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Conclusion: We found polygenic overlap between AD and BIP and identified novel loci for each trait and two jointly associated loci. Further studies should examine if the shared loci implicating the MARK2 and VAC14 genes could explain parts of the shared and distinct features of AD and BIP.
Results: Conditional QQ-plots demonstrated a polygenic overlap between AD and BIP. Using conditional FDR, we identified one novel genomic locus associated with AD, and nine novel loci associated with BIP. Further, we identified two novel loci jointly associated with AD and BIP implicating the MARK2 gene (lead SNP rs10792421, conjunctional FDR = 0.030, same direction of effect) and the VAC14 gene (lead SNP rs11649476, conjunctional FDR = 0.022, opposite direction of effect).
Methods: We obtained genome wide association studies data from the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project part 1 (17,008 AD cases and 37,154 controls) and the Psychiatric Genetic Consortium Bipolar Disorder Working Group (20,352 BIP cases and 31,358 controls). We used conditional QQ-plots to assess overlap in common genetic variants between AD and BIP. We exploited the genetic overlap to re-rank test-statistics for AD and BIP and improve detection of genetic variants using the conditional FDR framework.
Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and bipolar disorder (BIP) are complex traits influenced by numerous common genetic variants, most of which remain to be detected. Clinical and epidemiological evidence suggest that AD and BIP are related. However, it is not established if this relation is of genetic origin. Here, we applied statistical methods based on the conditional false discovery rate (FDR) framework to detect genetic overlap between AD and BIP and utilized this overlap to increase the power to identify common genetic variants associated with either or both traits.
Introduction
About a century ago, Alois Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin described the historical equivalents of AD and BIP (Alzheimer, 1907; Kraepelin, 1921). Still their etiologies are incompletely understood and no curative treatments exist (Grande et al., 2016; Scheltens et al., 2016). The Global Burden of Disease study ranks AD and BIP among the top thirty causes of years lived with disability worldwide (Vos et al., 2016).
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder (Jack et al., 2013) usually presenting in late adult life (Koedam et al., 2010), while BIP is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder (Sanches et al., 2008; O’Shea and McInnis, 2016) with average age at onset in early adult life (Baldessarini et al., 2010). Yet, epidemiological, pathophysiological, and clinical data suggest that AD and BIP could be related. A recent meta-analysis reports an odds ratio of 2.4 (95% CI 1.4–4.1) for dementia of all causes among patients with BIP (Diniz et al., 2017). The risk of dementia is higher among patients with BIP compared to patients with arthritis, diabetes, and schizophrenia (Kessing et al., 1999; Kessing and Nilsson, 2003). Among patients with BIP, treatment with lithium is associated with a reduced risk of dementia (Kessing et al., 2010; Gerhard et al., 2015) and AD (Nunes et al., 2007) in most, but not all (Cheng et al., 2017), observational studies. Among patients with AD or mild cognitive impairment, a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies found that lithium decreased cognitive decline (Matsunaga et al., 2015). Shared pathophysiological processes between AD and BIP are reported in the kynurenine pathway (Miller et al., 2006; Myint et al., 2007; Rahman et al., 2009; Gulaj et al., 2010; Maddison and Giorgini, 2015; Savitz et al., 2015). There is also evidence of inflammatory processes in both conditions (Goldstein et al., 2009; Antonio et al., 2015; Heneka et al., 2015). Further, euthymic patients with BIP have impairments of episodic memory (Torres et al., 2007) and executive dysfunction (Torres et al., 2007; Martino et al., 2015), which are also core symptoms of AD (Gold and Budson, 2008; Godefroy et al., 2016).
Despite several lines of evidence suggesting a relation between AD and BIP, it is not established if the conditions have a shared genetic basis. AD and BIP are in most cases complex traits, i.e., they are influenced by several genetic and environmental factors. Twin studies estimate the heritability of AD and BIP to 60% or higher (McGuffin et al., 2003; Kieseppä and Partonen, 2004; Gatz et al., 2006; Lichtenstein et al., 2009). Genome wide association studies (GWASs) are the gold standard for hypothesis-free assessment of associations between complex traits and common genetic variants (Corvin et al., 2010). The common variants refer to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with minor allele frequencies > 1–5%. The power of a GWAS is a function of study sample size and the genetic architecture of the trait (i.e., the narrow-sense heritability, the number of causal variants, their effect sizes, and population frequencies) (Schork et al., 2016; Frei et al., 2018). AD and BIP are considered highly polygenic (Purcell et al., 2009; Escott-Price et al., 2015), and ∼1/3 of their heritability can be explained by SNPs with tiny effect sizes that are not individually detectable given the power of current GWASs (Lee et al., 2011, 2013; Ridge et al., 2013, 2016).
With the current sample sizes, however, the power of GWASs can be boosted by leveraging polygenic overlap between complex traits (Andreassen et al., 2013a,b, 2015). Shared genetic influences are common among complex traits (Visscher et al., 2017). Statistical methods based on the conditional FDR framework can detect polygenic overlap between complex traits and utilize this polygenic overlap to increase the power to identify common genetic variants associated with each trait and jointly with two or more traits (Andreassen et al., 2013a,b, 2015). We aimed to use these methods to identify the shared genetic basis between AD and BIP.
Materials and Methods
Data Sources
We obtained summary statistics (i.e., effect sizes and corresponding p-values for all SNPs) from the IGAP (Lambert et al., 2013) and the PGC2-BIP (Stahl et al., 2019).
International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project
The IGAP is a two-stage study. We used data from stage 1 of the study, which is based upon four previously published GWASs [The European Alzheimer’s Disease Initiative (Dreses-Werringloer et al., 2008; Heath et al., 2008), the Alzheimer Disease Genetics Consortium (Jun et al., 2010), The Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology consortium (Psaty et al., 2009), The Genetic and Environmental Risk in AD consortium (Harold et al., 2009)] on 17,008 AD cases and 37,154 controls of European ancestry. The IMPUTE2 (Howie et al., 2009) or MaCH/Minimac (Li et al., 2010) software were used to impute SNPs from the European ancestry haplotypes in the 1000 Genome Project (Altshuler et al., 2010). In stage 2 of the study, SNPs with p-values < 1 × 10-3 from stage 1 were selected for genotyping in independent samples. We did not use data from stage 2 of the study since the conditional FDR method require genome-wide summary statistics which are not inflated.
Diagnoses of AD in the sub-studies of IGAP were in most cases made clinically according to the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer’s disease and Related Disorders Association criteria (McKhann et al., 1984) or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria, or post mortem according to the National Institute of Ageing-Regan criteria (Newell et al., 1999).
Informed consents were provided from all participants, or, in the case of substantial cognitive impairment, from caregivers, legal guardians, or other proxies. The sub-studies were approved by local ethic committees.
For further details, we refer to the original publication (Lambert et al., 2013).
Psychiatric Genetic Consortium 2 Bipolar Disorder Working Group
The PGC2-BIP is a GWAS based upon 32 sub-studies on 20,352 BIP cases and 31,358 controls of European ancestry. Arrays for genotyping were chosen by each sub-study. The Ricopoli pipeline was used to standardize quality control, imputation, and analyses of genotypic data from all samples except one. SNPs were excluded by the following criteria: missingness in > 5 (before sample removal) or 2% (after sample removal), p-value for Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium < 1 × 10-10 in cases or <1 × 10-6 in controls, missingness difference between cases and controls > 2%, or autosomal heterozygosity deviation (|F het | > 0.2). Individuals with > 2% missing genotypes were also excluded. The IMPUTE2 (Howie et al., 2009) and SHAPEIT2 (Delaneau et al., 2012) software were used for imputation.
Diagnoses of BIP were established by clinical interviews or obtained from hospital record data according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), the International Classification of Diseases 9th revision (World Health Organization, 1977), or the International Classification of Diseases 10th revision (World Health Organization, 1992).
Informed consents were provided from all participants. The sub-studies were approved by local ethical committees.
For further details, we refer to the original publication (Stahl et al., 2019).
Data Availability
Data from the IGAP and PGC2-BIP studies are publicly available for download.
Statistical Analyses
Conditional Quantile–Quantile (QQ)-Plots
We used conditional QQ-plots to visually assess pleiotropic enrichment. A conditional QQ-plot displays the distribution of p-values for the first trait, e.g., AD, conditioned on association levels for the second trait, e.g., BIP. Pleiotropic enrichment is present if the degree of leftward shift from the expected null line for the first trait is dependent on the degree of association with the second trait. For further details, we refer to previous studies (Andreassen et al., 2013a,b, 2015) and Supplementary Methods 1.1.
Conditional False Discovery Rate (condFDR)
The enrichment observed in conditional QQ-plots can be translated to FDR for each SNP. We used the conditional false discovery rate (condFDR) to improve power to detect SNPs associated with AD given associations with BIP and vice versa. condFDR is defined as “the posterior probability that a given SNP is null for the first trait given that the p-values for both traits are as small or smaller than the observed p-values” (Andreassen et al., 2015). We denoted condFDR for AD given associations with BIP as condFDR (ADjBIP) and for BIP given association with AD as condFDR (BIPj AD) and considered values < 0.01 significant. For further details, we refer to previous studies (Andreassen et al., 2013a,b, 2015) and Supplementary Methods 1.2.
Conjunctional False Discovery Rate (conjFDR)
We used conjunctional FDR (conjFDR) to identify SNPs jointly associated with AD and BIP. conjFDR is defined as “the posterior probability that a SNP is null for either phenotype or both simultaneously, given the p-values for both traits are as small or smaller than the observed p-values” (Andreassen et al., 2015). After repeating the condFDR procedure for both traits, we identified shared loci at conjFDR < 0.05, which is given by the maximum between the condFDRs for both traits. Hence, the conjFDR analysis is a conservative approach requiring that loci exceed a condFDR significance threshold for two traits simultaneously. For further details, we refer to previous studies (Andreassen et al., 2013a,b, 2015) and Supplementary Methods 1.3.
Conditional and Conjunctional Manhattan Plots
We constructed conditional Manhattan plots to visualize the chromosomal location of SNPs with condFDR (ADjBIP) (Supplementary Figure 1) and condFDR (BIPjAD) < 0.01 (Supplementary Figure 2). We constructed a similar plot for SNPs jointly associated with AD and BIP at a conjFDR < 0.05 (Figure 2).
Assessment of Novelty
To determine if a locus was novel, we first checked that the p-value(s) for the implicating variant was > 5 × 10-8 in the original GWAS(s). Further, we used LDlink (Machiela and Chanock, 2015) to exclude variants which are in LD (r2> 0.1) with any of the genome-wide significant hits in the original GWAS(s). Finally, we conducted a search on PubMed using the term (“SNP id” OR “gene name”) AND (“Bipolar Disorder”[Mesh] OR “Alzheimer Disease”[Mesh]) to exclude that the variants or implicated genes have been associated with AD or BIP at genome-wide significance in previous GWASs.
Cerebral Gene Expression Across Lifespan of the Implicated Loci
The Human Brain Transcriptome (HBT) project used postmortem brain tissue from over 1,340 samples to provide genome-wide exon-level transcriptome data in 16 cerebral regions (Kang et al., 2011). We obtained figures from the HBT project on gene expression in different cerebral areas as a function of age (i.e., from embryonic life through late adulthood) for the nearest genes to the loci jointly associated with AD and BIP.
Control of Spurious Enrichment
We randomly chose one SNP in each LD block (r2> 0.1), and calculated the average empirical cumulative distribution function (ecdf) by using the p-values obtained through 200 iterations. SNPs within the major histocompatibility complex region (defined as chr6:25652429–33368333) and the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene (chr19:44909039–45912650), and SNPs in LD (r2> 0.1) with these SNPs, were excluded from the analyses due to their complex LD structure (de Bakker and Raychaudhuri, 2012) and known association to AD (Lambert et al., 2010; Scheltens et al., 2016), which could bias the estimates of enrichment. Further, we used LD-independent (r2< 0.1) intergenic SNPs, which are depleted of true associations, to calculate an inflation factor value (Wang et al., 2016a). We divided all test statistics on this value to control for genomic inflation.
Cross-Trait Linkage Disequilibrium Score Regression (LDSR)
We calculated the degree of genetic correlation between AD and BIP using cross-trait LD score regression (LDSR) (Bulik-Sullivan et al., 2015). For details, we refer to Supplementary Materials 1.4.
Ethics Statement
All GWASs performed and investigated in the present study were approved by the local ethics committees, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. Furthermore, the Norwegian Institutional Review Board for the South-East Norway Region has evaluated the methods used in the current study and found that no additional institutional review board approval was needed because no individual data were used (ref. 2011/1980).
Results
Pleiotropic Enrichment
In the conditional QQ-plots, we observed enrichment of associations with AD given increasing SNP associations with BIP, and vice versa (Figure 1). These findings indicate polygenic overlap between AD and BIP across common genetic variants.
FIGURE 1
Figure 1. Conditional QQ-plots of nominal p-values at y-axis and 1 - empirical cumulative distribution function on x-axis for (A) Alzheimer’s disease (AD) with lines representing strata of SNPs according to their degree of association with bipolar disorder (BIP) and (B) BIP with lines representing strata of SNPs according to their degree of association with AD.
Improving Genetic Discovery Using Conditional FDR
We then leveraged the pleiotropic enrichment observed in conditional QQ-plots to boost SNP discovery in both traits using condFDR.
We identified 22 SNPs clumped into 19 independent loci at condFDR (ADjBIP) < 0.01 (Supplementary Table 1). The chromosomal locations of the nearest genes are visualized in a conditional Manhattan plot (Supplementary Figure 1). Red annotations represent the four loci with a lower conditional than unconditional FDR. Of these four loci, two loci have uncorrected p-values > 5 × 10-8 in the original GWAS and are thus not identified by traditional methods; NDUFS3 (rs71475924, intron variant) and MTSS1L (rs12597717, intron variant). The signal in NDUFS3 was driven by one single SNP and is thus probably a spurious association.
Further, we identified 24 SNPs within 24 loci at a condFDR (BIPjAD) < 0.01 (Supplementary Table 2). As visualized in the conditional Manhatton plot (Supplementary Figure 2), 17 loci had a lower conditional than unconditional FDR. Of these 17 loci, 10 variants have uncorrected p-values > 5 × 10-8 in the original GWAS and are thus not identified by traditional methods; LOC105378763 (rs1889778, intron variant), CNTNAP5 (rs13011184, intron variant), KIAA1109 (rs45605540, intron variant), SSBP2 (rs7707981, intron variant), AK091365 (rs2388334, no genic locational annotation), RCOR2 (rs4980532, intron variant), STARD9 (rs4447398, intron variant), GRIN2A (rs11647445, intron variant), THRA (rs61554907, intron variant), and PRKCA (rs7406066, intron variant). However; the CNTNAP5 gene has previously been associated with the posterior cortical atrophy variant of AD at genome-wide significance (Schott et al., 2016) and with BIP (Djurovic et al., 2010).
Identification of Shared Loci
Finally, we applied conjFDR to assess for SNPs jointly associated with AD and BIP. We used effect sizes from the original data sources to determine the allelic direction of effects in both traits.
We identified two SNPs at two loci at a conjFDR (AD&BIP) < 0.05 (Table 1 and Figure 2). A 2 kb upstream variant at MARK2 (rs10792421) was associated with AD and BIP with the same direction of effect on AD and BIP [conjFDR (AD&BIP) = 0.030, z-score (AD) = 3.99, z-score (BIP) = 4.74]. MARK2 is widely expressed in the developing and adult human brain (Supplementary Figure 3). An intronic variant within VAC14 (rs11649476) was associated with AD and BIP with opposite directions of effect in AD and BIP [conjFDR (AD&BIP) = 0.022, z-score (AD) = -4.35, z-score (BIP) = 4.18]. VAC14 is also widely expressed in the developing and adult human brain (Supplementary Figure 4). Both SNPs have p-values > 5 × 10-8 for both traits in the original GWASs and are thus not identified by traditional methods.
TABLE 1
Table 1. SNPs with related genes jointly associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and bipolar disorder (BIP) at a conjunctional false discovery rate (conjFDR( AD&BIP) ) < 0.05.
FIGURE 2
Figure 2. Conjunctional Manhatton plot of loci jointly associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and bipolar disorder (BIP) at a conjuntional false discovery rate < 0.05.
Genetic Correlation
We estimated that there is no overall genetic correlation between AD and BIP according to LDSR (r g = -0.0222, SE = 0.0519, p = 0.669).
Discussion
We used statistical methods based on the condFDR framework and showed that AD and BIP have a shared genetic basis. Our study adds new insights into the relation between AD and BIP by finding polygenic overlap, one novel locus associated with AD and nine novel loci associated with BIP when conditioned on associations with the other trait, and two novel loci jointly associated with both traits.
A polygenic overlap between AD and BIP could implicate shared genetic influences as a part of the explanation to the epidemiological (Diniz et al., 2017), pathophysiological (Goldstein et al., 2009; Heneka et al., 2015), and clinical (Gold and Budson, 2008; Martino et al., 2015; Godefroy et al., 2016) links between the diseases. However, we do not find an overall genetic correlation as assessed with cross-trait LDSR (Bulik-Sullivan et al., 2015). Also, one of the two jointly associated SNPs demonstrates effects in opposite directions. These findings are compatible with a scenario where the polygenic overlap between AD and BIP involves a mixed direction of effects of the implicated SNPs yielding no genome-wide correlation (Frei et al., 2018). Thus, absence of an overall genetic correlation between brain disorders, as evident for several traits (including AD and BIP) in the study of Anttila et al. (2018), does not imply lack of genetic overlap.
The loci implicating the MARK2 and VAC14 genes were jointly associated with AD and BIP (Table 1). Both genes are widely expressed in the human brain throughout life (Supplementary Figures 3, 4), which implies a spatial and temporal relation to both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative processes. The locus implicating the MARK2 gene (rs10792421) had a concordant direction of effect in both traits (Table 1). The MARK2 gene encodes the microtubule affinity regulating kinase 2 (MARK2). The kinase is involved in a diversity of neuronal cellular processes, including neuronal migration, and tau phosphorylation (Matenia and Mandelkow, 2009). Migration of immature neurons is necessary for corticogenesis (Kon et al., 2017). BIP is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder partly because of previous findings of cortical cell migration abnormalities (Sanches et al., 2008; O’Shea and McInnis, 2016). Abnormal neuronal migration might also be involved in later stages of life among patients with AD (Reiner et al., 2009). Tauopathy is one of the pathophysiological hallmarks of AD (Jack et al., 2013). Gu G.J. et al. (2013) demonstrated that MARK2 increases the phosphorylation of tau in situ and found interactions between MARK2 and tau in postmortem human AD brain tissue. The role of tauopathy has also been explored in BIP. A study of cerebrospinal fluid among younger patients with BIP (Jakobsson et al., 2013) and a similar study of elderly patients with BIP and mild cognitive impairment (Forlenza et al., 2016) did not find any evidence of tauopathy. However, in another study, the total to phosphorylated tau ratio was reduced among patients with BIP carrying the risk allele of a common variant related to the previously discovered BIP risk gene CACNA1C (Jakobsson et al., 2016). A similar reduction was not found among healthy controls carrying the same risk allele. These findings suggest an alteration in the regulation of tau phosphorylation in carriers of the risk allele that is restricted to patients with BIP. Further studies should explore whether interactions with other genes involved in regulation of tau phosphorylation, like the MARK2 gene, could explain the specificity of the finding to patients with BIP. Lithium has several molecular targets including inhibition of glycogen synthase kinase 3β (Freland and Beaulieu, 2012). Evidence is conflicting on whether glycogen synthase kinase 3β in turn inhibits or activates MARK2 (Kosuga et al., 2005; Timm et al., 2008). Consequently, it is unknown whether treatment with lithium could result in reduced or increased phosphorylation of tau among carriers of the common variant related to the MARK2 gene.
The intronic variant within VAC14 (rs11649476) was related to AD and BIP with opposite directions of effects. The same variant was shared between BIP and intelligence with concordant direction of effects in a recent study using conjunctional FDR (Smeland et al., 2019). VAC14 encodes a part of the PIKfyve protein kinase complex, which phosphorylates phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate [PI(3)P] to phosphatidylinositol 3,5-bisphosphate [PI(3,5)P 2 ] (McCartney et al., 2014). PI(3,5)P 2 is involved in endosomal homeostasis (Di Paolo and De Camilli, 2006). A null mutation of VAC14 in a mouse model resulted in perinatal death and massive neurodegeneration with vacuolated neurons (Zhang et al., 2007). Amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a transmembrane protein involved in the pathophysiology of AD (O’Brien and Wong, 2011). Balklava et al. (2015) found that APP interacts with the PIKfyve complex to maintain endosomal homeostasis in C. elegans. They postulated that aberrant processing of APP contributes to the pathophysiology of AD through a cascade of reduced activation of PIKfyve, reduced levels of PI(3,5)P 2 , endosomal dysfunction, and reduced clearance of beta amyloid. Another example of the relationship between the processing of phosphoinositides and APP comes from a study of Miranda et al. (2018). They found that inhibition of Vps34, a kinase phosphorylating phosphatidylinositol (PI) to PI(3)P, causes endolysosomal dysfunction with secretion of exosomes containing APP C-terminal fragments. Knowles et al. (2017) recently reported that serum levels of PI, the precursor of phosphoinositides like PI(3)P and PI(3,5)P 2 , is negatively associated with a proxy of genetic susceptibility to BIP.
Some of the genes implicated by the novel loci identified by conditional FDR analyses (Supplementary Tables 1, 2 and Supplementary Figures 1, 2) also relate to known pathophysiological and clinical features of AD and BIP. The PRKCA gene encodes the protein kinase C alpha (PKCa). PKCa is described in amyloid plaque of patients with AD (Clark et al., 1991) where it could contribute to reduced synaptic activity (Alfonso et al., 2016). The PRKCA gene is higher expressed in bipolar mania compared to unipolar depression (Wang et al., 1999), and is lower expressed in fibroblasts of patients with BIP treated with lithium compared to those treated with other medications (Kittel-Schneider et al., 2016). Common genetic variants implicating the PRKCA gene are in healthy individuals associated to impairment of episodic memory (MacLeod and Donaldson, 2014). Variants within the KIAA1109 gene are in family studies associated with multi-system syndromes characterized by impaired neurodevelopment (Alazami et al., 2015; Gueneau et al., 2018), while the MTSS1L gene is associated with neurodegeneration in a consanguineous family study (Alazami et al., 2015). The STARD9 gene is necessary for spindle assembly during cell division in human development, and a mutation in the gene might cause a syndrome with intellectual disability (Okamoto et al., 2017). The locus implicating the AK091365 gene was previously associated with general cognitive function when conditioned on association with schizophrenia (Smeland et al., 2017), which in turn has a high genetic correlation with BIP (Bulik-Sullivan et al., 2015). The SSBP2 gene encodes the single strand DNA binding protein 2, which protects telomeres in a mouse model (Gu p. et al., 2013). In a Mendelian randomization study, Zhan et al. (2015) found that telomere length is causally related to AD. Telomere length is probably not reduced in most patients with BIP (Colpo et al., 2015; Darrow et al., 2016), however; one study found that patients with BIP treated with lithium had longer telomeres compared to patients not receiving lithium (Powell et al., 2017). The RCOR2 gene product is related to cortical development (Wang et al., 2016b) and inflammation (Alvarez-López et al., 2014) in mice. The GRIN2A gene encodes the GluN2A subunit of the N-methyl- D -aspartate (NMDA) receptor. The NMDA receptor is central for synaptic plasticity and learning (Li and Tsien, 2009). Memantine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, probably reduces cognitive decline (Reisberg et al., 2003; Howard et al., 2012) and neuropsychiatric symptoms (Maidment et al., 2008) in AD. Ketamine, another NMDA receptor antagonist, can give short term remission of depression in BIP when used as an add-on to mood stabilizers (Diazgranados et al., 2010; Zarate et al., 2012). Mutations in GRIN2A are previously associated with a range of neuropsychiatric phenotypes including mental retardation, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and BIP (Itokawa et al., 2003; Yuan et al., 2015).
Some of the genes implicated both at genome-wide significance in previously GWASs and by conditional FDR in the present study also have pathophysiological and clinical plausibility. The expression of TRANK1 is decreased in induced pluripotent stem cells derived neurons carrying the common variant found in our study (rs9834970). Decreased expression of TRANK1 alters the expression of other genes related to neuronal development and differentiation (Jiang et al., 2018). Chronic treatment with sodium valproate, a mood stabilizer used in BIP (Macritchie et al., 2001), normalizes the expression of TRANK1 (Jiang et al., 2018). The CNTNAP5 gene encodes a transmembrane protein of the neurexin family, which is related to cellular adhesion and intercellular communication (Traut et al., 2006). Common variants implicating CNTNAP5 have previously been associated with the posterior cortical atrophy variant of AD (Schott et al., 2016), BIP (Djurovic et al., 2010), and response to antipsychotic treatment in schizophrenia (Yu et al., 2018), while rare variants within CNTNAP5 have previously been associated with autism spectrum disorders (Pagnamenta et al., 2010). The NCAN gene is involved in neuronal adhesion and migration (Raum et al., 2015). Common variants implicating NCAN are associated with cognitive performance (Raum et al., 2015) and limbic gray matter volumes (Dannlowski et al., 2015) in healthy individuals, while a rare variant is associated with dyslexia (Einarsdottir et al., 2017).
Further experimental studies should examine the implications of our findings. It is unknown if the loci implicated by condFDR and conjFDR relate to altered levels of gene expression, pathophysiological processes (e.g., impaired neuronal migration, tauopathy, and disturbed endosomal homeostasis), clinical features (e.g., cognitive and affective symptoms), and treatment response to lithium among patients with AD and BIP. Further, it is unknown if the loci interact with environmental risk factors and other genes implicated in AD and BIP.
Our results should be interpreted in light of the following limitations. We can neither exclude that some of the patients with AD have had BIP, nor that some of the patients with BIP will develop AD, which could have confounded our results. However; this could not explain the finding in the conjunctional FDR analyses of one locus implicated in AD and BIP with opposite directions of effect. Due to linkage disequilibrium among SNPs, our findings do not necessarily reflect causal variants, or that the same causal variants are involved in both traits. Although we found indications of modest polygenic overlap using conditional QQ-plots (Figure 1), we only detected two genetic loci jointly associated with both AD and BIP (Figure 2). However, the observed enrichment suggests that more shared SNPs will be identified when GWAS sample sizes increase (Schork et al., 2016). Further, we have only assessed the shared common genetic variants between AD and BIP. Other genetic variations, like rare structural variants, are also shown to increase the risk of AD and BIP (Lord et al., 2014; Cruceanu et al., 2017). Lastly, most participants in the data used in our study are of European ancestry. The generalizability of our findings to samples dominated by participants of other ancestries is unknown.
Conclusion
We find polygenic overlap between AD and BIP and identify novel loci associated with each trait and jointly with both traits, providing new insights into their genetic architecture. The genes MARK2 and VAC14 jointly implicated in AD and BIP are previously described to be involved in neuronal migration, tau phosphorylation, and endosomal homeostasis. Further experimental studies should examine if our findings translate to altered levels of transcription, pathophysiological processes, clinical features, and treatment response to lithium among patients with AD and BIP.
Author Contributions
OD, PF, SH, and OA designed the protocol of the study. OA and OS obtained funding. AS, OS, OF, SH, and YW conducted the analyses. OS, AS, AW, OF, YW, SH, and OA interpreted the results. OD, OS, and AS drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed with the further writing of the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
The study was supported by grants from by NIH (NS057198 and EB00790), the Research Council of Norway (229129, 213837, 223273, 251134, and 226971), the South-East Norway Regional Health Authority (2013–123, 2016–064), and KG Jebsen Foundation (SKGJ-2011–36).
Conflict of Interest Statement
OA has received a speaker’s honorarium from Lundbeck and has a patent application (US 20150356243) pending. AD also applied for this patent application and assigned it to UC San Diego. AD has additional disclosures outside the present work: founder, equity holder, and advisory board member for CorTechs Labs, advisory board member of Human Longevity, recipient of non-financial research support from General Electric Healthcare.
The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP) for providing summary results data for these analyses. The investigators within IGAP contributed to the design and implementation of IGAP and/or provided data but did not participate in analysis or writing of this report. IGAP was made possible by the generous participation of the control subjects, the patients, and their families. The i–Select chips was funded by the French National Foundation on Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. EADI was supported by the LABEX (laboratory of excellence program investment for the future) DISTALZ grant, Inserm, Institut Pasteur de Lille, Université de Lille 2 and the Lille University Hospital. GERAD was supported by the Medical Research Council (Grant n∘ 503480), Alzheimer’s Research UK (Grant n∘ 503176), the Wellcome Trust (Grant n∘ 082604/2/07/Z) and German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF): Competence Network Dementia (CND) grant n∘ 01GI0102, 01GI0711, 01GI0420. CHARGE was partly supported by the NIH/NIA grant R01 AG033193 and the NIA AG081220 and AGES contract N01–AG–12100, the NHLBI grant R01 HL105756, the Icelandic Heart Association, and the Erasmus Medical Center and Erasmus University. ADGC was supported by the NIH/NIA grants: U01 AG032984, U24 AG021886, U01 AG016976, and the Alzheimer’s Association grant ADGC–10–196728. We would like to thank the Psychiatric Genetic Consortium 2 Bipolar Disorder Working Group (PGC2-BIP) for providing summary statistics for the study. The authors are listed in the Supplementary Methods 1.5. We would also like to thank the Human Brain Transcriptome atlas for giving permission to use their figures on spatio-temporal cerebral expression of the genes identified in our study.
Supplementary Material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00220/full#supplementary-material
Abbreviations
AD, Alzheimer’s disease; BIP, bipolar disorder; FDR, false discovery rate; GWAS, genome wide association study; IGAP, International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project; LD, linkage disequilibrium; LDSR, Linkage disequilibrium score regression; PGC2-BIP, Psychiatric Genetic Consortium 2 Bipolar Disorder Working Group; SNP single nucleotide polymorphism; QQ, quantile-quantile.
Footnotes
References
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If you believe what the participants say, then the story of Alex Ferguson, Mauricio Pochettino, a £114 bottle of Brunello di Montalcino (2011) and the Scott’s establishment in Mayfair was nothing more than two men making good on a resolution to meet.
It was May 10 this year when the two men took up chairs there, with the Tottenham Hotspur manager’s assistant Jesús Pérez in tow – “myself and Sir Alex spoke, and Jesús drank,” Pochettino later related with a smile - and the Argentine characterised it as an opportunity for accelerated learning. He claimed he hadn’t slept the night before, as a verbal agreement to lunch, made at a League Managers’ Association dinner in March, firmed up into two coveted hours in Ferguson’s company.
But the choreography has always seemed a little more complex where the Godfather of Manchester United and Pochettino are concerned. Ferguson described him last season as the best manager in the league and although the Argentinian signed a new five-year contract at Tottenham within a few days of the Mayfair encounter, he has clearly been on Ferguson’s radar – and thus United’s.
This is the backdrop to the game of this weekend – Mourinho’s United v Pochettino’s Tottenham - which, after Mourinho v Wenger and Guardiola v Conte provides yet another absorbing managerial match up in a season which is becoming stuffed with them.
Though Ferguson has been glowing in his tributes for Mourinho too, you sense that Pochettino – who at 44 is nine years the Portuguese’s junior – fits more essentially into his notion of what successful football management is all about, not least developing a youthful, home-grown core. As the two sides prepare to collide at OId Trafford, Mourinho faces an almighty fight to prove that he’s not been turned into yesterday’s man by a coming man.
Pochettino really was making Mourinho seem ancient history two months or so ago, when Manchester City were overwhelmed by Spurs just 22 days after submitting Manchester United to a first half evisceration in the Old Trafford derby. Since then the picture has been scrambled by Tottenham’s stuttering progress. It will take more than a win over Swansea City and CSKA Moscow – whipping boys of the competitions in which Spurs met them – to suggest that Pochettino is back at the top of the hill.
His problems have included the struggle of some players whose performances prompted that fulsome Ferguson praise last spring to find the same level this season. Eric Dier, Jan Vertongen, Christian Eriksen and Dele Alli are among them. Harry Kane and Mousa Dembele have struggled for fitness, while Moussa Sissoko, Victor Wanyama nor Vincent Janssen have looked worth the money paid out for them.
Manchester United transfer targets Show all 6 1 /6 Manchester United transfer targets Manchester United transfer targets Jose Gimenez (Atletico Madrid) The 21-year-old Uruguayan has already played 21 times for his country and has been touted as a future world-class centre-back. Currently on the books of Atletico Madrid, Gimenez is not a regular and a move in January for first-team football would surely appeal to him. Getty Manchester United transfer targets Victor Lindelof (Benfica) The most recent player to be linked with the Red Devils, Lindelof is a 22-year-old centre-back currently plying his trade at Benfica. The Swedish international has been in fine form this season and could be tempted by a move to England in January. Getty Manchester United transfer targets Mesut Özil (Arsenal) The German midfielder has emerged as a shock transfer target for the Red Devils as the Arsenal playmaker demands a substantial increase to his current £140,000 per week contract in North London. Getty Manchester United transfer targets Antoine Griezmann (Atletico Madrid) The French forward had a brilliant season in Spain last year and was top scorer and Player of the Tournament as he helped his country to the final of Euro 2016. Atletico Madrid would certainly not let him go on the cheap however. Getty Manchester United transfer targets Yannick Carrasco (Atletico Madrid) The third Atletico Madrid player reported to be on Mourinho’s wish-list, Carrasco is one of Belgium’s new generation of talent and, at just 23 years of age, has a long career ahead of him. The Belgian is an attacking midfielder who has added a ruthlessness in front of goal to his repertoire this season, contributing nine goals in all competitions. Getty Manchester United transfer targets Bruma (Galatasaray) Galatasaray’s fleet-footed winger is rated at around £21.5m and has impressed in the Turkish league this season, receiving five Man of the Match awards in just ten starts so far. Bruma is a fantastic dribbler who would certainly provide competition for places on the left wing. Getty
Pochettino still looks a brighter light than Mourinho, though. This was the week we discovered that those at the top of Old Trafford are "encouraged" by what is seen as a more progressive style of play than Louis van Gaal instigated. But the very fact that such expressions of support are necessary speak for the club’s poorest start to a season for 26 years, with two wins in the past 11 league matches.
Mourinho’s current task is monumentally greater than Pochettino’s, however much money the former has at his disposal. The older man is handling a super-tanker, his adversary a pleasure craft. “It is not so easy to change in three months,” Mourinho observed recently. “Personality is the most difficult thing to change, whereas style of play you change here and there. I never went to a winning club or a club with the recent success where you can just introduce a little of your salt and pepper and maybe change a little the direction.”
But it certainly feels like the world has changed in the nine years since Tottenham chairman rang Mourinho fully five times after he had been sacked by Chelsea, offering the match his £5.2m Stamford Bridge salary - only for the move to be blocked by the strictures of the severance agreed with Roman Abramovich. “I couldn't go. I couldn't train in England for two years," Mourinho later reflected of Levy’s enticements in September 2007.
I never went to a winning club or a club with the recent success where you can just introduce a little of your salt and pepper and maybe change a little the direction. Jose Mourinho
Mourinho will be without Chris Smalling and Luke Shaw, yet with Eric Bailly available and also extolling the virtues of Henrik Mkitarayan, after his fine display and first United goal in Odessa against Zorya Luhansk on Thursday. | {
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A FORMER Tyrone GAA star who shot dead his father had been harbouring a secret need to kill either of his parents, the Court of Appeal heard this week.
A FORMER Tyrone GAA star who shot dead his father had been harbouring a secret need to kill either of his parents, the Court of Appeal heard this week.
A consultant psychiatrist who assessed Sean Hackett told judges he is suffering from one of the purest forms of delusional disorder she has ever encountered.
Describing the case as unlike any other in Northern Ireland, Dr Carine Minne claimed the 20-year-old’s mental illness now requires expert medical attention.
She said, “He’s not just a homicide risk while he remains untreated, but also a suicide risk.”
Hackett is challenging a minimum ten-year prison term imposed for the manslaughter of his father Aloysius at the family home near Augher, in January 2013.
A jury found him guilty last year on the grounds of diminished responsibility after acquitting him of murder.
Aloysius Hackett, a former chairman of St Macartan’s GAC in Augher, was shot twice in the head on the driveway of his Aghindarrah Road home.
His son Sean, who previously captained the Tyrone Minor GAA team, admitted carrying out the shooting but consistently denied murder.
At his trial it was set out how he had suffered depression in the preceding months, triggered by a split from his girlfriend.
Defence lawyers are now appealing the sentence by arguing that a hospital order should be considered as an alternative.
James Gallagher QC, for Hackett, stressed his client could not be accused of trying to manipulate the criminal justice system.
“The accused has said he considers that he doesn’t need treatment, but he acknowledged if the treatment is available to him he will avail of This,” he told the court.
“If a hospital order is deemed appropriate he would comply with that.”
Dressed in a white shirt, black tie and trousers, Hackett was escorted into court by guards for the appeal hearing.
His mother Eilish, who he tried to strangle just months before the shooting, sat in the public gallery along with other family members.
She listened as Mr Gallagher told the three judges that the relationship between her son and husband was described as being “like brothers”.
The barrister argued that his client was mentally ill at the time of the shooting and remains so now.
“There hasn’t been any sudden, self-cure without treatment or assessment,” he said.
Up to five psychiatrists back the view that Hackett was in a delusional state of mind when he carried out the killing.
One of those experts called to give fresh evidence was Dr Minne, who is based at the high security Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire.
She identified a series of factors contributing to Hackett’s mental health deteriorating in the months leading up to the shooting.
As well as breaking up with a girlfriend, the psychiatrist pointed to the death of a grandparent and the blow to his self-esteem when he failed to be picked for a football team.
By Autumn 2012 he had developed a belief that killing either of his parents would solve his problems, she claimed.
“He kept that secret to himself, and this delusion kept recurring over the coming weeks,” Dr Minne told the court.
Hackett first lured his mother into the family garage in a bid to strangle her, only to come to his senses and stop when she struggled and screamed.
Dr Minne revealed, “To quote him, he said ‘I just knew I had to do it’.”
He was taken to see his GP after that episode but was said to have insisted nothing was wrong as part of a “minimisation” of his illness.
At one point Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan asked Dr Minne if she knew of anything else like Hackett’s case.
She replied, “I’m not aware of another case of this type in Northern Ireland, but I have seen, assessed and treated cases of this kind through Broadmoor Hospital.”
Following the attempted strangulation Hackett’s thinking was said to have remained the same.
“The idea of needing to kill one of his parents persisted in his mind, but unbeknown to his family,” Dr Minne told the court.
The intensity of his relationship with them had been heightened by his brothers and sister all being away from home.
Hours before the shooting he nearly killed his mother before stopping at the last minute, it was claimed.
“He felt very scared and somehow couldn’t go through with it and withdrew, the psychiatrist said.
But according to her evidence Hackett was unable to tap into any such anxiety to stop himself from shooting his father later the same day.
In her assessment of Hackett she said he recalled feeling excited and tense as he heard his father arrive home.
After firing the first shot the victim’s son, in his delusional state, felt he had to shoot again to ensure he was dead, the court heard.
Significantly, Dr Minne claimed, Hackett stood over his father in a calm state of disbelief immediately after pulling the trigger.
“He felt as if he could be dreaming and wasn’t sure if he was really there or not really there,” she continued.
“He decided to walk around the house to see if the scene would still be there.
“At that moment he was in a disassociated state, where you’re not really fully aware of being present in reality, and you feel as if you’re in a dream and you’re going to snap out of it. Except he did not snap out of it.”
Following his arrest Hackett showed no signs of shock or horror at what he had done.
The psychiatrist added that since being taken into custody he has been “a poster boy prisoner”, adhering to all rules.
She contended that Hackett has still not fully understood that he killed his father.
“This case, of all the cases I have seen in Broadmoor in the last 25 years, is one of the purest forms of delusional disorder I have come across,” she told the judges.
According to her assessment any treatment in a psychiatric regime could take between five and ten years.
She added, “I’m so sorry Mr Hackett is not currently getting the treatment he needs.
“If it was my son suffering from this disorder I would really want him to be getting the treatment.”
Under cross-examination Ciaran Murphy QC, for the Crown, argued that Hackett had been capable of making decisions and exercising self-control in preparing and planning the shooting.
Dr Minne responded that by that stage there was no longer a sane part of his mind.
However, Mr Murphy insisted Hackett’s mental functioning enabled him to fire the gun, hide the weapon in a car boot and claim at first that a burglar may have carried out the shooting.
“It wasn’t dream-like when doing all these acts. They were well-directed,” the barrister contended.
Following submissions Sir Declan, sitting with Lord Justices Girvan and Coghlin, reserved judgment in the appeal. | {
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ASSOCIATED PRESS The Rev. William J. Barber II is a prominent progressive Christian pastor and civil rights advocate.
President Donald Trump openly embraced the label “nationalist” at least twice this week, breaking an unspoken rule among presidents about a word that has a long, troubling and racist history. There’s a key difference between nationalism and patriotism, according to the Rev. William J. Barber II, a prominent progressive Christian pastor and senior fellow at New York’s Auburn Seminary. “Nationalism suggests a commitment to one country to a fault,” Barber said in a statement released by Auburn. “Patriotism is a love for country that is willing to call it to question and challenge its flaws.” Barber isn’t just paying lip-service to his concept of patriotism. The North Carolina pastor is a longtime civil rights advocate who often participates in acts of civil disobedience. Earlier this month, Barber was named a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Genius Grant ― the same day he was arrested in Chicago while protesting with fast-food workers to raise the minimum wage. The pastor has been arrested at least 15 times, according to The Associated Press. Barber said he doesn’t think God calls people of faith to support nationalism in any form ― whether it’s the ideology embraced by white nationalists or the religious nationalism often espoused by some of Trump’s conservative evangelical supporters. “We are called to be faithful to the principles of Love, justice and mercy, and Truth,” Barber wrote in his statement. “We are called to be the prophets to the nations; not the Puppets of any president, any slogan or law that violates the fundamental humanity of any person.”
Bloomberg via Getty Images President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Houston, Texas, on Oct. 22, 2018. Trump called himself a "nationalist" at the rally as he appealed to Texas Republicans to help the party keep control of Congress.
Trump made his comments about nationalism during a rally in Houston on Monday night. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, OK?” the president said, eliciting cheers from the audience. “I’m a nationalist. Nationalist! Use that word! Use that word!” When Trump was asked to clarify his remarks during a press conference at the White House the next day, the president claimed to be ignorant of the word’s association with racist movements. Trump said all he wanted was for America to be “treated with respect” by its allies, particularly in trade deals. “I’m proud of our country. And I am a nationalist. It’s a word that hasn’t been used too much. Some people use it, but I’m very proud. I think it should be brought back,” he said. Auburn Seminary, a training institute for progressive faith leaders, canvassed its 25 senior fellows for their thoughts on Trump’s choice to embrace the word “nationalism.” One of them, Rabbi Sharon Brous, said she isn’t convinced that Trump is unaware of the word’s history. “He knows exactly what that means,” said Brous, a leader of the Ikar Jewish community in Los Angeles. “He is tacitly endorsing white nationalism, signaling his support of a violent, white supremacist agenda.” “Violent speech and a culture of division and aggression matter. History has taught us this — we must not ignore it now,” the rabbi added. Trump previously labeled himself a nationalist while talking about free trade during a February 2017 meeting at the White House, saying he was a “total nationalist” in a “true sense.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump holds up a "Christian Conservatives for Trump" sign at a rally on Sept. 28, 2016, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. | {
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The Club
KITS WITH CLASSIC LINES AND THE RETURN OF BLACK FOR THE THIRD KIT
The Official Store was the scene for the presentation of the new kits of the first team, Sevilla Atlético and Sevilla FC Femenno
Sevilla FC has released, with an act in the official store of the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, the new set of kits that will be used in the 17/18 season. This new collection has been launched accompanied by a campaign called ''Juega Sin Limites' (Play without limits). The home kit is logically white, with subtle vertical lines and contrast with touches of red on the neck, shoulders and sleeves of the shirt. The crest appears embroidered on the chest and the traditional one remains on the back of the neck. The kit s completed with the traditional white shorts and black socks. In the away kit there is also a use of the traditional red and a V neck similar to the home kit, but in this case of white colour, which also appears on the lower side of the sleeve. The shorts and socks also are red. When it comes to the third kit, the colour black returns replacing the colour yellow, with a shirt that sketches geometric diamond shapes, that recall some of the characteristic towers in the city's landscape. The shirt has a round and buttoned white collar, tone that also covers the socks. As a gesture, all three kits carry the number 16 on one of their shoulders in memory of Antonio Puerta, on the tenth anniversary since his tragic departure. The outfits have been developed by NB Dry, a fabric that absorbs humidity and helps maintain coolness, with 3D netting under the arms and back to help air circulation. Also, there is an additional zone of shock absorption on the socks. The new kits are already out for sale in the Official Store and the Online Store.
Sevilla Atlético and Sevilla FC Femenino There was also a spotlight in the kit launch on Sevilla Atlético, who will go back to competing in LaLiga 1|2|3, and on the feminine team, recently promoted to the Liga Iberdrola. In this sense, the youth team presents as an innovation that the strip on their shirt, red in the home kit and white in the away one, in addition to it being a bit larger, will occupy front and back of the shirt. When it comes to the third kit, it will be similar to the first team's one but less intense and without the strip. The outfits of the feminine team, identical to those of the first team, were presented by Alicia Fuentes, Jenni Morilla and the recently arrived Martina Piemonte. | {
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Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Spor
I realized something while watching UFC on Fox last Saturday night.
The co-main event between Rory MacDonald and Jake Ellenberger had just ended, with MacDonald named the winner by decision. I took to Twitter to voice my opinion on the fight, which was this: I thought it was a brilliant tactical performance by MacDonald, and an awful and uninspiring effort from Ellenberger.
The reaction was swift and vicious. Nine out of 10 respondents accused me of being an idiot. To be fair, I am sometimes an idiot, and I am fine with admitting this. Some accused me of trolling. A few people, with a total number that could probably be counted on one hand, agreed with me. They made me feel a little better, but not much.
And so I began to think...was MacDonald's performance really a smart, tactical one? Or, by virtue of not trying to hurt or finish Ellenberger, was MacDonald guilty of the same kind of listless effort as his opponent?
The larger question, and I think it's an important one: Is mixed martial arts primarily a sport, or is it entertainment for the masses?
There's no question that the UFC has used bits and pieces from the pay-per-view model created by Vince McMahon and applied to his WWF/WWE beginning in the 1980s. In the UFC, the biggest pay-per-view events are the ones that feature a grudge capable of capturing public imagination.
Tito Ortiz vs. Ken Shamrock. Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir. Rampage Jackson vs. Rashad Evans. They all have one thing in common: two combatants with charisma and a grudge that needs to be settled. They're also some of the UFC's biggest events in company history.
Even if we know deep down the animosity may not be quite as intense as it's portrayed, we're still able to suspend disbelief. We're moved enough to open up our wallets and give the UFC our money because we can't miss the moment when two fighters step in the cage to end their rivalry.
I understand that the name of the game, at least for Zuffa, is making money. And when a fan makes the decision to part with his hard-earned money, he expects to be entertained by the product he's paying for.
Granted it was not a PPV, but let's get this out of the way right now: MacDonald vs. Ellenberger was not an entertaining fight. It won't go down in the annals of UFC history alongside Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar. It was a forgettable fight from an excitement aspect, and that's a shame, because it had so much potential.
But while I agree with the general consensus that it was not exciting, I will also say that I understood why MacDonald performed the way he did. And even though it wasn't the most thrilling thing to watch, there was a beauty in his performance.
Using a jab and front kick almost exclusively, MacDonald shut down one of the best welterweights in the game. He took him out of the fight in the very first round when Ellenberger realized he was going to get jabbed in the face any time he tried to close the distance. And that jab, well, it was a thing of beauty. It's such an underutilized technique in mixed martial arts, which is why it's so fascinating to see someone utilize it with such effectiveness.
Again, it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. But can you blame MacDonald for doing what he had to do to get the win? He realized early that Ellenberger wasn't going to threaten him as long as he kept him on the outside with the jab. MacDonald also knew, because he's a smart fighter, that standing in the pocket and trading punches with Ellenberger would result in plenty of unneeded punishment and perhaps even a knockout.
Fans always want to see fighters working for the finish. I understand that notion completely. But I also realize the value of a game plan—of trying to survive 15 minutes in a cage with a power puncher who is attempting to take your head off. If you had a choice between standing and trading punches in order to thrill the fans or using a tool that your opponent has no answer for in order to avoid serious punishment, which would you choose?
Plenty of people will say they'd go for the finish. Some of them are even telling the truth. But most of them have never stepped in the cage with one of the top-ranked fighters in the world, with a winning streak and potential titles and riches on the line. Few of them will ever have to weigh the long-term consequences of trading haymakers for the simple purpose of entertaining the fans.
MacDonald's performance was safe and effective. It didn't earn him any accolades, and he's no closer to the championship after the bout. That much is true.
But MacDonald didn't tumble down the rankings, either. For better or worse, he is where he was before Saturday night, at least in terms of rankings. Perhaps he's lost a little shine in the eyes of the fans, but do you think he lost as much momentum as he would have by going in the cage and getting knocked out in violent fashion?
It's difficult to know just how much of MMA is sport and how much is entertainment. Is it better to be an entertaining fighter who's loved by the fans but never ascends to title opportunities because he keeps losing?
Or is winning the only thing that matters, even if you don't win any hearts and minds in the process?
Maybe it's a mixture of both. And perhaps Rory MacDonald will figure out that balance as he continues to grow and improve.
Even if he doesn't, I can't fault him for taking the path he did on Saturday night. | {
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In less than five weeks, New Horizons will zip past the Pluto-Charon system in a brief but historic encounter. Given the huge interest in Pluto, it’s fair to ask: Why won’t mission planners let the probe hang out a while?
Above: Our first glimpse of Pluto and Charon in color (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
The simple reason is that New Horizons can’t make a stop at the Pluto-Charon system. It’s a constraint that has as much to do with engineering as it does with basic physics.
Above and below: Pluto’s position as of today, June 9, 2015. (NASA/New Horizons)
In order to get New Horizons to Pluto in a reasonable amount of time (in this case 9.5 years), NASA had to get the probe moving very, very fast. And a probe on the move can be difficult to slow down.
After its launch from Cape Canaveral on January 19, 2006, the probe entered into an escape trajectory featuring a speed of 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph), setting a new record for the highest launch speed of a human-made object flung from Earth. New Horizons’s encounter with Jupiter offered a subsequent gravitational assist that increased its speed by an additional 4 km/s (14,000 km/h; 9,000 mph). Once at the Pluto-Charon system, the spacecraft will pass through at a velocity of about 13.8 km/s relative to the dwarf planet (49,680 km/h; 30,800 mph).
That’s obviously a lot of momentum. To get New Horizons into Pluto’s orbit, mission planners would have to reduce its speed by over 90%, which would require more than 1,000 times the amount of fuel the probe can carry. That’s a technologically unfeasible proposition. And so, the probe will have no choice but to zoom past Pluto, feverishly snapping pics and taking measurements before being flung outward towards the Kuiper belt.
Which is a pretty neat consolation prize. The New Horizons mission will be far from over after its July 14 encounter with Pluto.
[ NASA’s New Horizon Mission ] | {
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What was fire in the Texas sky? A metallic meteorite Metallic meteorite likely sent fireball across Texas sky
Sunday’s great Texas fireball was – probably – just a meteor.
Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Strategic Command said the bright lights witnessed over Texas skies were almost certainly not linked to last week’s collision between an American commercial satellite and a Russian government communications satellite.
“Our indication is this was a natural phenomenon, perhaps something like a meteor,” said Air Force Maj. Regina Winchester, a spokeswoman for the Space Surveillance Network, part of the Pentagon’s Strategic Command arm that tracks space debris.
The brightness of the object and the fact that it seemed to generate a sonic boom led some astronomers to speculate about the meteor’s size.
“There are lots of variables, but we do have some clues,” said Anita Cochran, assistant director of The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory.
The most common type of meteors are porous, nonmetallic and tend to fall apart quickly. Yet to generate a sonic boom, a meteor must reach Earth’s stratosphere, about 30 miles above the planet’s surface, before burning up, Cochran said.
That implies the meteor seen above Texas was probably a metallic-type, which, although rarer, are more durable during the fiery entry into Earth’s atmosphere. Metallic meteorites are the type most commonly found on Earth because of their durability.
Images of the meteor suggest it appeared brighter than a daytime Venus, Cochran said, but not quite as bright as a daytime moon.
A metallic meteorite of this brightness in the stratosphere probably would be about the size of a basketball, or smaller, she said.
And that’s just about how large it would have to be for any fragment to reach the ground.
There have been no reports of a discovery yet. Cochran said it’s almost impossible to triangulate the location of a meteorite from observations of its flight. Most discoveries happen by dumb luck, and they’re usually made in the world’s least populous continent – Antarctica.
“It’s just because black rock is easy to spot against white ice,” she said. “And if you see a rock there, chances are it came from space.”
[email protected]
[email protected] | {
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On August 6, 2019, at the same time that National Security Adviser John Bolton is leading a US delegation in Peru to organize opposition to the elected government of Venezuela, the White House released a statement about a new executive order signed by President Trump that creates a blockade on Venezuela.
The executive order blocks the Venezuelan government from having access to any of its property in the United States or any property that enters the United States. It also contains very broad language that allows the Treasury Secretary, in consultation with the State Department, to block any person who is considered to be:
“owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.”
And it imposes a travel ban, under the discretion of the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, to block anyone from entering the United States who supports the elected government of Venezuela.
RELATED CONTENT: Chancellor Arreaza: Venezuela Prepared for the Blockade (+9 Ministers and 3 Deputy Ministers – Video)
According to Reuters, John Bolton told the meeting in Lima, Peru that “U.S. authorities can now target and sanction anyone, including foreigners, who supports Maduro’s government.” This action is being taken by the United States to further its attempts at regime change in Venezuela since multiple coup attempts and other interferences have failed to date.
Popular Resistance opposes the illegal actions being taken by the United States, including this latest blockade, and urges the United States to end the unilateral coercive economic measures and threats of military attack, which violate the United Nations Charter. These measures are preventing Venezuela from importing necessary medications, supplies and food, which is hurting the Venezuelan people and has contributed to at least 40,000 deaths in Venezuela since 2017.
Popular Resistance opposes the United States’ support for coup actors led by Juan Guaido and interference in negotiations between the Venezuelan Government and the opposition. The United States is funneling over $40 million meant for humanitarian aidin Central America directly to the US-led opposition, an open act that is unprecedented in the long history of US regime change efforts. The Venezuelan Government responded to the newest blockade with continued dedication to the negotiations.
RELATED CONTENT: “International Lawlessness”: Galloway Slams Lima Group Gathering with US, Without Venezuela
Popular Resistance is in solidarity with people of Venezuela and supports their right to elect their government free of influence from the United States and its allies.
Popular Resistance supports the Caracas Political Declaration created in July at the meeting of the Nonaligned Movement where representatives from 120 nations that recognize Nicolas Maduro as the elected, legitimate president of Venezuela met to reaffirm their support for the United Nations Charter and international law as “essential tools for the maintenance of international peace and security and in strengthening international cooperation.”
We affirm our commitment to oppose US imperialism and militarism and urge people to join the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet, September 20 to 23, 2019 in New York City.
Source URL: Popular Resistance | {
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Police on Friday morning arrested a man who had been holed up near a Maserati car dealership overnight, authorities said.
Officers first received reports of a man creating a disturbance near 18th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard at about 1:30 a.m., said Lt. Saul Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Santa Monica Police Department.
When they arrived, they encountered the man carrying a rifle, who hid behind a dumpster in an alley near the luxury car dealership. Reports that the man had locked himself inside a Maserati in the dealership were not correct, Rodriguez said.
SWAT and crisis negotiation teams worked for hours to communicate with the man before successfully taking him into custody shortly before 6 a.m. No injuries were reported. | {
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A LinkedIn colleague posted an update in a project management group about the following infographic. It was extremely well received, and inspired me to look into the effort required to replicate it using the tools at hand, namely MS Office 2010.
This infographic was developed by John Furness of Simple Square; 5663 Cornwallis St.; Halifax NS B3K 1B6; ph. +1 902 452 3417; [email protected].
I find this infographic inspirational. It is easy to read and intuitive, and visually stunning. It conveys a lot of data, very efficiently to me. I can tell by the size of the circles and fonts the level of involvement and importance of each task (bubble) on the timeline. The location of the bubble’s perimeters on the timeline indicate start and finish dates, overlap and size of bubbles is an indication of resources needed, etc. I didn’t feel like I needed the legend, but it is nice to have. In my opinion, this is a great first presentation of a project and an excellent sales tool.
I started building this with the data required to make a “normal” Gantt Chart: Task, Start Date, Work Completed, Finish Date, Number of Days, and Current Date. (my definition of a normal Gantt Chart)
The results were unreadable, even after working on the formatting… a lot!
I obviously had too much data, so I pared it down to Task, Start Date, and Number of Days.
This was better, but the bubbles are lined up on the Y axis… So, I watched a few YouTube videos on Bubble Charts. It was faster for me to see what was possible, than just exploring them by myself.
After a lot of watching and experimenting, I was able to write a macro to create this:
The trick is that EACH task in the spreadsheet is a data series in the Chart. This gives you access to the individually configurable components, color, transparency, label position, font size, etc.
At this point, I can either work in Excel’s chart object or copy the chart into PowerPoint and simply add the legend and other labels as desired.
The Finished Product:
(The parts of the legend that include bubbles were created in Excel.)
I have used this to introduce several project in the past couple of weeks. It has been very well received by my clients.
For a workbook example, in Excel 2010, including automation macros, download it from
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7-KTTJhKkb4a1JZVHpIWkV4RXM/edit?usp=sharing
For the PowerPoint example, download it from
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7-KTTJhKkb4UjFvZElWYmlmcW8/edit?usp=sharing
For a PDF version of the bubble chart used in an actual presentation [redacted], click here:
PMFlashBlog
PMFlashBlog.pdf
PMFlashBlog.pdf
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Details 3.5 MiB21 Downloads Category: Pm-flashblog Date: November 22, 2014
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How do I design a class so that methods must be called in a certain order?
Raymond
March 18th, 2019
Suppose you have a class with some methods, and the methods must be called in a certain order. For example, suppose your class is for importing photos from a camera. First, you have to specify which camera you are importing from. Then you discover the pictures. Then you have to select which pictures you want to import, and set the options for how you want the download to occur. And finally, you download them.
class PhotoImporter { public: PhotoImporter(const Camera& camera); // Optionally configure the discovery. void SetFindOnlyNewPhotos(bool newPhotosOnly); // Call this first to get some photos. std::vector<Photo> DiscoverPhotos(); // Then decide which photos you want to download by calling // this for each photo you want to download. void SelectPhoto(Photo photo); void SelectAllDiscoveredPhotos(); // Configure the download. You must set a download folder. // The other settings default to false. void SetDownloadFolder(const path& downloadFolder); void SetRenumberPhotos(bool renumber); void SetDeleteOriginalsAfterDownload(bool deleteOriginals); // And then download them. void Download(); };
The problem is that there is nothing preventing the caller from calling the methods out of order or omitting some methods altogether.
void confused() { PhotoImporter importer(mainCamera); importer.SelectAllDiscoveredPhotos(); importer.Download(); importer.SetRenumberPhotos(true); importer.DiscoverPhotos(); // never specified a download folder }
One trick for making it harder to call the methods in the wrong order is to represent each state of the import process as a separate class.
class PhotoImporter { public: PhotoImporter(const Camera& camera); // Optionally configure the discovery. void SetFindOnlyNewPhotos(bool newPhotosOnly); // Call this first to get some photos. DiscoveredPhotos DiscoverPhotos(); }; class DiscoveredPhotos { public: // Not publically constructible. const std::vector<Photo>& GetPhotos(); // Decide which photos you want to download by calling // this for each photo you want to download. void SelectPhoto(Photo photo); void SelectAllDiscoveredPhotos(); // Configure the download. You must set a download folder. // The other settings default to false. void SetDownloadFolder(const path& downloadFolder); void SetRenumberPhotos(bool renumber); void SetDeleteOriginalsAfterDownload(bool deleteOriginals); // And then download them. void Download(); }
Breaking it up this way means that it is impossible to call Download before calling DiscoverPhotos , because in order to download the photos, you need to get a DiscoveredPhotos object, and the only way to get one of those is by calling DiscoverPhotos .
And then there’s the issue of requiring a download folder. For that, we could make the mandatory portion an explicit parameter to the Download method. We used this trick when we required the Camera to be passed to the PhotoImporter constructor.
class DiscoveredPhotos { public: ... void Download(const path& downloadFolder); }
And to ensure that people don’t try to do things like call SetRenumberPhotos after Download , you could put all of the download options into an options class.
class DownloadOptions { public: void SetRenumberPhotos(bool renumber); void SetDeleteOriginalsAfterDownload(bool deleteOriginals); }; class DiscoveredPhotos { public: // Not publically constructible. const std::vector<Photo>& GetPhotos(); // Decide which photos you want to download by calling // this for each photo you want to download. void SelectPhoto(Photo photo); void SelectAllDiscoveredPhotos(); // And then download them. void Download(const path& downloadFolder, const std::optional<DownloadOptions>& options = std::nullopt); }
While this technique forces the programmer to satisfy prerequisites before calling a method, it doesn’t prevent the programmer from trying to go backwards. For example, after calling Download , the programmer could go back and select some more photos and then call Download a second time.
If you want to disallow that, then I’m stumped. I can’t think of something that prevents an object from being used after a particular method is called, with enforcement at compile time. Maybe you can think of something? | {
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As protests against the Chilean government continued Monday, trade unions across the South American country called for a general strike to support demonstrators drawing attention to the nation's high cost of living, inequality, and injustice.
"We can't remain indifferent to the social movement out there," Escondida Union No. 1 president Patricio Tapia, whose organization voted to stop work at the Escondida copper mine for 10 hours Monday night or Tuesday morning, told Bloomberg Monday. "Something's not right with this country and 14-year-olds were the first ones to say so—now it's workers' turn to say enough is enough."
The movement began with high schoolers protesting subway fare hikes but exploded across the country over the weekend to encompass a wide array of issues after a police crackdown on the teenagers drew widespread anger and outrage.
As Common Dreams reported, billionaire right-wing President Sebastián Piñera has declared a state of emergency over the protest movement and, on Saturday, tried to defuse the situation by suspending the fare increase.
A number of unions said Sunday they were calling for a general strike in solidarity with the burgeoning protest movement.
"Sebastián Piñera does not understand the underlying reasons for the widespread citizen protest throughout the territory," the unions said in their declaration of intent to strike. "With his attitude it is clear that he is not in a position to continue directing the country."
#Chile Unions call for a general strike to support protests against a transit fare hike, that erupted into mass demonstrations over economic inequalities. The gov't declared a #curfew & called the army onto the streets, clashes led to at least 11 deaths.
https://t.co/VIKqSIHahS pic.twitter.com/FSFxPfQoko — Human Rights Oaxaca (@OaxacanewsENG) October 21, 2019
Protester Constanza Gonzalez told the BBC that the unrest is based in long simmering resentment.
"I think people are angry and this was a thing that had been coming for quite a long time," said Gonzalez.
Professor Richard D. Wolff tweeted that the protests were the natural outcome of an unstable system.
"Deepening inequalities in all capitalist economies over recent decades (first neoliberalism and now neo-protectionism) produce predictable explosions," said Wolff. | {
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Hard-left actor Danny Glover and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates were called to testify at today’s reparations hearings. They are rich and famous black men who support anything hard-left.
According to a Marist poll, 58% of African-Americans want reparations and 8% of white Americans want it. That means a lot of Democrats don’t support this bizarre and divisive idea.
Glover is a great admirer of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. In fact, Chavez was his good friend.
“This hearing is yet another important step in the long and heroic struggle of African Americans” to obtain equality, Glover told the panel chaired by Rep. Steve Cohen, according to CBS News.
“White America must recognize that justice for black people can’t be achieved without radical change to the structure of our society,” the communist added.
REP. JOHNSON WAS BOOED FOR A TRUTH BOMB
“Barack Obama opposed reparations when he ran for president in 2008, and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders did, as well, eight years later,” Rep. Johnson said.
“In addition to all this, here in the Judiciary Committee, we have an obligation to acknowledge that any monetary reparations that might be recommended by the commission created by HR 40 [the reparations bill] would almost certainly be unconstitutional on their face,” Johnson said.
He also explained that you can’t hold people responsible for something that happened generations ago.
It’s absurd!
Since most of the racists were Democrats, they should pay reparations, no one else. Go after the Democrat Dixiecrats or the other Jim Crow Democrats.
“Why should the federal government bear responsibility for economic and social damages to the descendants of the enslaved?” “I think the most obvious reason is because the federal government is complicit in it,” Ta-Nehisi Coates says. https://t.co/mRdEFuytTO pic.twitter.com/OfzTRiCVim — ABC News (@ABC) June 19, 2019
Sheila Jackson Lee wants the reparations bill HR40 passed [after 40 acres and a mule, the reparations awarded at the time]. Hard-left Cory Booker says we haven’t come to grips with our racism so we have to pay.
.@CoryBooker, who is running for President, says at a house hearing on reparations: “We, as a nation, have not yet truly acknowledged and grappled with racism and white supremacy that’s tainted this country’s founding.” “This is a very important hearing. It is historic.” pic.twitter.com/2A8cjGTy8k — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 19, 2019
Not everyone agreed!
.@mikaela_bearpaw on Elizabeth Warren: "She's running on a case of reparations… They're already giving us billions of dollars every year in funding and government programs that haven't helped anything." pic.twitter.com/wRa2Y1KIZl — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 19, 2019
Burgess Owens wants restitution, but not from who you might think.
Wow, Burgess Owens just stunned everyone: “I used to be a Democrat until I did my history and found out the misery that that party brought to my race… Let's pay restitution. How about the Democratic Party pay for all the misery brought to my race…" pic.twitter.com/ZXuwncFreV — Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) June 19, 2019
This next one is funny. Democrat Coleman Hughes didn’t tell the Dems what they wanted to hear.
Democrat's eloquent remarks against reparations anger supporters! [VIDEO] Excerpt: Reparations by definition are only given to victims, so the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent.https://t.co/P8BzcinOiN — ✭ Wayne Dupree ✭ (@WayneDupreeShow) June 19, 2019
This is funny too!
https://twitter.com/nevilled35/status/1141368394635272192?s=21 | {
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A former reporter for The Young Turks Network filed a $23.5 million lawsuit against HuffPost on Wednesday, alleging that he was fired after the site published a libelous post accusing him of rape.
Jordan Chariton was an investigative reporter for the progressive YouTube channel until he was let go last month. The firing followed the publication of an unpaid contributor post accusing him of sexually assaulting a co-worker, Carly Hammond.
HuffPost removed the article within 24 hours. According to its author, Christian Chiakulas, the post was taken down because HuffPost was unable to devote the resources to fact-check a contributor post of that nature.
Oath, the parent company of HuffPost, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the suit, Chariton says the sexual assault allegations were fabricated by bitter co-workers in order to destroy his career. He also faults HuffPost for indexing the article on Google News, which boosted its visibility.
The post alleged that Chariton sexually assaulted Hammond at a hotel in May 2017. Hammond was working as a reporter for Truth Against the Machine, a side project co-founded by Chariton. Chariton contends that the author failed to interview witnesses who would have confirmed that the alleged assault never occurred.
Shortly after the post was published, TYT Network terminated Chariton. Cenk Uygur, the CEO of the network, announced on “The Young Turks” that Chariton was fired for using company resources to launch Truth Against the Machine, and for admitting to having a sexual relationship with a subordinate. | {
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Product Details
-Lotion for trouble care-Neat and clean feelingThe third step of skin care for controlling troubled skinNeat and clean feeling lotion suitable for sensitive skin controls sebum and pores which are the trouble factors of skin. It provides moisture to troubled skin which is oily but lack of moisture, and maintains neat and moist skin.Type : MoisturizerCapacity : 50mlSuitable for : Oily skinMain Ingredients : Malva Sylvestris (Mallow) Flower Extract, Hyssopus Officinalis Extract, Thymus Vulgaris (Thyme) Extract, Ecklonia Cava Extract, Loess Extract, Melaleuca Alternifolia (Tea Tree) Extract, Houttuynia Cordata Extract, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Extract, Euterpe Oleracea Fruit Extract, Camellia Sinensis Leaf Extract1. Use Serum to smooth your skin texture.2. Take an adequate amount of Dr. Clear Final solution on the back of your hand.3. Spread it on your whole face, using your finger tips to massage softly in the order of cheeks, the forehead, nose and the chin from the inner part to the outer part.4. Pat it to be absorbed completely.* You can feel the synergy effect by using other Dr. Clear Magic Line products together. | {
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Doesn't know how to use a map Needs a gps to not get lost on campus
459 shares | {
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For Brandauer, the vote delayed the order from the American electronics company, a deal worth about $1 million. Mr. Crozier, the Brandauer chief, had flown to California to meet with executives. A handshake deal had been secured. Then the procurement director in the United States began asking about the implications of a Brexit. The director was weighing Brandauer against competing suppliers in Germany.
“I’ve spent the last 12 months building that relationship,” Mr. Crozier grumbled.
Mr. Crozier has delayed replacing aging machinery, spreading the grip of commercial purgatory. “We’re just going to sit back and wait,” he said.
He worries that a Brexit will bring limits on immigration, making it difficult for him to hire people with needed skills. Many of Brandauer’s parts are tiny, a tenth the width of a human hair, so every detail counts in designing the tools. Brandauer recently turned to Romania for a product engineer.
Downtown, at the Post Office Vaults pub, a pleasingly musty dark room, the bartender, Jess Milton, 24, tended to 360 varieties of bottled beer, many of them from Belgium. Those bottles get here duty-free. What if Britain goes back to being an island?
“I think our business would completely fail,” she said.
A customer cradling a pint heard these words and flashed a look of disgust. Richard Plumb, 59, manages leases for the British medical system. He has watched immigration refashion his community, and he seethes, blaming Brussels.
“We don’t have control over what happens to our country,” he said. “We can’t get rid of undesirables. E.U. regulations prevent all manner of things.”
What about trade, economic growth and jobs? Mr. Plumb said Brexit fears were overblown. And if there is a price to be paid, abandoning Europe will be worth it.
“It’s about being our own sovereign nation again,” Mr. Plumb said. “It would make the country feel better. It’s a feeling.” | {
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On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Vice President Mike Pence stated that the US is open to a diplomatic resolution with North Korea, but the US “will not tolerate the regime in North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that threaten our people,” and the military option is still on the table.
Pence said the military option “never came off” the table.
He continued, “The truth is that President Trump has made it clear that this administration will not tolerate the regime in North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that threaten our people, that threaten the United States of America, that threaten our allies in the region. But we’ll continue to be open to the diplomatic path and that’ll be much of the discussion tomorrow with President Moon.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett | {
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Canadians should not expect the federal government to collect any cash from Volkswagen as a penalty for lying about emissions levels.
In late June, the United States government announced a US$15.3-billion civil settlement with the German automaker that included US$2.7 billion for the public sector to spend on environmental mitigation efforts. Several diesel-powered VW models had so-called “defeat devices” installed, allowing millions of cars to pass emissions tests despite emitting certain toxic chemicals at levels more than 40 times higher than regulations allow.
Roughly 100,000 Canadian VW cars are affected by the issue and the company told BNN earlier this week it would take months longer than initially expected to settle various class action lawsuits brought against Volkswagen by Canadian drivers. Environment and Climate Change Canada, which launched a criminal investigation of the company in September 2015, told BNN Friday it cannot seek a settlement similar to what was achieved south of the border.
“The resolution of civil claims [against Volkswagen] brought by the United States’ Department of Justice, the State of California, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and private plaintiffs… There is no such mechanism available to [Environment and Climate Change Canada] under Canadian law,” the department said via email.
twitter embed
Ottawa refused to provide any details on its nearly year-long investigation, arguing because the probe was still ongoing any disclosure “could jeopardize the integrity of the investigation.”
Another federal government department – Natural Resources Canada – is continuing to actively promote several of the heavily-polluting VW models as being environmentally friendly. The department stood by its support of the vehicles in response to questions from BNN, noting it was based on a different measure of pollution.
The site “contains information related to fuel consumption and CO2 emissions obtained through laboratory testing,” Natural Resources Canada explained via email Wednesday. “The false claims to which Volkswagen has admitted relate to smog-forming air pollutant emissions.”
The endorsement stands in stark contrast to other jurisdictions such as South Korea, which last week outright banned the sale of almost all Volkswagen models in the country. | {
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The number of trips being taken on Auckland's public transport network looks set to miss targets this year, and a new survey shows public perception of the services is worsening.
Photo: RNZ / Diego Opatowski
There has been strong growth on trains and the dedicated Northern Busway but fewer people are using the general bus network, which carries 75 percent of the city's public transport users.
With two months to go, patronage is down slightly - despite population growth - and overall bus trips are expected to fall short of the annual target of 51.5 million, by more than 4 percent.
Auckland Transport (AT) said cutting some free travel on the downtown City Link bus had produced the biggest single fall, of about 700,000 trips.
"If you're transferring from another bus or another train using the AT HOP card, the service is still free," AT Metro general manager Mark Lambert said.
"But I guess some of those people who were using the City Link for relatively short distances would rather walk a few hundred metres than pay a 50 cent fare. That's completely understandable and that's probably a good thing."
AT said the bus network had suffered years of neglect, but new fares and a redesign of routes over the next 18 months were expected to provide a boost.
"As we change the bus network there may be a localised stagnation, as people get used to the changes, but we certainly expect to see strong growth as a result of those service re-designs," Mr Lambert said.
The decline was also being blamed on this year's partial bus strike, cheaper petrol and the moving of some downtown bus stops to avoid major construction zones.
Patronage growth was strong on the rail network, where more than $1 billion had been spent on electrification and new trains, with trips up 20 percent on a year earlier.
Similar growth was occurring on the dedicated Northern Busway, where double-decker buses had been introduced to add capacity.
Transport advocate Matt Lowrie, who is an editor on website TransportBlog, said AT could do more, and it seemed to be distracted by the re-design of the bus network.
"There are a lot of other aspects that they need to get onto and get fixed up," Mr Lowrie said.
"They're a bit behind on their bus lane roll-out that they talked about years ago; ones like Manukau Road would really help because it would make buses faster and more attractive to use."
Meanwhile, a quarterly survey by AT showed slightly fewer people than a year ago thought public transport was getting better - and their view of the council agency had worsened.
Fifty-six percent of those surveyed thought Auckland's public transport was improving, compared with 59 percent a year ago.
Only 38 percent rated AT as responsive and approachable, down from 47 percent a year ago. | {
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"Warcarting: when wardriving, warwalking, warflying, warrocketing, warballooning, warbiking, and warboating are just not good enough."
"You've been wardriving, but have you ever gone warcarting?"
"Warcarting: because wardriving is so 2000, and warflying is so 2002."
"Warcarting: the hobo's approach to wireless communications interception."
"Warcarting: wardriving on a budget"
To understand the Warcart requires one understand a bit of history first. Wardriving, that is, driving with a laptop computer and tracking WiFi access points, first became popular around 2001. Within a short time span, people invented warwalking, and millions flocked to walk the streets with a laptop and WiFi card in hand. Then the craze really took off when someone flew a Cessna airplane with a laptop and became the first warflyer. Within no time at all, the press and every tech blog on the internet was covering the latest war-something. There was warrocketing, warballooning, warbiking, and warboating. There were talks and seminars. News stories and blog posts. Television reports and radio shows. All about the latest in WiFi tracking. It soon became apparent to the larger community that most of these methods are highly elitist. Here are car-driving, personal-plane-owning, leisure-hot-air-ballooning, yachting aficionados armed with laptop computers. What the world needed was a low-cost, yet powerful alternative.
And thus, mostly as a joke and for reasons that would have been disclosed (if it wasn't blocked) in this talk at Defcon 16, the Warcart was born.
Melodramatic Video About the Warcart
Download Warcarting the Song
Based on the House-music classic, "Can You Feel It" by Mr. Fingers, this custom remix, made just for the warcart, embodies everything that the warcart stands for. You can find the lyrics here: Warcart The Song Lyrics and you can download the song here:
Can You Sniff It
Warcart Features
The Warcart is more than a WiFi sniffer. It is a complete wireless communications interceptor built on top of an abandoned shopping cart found in the streets. The above graphic shows the key features of the Warcart. Here is a listing of its capabilities:
1) WiFi Sniffing. With two high-gain WiFi antennas, the Warcart can pick up even the faintest of signals. Software (Kismet) running on one of the laptops records these signals to an external hard drive.
2) Cordless Phone Recording. A powerful 900 MHz antenna and radio scanner can pick up cordless telephone conversations and record them to one of the laptop's hard drives. The obnoxious-mode switch can also switch the live conversation over the PA speaker, ensuring everyone in the vicinity will hear the conversation.
3) USB Flash Drive Dropper. It is old news, now, that a U3 flash drive can be used to take over someone's computer (http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/USB_Switchblade). One hit of a button on the control panel and several such drives can be dropped. This is the perfect tool to use while taking the Warcart into the office around some cubicles. Someone finds a "lost" flash drive, and he cannot resist plugging it into his machine.
4) Police Communications Monitoring. With a device like the Warcart, it should be not surprising to have an encounter with the authorities. Indeed, it may be troubling if a device such as the Warcart were allowed in the streets without an officer questioning its safety and legality. With the onboard police scanner, however, one can be attune to any intervention before it happens.
5) Sentry-Gun-Style Smoke-Grenade Launcher. Courtesy of the kind folks at http://www.keepshooting.com/, the Warcart is equipped with a detachable launcher that emits smoke grenades. These canisters are harmless, but provide a thick smoke for hiding the Warcart's movement. The launcher is attached to a custom-built pan and title mechanism that is operated by a joystick. [note that actual use of this feature is only legal in emergency maritime operations]
6) General-Coverage Radio Snooping. The Warcart is equipped with a standard radio scanner. This can pick up most security, emergency services, private operations (handheld walkie-talkies), etc.
7) Bright Lights. The Warcart features a 2-million candle-power spotlight, a halogen "intimidator light" that illuminates the shopping cart, and a neon lamp.
8) Loud PA Speaker. For playing live or recorded radio communications, or music. A microphone allows the operator to make announcements. The system works quite well for stopping traffic and clearing pathways on busy sidewalks.
9) Extra Space. There is still enough room within the cart for groceries.
Crowds of people follow and watch the Warcart near Harvard Square (above).
The control panel (above) features two IBM Thinkpad laptops, a switchbox to control the lights, horn, and flash-drive dropper, a joystick to control the pan/tilt mechanism, an antenna selector, a radio scanner, and a key-switch to turn the Warcart on/off.
The Warcart has a detachable smoke grenade launcher. The above image shows one of the grenades creating a smoke-screen at night. It is glowing because the interior halogen "intimidator light" is on. The smoke grenade launcher is especially useful when the Warcart and its operator are in pursuit.
The two-million candle-power headlamp illuminates deep into the night.
The waterjet-machined pan/tilt assembly has a quick-release mount to allow one to alternate between a highly-directional WiFi antenna and a smoke grenade launcher.
Interior lights add to the intimidation factor of the Warcart.
The Warcart's Maiden Voyage
July, 2008 - Cambridge, MA
Crowds swarm the Warcart with looks of awe. A passerby offers some spare change.
Urban Outfitters kicks the Warcart out of their store. See above video for the confrontation.
Leaving the Urban Outfitters store.
Every head at Au Bon Pain looks upon the Warcart, which was playing a loud dialup modem sound at the time.
Night shot of the Warcart cruising down a dark alley near MIT.
Disclaimer: No actual data was recorded during the Warcart's maiden voyage. No smoke grenades were launched. The shopping cart was salvaged from an abandoned garbage dump. | {
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EFF, along with more than 70 civil liberties organizations, public interest groups, and companies sent two letters to the House and Senate leadership today. One supported HR 1852, the bipartisan Email Privacy Act, and the other supported Senate companion bill S. 607, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013 (.pdf). The bills aim to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), an archaic law that's been used by the government to obtain emails without getting a probable cause warrant. The bills are sponsored by a wide range of lawmakers like Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, and Representatives Kevin Yoder, Tom Graves, and Jared Polis.
The letters are part of a larger push from the Digital Due Process Coalition to pass the two bills. The Email Privacy Act in the House has over 260 cosponsors, while the Senate bill is ready for a final vote. Both bills will codify the precedent set by the Sixth Circuit, which ruled in US v. Warshak that users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their email. The bills ensure the government must obtain a warrant in all contexts before it looks at your private online messages.
The coalition letters urge congressional leaders to set a vote on both bills. The letters also encourage passing the bills since they
would eliminate outdated discrepancies between the legal process for government access to data stored locally in one’s home or office and the process for the same data stored with third parties in the Internet “cloud.”
Signers include the American Civil Liberties Union, Microsoft, Google, Rackspace, Dropbox, Freedomworks, Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others.
Join us now in helping push the bills forward by emailing your lawmaker and telling them to cosponsor the bills! | {
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There are a lot of partisan battle lines in the Republican tax reform law. But one provision should be celebrated by Republicans, Democrats, and anyone who cares about the true causes of charity, education and health care in America.
The new provision pours some cold water on million dollar salaries at nonprofit organizations.
It's important to remember that nonprofit organizations actually make profits; sometimes even huge profits. They generally get the nonprofit designation and the tax advantages that come with it because they don't have shareholders and are deemed to be doing a service to the community. The money these organizations make every year above expenses is usually paid out to employees, often with very large salaries to a few executives at the top.
No, not all nonprofit groups in America have overpaid executives. But the trend of paying huge salaries for leading executives at colleges, hospitals, and charities, has been growing for years. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal combed through the most recently available IRS data and found that 2,700 employees at U.S. nonprofits were paid more than $1 million in 2014. All indications are that the number has grown even more since then.
The most common explanation for this is that nonprofits need to pay top executive candidates higher salaries to compete with the private sector. But that explanation just doesn't cut it when you look at some of the salaries and who's paying them:
And then there's the granddaddy of them all: College football head coach salaries. No fewer than 78 of them currently make more than $1 million per year, led by the University of Alabama's Nick Saban at more than $11 million per year.
Just think of it. At a time when more Americans are facing rising medical bills and tuition costs, hospitals and colleges are paying their executives sometimes enormous salaries all without the kinds of taxes regular companies face. Plus, they still get to ask for donations and public support thanks to that "nonprofit" designation.
So what is the new tax law going to do about it?
Every organization that pays a salary of more than $1 million per year to any of its top five earning employers will face a stiff new 21 percent excise tax. That means any nonprofit-designated charity, college, and hospital that routinely asks us for donations, or charges expensive tuition or medical bills will have to justify paying those high salaries against a hefty new tax.
There's another reason why this smack down on high salaries is needed. Every time super high pay packages at nonprofits make it into the news, it undermines the organizations' usually good causes. One harrowing example of this came in the 1990s when the United Way suffered under the weight of back-to-back bouts of bad publicity.
First, United Way CEO William Aramony was forced out of his job after the public learned he was using his rich salary and the charity's operating funds for lavish expenses and even to finance an affair with a teen girl. Then his successor, current Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, faced criticism for her large salary and departure payment. In the wake of those and other spending controversies, donations to the United Way went down.
So far, most elite universities in America have avoided any real backlash in response to high executive pay. But many colleges in the middle tier are suffering. One Harvard Business School professor believes half of American colleges could be bankrupt within the next few decades. The former leaders of Burlington College in Vermont, which already went bankrupt, are under heavy scrutiny right now. That scrutiny includes questions about the relatively high salary Burlington paid its last president, Jane Sanders, who is married to Senator Bernie Sanders.
Of course, nonprofits are still getting away with tremendous advantages. The deduction for charitable donations was preserved. So was the tax exemption for bonds hospitals often rely on for expansions and repairs. Deductions for student loan interest and grad student tuition waivers were also saved.
No one should cheer new taxes. But for-profit companies with much higher tax burdens have found a way to pay high salaries and retain top executives in competitive markets for decades. Meanwhile, nonprofit companies make big money without those tax burdens and then shovel those profits to their top executives. That's an uneven playing field they enjoy no matter what the IRS calls them. This new tax goes a long way to evening that playing field and it's long overdue.
Commentary by Jake Novak, CNBC.com senior columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jakejakeny.
For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCopinion on Twitter. | {
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Nov 23, 2017 This week’s theme
Words that have changed
This week’s words
parboil
notorious
vedette
acerate
egregious
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It takes a minute! It’s free. Words that have changedIt takes a minute! It’s free. A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
acerate PRONUNCIATION: (AS-uh-rayt)
MEANING: adjective: Needlelike.
ETYMOLOGY: acidic, acidulous, From Latin acerosus (full of chaff), erroneously interpreted as derived from acus (needle) or acer (sharp), ultimately from the Indo-European root ak- (sharp), which is also the source of acrid, vinegar, acid, acute, edge, hammer, heaven, eager, oxygen, mediocre, acerbate acuity , and paragon . Earliest documented use: 1833.
USAGE:
Sam Merwin Jr.; Judas Ram; Galaxy Science Fiction; Dec 1950.
See more usage examples of “At once the air was hideous with the acerate harmony of a singing commercial.”Sam Merwin Jr.;; Galaxy Science Fiction; Dec 1950.See more usage examples of acerate in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Poetry is a sort of homecoming. -Paul Celan, poet and translator (23 Nov 1920-1970)
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Concluziile studiului realizat de Dorin Bodea arată că pentru a avea succes în relațiile cu ceilalți trebuie să le spui ce vor să audă, iar o persoană cinstită are multe de pierdut. Acestea ar fi doar două dintre concluzii.
Andrei Pleșu: Cu omul de convingeri nu se prea poate dialoga. Cu un om care are opinii poți să dialoghezi, el poate să-și schimbe opinia, poate să reflecteze. Un om de convingeri rămâne de obicei lipit de convingerile lui. Nu există concept absolut, eu spun că în politică, dimpotrivă, ne lipsesc oamenii de convingeri.
Dorin Bodea: Pe scurt, cam 8-9 din 10 susțin că e nevoie de o doză de necinste pentru a avea succes. (...) Modalitățile prin care e văzut succesul e îngrijorător.
Andrei Pleșu: Succesul e ceva mai nuanțat și mai discret, nu depinde neapărat de un amplasament social. Trebuie ieșit din capcana succesului înțeles ca strictă cățărare.
Dorin Bodea: (Vrem să fim șefi – n.r.) Pentru că avem o părere foarte bună despre noi, pentru că suntem nemulțumiți de șefii actuali și ne credem mai buni decât ei. Vorbim de români cu studii superioare. Aproape 9 din 10 români își doresc să fie șefi, totuși e un procent destul de mare spre deosebire de Occident, unde procentul este undeva mai redus – la 5-6 din 10. Tendința de a deveni manager exprimă o părere foarte bună despre sine, care uneori ascunde un gol mare înăuntru. Pentru că cine își dorește să fie șef? Foarte multă lume din cei care au participat la studiul nostru nu au experiență. Ei se cred doar la nivel potențial ca fiind potriviți pentru acest lucru. Când intră într-o organizaţie, mulţi dintre acești tineri nu ştiu ce înseamnă să stai 8 ore la serviciu și au dificultăți în a respecta programul de lucru. În momentul în care am întrebat ce înțeleg prin șefie, cei mai mulți dintre ei văd mai degrabă poziția privilegiată de putere pe care o au și nu neapărat responsabilitatea rezultatului.
Andrei Pleșu: La noi există tradițional niște expresii. Românul are un cult pentru ceea ce el numește omul deștept. Românul ține la virtutatea sa, asta e un lucru bun. E lucru bun și că uneori are umor. Din sondaj rezultă că românul poate fi răzbunător. Eu n-am senzația asta, eu cred că mai curând românii sunt bășcălioși. Felul lui de a reacționa la un dușman e luarea peste picior, batjocura, ironia. A fi deștept are însă tot o conotație de descurcăreală. Nu fi prost... adică, bă, țin-te tare! Acest cult al deșteptăciunii înțeles ca dexteritate de a te descurca are și părți mobilizatoare, dar și derapaje foarte serioase. Apoi un tip de relativism. "Hai, domne, să n-o luăm nici aşa. Oameni suntem". Oameni suntem înseamnă "nu ni se poate cere prea mult". Acest tip de relativism, ca şi un anumit individualism care transpare din sondaj, sunt caracteristici ale noastre, și rezultă și dintr-o combinaţie observată din secolul XIX de călătorii străini. Spunea unul: Rasa occidentală și structură orientală. E ceva aici care definește. Altul spune că românul nu reacţionează, alunecă. Adică preferă să patineze supravieţuind, decât să impună o regulă sau să se supună unei reguli.
Dorin Bodea: Peste tot în lume există această tendință a oamenilor de a se considera mai buni decât ceilalţi, mai ales când vorbim de onestitate sau competenţă. În studiu am arătat că această diferență, când ne uităm la noi și spunem că suntem mult peste ceilalți, e foarte accentuată. Ne vedem într-un fel, aproape de cer, iar cu ceilalţi dăm de pământ. Această diferențiere foarte mare înseamnă o ruptură în societatea românească.
Andrei Pleșu: Sunt două tendinţe mari. Una e ca la noi la nimeni, în sens rău. "Ce ţară e asta?", spune românul exasperat. Pe de altă parte, dacă îți spune altcineva asta, se enervează. Ambele atitudini sunt păguboase. Sunt ușor convertibile. Complexul de inferioritate se transformă compensator într-unul de superioritate. Să spui mereu unui popor: ești minunat, n-ai niciun defect, dacă nu reuşeşti e pentru că ceilalţi nu te lasă, pentru că trăieşti într-o mare de antipatie şi de sabotaj. E o aberaţie, patriotismul nu trebuie să semene a ţicneală. Pe de altă parte, dacă spui: suntem condamnaţi, blestemaţi, nu e nimic de făcut cu noi, suntem la fundul borcanului cu valori, iarăşi e defetist și demobilizant. Trebuie găsit un echilibru și o înţelepciune, chiar dacă ambele excese sunt, uneori, explicabile și scuzabile. Nu trebuie luat un episod și transformat într-o filosofie, cum se întâmpla cu unul din cunoscuţii noştri, care s-a enervat pe poporul român când era tânăr, iar acum, orice ar scrie și orice ar face, nu i se citează decât cele două randuri.
Dorin Bodea: E un triunghi. Noi l-am numit: pesimism, fatalism, resemnare. Un fel de cerc vicios, în care circa 6 din 10 cad victimă în acest tipar de gândire. E tot o consecinţă educaţională. Acest fatalism înseamnă că îmi reduc propriul rol activ în a-mi făuri propria viaţă. Ce se întâmplă în jurul meu are un impact asupra vieții mele mult mai mare decât pot să-l am eu, cam aşa poate fi tradus. Nu putem schimba lucrurile dacă așteptăm să vină îmbunătățirile din afara noastră.
Andrei Pleşu: Nu stăm rău cu miturile. Începând de la daci și terminând cu câțiva voievozi imediat sanctificabili, privind și virtuțile noastre strămoșești. Dar trebuie să ai și o bună uzanţă a miturilor, să știi ce să faci cu ele. Ele sunt bune ca repere de emulaţie, dar nu ca justificări. Am ajuns să ne justificăm prin miturile noastre, în loc să le luăm ca repere de emulaţie, să vrem să fim la înălțimea lor. Noi spunem: noi suntem Ştefan cel Mare, Brâncuşi, noi suntem cei care i-au bătut pe turci.
Luca Niculescu: E un alibi ca să nu mai faci nimic.
Andrei Pleșu: Exact! Ca și cum virtuțile strămoşilor se moştenesc genetic.
Urmăriți întreaga discuție în materialul video de mai sus.
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Its nice to get official apps directly from companies, and the latest is directed at Volvo owners with recent model cars who also use Windows Phones
Starting from model year 2012, Volvo has released an app with the ability to access your vehicle from your Windows Phone. This requires that your car is equipped with a Volvo On Call Telematics unit.
If your car conforms with these requirements you will, depending on your model be able to:
See vehicle dashboard values, such as fuel level, trip meters, and more, in the App.
Control your fuel fired parking heater, if the vehicle is equipped with a fuel fired parking heater.
Locate your vehicle on a map or using the vehicle signal horn and turn indicators.
See the current status of doors, windows and locks for your vehicle.
Lock and unlock the vehicle.
Request road side assistance from the App.
Have an electronic driving journal, that will create trip reports for every trip made with the vehicle.
The Volvo V60 PLUG-IN HYBRID is unfortunately not supported by the app.
Even if you do not currently own a Volvo that fits the bill you can still install the App and use it in demonstration mode, in-order to see some of the functionality offered by the Volvo On Call Telematics system.
Find the free app in the Windows Phone Store here.
Via Wingadget.se | {
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“Holidays,” the horror anthology that includes material from Kevin Smith, has been picked up for a day-and-date release from Vertical Entertainment and XYZ Films, an acquisition made in advance of the feature’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 14.
Vertical and XYZ will capitalize on the publicity from the debut screening at Tribeca to release the movie on digital and VOD on April 15, with a limited theatrical release set for April 22.
The stories collected in “Holidays” put a scary spin on annual holidays like Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Labor Day and Mother’s Day. The team of directors involved includes Smith, Gary Shore, Scott Stewart and Sarah Adina Smith. John Hegeman’s Distant Corner Entertainment produces with XYZ.
At Tribeca, “Holidays” will open the Midnight section of genre films. The festival’s Virtual Arcade area of new-media programming will also include virtual reality offering “H0lidays: Christmas VR,” which is linked to the Christmas segment in the feature.
XYZ, an independent production company and sales agency, and distributor and marketer Vertical team up for the release. The two companies have also collaborated on Asian action film “Headshot,” featuring “Raid” star Iko Uwais, and Sundance horror title “Under the Shadow.” | {
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Last week, machine learning took a big leap forward when Google’s AlphaGo, a machine algorithm, beat the world champion, Lee Sedol, in the game Go. An ancient Chinese board game that dates back nearly 3,000 years, Go is played on a 19-by-19 square grid, with each player trying capture the opponent’s territory. Unlike Western chess that has around 40 turns in a game, Go can go up to 200. The number of possible outcomes quickly compounds to a bewildering range of 10,761 — more than the total number of atoms in the entire observable universe. It was thought it would take at least another 10 years before a machine could beat a human in Go.
What’s most remarkable is that AlphaGo turns out to be a machine that can improve its performance every day, without the direct supervision of a human programmer. That’s like an aircraft that can fly faster and faster without the help of an engineer. How can that be possible?
The past, present and future of machine learning
Structured data. When machine learning first took off, it was used to predict how we click, buy, lie, or die. Machines improved the way companies email, call, offer a discount, recommend a product, show an ad, inspect flaws, and approve loans. Under the hood of machine learning is statistical data mining that uncovers previously unknown patterns and recommends real-time actions. The downside to this approach is that it is context dependent. This is why most algorithms were built for a single purpose, like Deep Blue, which beat former chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, but wasn’t useful for anything else. For these first-generation machines, learning was made possible only through constant monitoring by computer scientists and statisticians. Data had to be labeled, and goals set. The same program design couldn’t be used for different problems, and the algorithm couldn’t understand unstructured data expressed in natural human language.
Natural languages. When IBM Watson beat former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in the game show Jeopardy! in February 2011, it became clear that machine learning could go beyond this single-minded focus and handle unstructured, ambiguous data. In addition to factual knowledge on a wide variety of topics, competing on Jeopardy! requires the ability to understand subtle meaning, irony, riddles, slang, metaphors, jokes, puns, and other language complexities. Meaning is dependent on what has been said before, the topic itself, and how it is being discussed. At the end of the two-day Jeopardy! tournament, Watson amassed $77,147 in prize money, more than three times that of its human opponents. Jennings, who came in second, later said, “Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20th century by new assembly line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of ‘thinking’ machines.”
Currently, rather than replacing experts, Watson enhances their work. For example, the algorithm provides research and clinical recommendations to oncologists, who only need to describe a patient’s symptoms to Watson in plainspoken English, via an iPad application. Even though it doesn’t rely on encoded rules, IBM Watson requires close monitoring by domain experts to provide data and evaluate its performance. Before Watson went live for oncologists, it had been manually fed 25,000 test-case scenarios; 1,500 real-life cases; 605,000 pieces of medical evidence; and 2 million pages of text. Nurses had spent more than 14,700 hours meticulously training the algorithm. All this took time, money, and dedication.
Deep learning. Before AlphaGo played against a human, Google researchers had been developing it to play video games — Space Invaders, Breakout, Pong, and others. AlphaGo was programmed to seek positive rewards in the form of scores and continually improve its system by playing millions of games against tweaked versions of itself. The algorithm was able to master each game by trial and error — pressing different buttons randomly at first, then figuring out an appropriate strategy and applying it without making any mistakes. AlphaGo achieved this because it is based on a deep neural network — a network of hardware and software that mimics the web of neurons in the human brain. This idea is not new; it has been discussed among computer scientists for more than 20 years. But due to the advance of computing power, deep learning has become practical, and AlphaGo was the first to achieve such a stunning mimicry of intuitive thinking.
The impact on big companies
AlphaGo proves that the rise of machines capable of learning with minimum supervision from human experts and programmers is inevitable. And as IBM Watson has shown, machines will also absorb large amount of information and data in any format, structured or not, across a wide array of sources. The cost of implementation will continue to fall. The coordination of business transactions within and outside an organization will speed up, and in the process, eliminate organizational friction and facilitate market collaboration.
For these reasons, big companies with the conventional advantage of being vertically integrated will be the first to go. Traditional propositions like “one-stop shop” or “supply chain optimization” will become commonplace, easily achievable by small players or new entrants in a number of industries.
Consider Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and other large-scale inter-organizational systems that enable real-time communication with suppliers, customers, and logistics specialists. Systems made by SAP and Oracle are bulky, expensive, difficult to use, and hard to integrate. Historically, only big firms such as Walmart or Best Buy have had enough sway, and bargaining power, to force their suppliers to adopt them. Once put in place, these systems still require a bastion of specialists to constantly monitor, tweak, and recommend managerial actions as well as cascade them throughout an organization.
In contrast, the team that developed AlphaGo had fewer than 50 people. The program itself is relatively lightweight, requires little human intervention once set up, and is deployable across different problem domains.
It is easy to imagine a world where self-taught algorithms will play a much bigger role in coordinating economic transactions; AlphaGo simply shows us what is possible in the near future. With instantaneous adjustment, automatic optimization, and continuous improvement all quietly managed by unsupervised algorithms, the redundancy of production facilities and wastage in the supply chain should become headaches of the past. Freed from the pressure to vertically integrate and with far fewer resources needed for organizational coordination, smaller players will be able to specialize in best-in-class services and deliver extremely customized solutions in real time when specific demands arise.
The questions looming for large, nontech companies are: 1) What are the core competencies of my organization when size no longer matters? 2) How much of my organization’s managerial expertise is entirely dedicated to market coordination? 3) If new competitors replicate these capabilities by replacing human experts with machine algorithms, what is my cost structure compared to theirs? 4) Going forward, what new offering can I extend if product distribution is democratized? 5) Can I partner with new players to recombine my current capabilities to enter new markets?
Most exciting to me is the even larger prospect of embedding AlphaGo-like machine learning into the backbone of the global economy. When algorithms that never stop learning link loosely related companies, NGOs, and government agencies, they may enable the emergence of new ecosystems that tackle the most difficult societal problems — those currently fumbled by the complexity and fragmentation of players in the field — like energy, transportation, health care, and education. | {
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Photo: Paul Kuroda / Special To The Chronicle
The size of your child’s kindergarten class. Homeland security funds for your community. Natural disaster preparation. Highway and mass transit resources. Health care and emergency room services.
Vital services such as these would be jeopardized and our voice in government diminished if the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 count resulted in an undercount. Beyond its constitutional role in redistricting, a proper count conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau shapes our everyday lives. If the bureau is ill-prepared for the job or a count is faulty, every state, every neighborhood, faces the risk of losing its fair share of federal funding for its people and its taxpayers.
Every 10 years, the bureau must count each person in our country — whether citizen or noncitizen — “once, only once, and in the right place.”
The Trump administration is threatening to derail the integrity of the census by seeking to add a question relating to citizenship to the 2020 census questionnaire. Innocuous at first blush, its effect would be truly insidious. It would discourage noncitizens and their citizen family members from responding to the census, resulting in a less accurate population count.
Including a citizenship question on the 2020 census is not just a bad idea — it is illegal.
The Constitution requires the government to conduct an “actual enumeration” of the total population, regardless of citizenship status. And since 1790, the census has counted citizens and noncitizens alike.
The census has a specific constitutional purpose: to provide an accurate count of all residents, which then allows for proper allotment of congressional representatives to the states. The Census Bureau has a long history of working to ensure the most accurate count of the U.S. population in a nonpartisan manner, based on scientific principles.
Since the last census in 2010, the public servants at the Census Bureau have been planning and fine-tuning the 2020 census. This work includes painstaking determinations of which questions to ask on the census and how to ask them.
In December, the U.S. Department of Justice formally asked the bureau to include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census. By March 31, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross must decide whether to add this question.
This request is an extraordinary attempt by the Trump administration to hijack the 2020 census for political purposes. Since the first day of his presidential campaign and through his first year in office, President Trump has targeted immigrants: vilifying them and attempting to exclude them from the country. Think travel bans, repeal of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, ramped up Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that tear parents away from their children. Immigrants and their loved ones understandably are, and will be, concerned about how data collected in the 2020 Census will be used.
California, with its large immigrant communities, would be disproportionately harmed by depressed participation in the 2020 census. An undercount would threaten at least one of California’s seats in the House of Representatives (and, by extension, an elector in the electoral college.) It would deprive California and its cities and counties of their fair share of billions of dollars in federal funds.
These concerns are real and they are bipartisan. The past four census directors, who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, have all publicly voiced opposition to a citizenship question based on the certain consequence of an undercount. These concerns affect red states and blue states alike.
The politicization of the 2020 census must stop now. By the end of the week, the bureau will announce its final list of census questions. Secretary Ross should uphold the government’s constitutional duty to count all people in every part of the country — and reject the Justice Department’s dangerous call to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. | {
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SARASOTA, Fla. - The Orioles will be counted among the teams attending Tim Lincecum’s showcase later this week.
The two-time Cy Young Award winner will throw Thursday at Driveline Baseball’s facility outside Seattle, allowing him to dive into a flooded free agent market.
Executive vice president Dan Duquette indicated earlier today that the Orioles are more likely to sign a couple of veteran pitchers than consummate a trade, though both avenues remain open. The rotation still has three vacancies.
Lincecum, 33, hasn’t pitched since making nine starts with the Angels in 2016 and going 2-6 with a 9.16 ERA and 2.374 WHIP over 38 1/3 innings. He won Cy Young Awards with the Giants in 2008 and 2009.
“There will be a good contingent at that showcase, from what I understand,” Duquette said while appearing on “MASN All Access.” “Tim’s been working out at Driveline. He’s a big Driveline guy. He’s had some great years. Very colorful player. So we’ll be keeping an eye on that.”
The Orioles also remain in the market for a left-handed hitter, left-handed reliever and perhaps a veteran utility player. They have a handful of candidates in camp for the latter position, but could go outside the organization.
“I don’t know if we have that type of player here, but we can take a look at some of the guys we have in camp,” Duquette said. “If we don’t have that type of player, we can certainly look for that player toward the end of spring training because there will be some utility players that won’t make clubs that will be available on the market.”
Duquette also indicated that he didn’t talk contract extensions while negotiating 2018 deals with pitcher Kevin Gausman and second baseman Jonathan Schoop, who were eligible for arbitration. Gausman signed today to make the Orioles 7-for-7.
There also haven’t been extension talks with center fielder Adam Jones, a pending free agent.
Duquette joked that he talked “extensively” with the agents for Gausman and Schoop. Not quite the same as long-term deals.
“These are all issues for the club to consider,” he said. “These are good players. They’ve been core players for us and this is something the club has to consider certainly.”
Duquette was encouraged by Zach Britton’s recovery from Achilles surgery after seeing the closer move around the complex.
“I was surprised seeing him walk around the training room today. He looked great,” Duquette said. “I don’t know about the beard, but the walking around, Zach Britton looked good. He looked like he was in good spirits.
“The athletes that are in shape and they’re young, and he was training to have a good year, they can come back quickly. And Zach is motivated to come back quickly, so we’ll have to see how it goes.”
Outfielder Trey Mancini was another early arrival today. | {
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The liberal mainstream media excitedly reported on Jared Kushner’s attempt to set up a secret channel of communication with Russia before the president took office.
Kushner met with Russian officials briefly in December as part of his role in the transition and as a diplomatic conduit to the State Department.
Democrats called for Jared Kushner to be fired after the reports were made public.
Of course, Barack Obama worked behind the scenes for years with the Russians. Democrats and the liberal media said nothing about these behind the scenes communications.
And Barack Obama even worked behind the scenes with the the Iranian regime, the top sponsor of state-sponsored terrorism.
Obama even sent the Khamenei regime a pallet of unmarked bills in the dead of night in exchange for US prisoners.
TRENDING: RUTH BADER GINSBURG DEAD! Supreme Court Justice Dies at Home Surrounded by Family
The US hostages were not released until the payment was delivered.
The Washington Post said there was no video evidence of this ransom payment.
There is.
The liberal media didn’t ever complain about this either. | {
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Strategy: Make Them Sich of You
Early in the game, the Hetmans will like lean towards a wide game, but not by nature a warmongering one. In fact, escaping notice is preferred, since your best unit is a late game combat unit. Sticking to burning City States on weekends should be the best course. If you lose a city or two to early game warmongers, grin and bear it. You'll be the one laughing in the end. Of course, seeking out Horse resources is crucial, since your UU relies on them. Funnily enough, getting the Pyramids might not be a bad idea. Late game, most of the land you conquer will be burnt to hell by your own men, so getting it back in shape will need to happen quickly.Mid-game gets a bit more interesting. With the prospect of upcoming war, you should begin tooling up for the day when you figure out how to make horses fight other horses better. AN opportunistic war or two might be good, since you can get a Hetman or two out of it. By this point, you should own plenty of land, due in part to your expansion and the rest to citadel spams. Due to the amount of free citadels, you won't have much to fear in terms of an enemy attack so long as you keep vigilant. The Hetmanate is like a tank. Slow to start, but defensible.Late game is where things start getting fun. Your opponents will be left to wonder what happened as you retake your lost cities and burn swathes of the countryside in search of your national unity. Your Cossacks will ruin all their tile improvements, making war something they have to win in a timely fashion before all their cities start starving, or just stop working. Once you get Lightning Warfare, nothing will stop you from destroying the entirety of the enemies homelands. Soon, the world will be burning blaze, and you'll be the only one left to rule it. | {
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HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 30 (ACN) The African Union demanded an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for over 55 years and characterized it as illegal and unjustified.
The condemnation of the hostile US policy "that affects the Cuban government and people", was discussed during the 30th Summit of Heads of State and Governments of the African Union held in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, reported Prensa Latina News Agency.
The representatives of the 55 member States of the regional block adopted a "Resolution on the lifting of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the US towards Cuba".
The text, based on the Resolution approved by the UN General Assembly, recognizes the existence of the blockade and condemns the setback in bilateral relations between Havana and Washington.
The document concludes with the reaffirmation of the solidarity of the member states of the African Union with Cuba.
The information recalls that Africa has maintained a unanimous support of Cuba regarding the blockade both in the AU, the United Nations and other international forums. | {
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A Libertarian Socialist Defense of the Class Theory of the State
By Wayne Price
In order to understand government politics, it is necessary to have a theory of the state. This essay reviews classical anarchist and Marxist views of the class-based, pro-capitalist, nature of the state. But there are also non-class and non-capitalist influences on the state. These need to be integrated into a class theory of the state.
For anarchists and other radicals to really understand the Trump administration, and what is generally happening in U.S. politics, requires an analysis of the U.S. government. This, in turn, requires a theoretical understanding of the state, the basic framework of government. Yet, as Kristian Williams writes, in Whither Anarchism? “For a group so fixated on countering…the state, it is surprising how rarely today’s anarchists have bothered to put forward a theory about [it]….The inability or unwillingness to develop a theory of the state (or more modestly, an analysis of states)…has repeatedly steered the anarchist movement into blind alleys.” (Williams 2018; 26-7)
Of the theories which place the state within the context of the capitalist economy and all other oppressions (patriarchy, racism, ecological destruction, etc.), anarchism and Marxism stand out. Yet few Marxists know anything of the anarchist view of the state, and few anarchists know anything of Marxist state theory. (For that matter, as Williams implies, few anarchists know much of any state theory.) For example, most Marxists believe that anarchism denies that class factors are important for the state—and that it contradicts anarchism to believe that they are. They see anarchism as focused solely on the state, ignoring factors of class and political economy. Meanwhile, many anarchists believe that Marxists see the state as simply a reflex of the wishes of the capitalist ruling class, with no independent interests of its own and no reaction to other class and non-class forces.
I am going to review the classical anarchist and Marxist theories about the nature of the state and its relationship to classes and political economy. By “classical anarchism,” I mean essentially the views of J-P Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin (and not the views of individualists, Stirnerites, or “post-left”/“post-anarchists”). By “classical Marxism,” I mean the views of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (and not the views of social democratic reformists or Stalinists).
When writing of “the state,” I do not include any and every means of social coordination, collective decision-making, settling of differences, or protection from anti-social agression. Humans lived for tens of thousands of years in hunter-gatherer societies (also called “primitive communism”) and early agricultural villages. They provided themselves with social coordination, etc., through communal self-management. What they did not have were states. The state is a bureaucratic-military institution, dominating a territory through specialized armed forces (police and military) and bureaucratic layers of people who make decisions, ruling over—and separate from—the rest of the population.
“The State…not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration as well as the concentration in the hands of a few of many functions in the life of societies….A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing has to be developed….”
(Kropotkin 2014; 254) The state is a “public force [which] consists not merely of armed men but also of material appendages, prisons, and coercive institutions of all kinds…organs of society standing above society…representatives of a power which estranges them from society….” (Engels 1972; 230-1) This is the view of both Kropotkin and Engels. When speaking of the end of the state under socialism/communism, they did not mean the end of all collective decision-making, etc., but the end of this bureaucratic-military, socially-alienated, elite institution.
The Views of the Classical Anarchists
The first person to call himself an “anarchist,” Proudhon, wrote, “In a society based on inequality of conditions, government, whatever it is, feudal, theocratic, bourgeois, imperial, is reduced, in last analysis, to a system of insurance for the class which exploits and owns against that which is exploited and owns nothing.” The state “finds itself inevitably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat.” (Proudhon 2011; 18)
Bakunin, who as much as anyone initiated anarchism as a movement, wrote, “The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bourgeoisie—and finally…the class of bureaucracy….” And “Modern capitalist production and banking speculations demand for their full development a vast centralized State apparatus which alone is capable of subjecting the millions of toilers to their exploitation.” (quoted in Morris 1993; 99)
Kropotkin elaborated anarchist theory: “All legislation made within the State…always has been made with regard to the interests of the privileged classes….The State is an institution which was developed for the very purpose of establishing monopolies in favor of the slave and serf owners, the landed proprietors,…the merchant guilds and the moneylenders, the kings, the military commanders, the ‘noblemen,’ and finally, in the nineteenth century, the industrial capitalists, whom the State supplied with ‘hands’ driven from the land. Consequently, the State would be…a useless institution, once these [class] monopolies ceased to exist.” (2014; 186-8)
In brief, the classical anarchists saw a direct connection between the state and exploitative class society, serving the various upper classes as they lived off the lower, working, classes. This is the “class theory” of the state, also called the “materialist” or “historical materialist” state theory.
The class theory of the state is frequently criticized as a “reductionist,” “instrumentalist,” theory, which crudely reduces all government activity to the desires of the capitalist class. It is criticized for allegedly ignoring conflicts within that class, the pressures of other classes (such as lobbying by unions), and non-class forces. Non-class forces include all subsystems of oppression: sexism, racism, sexual orientation, national oppression, etc.—each, in its own way, maintained by the state. There are other pressures on the state, such as by the churches. As an institution, with its personnel, the state has its own interests. Supposedly, the materialist or class state theory ignores all this. In my opinion, it is this criticism which is itself oversimplified, as I will try to show.
The Views of the Classical Marxists
As with the anarchists, the Marxist form of the class theory of the state has been accused of being class reductionist, oversimplified, and mechanical.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote, “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (in Draper 1998; 111) Draper calls this sentence, “the most succinctly aphoristic statement by Marx of his theory of the state.” (same; 207)
This is often taken to mean that the state is merely a passive reflex of the capitalist class, with all the influence going from the bourgeoisie to the state. In fact, the sentence says that the state—or rather its executive branch—actively manages the interests of the bourgeoisie, as opposed to merely reflecting them. In any case, it is a brief and condensed (“succinctly aphoristic”) statement, by no means a whole exposition of a theory.
Over the years, Marx and Engels developed their analysis of the state (an excellent overview is in Draper 1977). Marx’s major work on the state appears in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. It was written in 1852 and covered French politics leading up to the elected president, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the Emperor Napoleon), seizing power and establishing his dictatorship (Marx 2002). Here and in other works he goes into the details of French politics. It become clear that Marx regards the state as full of conflicts among classes, fractions of classes, and agents of fractions of classes.
He uncovered the political-economic conflicts among the financial aristocracy (who supported one claimant to the monarchy), the large landowners (who supported another), the manufacturing bourgeoisie, the “republican” bourgeoisie (an ideological current within the bourgeoisie), the “democratic-republican” petty-bourgeoisie, and, below them all, the proletariat (mostly passive due to a recent major defeat), and the peasantry (who gave their support to the conman Louis-Napoleon, partially due to his name). There were splits within each of these forces. Marx also included the government officials and the army officers (all seeking money). He was clear that there were personal hostilities, ideological commitments, prejudices, and ambitions through which these conflicts worked themselves out.
Applying this approach to the current U.S. government would analyze the differing fractions of the capitalist class and its ideological and political agents and hangers-on, in their conflicting relations with each other and with sections of the middle and working classes.
The other main theme of Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire is the increasing independence of the state from all classes, including all sections of the bourgeoisie. Balancing between conflicting class forces, the executive branch of the state tends to rise above them all. Marx called this “Bonapartism,” and it has been discussed as the “relative autonomy” of the state. With the dictator’s abolition of the legislature and its political parties, as well as censorship over political discussion, the bourgeoisie lost direct control over the government. The capitalists were made to focus on running their businesses and making money, while Louis Bonaparte ran the state (declaring himself the new “Emperor”). This he did through the state bureaucracy, the army, and a quasi-fascist-like mass movement, as well as with popular support from the peasants.
In Defense of the Class Theory of the State
So, there are many fractions of the capitalist class, other classes, and non-class forces all competing for state influence. And the state itself has its own interests and a degree of autonomy from even the bourgeoisie. Does this mean that the class theory of the state is wrong?
I do not think so. In itself, that there may be multiple determinants of something does not decide the relative weights or importance of each determinant. There are many influences on the state, all of which may have some effect. Still, the overall need of a capitalist society is to maintain the capitalist economy, the growth and accumulation of capital, the continued rule of the capitalist class. Without the surplus wealth pumped out of the working population, the state and the rest of the system cannot last. This is the primary need of the society and the primary task of the state. Even if the bourgeoisie has little or no direct control of the government (as under Bonapartism or fascist totalitarianism), the state must keep the capitalist system going, the capitalists driving the proletariat to work, and profits being produced. The extreme example of this was under Stalinist state capitalism (in the USSR, Maoist China, etc.). The stock-owning bourgeoisie was abolished, yet the collective state bureaucracy continued to manage the accumulation of capital through state exploitation of the working class. (That is, until it fell back into traditional capitalism.)
This has been elaborated by Wetherly (2002; 2005). The class theory “involves a claim that the capitalist class is able to wield more potent power resources over against pressure from below and the capacity for independent action on the part of the state itself….The political sway of the capitalist class [is] not exclusive but predominant.” (Wetherly 2002; 197) “It does not claim that the economic structure exclusively explains the character of the state, but it assigns these other influences a minor role….Economic causation plays a primary role in explaining state action to sustain accumulation as a general feature of capitalist society. The state normally sustains accumulation and this is largely explained by the nature of the economic structure.” (same; 204-5)
Others have theorized the interactions and overlapping of oppressions with each other and with class exploitation as “social reproductive theory” (Bhattacharya 2017). The different oppressions are not simply separate while occasionally intersecting; rather, they co-produce each other, within the overall drive of the whole system to reproduce and accumulate capital. For example, the oppression of women is directly related to the need for the system to reproduce the labor power of all workers (a necessity for capitalist production), which is done through the family. Similarly, Africans were enslaved to create a source of cheap labor. African-Americans remain racially oppressed in order to maintain a pool of cheap (super-exploited) labor, as well as to split and weaken the working class as a whole through white racism. (These factors are not the whole of sexism or racism, but are their essential overlap with capitalist exploitation.)
The state is not something added onto the capitalist economy, but a necessity if the capital/labor process is to go (relatively) smoothly—just as (reciprocally) the efficient functioning of the capitalist production process is necessary for the state to exist.
Primitive Accumulation and the State
The classical bourgeois economists, such as Adam Smith and David Riccardo, had speculated that capitalism began by artisans and small merchants gradually building up their capital, until they had enough to hire employees. This was called “primitive (or primary) accumulation.” Marx rejected this fairy tale, showing how the state and other non-market forces played major roles in the early accumulation of wealth. There was state-supported dispossession of European peasants; slavery of Africans and Native Americans; looting of Ireland, India, and South America; piracy; and plunder of the natural environment. In Capital, Marx wrote of “the power of the state, the concentrated and organized force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode….Force is…itself an economic power.” (Marx 1906; 823-4)
Kropotkin criticized Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation—not because he disagreed that state coercion played a major role in the development of capitalism! He completely agreed with Marx on that point. Rather, Kropotkin insisted that state support for capitalism had never stopped; there was no distinct period of early accumulation, followed by a period of state non-intervention in the economy.
“What, then, is the use of talking, with Marx, about the ‘primitive accumulation’—as if this ‘push’ given to capitalists were a thing of the past?….The State has always interfered in the economic life in favor of the capitalist exploiter. It has always granted him protection in robbery, given aid and support for further enrichment. And it could not be otherwise. To do so was one of the functions—the chief mission—of the State.” (Kropotkin 2014; 193)
Similarly, the Marxist feminist Silvia Federici writes, “The need of a gendered perspective on the history of capitalism…led me, among others, to rethink Marx’s account of primitive accumulation….Contrary to Marx’s anticipation, primitive accumulation has become a permanent process….” (2017; 93)
However, Marx had expected that once capitalism had reached its final development, its epoch of decline, it would once again rely heavily on non-market and state forces. In his Grundrisse, he wrote, “As soon as [capital] begins to sense itself as a barrier to development, it seeks refuge in forms which, by restricting free competition…are…the heralds of its dissolution ….” (quoted in Price 2013; 69)
In any case, no one could deny today that government intervention is an essential part of the economy—from massive armaments expenditures to central banks to regulation of the stock exchange, etc. The key point is that the state is not an institution truly distinct from the capitalist economy. On the contrary, it is a central instrument in the creation, development, accumulation, and eventual decay of capitalism. “Force is itself an economic power.”
Disagreement between Anarchists and Marxists on the State
Revolutionary anarchists and Marxists agree that the working class and the rest of the exploited and oppressed should overturn the power of the capitalist class. The workers and their allies should dismantle the capitalist state, capitalist businesses, and other forms of oppression, and organize a new society based on freedom, equality, and cooperation.
But they draw different conclusions from the class theory of the state. Marxists say that since the state is the instrument for a class to carry out its interests, then the workers and their allies need their own state. They need it in order to overthrow the capitalists and create a new socialist society of freedom and solidarity. The new state will either be created by taking over the old state (perhaps by elections) and modifying it, or by overthrowing the old state (through revolution) and building a new one. Over time, Marxists say, the task of holding down the capitalists and their agents will become less important, as the new society is solidified. Then the state will gradually decline. There may still be a centralized public power for social coordination, but it will become benevolent and no longer have coercive powers.
However, anarchists have a different conclusion. Since the state is a bureaucratic-military elite machine for class domination, it cannot be used for liberation. Such a supposed “workers’ state,” however it comes into existence, would only result in a new ruling class of bureaucrats, exploiting the workers as if the state was a capitalist corporation or set of corporations. This was predicted by Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, way back in the beginning of the socialist movement. History has more than justified the prediction.
Instead, the anarchists propose that the workers and oppressed organize themselves through federations and networks of workplace assemblies, neighborhood councils, and voluntary associations. They should replace the police and military with a democratically-coordinated armed population (a militia), so long as this is still necessary. Such associations would provide all the coordination, decision-making, dispute-settling, economic planning, and self-defense necessary—without a state. It would not be a state, because it would not be a bureaucratic-military socially-alienated machine such as had served ruling minorities throughout history. Instead it would be the self-organization of the working people and formerly oppressed.
Conclusion
The class theory of the state claims that the bureaucratic-military social machine of the state exists primarily to develop and maintain capitalism, the capitalist upper class, and capital’s drive to accumulate. There are also other influences on the state. These include factional conflicts within the capitalist class, demands by the working and middle classes, pressures to maintain other oppressions (race, gender, etc.) and resistance by these oppressed, other non-class forces, ideologies, and also the self-interest of the state itself and its personnel. Yet these myriad forces work out within the context of the need for capitalism to maintain itself and to expand. Therefore the political sway of the capitalist class is not exclusive but it is predominant. The fight against the state, against capitalism, and against all oppressions is one fight. It is a struggle for a society of freedom, individual self-development, the end of the state and of classes, self-determination and self-management in every area of living.
References
Bhattacharya, Tithi (2017) (ed.). Social Reproductive Theory; Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression. London: Pluto Press.
Draper, Hal (1977). Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution, Vol. 1; State and Bureaucracy. NY: Monthly Review Press.
Draper, Hal (1998) (ed.). The Adventures of the Communist Manifesto. Berkeley CA: Center for Socialist History.
Engels, Friedrich (1972). The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Ed.: E. Leacock). NY: International Publishers.
Federici, Silvia (2017). “Capital and Gender.” In Reading Capital Today; Marx After 150 Years. (Eds.: I. Schmidt & C. Fanelli). London: Pluto Press. Pp. 79—96.
Kropotkin, Peter (2014). Direct Struggle Against Capital; A Peter Kropotkin Anthology (Ed.: Iain McKay). Oakland CA: AK Press.
Marx, Karl (1906). Capital; A Critique of Political Economy; Vol. 1 (Ed.: F. Engels). NY: Modern Library.
Marx, Karl (2002). “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (Trans.: T. Carver). In Cowling, M., & Martin, J. (eds.). Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire; (Post)modern Interpretations. London: Pluto Press. Pp. 19—109.
Morris, Brian (1993). Bakunin; The Philosophy of Freedom. Montreal/NY: Black Rose Books.
Price, Wayne (2013). The Value of Radical Theory; An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. Oakland CA: AK Press.
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph (2011). Property is Theft; A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology (Ed.: Iain McKay). Oakland CA: AK Press.
Wetherly, Paul (2002). “Making Sense of the ‘Relative Autonomy’ of the State.” In Cowling, M., & Martin, J. (eds.). Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire; (Post)modern Interpretations. London: Pluto Press. Pp. 195—208.
Wetherly, Paul (2005). Marxism and the State; An Analytical Approach. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Williams, Kristian (2018). Whither Anarchism? Chico CA: To The Point/AK Press.
This article was originally published with Anarkismo.net. | {
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InSight is barreling in for a landing on Mars. The spacecraft will make its approach and landing via a tried and true method, but even though NASA has pulled this stunt before, dozens of things need to go exactly right during entry, descent, and landing (EDL) for InSight to arrive safely on the surface of the Red Planet.
At 2:47 p.m. EST on Monday, November 26, the InSight lander will hit the top of the Martian atmosphere, about 125 kilometers (70 miles) above the surface, traveling at 5.5 kilometers per second (12,000 mph). The craft’s ablative silica heat shield will rise to a temperature of more than 1,500 degrees Celsius—hot enough to melt steel. About three and a half minutes after atmospheric entry, the spacecraft will still be hurtling toward the ground at supersonic speeds. A parachute will deploy to decelerate as much as possible, the heat shield will jettison, and the spacecraft will start looking for the ground with a radar. About six minutes after hitting the atmosphere, the lander will separate from its back shell—still traveling about 180 mph—and fire its retro rockets to bring it the rest of the way home, touching down roughly a minute later.
If everything goes right—while engineers monitor control screens during the “seven minutes of terror,” unable to steer the distant craft in real time—InSight will come to rest in Elysium Planitia on the Monday after Thanksgiving and prepare to begin studying the seismology and internal heat of Mars. NASA can take comfort in the fact that such landings have succeeded in the past, but when you are attempting to land a craft millions of miles away, it’s impossible to prepare for every eventuality.
Whenever a Mars landing approaches, space fans get an earful of statistics. Before Curiosity’s landing, “more than half of all Mars missions have failed.” Before Europe’s ExoMars’ launch, “more missions have failed than not: 28 flops compared to 19 successes." After the ExoMars orbiter succeeded, but its lander did not (at least, not entirely): “Of the about a dozen robotic lander and rover missions launched to Mars, only seven have succeeded.”
The statistics are dramatic, but the story they tell is a little dated. There was a spectacular run of failures in the latter part of the 20th century—Mars 96, Mars Observer, Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander’s losses still sting. But while Russia has never achieved a complete success at Mars, NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have all pretty much nailed orbital insertions at Mars since Y2K. China, India and Japan have their second Mars-bound missions in the works, and the United Arab Emirates is planning their first, not to mention the ambitions of several private entities.
Mars orbit insertions have become relatively routine in the 21st century, but Mars landings are still some of the most difficult deep-space missions ever attempted. ESA’s two successful orbiters both included tiny landers that were never heard from after touchdown, though ExoMars’ Schiaparelli lander returned data nearly all the way to the surface.
Three things make a Mars landing much more difficult than a moon landing—or an Earth landing, for that matter. First, unlike the moon, Mars is too far away for any ground-bound human to be in the loop during a landing attempt. The time it takes for a signal to travel from Mars to Earth and back is never less than nine minutes and is usually much longer, so by the time we can hear and respond to a signal that our spacecraft has hit the top of the atmosphere, the end result, one way or another, has already occurred.
The second problem is Mars’ atmosphere. There is both too much and too little. On Earth, when astronauts and sample capsules return from space, we can protect spacecraft behind heat shields and use the friction of atmospheric entry to slow the hypersonic craft to subsonic speeds. Once the flamey part is over, we can simply pop out a parachute to further reduce the velocity and drift to a gentle (or, at least, survivable) touchdown on land or water.
Mars’ atmosphere is thick enough to generate a fiery entry, requiring a heat shield, but it’s too thin for a parachute alone to slow an entering spacecraft to a safe landing speed. When Curiosity hit the top of Mars’ atmosphere in 2012, it was traveling at 5.8 kilometers per second (13,000 mph). When the heat shield had done all it could do, the spacecraft was still hurtling toward the ground at 400 meters per second (895 mph). Curiosity’s parachute could, and did, slow it down, but only to 80 meters per second (179 mph). Hitting the ground at that speed is not survivable, even for a robot.
On an airless world like the moon, heat shields are not required and parachutes do you no good. But fear not, we’ve had the technology for lunar landings since the 1960s: take some rockets and point them downward, canceling out the craft’s velocity.
The atmosphere makes things a little trickier on Mars, though. With moving air as an additional factor, unpredictable winds can add an equally unpredictable horizontal velocity to a descending spacecraft. For this reason, landing regions on Mars are required to have low regional slopes. High horizontal winds plus high slopes could put a lander much farther from, or closer to, the ground than it expects—and either situation could spell disaster.
So a Mars lander needs three technologies to reach the surface: a heat shield, a supersonically deployable parachute and retrorockets. The Viking missions to Mars in the mid-1970s prepared by test-launching parachutes on suborbital rockets to verify that they could inflate without shredding at faster-than-sound speeds. All successful Mars landings since then (all of them NASA’s) have relied on parachutes with Viking legacy. Recently, NASA has worked on a new effort to develop deceleration technologies able to land spacecraft heavier than the Viking probes—an effort that was not, initially, successful, resulting in catastrophically shredded parachutes. (More recent tests have worked better.)
Keeping all of this in mind, what do we know about what went wrong for recently failed Mars landers? For two of them—Mars Polar Lander and Beagle 2—we can only speculate. The spacecraft had no ability to transmit real-time telemetry data as they descended. The Mars Polar Lander failure taught NASA an important lesson: If we are to learn anything from our failures, we have to collect as much data as we can up to the point of failure. Ever since the Mars Polar Lander crashed into the surface at the end of 1999, every Mars lander except ESA’s Beagle 2 has transmitted data to an orbiter that recorded raw radio signals for future analysis in the event of failure.
These days, there are many orbiters at Mars, so we can do even better than that. There’s always one orbiter listening to and recording every last bit of radio signal from a lander, just in case of disaster. And there’s usually a secondary orbiter that doesn’t just listen to the signal, but decodes it and relays the information to Earth as fast as the slow travel of light will allow. This “bent-pipe” data transmission has given us the adrenaline-laced, real-time picture of Mars landing attempts.
When InSight lands, it will fall to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to record telemetry for future dissection if the attempt fails. To get real-time data of the landing, however, InSight has brought along two little spacefaring companions: the MarCO CubeSats, each only about three feet long. The Mars Cube One spacecraft are the first-ever interplanetary CubeSats. If the craft succeed, the world will get its real-time reports on InSight’s landing, and the little space robots will pave the way for future, tinier, cheaper trips to Mars.
But for now, all eyes are on InSight. NASA has successfully landed on Mars seven times, and before the month is out, the space agency is going to try to make it eight.
Emily Lakdawalla is a planetary evangelist at The Planetary Society and the editor of the society’s quarterly publication, The Planetary Report. Her new book is The Design and Engineering of Curiosity: How the Mars Rover Performs Its Job. | {
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Southampton signed midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg from Bayern Munich
Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg was once seen as the next Sergio Busquets by Pep Guardiola, but Southampton's new signing has a point to prove in the Premier League, writes Nick Wright...
Before Pep Guardiola took over at Bayern Munich in the summer of 2013, he requested a detailed scouting report on their gifted young midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg. The 17-year-old had made his Bundesliga debut under Jupp Heynckes just a few months earlier, and the new man in charge was eager to find out more.
The report was put together by Albert Celades, the coach of Spain's U20s and a former team-mate of Guardiola at Barcelona, who described Hojbjerg as a "diamond in the rough". The Danish youth international was a raw talent who had shown considerable potential since arriving at Bayern from Brondby in 2012, and it didn't take long for Guardiola to see it for himself.
"Pep had heard good things about Hojbjerg before coming to Bayern and it has taken just a couple of training sessions for him to fall in love with the player," wrote Marti Perarnau in Pep Confidential, his book about Guardiola's first season in charge of Bayern. "Pep thinks he may have just found the Sergio Busquets of Bayern."
Busquets had blossomed into the world's best deep-lying midfielder under Guardiola's stewardship at Barcelona, and the Catalan saw similar attributes in Hojbjerg. The teenager was a talented passer whose intelligent reading of the game was perfectly suited to the role of pivote, and Guardiola - an expert in the position - wanted to teach him everything he knew.
Pep Guardiola took Hojbjerg under his wing in his first season at Bayern
Hojbjerg trained with Bayern's first team throughout the 2013/14 season, receiving what Perarnau described as "hours and hours of almost non-stop obsessional attention" from Guardiola at Bayern's Sabener Strasse training ground. The education was invaluable for Hojbjerg, but he had to bide his time for a chance to make an impact on the pitch.
For all the personal attention, Guardiola offered his protégé little in the way of playing time. Hojbjerg was behind Phillip Lahm, Thiago Alcantara, Toni Kroos and Bastian Schweinsteiger in the central midfield pecking order, and the teenager's progress was also stalled by the tragic death of his father during Guardiola's first season in charge.
Hojbjerg has earned 17 caps for Denmark since his debut in 2014
Hojbjerg did start at right-back in Bayern's German Cup final win over Borussia Dortmund in May 2014, but opportunities in his favoured position were limited. After 18 months under Guardiola, he had only made seven Bundesliga and Champions League starts, and while he was already emerging as a key player for Denmark, a change was required at club level.
Hojbjerg's first extended run of games came on loan at Bayern's Bundesliga rivals Augsburg in the second half of the 2014/15 season. Manager Markus Weinzierl described the youngster as "sensational" after an impressive debut in a 3-1 win over Hoffenheim, and Hojbjerg featured prominently as the Bavarian club clinched an unexpected fifth-placed finish.
Hojbjerg got two goals and three assists in 16 appearances for Augsburg
Hojbjerg had impressed in a box-to-box role at Augsburg, but back at Bayern it was decided he would spend the 2015/16 campaign with Schalke.
Bayern's sporting director Matthias Sammer insisted they still had "high hopes" for the youngster, but a frustrating season at the Gelsenkirchen club yielded just 13 Bundesliga starts as he struggled to hold down a first-team place.
His development suffered, and by the end of the season, Hojbjerg had decided he needed to leave Bayern permanently to kick-start his career. There were even suggestions he had fallen out with Guardiola. "I need to find something that fits me," he told Danish newspaper BT. "It's clear that it won't be a top club. I want a place where there is a perspective."
That place turned out to be Southampton. The south coast club have developed an impressive record for nurturing young players while challenging near the top of the Premier League table, and they needed a central midfielder after losing Victor Wanyama to Tottenham.
Hojbjerg fit the profile, and he didn't have to think twice when the offer came. "When I heard that Southampton came in for me, I said to my people that this is what I want to do," he told the club's website. "It's the way I like to think, it's the way I like to play and it fits me really well."
The 6ft 1in Dane is still only 20 years old and has the physical and technical attributes to shine in the Premier League, but the question is whether he can finally unlock his huge potential at Southampton. His passing prowess is certainly a good fit for the Saints' possession-based playing style, but Hojbjerg has only made 28 league starts in the last three seasons. Above all, he needs consistent playing time.
Hojbjerg poses with the Southampton shirt after his arrival from Bayern Munich
Southampton's £12.8m investment suggests Hojbjerg will get that under Claude Puel, but he arrives in England with a point to prove to his former mentor Guardiola. "It's a big opportunity for me," he said. "I look forward to giving what I have and what I can to the club. They have put trust in me. I want to show them that they are not wrong."
His determination is clear. Things did not work out as planned for Hojbjerg at Bayern, but Southampton now stand to benefit from his stellar footballing education. "It really made me who I am today," he said. "For the future, what I learned at Bayern is worth gold. I am really thankful that I experienced it, but now it's a new chapter."
If he can deliver on the potential Guardiola saw in him, Hojbjerg could be Southampton's next success story. | {
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Coming into the 2018 season, there was so much excitement about the beginning of the Scott Frost era at Nebraska that it was almost cruel to Cornhuskers fans that they had to wait an extra week.
Fans packed Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb., for the opener against Akron and roared at the open kickoff. But, that was it. Severe weather forced the game to be halted, fans were eventually sent home and the game was never played.
A week later, 89,853 fans poured into the seats for Frost’s actual debut as Nebraska head coach, only to watch former Big 12 rival Colorado steal a 33-28 victory in the waning moments.
It took seven games for the Huskers to get their first win under Frost, a native and former Nebraska quarterback.
This year, there’s a load of hype again, but perhaps with more substance behind it. This month, Buffzone.com is previewing each of Colorado’s opponents, with this installment focusing on Nebraska, which is coming off of back-to-back 4-8 seasons and visits Boulder on Sept. 7.
Despite consecutive losing seasons for the first time since six in a row from 1956-61, Nebraska comes into this year as a legitimate contender to win the Big Ten West division. In fact, Phil Steele, Athlon and Street & Smith’s all project the Cornhuskers as the West winner.
“I know we’re a lot better team than we were a year ago at this time,” Frost told The Athletic recently.
Part of that is due to Frost. He won a national championship as the Huskers’ quarterback in 1997. He was the offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Oregon in 2014 when Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy. He then became the head coach at Central Florida in 2016 and took them from 0-12 the year before to 13-0 in 2017.
Frost is a proven winner, but had to change the culture in Lincoln. It didn’t happen overnight, but there’s belief that the Huskers are getting there.
“People are seeing the same things as coach Frost in this program,” linebacker Mohamed Barry told The Athletic. “They see it in themselves. We’re not there yet, but I’m just in love with this team because of the buy-in.”
In addition to the buy-in, Nebraska expects to be better because of quarterback Adrian Martinez.
Now a true sophomore, Martinez made his collegiate debut against CU and, despite the loss, was stellar. He threw for a touchdown and ran for two more against the Buffs. Frost believes Martinez could be one of the best quarterbacks to ever come through Lincoln. Related Articles CSU Rams, Mountain West shift gears, now playing football in fall
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Injured late in the game against CU, Martinez missed most of the next two games, as well. By the second half of the year, he and the Huskers were rolling along. They were one of the most improved teams in the country from September to November. Now, they’re expected to be one of the most improved teams in the country from last year to this year.
“We finished in a good place last year,” Frost said in a recent interview with Rivals.com. “We certainly went through a heck of a lot of pitfalls and bumps to get there. The key for us is to start where we left off, from a culture standpoint, from an attitude standpoint and from a competitive standpoint. We were a good enough team at the end of last year to play with or beat about anybody we played. We need to make sure we start there Game 1.”
Nebraska Cornhuskers
Date with CU: Sept. 7, 1:30 p.m., at Folsom Field in Boulder
Head coach: Scott Frost, 2nd year (4-8; 23-15 career)
Series: Nebraska leads 49-19-2
Cornhuskers in 2018: 4-8, 3-6 in Big Ten
Returning starters: 12 – 7 on offense, 5 on defense
5 offensive players to watch (2018 statistics):LT Brenden Jaimes, Jr. (21 career starts; HM All-Big Ten last year)QB Adrian Martinez, So. (224-of-347, 2,617 yards, 17 TD, 8 INT; rushing: 140 att., 629 yards, 8 TD)WR JD Spielman, Jr. (66 catches, 818 yards, 8 TD)TE Jack Stoll, Jr. (21 catches, 245 yards, 3 TD)RB Maurice Washington, So. (77 att., 455 yards, 3 TD; 24 catches, 221 yards, 1 TD)
5 defensive players to watch:LB Mohamed Barry, Sr. (112 tackles, 11 TFL, 2 sacks)CB Dicaprio Bootle, Jr. (39 tackles, 15 PBU)DE Carlos Davis, Sr. (27 tackles, 3 TFL, 5 PBU)OLB JoJo Domann, Jr. (19 tackles, 1 sack)DE Ben Stille, Jr. (25 tackles, 5 TFL, 5 sacks)
Notable: Nebraska makes its first trip to Folsom Field since Nov. 27, 2009. The Cornhuskers are 3-1 in their last four trips to Boulder. … After an 0-6 start last season, the Cornhuskers won four of their last six and the two losses came by a combined eight points. Overall, five of the eight losses came by five points or less. … As a true freshman last season, Martinez set a school record with 295.1 yards of offense per game. … Because of legal issues, Washington’s status for this season is unknown. If he plays, he’s expected to start. If not, junior Dedrick Mills could be the man. Mills led Georgia Tech in rushing as a true freshman in 2016 (771 yards, 12 TD) and rushed for 1,358 yards and 19 TD at Garden City (Kan.) Community College last year. … True freshman Wan’Dale Robinson could be a factor at running back, as well. … Former CU receivers coach Troy Walters is the offensive coordinator for the Huskers. … Defensively, the Huskers ranked 12th in the Big Ten in points allowed (31.3 per game), rushing yards allowed (195.8) and total yards allowed (433.5). … Sophomore Barret Pickering returns after a solid freshman year kicking the ball (14-for-18 on field goals, 40-of-41 on extra points).
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Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) called for an end to funding the Department of Homeland Security during a MoveOn.org event Thursday.
Ocasio-Cortez took to the microphone to fight for the rights of those immigrating here illegally.
“This is one of the most urgent moral issues and crises that we have in America right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said to a small crowd of people and reporters gathered outside of the U.S. Capitol. “This is not a political issue. Children dying in detention centers should not be a partisan concern. It should be a universal concern for every American in the United States.”
Ocasio-Cortez then insisted that President Trump was lying when he said he liked “legal immigration.”
“He said and spoke of the idea that he likes, quote-unquote, legal immigration. But that is a lie. The president does not like any form of immigration. He has been cutting down and imposing restrictions on legal forms, on the diversity visa lottery, on family unification, and so on.”
Watch the entire event:
https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/339327256685365/?__tn__=%2CdkC-R&eid=ARCfytq6rTyTdBe4WdW80ZYLO5GxhEFjhf9MS8EOBZQTw9gkfkxSg7drHdlMgreg22s8vvG1EmYiOJYK&hc_ref=ARSSCfZ-cdZG2_Qx2dItZn8sv3mh1N68wMfPrd7n0Vy2n9GStFtnO_XB8stSC4EpGHI
The New York freshman then stated that President Trump wants to “continue to militarize and weaponize” the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by requesting additional funding. She also stated that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “has no idea when she goes in front of a hearing how many children are dying in her own care, under her own watch.”
“We’re here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime,” Ocasio-Cortez stated.
Ocasio-Cortez, who has received widespread attention for her proposal to impose a 70 percent tax rate on the wealthy to fund her climate change plan called the “Green New Deal,” also claimed that ICE should not receive funding for its “radical agenda” until it decides to “embrace immigrants.”
“I will not give one dollar to a secretary who does not care about her life and does not care to investigate a child’s death,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I will not give one dollar to black box detention facilities that think that some people in this country are deserving of constitutional protections and others are not.”
Ocasio-Cortez, whom a Getty Images photographer captured crying, then made her case for those immigrating here illegally and pointed out that we are a nation of laws:
“We are a nation and land of laws. Not just some people are subject to laws and others are not,” Ocasio-Cortez claimed. “When we are a land of laws, what that means is that every person that steps foot on this soil deserves the consideration of due process. They deserve the protections. They deserve to have access to our Bill of Rights. That’s what makes this nation special.”
Rep. Omar then took to the mic to echo Ocasio-Cortez’s plea to cut funding for the DHS.
“We need to feel the pain and the struggle, the hopes, and dreams of the people who this president likes to demonize,” Omar said, adding:
For many of these families coming to our border, they are leaving situations where it is safer for them to risk starvation, to risk possible rape, to risk possible death because they know the smallest hope of survival is much more bigger and better than just standing still and waiting, waiting to not have a new opportunity to start anew.
Rep. Omar, who has been criticized for her anti-Semitic views, then correlated her own situation in coming to America with that which she claims children are facing today.
“I cry every time I see a little girl standing in the desert waiting to get processed into this country because I remember what that felt like,” Omar stated. She continued:
But the difference between what is happening to some of these little girls and me is that I didn’t, I didn’t, have a cage waiting for me. I had an open arm, people with a moral clarity, awaiting us, saying, “You’ve been through a lot. Here is your new home. You’re our new neighbor. You need water and you need food.”
Omar then claimed those immigrating here illegally are “detained and tortured.”
“In the United States, people are not welcomed that way. They are separated and processed, they are detained and tortured, and we can’t continue to allow it to happen, at least not under our watch.”
“In this Congress, we cannot have a budget that does not further our values. We have a value of upholding human rights. We have a value of welcoming immigrants. We have a value of tolerance and acceptance,” Omar said. “We can not lose it today to a president and administration that is morally corrupt.”
Omar then went on the attack of the Trump administration and claimed that they only “see dollars.”
“They don’t see people. They see dollars. They see campaigns. They see cheers. They see rallies,” Omar claimed. “We see humans because most of us have been invisible in our communities.”
Rep. Tlaib spoke briefly after Omar and also called for a cut to DHS funds as she broke into tears.
“I’m really tired of us sitting back and saying, ‘Well, we gotta get the information.’ Guess what? We already know people died.” She went on, “That should be enough for us to act and to say that no more money towards an institution that is demonizing and criminalizing our immigrant neighbors. We don’t want a system that basically has taken away the core values of the American dream.”
Rep. Pressley stated that those in attendance at the event were there to “draw a line in the sand.”
“We are here to draw a line in the sand, in the name of love and in the name of justice,” Pressley said. “We have a task put before this institution to negotiate a DHS package in three weeks’ time. We have an obligation to make our workers whole, to prevent another road shutdown by this administration and to demonstrate moral leadership.”
“I ask my colleagues for their solidarity to enter into the DHS conference committee process with clarity. Time and again, this administration has put profits before people and rhetoric before the lives of immigrant children. It is clear that we must reduce and not increase funds for the DHS,” Pressley stated.
Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris and Facebook. | {
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BRASILIA (Reuters) - Jailed former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has increased his support by 5 percentage points and would win Brazil’s October presidential election if he was allowed to run, a poll by CNT/MDA showed on Monday.
Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's supporters walk during the Free Lula March in Brasilia, Brazil, August 14, 2018. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
The survey, which was last taken in May, found that almost half of the leftist leader’s supporters would transfer their votes to his running mate Fernando Haddad if Lula is disqualified from Brazil’s most uncertain race in decades.
The Brazilian real led losses among Latin American currencies after the poll showed investors’ favorite Geraldo Alckmin, the candidate most likely to enact fiscal reforms, lagging far behind his rivals.
Electoral authorities are expected to bar Lula from the election due to a corruption conviction. Despite that, he took 37.3 percent of voter intentions in the latest poll, up from 32.4 percent in the same poll in May.
His nearest rival was far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro with 18.3 percent, followed by environmentalist Marina Silva with 5.6 percent and business-friendly Alckmin with 4.9 percent.
Support for Marina Silva and center-left candidate Ciro Gomes has slipped since the May poll, while support increased for Bolsonaro. Alckmin, a former governor of Sao Paulo state, has also gained ground marginally.
It was the first major poll since candidacies were officially registered last week, but it did not provide results for the likely scenario of a race without Lula.
Lula’s supporters were asked who they would back if he is out of the race and 17.3 percent of the people surveyed said they would cast their vote for Haddad, a former Sao Paulo mayor who would head the Workers Party ticket.
Another 11.9 percent of the voters surveyed would migrate to Marina Silva, 9.6 percent to Gomes, 6.2 percent to Bolsonaro and 3.7 percent to Alckmin.
Lula, Brazil’s first working class president and whose social policies lifted millions from poverty in Latin America’s largest nation, was jailed in April to start serving a 12-year sentence for receiving bribes.
The nationwide survey of 2,002 people was carried out by pollster MDA for the transportation sector lobby CNT between Aug. 15-18 and has a margin of error of 2.2 percentage points. | {
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Led by Rep. John Lewis, Democrats on Wednesday staged a sit-in in the well of the House floor to call on Republicans who lead the chamber to allow votes on gun control legislation.
A senior Democratic aide said lawmakers plan to disrupt the chamber on Wednesday and Thursday, unless Republicans bring up bipartisan gun control legislation, sponsored by Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), up for votes: “No bill, no break.”
Last week, House Republicans blocked consideration of the legislation, which would prevent people on terrorist watch lists from being able to purchase firearms.
“We ask for the right to vote on a life and death issue confronting the American people, 6,354 of our fellow citizens do not get see another day,” said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 House Democrat, surrounded by dozens of House Democrats on the floor. “They are silent, let not the peoples’ house be silent.”
The sit-in began as the House went into recess a little before noon, following morning business. The House was scheduled to reconvene at noon, but was gaveled back into recess after Democrats refused to clear the well. The House was gaveled back into session a short time later, but almost immediately went back into recess.
“The House cannot operate without members following the rules of the institution, so the House has recessed subject to the call of the chair,” said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
A House GOP aide said members have been advised there will be votes Wednesday, but an exact time has not been determined.
According to a Democratic aide, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Conn.) organized the sit-in. Senate Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, leading advocates for gun control since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012, joined Democrats on the floor in a show of solidarity. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and potential Democratic vice presidential candidates, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Tim Kaine of Virginia, also joined the sit-in.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — who’s expected to replace Harry Reid (D-Nev.) next year as Senate Democratic leader — dropped by the House chamber for about an hour. At one point he sat in one of the plush House chairs conversing with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Dozens of Democrats remained on the House floor as others ventured to the Capitol steps to deliver a news conference calling for action.
Lewis, a leader in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, said on Twitter, “Sometimes you have to get in the way.”
“You have to make some noise by speaking up and speaking out,” the Georgia Democrat said.
Democrats expressed outrage that the chamber’s camera feed is shut off while the House is technically in recess. The feed is controlled by the majority party.
A senior GOP leadership aide noted, “All members of the House of Representatives voted on the rules governing floor proceedings at the beginning of the Congress. Cameras are only on when the House is in session. This rule of the House is being enforced, as it has been since TV cameras were first installed in the House.”
Many lawmakers, in violation of House rules, were filming and taking photos on the floor. Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) was the first member to live-stream the action on Periscope, which C-SPAN promptly picked up and carried live on air.
A number of lawmakers made remarks which were captured on the stream, including Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), who said, “Speaker Ryan, you can run but you can’t hide.”
I'm on the House floor with @repjohnlewis & Dems staging a sit-in to demand action on commonsense gun legislation pic.twitter.com/byIivby5gG — Rep. John Yarmuth (@RepJohnYarmuth) June 22, 2016
Time to occupy the House to demand action. #NoBillNoBreak #DisarmHate pic.twitter.com/C7BZpzNvxL — Rep Donna F Edwards (@repdonnaedwards) June 22, 2016
President Obama and other top Democrats thanked Lewis for leading the effort.
“Thank you John Lewis for leading on gun violence where we need it most,” Obama said on Twitter. Lewis responded: “Thank you, Mr. President. I’m just trying to help out and make a contribution.”
Warren called Lewis a “hero” in a tweet.
Hero @repjohnlewis is leading a sit-in on gun violence & @SpeakerRyan shut off the camera so you can’t watch. Shameful. #NoBillNoBreak — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 22, 2016
The sit-in disrupted business elsewhere on Capitol Hill as well.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson was the only Democrat at the House Science Committee hearing where Gina McCarthy was testifying.
“The reason I’m hear by myself on this side is that every other Democrat is on the House floor awaiting a bill, because without a bill, there’ll be no break. The bill concerning gun violence,” the Texas Democrat said.
A House Rules Committee hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. was also pushed back, and a Democratic news conference assailing the House GOP’s efforts to block the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule was canceled.
On Tuesday, Pelosi called on Ryan not to recess the chamber until it held a vote on gun legislation.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans want action on commonsense gun violence legislation – and the House of Representatives owes them a vote,”she said. “The Republican House must not leave Washington before holding a vote on commonsense gun violence legislation.”
According to a national Morning Consult survey conducted in the wake of the Orlando shooting, more than half of voters (57 percent) said they support general efforts to increase gun control.
Ryan Rainey and Jack Fitzpatrick contributed. | {
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2019 Tuvalu 1 oz Silver Marvel Captain America
Steve Rogers is Captain America! Defending liberty and the ideals upon which America was built, this super soldier pulled up from the depths of World War II, stands firm against every foe that threatens those ideals.
Introducing the 6th installment of the phenomenal! Marvel Tuvalu Superheroes series, the 2019 Tuvalu 1 oz Silver Marvel Captain America. This .9999 fine silver bullion coin is produced by Perth Mint for the island nation of Tuvalu. Following the sustained global success of the first 5 releases of the series, this magnificent Captain America edition is certain to be a blockbuster event!
Standing Strong ‑ Captain America!
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The reverse features an excellent action scene of Captain America with his shield raised before him in a defensive stance. His massive muscular torso bulges beneath his costume as he tenses for the battle. A large star emblazons his chest, and the bold iconic “A” upon his head gear. His expression tells the whole story of all that is about to transpire. His unflinching eyes are fixed on the enemy. His square jaw is firmly set, anticipating the clash. This day evil will not triumph, no matter the cost!
The entire field is filled to the rim with this magnificent scene. The inscriptions include “CAPTAIN AMERICA” in large, bold lettering, positioned just above his shield. Above this is the smaller Marvel block logo. and at the left rim is the Marvel copyright mark. The background displays a series of stars.
This magnificent 6th edition of the Marvel Tuvalu Super Heroes series is expected to sell out at the Mint quickly with only 50,000 produced for global distribution. Reserve your stash Today!
Highlights | {
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Flexhibit 2 meter media wall All Star Displays provides a very comprehensive and wide range of display banners in Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Australia. The range starting from standard banner stands, ingenious systems like the pop up walls that is replacing both the pop-up and back wall stands to provide a solution for custom built booths which was proving as hindrance. The modern system allows clients to customize its look and produce stunning ‘big modular booths” – that can be changed promote different themes or configurations for other shows without spending a single penny. These booths are much more than a ‘pop up’ can ever be. These are completely made of the LED screens that can produce oversized vivid graphics. The flexibility of these systems allows them to create a visual magic when placed on very high walls and free standing backlit towers, and to grab maximum attention of the viewers with overhead banner and blimp signage, but also combines aesthetic form with the functionality of product display counters and showcases as well as their Gizmo 3D banner stands. Trade show displays can make a difference when you are organising your next tradeshow or exhibition. Thus choosing the right type of display is critical.
Waveline Displays All of the portable display range travel securely between trade shows as we have designed bags and cases that can secure the wave line displays; from the shape molded neoprene like sleeves for banner stands right through to heavy duty blow molded transport cases for the pop up and other tension fabric displays; these cases are layered inside and within each layer even the components are segregated with foam cut-outs – the cases are also on ball bearing wheels thus are truly portable and the internal dividers ensure your display arrives unscathed at trade shows , and ready to wow your clients. The graphics have changed (and become more environment friendly) as technology has advanced – most of the vibrant graphics are now dye sublimation prints onto a wrinkle free stretch polyester fabric that simply slides over the frame like a glove and is sealed with a zipper. | {
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you can find me at the club house after a long day of golf with prospective clients
7,844 shares | {
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浮世絵専門の美術館「太田記念美術館」が2015年に開催し好評だった展覧会『江戸の「悪」』が、今年6月に「江戸の悪 PART II」と題し帰ってきます！
第1弾では『大海賊、侠客、悪女ストーカー、江戸の「悪い人」たちが大集合』というキャッチコピーで歴史好きのこころを鷲づかみにしましたが、第2弾の今回も、江戸時代の”悪い人”たちにフォーカスし、浮世絵作品が集結します。
ドラマや映画、漫画、アニメなどでは、悪役が主役を凌ぐほどの魅力を放つことが珍しくありませんが、江戸時代に生きた人々も同様に、悪役が魅力的に映ることがあったようです。
元禄赤穂事件はすぐに芝居にも移され、吉良上野介は稀代の悪人としてのイメージを定着し今に続いています。盗賊・ねずみ小僧に様々な逸話が残るのも、人々が悪人に魅せられた結果でもあるでしょう。
本展では、悪人を「 江戸の「悪い人」たち」、「悪の権力者たち」、「悪女と女伊達」、「恋と悪」、「善と悪のはざま」という様々なコーナーに分けて紹介。江戸時代の悪人に限らず、浮世絵に描かれた架空の悪人や江戸時代以前の悪人なども一挙紹介されます。
さまざまな悪人たちのイメージを、描かれた浮世絵から探る展覧会「江戸の悪 PART II」は2018年6月2日（土）～7月29日（日）の期間、太田記念美術館で開催されます。
江戸の悪 PART II – 太田記念美術館 | {
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This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
I am a venture capitalist. I take other people's money, invest it in exciting little companies, hope those companies get bigger and, if all goes well, return more money to my investors than they gave me.
I recently met a financial planner who informed me that his mission was to help me achieve my life's goals. He asked me a string of questions in an effort to understand me as a person, and then asked his final question: "What do you want to achieve with your life?"
I thought about it for a second and told him, "I want to be a successful venture capitalist without being a jerk." He was at a loss. Apparently my answer was supposed to be in dollars. But it was the truth. I'll make my investors plenty of money. But, above all, I want to demonstrate that success doesn't have to come at someone else's expense.
Imagine my horror, then, when I read about a recent study[1] by professors from several leading business schools, including Stanford's, which concluded that nice guys don't finish first. It determined that although nice guys garnered prestige for their upstanding behaviour, the strongest leaders were best characterised by dominance. Those who demonstrated selfish or belligerent traits were ultimately perceived as more dominant and, therefore, better leaders. The converse was also true -- the more altruistic you appeared, the less appealing you were as a leader.
The study reminds me of dating. The girls in my school were attracted to the bad boys. Despite the early appeal of the jerks, however, in the end the girls realised that they were better off marrying the nice guys. I think the same is true in business.
Selfish, authoritarian leaders may appear attractive at first. But the appeal will wear off.
What the study gets wrong is the timescale. Sometimes aggression and dominance will characterise a strong leader. But company-building is more collaborative than adversarial. Leaders need to co-operate with employees, partners, distributors, customers etc. As a result, executives who optimise for the confrontational aspects of their job, rather than the collaborative ones, will miss the mark. As tempting as it is to use this study as an excuse to become the bad boy of business, I'm convinced the professors have come to the wrong conclusion. Nice guys don't finish last. It just takes a while for the true value of positive, collaborative leadership to shine through.
[1] Nir Halevy et al, forthcoming, "Status conferral in intergroup social dilemma: behavioral antecedents and consequences of prestige and dominance", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
David Hornik is the author of Ventureblog. | {
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Saw you throw up after taking a shot doesn't tell anyone. Gives you gum.
767 shares | {
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Two powerful open letters from experienced activists share vital advice with “peaceful civil disobedience” group Extinction Rebellion (XR). Everyone who is concerned about the environment and the impact of climate chaos needs to read these letters.
Both the letters offer love and support to the rebellion which brought London to a standstill and ended in over 1,000 arrests during ten days of occupation and protest in April. But the letters also address head-on concerns many people have expressed over XR and offer a vitally important perspective.
“The fight for climate justice is the fight of our lives”
On 3 May, Red Pepper published an open letter from grassroots collective Wretched of The Earth. The collaborative letter reflects the perspective of over 20 campaign and activist groups, ranging from Black Lives Matter UK to Disabled People Against the Cuts and End Deportations. Following recent XR protests, these groups reflected “on the narrative, strategies, tactics and demands of a reinvigorated climate movement in the UK”. The letter sets out a series of powerful “principles and demands”. It also suggests ways to unify and build a “whole movement”. As it states:
The fight for climate justice is the fight of our lives, and we need to do it right.
And another beautifully eloquent letter from John Jordan – a ZAD (zone à défendre) activist – points to the deep relationships between activism and the state, and the endurance needed for successful protest.
“Dear Extinction Rebellion…”
The collaborative letter supports XR and welcomes any mass awareness of “the immense danger ahead of us and a collective will to fight it”. But crucially, it also points out that:
in order to construct a different future, or even to imagine it, we have to understand what this “path” is, and how we arrived at the world as we know it now. “The Truth” of the ecological crisis is that we did not get here by a sequence of small missteps, but were thrust here by powerful forces that drove the distribution of resources of the entire planet and the structure of our societies.
Because as the letter so vitally states, everyone is dominated by existing “economic structures”. And these came from “colonial projects whose sole purpose is the pursuit of domination and profit”. We need to remember that:
For centuries, racism, sexism and classism have been necessary for this system to be upheld, and have shaped the conditions we find ourselves in.
As it points out, for too many people, the impact of living under these conditions is nothing new:
For those of us who are indigenous, working class, black, brown, queer, trans or disabled, the experience of structural violence became part of our birthright.
“The crack of truncheons on our skulls”
Jordan’s letter also supports XR actions. But importantly it notes that any sense of ‘winning’ requires a deeper understanding of the state because:
your victories are a threat to its survival and it turns against you. I know that we are never prepared for the real repression when it comes. Sometimes it comes in the form of criminalisation through media storytelling, sometimes through the crack of truncheons on our skulls.
And he also points out that:
often it comes through the back door, an act of digestion and incorporation, transforming our radical actions into their own words, words that become tools for their greenwashing or electoral sloganeering.
“The root causes of the climate crisis”
On 1 May, parliament voted to declare an “environment and climate emergency”. This is a major, if symbolic, step towards formally recognising the climate catastrophe that the planet faces. But as Jordan notes, parliament declared a climate emergency on the very same day the government approved plans for the controversial third Heathrow airport runway:
the state declares an emergency with one hand and with the other it fuels the very fire which is pushing life to the edge… we can’t let this happen now, it would make the decades of resistance against this piece of climate burning infrastructure worthless and the growing climate rebellion a joke.
Similarly, Wretched of the Earth ask XR not to ignore longstanding “histories of struggle, dignity, victory and resilience”. On a global scale, climate protest must acknowledge the wisdom of “indigenous communities” and work for a future that creates “new worlds free of the violence of capitalism”.
As the letter also notes, “the root causes of the climate crisis” are complex. It’s a crisis that stems from “capitalism, extractivism, racism, sexism, classism, ableism and other systems of oppression”. It also points out that many:
communities have been on fire for a long time and these flames are fanned by our exclusion and silencing.
Privilege
Extinction Rebellion thanked the police on several occasions for their handling of the protests. But many people have criticised this stance, pointing out that the police force is a violent and institutionally racist organisation. A viral video showed this reality when a Black woman – who had nothing to do with XR – was arrested simply trying to walk through London. And the way that police dealt with XR protestors stands in stark contrast to the brutal arrests of Kurdish hunger strike activists in the same week.
Wretched of the Earth reiterate this point:
Many of us live with the risk of arrest and criminalization. We have to carefully weigh the costs that can be inflicted on us and our communities by a state that is driven to target those who are racialised ahead of those who are white.
The letter explains that although the XR strategy, based around the “primary tactic of being arrested”, is valid, it must be:
underlined by an ongoing analysis of privilege as well as the reality of police and state violence. XR participants should be able to use their privilege to risk arrest, whilst at the same time highlighting the racialised nature of policing.
A true “climate justice rebellion”
Wretched of the Earth set out six demands. The groups involved explain that these offer the only viable route to enact real change and highlight the need for social justice. A Green New Deal is vital, but it must be global. It must insist the UK ends “unfair trade deals”. It also argues that ending the arms trade is equally important:
Wars have been created to serve the interests of corporations – the largest arms deals have delivered oil; whilst the world’s largest militaries are the biggest users of petrol.
The demands call for a new approach to financial systems and economic structure. But they also go further, addressing other institutional structures. A viable future must, it proposes, also end “the hostile environment of walls and fences, detention centers and prisons… used against racialised, migrant, and refugee communities”.
These demands go far beyond XRs existing ones. Wretched of the Earth is challenging the very structures that underpin the onslaught of environmental destruction. As its letter explains, the groups involved feel “key aspects” of the XR approach “need to evolve”. Its demands simply offer a “starting point” for “urgently needed” conversations.
“How can our love of life become a love for a place?”
Jordan says he wrote a “letter of warning but also a love letter, or rather a letter about love”. And he asks a vital question:
how can all that energy from Extinction Rebellion shift from the temporary sites of bridges and road blocks and start to take root, to defend a territory. How can our love of life become a love for a place?
As the collaborative letter also states:
We share this reflection from a place of love and solidarity, by groups and networks working with frontline communities, united in the spirit of building a climate justice movement that does not make the poorest in the rich countries pay the price for tackling the climate crisis, and refuses to sacrifice the people of the global South to protect the citizens of the global North.
These letters share vital voices of experience. Climate breakdown affects everyone. And it’s through learning, sharing knowledge and working together that we’ll gain the strength needed to really take action over climate chaos.
Read the full letters here and here.
Featured image via Flickr/David Holt | {
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Jeremy Schneider should have won the award for Most Original Halloween Costume when he dressed up as 12-foot CVS receipt, in San Diego, California.Jeremy then called into his local CVS store, much to everybody’s amusement, where an employee was even able to successfully scan the costume.Jeremy made the costume by scanning the original receipt, splitting it in Photoshop into 50 8×10-sized pieces, printing them all out, and taping them together with shipping tape. It was quite an amazing achievement! Credit: YouTube/Jeremy Schneider | {
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Every day about the same time, Missy gets a pill that’s popped out of a 28-day blister pack similar to the ones that millions of women take to keep from getting pregnant. But Missy isn’t like most females on a birth control prescription. She’s a chimp.
Because chimpanzees share a similar anatomy to humans, they can take the same pill in much the same way as a woman does. But because they are animals, Dallas Zoo keepers sometimes have to come up with ways to disguise it.
Missy prefers to take her pill diluted in brightly colored juice, but Koko, who is no longer on birth control, would take hers only when it was mixed into oatmeal or served from a favorite pirate cup.
"They're smart," said Tami Jochem, assistant supervisor of primates at the Dallas Zoo. "Everyone has their own little idiosyncrasies that we cater to, of course."
There are a number of reasons why zoos use birth control — breeding recommendations, space constraints, health concerns — but it's all done under the careful watch of keepers looking out for side effects and ensuring that social structures are maintained.
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Human-like options
Like the pill Missy takes because keepers aren’t sure if the 52-year-old chimp is in a menopause-like state, many of the contraceptive options used at the Dallas Zoo are widely familiar to humans — oral, shots or implants.
“There’s not really a market for wild animal contraceptives, so we do adapt products that are approved for humans,” said Dr. David Powell, director of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Reproductive Management Center at the St. Louis Zoo. “But there’s never going to be enough tigers or capybaras for any drug company to go through the millions of dollars to develop a specific contraception for Asian small-clawed otters.”
But researchers did develop Suprelorin, an implant that costs $30 to $60 and was originally created for ferrets because the pet trade is full of them.
With an implant, keepers don't have to worry about whether or not the animals are actually taking a contraceptive.
“The biggest problem we have with oral contraception in animals is poor compliance: They spit their pills out, or they don’t eat enough of the feed or something like that,” said Dr. Christopher Bonar, Dallas Zoo director of animal health.
With the exception of Missy's pills and a shot primates can get, most of the animals on birth control have implants or injectable formulations prepared by veterinarians that differ from what is used in humans, Bonar said.
There’s also hysterectomy or castration, an irreversible way to avoid long-term hormone therapy.
Bonar has performed vasectomies on both a rattlesnake and a lion.
His previous zoo decided to perform the procedure on the lion to keep the animal from impregnating its sister. Castration would have kept him from growing a mane, and the zoo wanted to keep the female off hormonal birth control because of its side effects.
Strictly animal options
There are options that humans can’t really relate to.
For snakes or birds, keepers can replace an egg with a decoy or choose not to incubate.
Immunocontraception, originally developed for feral horses, works by tricking the female's body into creating antibodies against its own egg so the animal doesn't become pregnant, Powell said.
The Dallas Zoo employs the method for its naked mole rat.
The animal is also capable of a kind of contraception that requires no human intervention.
A queen naked mole rat suppresses the ability for all other females in the group to cycle or reproduce. As soon as the queen dies, there’s a fight to take her place, Powell said.
Contraceptive measures can have side effects on animals, including an increased risk of cancer and difficulty becoming pregnant later.
“Sometimes altering their hormonal cycles alters their behavior and position in the social structure,” Bonar said.
Experts are also researching the physical effects of taking away the ability to breed.
Deborah Chase, vet tech, left, holds a helmeted guineafowl as Dr. Chris Bonar, director of animal health at the Dallas Zoo, injected a solid birth control implant into Zotz, Pez and Skittle on Aug. 31, 2017. (David Woo / Staff Photographer)
Birth of animal contraception
The idea of developing contraception for zoo animals dates to the 1970s, when zoos realized there was not enough space to hold all the new offspring, Bonar said.
Around that time, biologists also started to learn the negative effects of inbreeding and zoos adopted a more thoughtful process that eventually led to the creation of the Species Survival Plan.
The plan, which manages 500 animal populations and is overseen by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, plays matchmaker for animals at accredited zoos across the country.
When deciding where to place animals, studbook keepers and species coordinators consider the overall population of animals in human care and weigh the needs of different institutions: Does a zoo have space to take in a giraffe? Could it use a companion for an animal or another tiger for public display?
Breeding recommendations are made to prevent inbreeding and ensure good genes don't pass out of the population.
That’s where the Reproductive Management Center comes in. The center gathers and provides data to zoos about contraceptive use, efficacy, reversibility and safety to help keepers make decisions about how to help animals breed or not.
Part of that work is expanding research into how to promote reproduction for struggling species, such as cranes, and to ensure zoo populations are sustainable, Powell said.
According to plan
Beyond space constraints and genetic concerns, there are social implications to weigh before putting an animal on birth control.
A zoo with only female gorillas may feel it needs a male for the troop’s social hierarchy. But if not all the animals have been recommended for breeding, contraception is necessary, Bonar said.
It may also be required for animals that have already reproduced many times and spread their genes throughout the population.
Zoos also factor in weather.
When Boipelo arrived in Dallas in March, the hippopotamus, a notoriously fertile breed, was put on birth control to prevent her from delivering a baby in the winter.
Like in humans, hormonal measures aren’t always 100 percent effective.
Boipelo’s mate, Adhama, was transferred to Dallas from the Los Angeles Zoo because a female hippo there became pregnant despite being on birth control, said Harrison Edell, the Dallas Zoo's vice president of animal operations.
Though staff — and guests — get excited when an animal has a baby, zoos try to ensure all births are planned.
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“These are not babies we use to support the budget; the babies are produced to be part of carefully managed program,” Edell said, citing the Species Survival Plan.
When Lina gave birth in March through C-section to the zoo's first lion cub in 43 years, it was after years of weighing with the Species Survival Plan's lion coordinator at the Denver Zoo the pros and cons of breeding a lion who previously had two stillborns.
"It’s real easy to take a pot shot and say we created a cute baby lion because we wanted to boost attendance,” Edell said. “Do people come up to the zoo to see a baby lion? Of course, she’s pretty damn cute. ... But there’s so much more to it than that."
Birth control at the Dallas Zoo
Source: The Dallas Zoo | {
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What happens if Jack Eichel decides to stay in school?
How would you feel if your NHL team finished last overall this year, then finds out it won't get the chance to send Connor McDavid
or
Jack Eichel out onto the ice next season?
It could happen.
Are you listening, Buffalo Sabres and Arizona Coyotes?
The last-place team has a 20-percent chance at winning the first overall pick in the redesigned NHL draft lottery and is guaranteed of getting the No.2 pick if it misses out on No.1.
Presently, the Sabres have the inside track over the Coyotes when it comes to finishing with the fewest points in the league. But after posting their second consecutive win by beating the Maple Leafs on Wednesday, the gap has been narrowed to just two points with five games remaining for both Buffalo (52 points) and Arizona (54). Edmonton has the third-fewest points (59) but is dangerously close to falling out of the McDavid-Eichel sweepstakes.
McDavid, the Canadian-born, 19-year-old center for the Erie Otters in the Ontario Hockey League, is the consensus No.1 pick.
Eichel, the American-born, 19-year-old center for Boston University, is the consensus No. 2 pick.
Eichel is the first NCAA freshman in 12 years to be named a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, college hockey's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy. He's helped his team reach the Frozen Four and has a chance to lead BU to the national championship.
And that's where it gets interesting.
Though everyone seemingly assumes he will leave college to enter the NHL draft in June, the possibility remains that Eichel could decide to stay in school for at least another year. It probably won't happen, but what if it does?
His coach at BU, Dave Quinn, gently has been trying to suggest the idea to Eichel, and apparently he's listening. A few current NHL players have reached out to Eichel as well, telling him how valuable it was that they stayed in college an extra year or two. Others have also been whispering in his ear.
One of them is none other than Mike Eruzione, hero of the 1980 gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic hockey team and a former Boston University player himself, who now works for the college as director of special outreach.
Eruzione told The Heat Index earlier this spring that he'd love to see Eichel remain in school for at least one more year, but of course, he's a little biased. So is Quinn.
"I have a horse in this race," Quinn told the New York Times. "And it's not just a horse. It's a thoroughbred. It's Secretariat."
So what happens if Secretariat decides to wait a year before turning pro?
Well, whichever team ends up with the No.2 overall pick will certainly still draft him. But then it would have to wait a full year before this can't-miss prospect comes aboard to be a franchise savior. It would be like staring at the ultimate Christmas present that's waiting for you under the tree except you have to wait another full 12 months to unwrap it.
Talk about a tease and a complete bubble burst.
Eichel is the type of player that could single-handedly help turn a team around overnight. He may not take you straight to the Stanley Cup as a rookie, but he'll at least put you on the path to get there. He makes everyone around him better. He will elevate everyone's play.
Unless, you know, you have to wait another year before he turns pro.
In the Times story in which Quinn is quoted, Nashville Predators center Colin Wilson credits having returned to Boston University after being drafted seventh overall in 2008 as the "best decision I ever made." Wilson and the Terriers went on to capture the NCAA title in 2009 and then he signed with the Predators.
"That second year at B.U. for me really changed my life," Wilson told the Times. "I found my game. I grew as a person and we won a championship. … Looking back, my only regret is that I didn't stay another year. Then again, I wasn't Jack Eichel."
Eichel and Boston University will meet North Dakota next Thursday in the NCAA semifinals at the TD Garden in Boston. The winner will meet either Omaha or Providence for the championship on April 11.
Suppose Eichel and the Terriers don't win it all. Will getting so close to a title make him seriously think about coming back for one more year to win a championship? It could.
It isn't unprecedented with elite-level prospects. Blackhawks star Jonathan Toews returned for his sophomore season at North Dakota after Chicago selected him with the No.3 pick in the 2006 NHL draft. Maple Leafs winger James van Riemsdyk played two years at New Hampshire after the Flyers made him the No.2 overall pick in 2007.
If Eichel were to return to Boston University for at least another year, you can't blame him, especially when he just told ESPN, "It's always been my dream to play college hockey."
In all likelihood, of course, Eichel will turn pro and like McDavid, make one lucky NHL team very, very happy. But will it be the Sabres or the Coyotes?
We'll find out a week from Saturday when the NHL regular season comes to an end on the same night they play the NCAA men's ice hockey championship.
Reach The Heat Index at [email protected] . Follow him on Twitter @azbobbymac and listen to him live every Monday at 5:30 p.m. on NBC Sports Radio with Roc and Manuch on AZ Sports Talk. | {
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Hannover
Kaum beschlossen und schon korrekturbedürftig: Mit dem nach langem Tauziehen vor gut einem halben Jahr beschlossenen niedersächsischen Polizeigesetz muss sich in der letzten Landtagssitzung vor Weihnachten prompt wieder das Parlament befassen. Wegen eines Urteils des Bundesverfassungsgerichts müssen Passagen im Gesetz zur automatischen Kennzeichenerfassung und zur Schleierfahndung nachgebessert werden.
Dabei war in Niedersachsen wohl über kaum ein Gesetz so lange und kontrovers diskutiert worden wie über das Polizeigesetz, das sogar Gegner zu Demonstrationen auf die Straße trieb. An der Notwendigkeit einer Gesetzesreform gab es spätestens seit dem Anschlag auf den Berliner Weihnachtsmarkt vor drei Jahren keinen Grundsatzzweifel mehr. Wie weit aber sollten Behörden im Zuge des Antiterrorkampfs in die Privatsphäre von Bürgern eingreifen dürfen? Die zunächst noch von Rot-Grün vorbereitete Gesetzesverschärfung wurde schließlich im Mai von der SPD/CDU-Regierung beschlossen.
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Bodycam und Streckenradar für die Beamten
Mit der Einführung von Körperkameras für Streifenbeamte oder des Streckenradars gegen Raser war die Polizei in Niedersachsen zwischenzeitlich vorgeprescht, mit dem Gesetz gibt es dafür nun auch eine rechtliche Grundlage. Das bei Hannover als bundesweit erstes Pilotprojekt installierte Streckenradar musste zwischendurch auf eine Klage hin erst noch einmal außer Betrieb genommen werden. Erst nach Verabschiedung des Gesetzes gab es grünes Licht vom Gericht. Und die Bodycams, die Beamte in potenziellen Konfliktlagen einschalten können, durften zunächst nur Bilder und keinen Ton aufnehmen. Vollwertig sind sie nun dank der neuen Regeln in Betrieb.
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Lesen Sie auch:
So funktioniert die Radaranlage Section Control
Landesdatenschutzbeauftragte hält an ihrer Kritik fest
Obwohl die Landesdatenschutzbeauftragte Barbara Thiel so manche Nachbesserung im Gesetzesverfahren sowie das Beseitigen von aus ihrer Sicht verfassungswidriger Praktiken bei der Polizei lobt, hält sie weiter an Kritik fest. Den Betrieb der polizeilichen Telekommunikationsüberwachung (TKÜ) etwa hält sie nach wie vor für rechtswidrig. Die Eingriffsschwelle für viele polizeiliche Maßnahmen sei ohne stichhaltige Begründung herabgesetzt worden. Schon im Vorfeld einer konkreten Gefahrenlage könne die Polizei nun zu einer Online-Durchsuchung oder einer elektronischen Fußfessel greifen.
Für das meiste Tauziehen zwischen den Parteien im Vorfeld sorgte das Einführen einer erweiterten Präventivhaft für terroristische Gefährder. Statt der geplanten 74 Tage darf diese nun für maximal 35 Tage verhängt werden. Tatsächlich zum Einsatz kam dieser viel diskutierte Eingriff in Freiheitsrechte - schließlich geht es um das vorsorgliche Wegsperren von Menschen, die noch nichts verbrochen haben - seit Verabschiedung des neuen Gesetzes erst ein einziges Mal. Im Juni drohte ein 33 Jahre alter polizeibekannter Gewalttäter damit, sich in Berlin in die Luft zu sprengen. Bis sich die Lage geklärt und beruhigt hatte, kam der Mann aus Osnabrück für 14 Tage hinter Gitter.
Die Politik einigt sich nicht
Nach wie vor wirft die Opposition der Regierung vor, ein nicht auf seine Verfassungsmäßigkeit überprüftes Gesetz beschlossen zu haben. Die mehrfache Ankündigung, den Staatsgerichtshof mit einer Prüfung zu beauftragen, scheiterte am Unwillen von FDP und Grünen, einen gemeinsamen Antrag mit der AfD einzureichen. Die beiden Parteien alleine kommen nicht auf die erforderliche Mindestanzahl von 20 Prozent der Abgeordneten - und die Parlamentarier von SPD und CDU lehnten es verständlicherweise ab, das selber beschlossene Gesetz in Frage zu stellen. Die von der AfD inzwischen alleine eingereichte Verfassungsklage wird mangels Unterstützung der anderen Parteien erfolglos bleiben.
Polizei und Landeskriminalamt sind ebenfalls unzufrieden
Die Polizei, deren Arbeit das neue Gesetz erleichtern soll, ist nicht mit allem zufrieden. So forderte der Leiter der für Extremismusbekämpfung zuständigen Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Celle, Frank Lüttig, kürzlich den Abbau formaler und technischer Hürden bei der Online-Durchsuchung. Trotz der mit dem Polizeigesetz geschaffenen Möglichkeiten dazu seien Fahnder in der Praxis weiter auf ausländische Nachrichtendienste und deren Einsatz von Trojanern angewiesen. „Wir haben die Online-Durchsuchung im Gesetz, aber die Hürden sind zu hoch“, sagte der Generalstaatsanwalt. „Da sich alles im virtuellen Raum abspielt, brauchen wir funktionsfähige Online-Infiltrationsmöglichkeiten.“
Auch das Landeskriminalamt sieht noch Regelungsbedarf. Telekommunikationsanbieter müssten verpflichtet werden, Inhalte unverschlüsselt zu übermitteln, außerdem müssten Standortinformationen von Handynutzern durchgängig verfügbar sein. Provider müssten zudem zur Mitwirkung bei polizeilichen Maßnahmen verpflichtet werden. „Dieser Regelungsbedarf wird als erforderlich angesehen, um mittels Telekommunikationsüberwachungen auch zukünftig entsprechend schwerwiegenden Gefahren begegnen und schwerste Straftaten verfolgen zu können“, sagte eine LKA-Sprecherin.
Weitere Informationen zum Thema
Von RND/dpa | {
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Ethical hackers from IBM's X-Force pen tested a building automation system and encountered numerous security issues. For starters, they co-opted a vulnerable router.
Image: iStock/Navidim
According to Gartner, "connected things" in smart homes and smart buildings represent 45% of 1.1 billion IoT devices in 2015. For that many devices, it is disconcerting that security pundits are asking whether these "connected things" are secure. However, it's a good enough question that IBM's X-Force Security Research Group has decided to find out.
The group has been around under various guises since 1998. The IBM X-Force Research Group has grown from 10 ethical hackers to today's global team researching the latest threat trends in order to advise and deliver security content to IBM customers and the general public.
IBM X-Force Ethical Hacking Team Lead Paul Ionescu suggests that little attention is being paid to IoT devices employed in smart or automated buildings simply because IoT devices fall outside the scope of traditional IT.
The team's research paper Penetration testing a building automation system, agrees with Ionescu's conjecture, and then adds what might happen if automated systems in buildings are successfully breached:
"If compromised, such devices may have a more profound impact on our physical surroundings than, for example, the defacing of a web server. Even in an ordinary office building, hackers could gain control of the devices that regulate data center temperatures, causing cooling fans to shut down, and servers to overheat."
Besides impacting the physical environment, the paper hints that it is possible compromised IoT devices and their network connections could be used as backdoors to the computing infrastructure.
SEE: Penetration Testing and Scanning Policy
Pen test a working system
IBM X-Force team members first thought to test individual devices, but realized that affords an incomplete picture. It would be best to work with a company already operating Building Automation Systems (BAS) for clients.
"Our Ethical Hacking team conducted an assessment (penetration test) of a BAS that controlled sensors and thermostats in a commercial office," explains the paper.
The fact the BAS controls several buildings and does so through a remotely-located central server made it even more interesting. The schematic in Figure A represents the pen-tested BAS including the central server and two separate buildings (Station 1 and Station 2).
Figure A
Image: IBM
Each station/building (simulated in Figure B) connects to the central BAS server via the internet using a router. A building automation controller connects to the router and various sensors throughout the building, reporting status to the central BAS, and affecting changes requested by the central BAS.
Image: IBM
Results of the pen test
It did not take long for the IBM X-Force Ethical Hacking team to find a way into the building's network. Chris Poulin, research strategist, IBM X-Force Security, mentions co-opting a vulnerable router gave the team a foothold.
Image: IBM
Next the pen-test team tried the router's admin password, which was stored in clear text on the router, to gain access to the BAS -- and it worked. A combination of a security flaw in the router and sharing passwords between devices with different roles, gave the IBM team admin rights to the local BAS controller. Like dominoes, access to key components continued to fall into the team's hands, ultimately gaining access to the central BAS server and command of the building automated controller in multiple buildings located across the United States.
The team was a bit surprised at the number of security issues they encountered, including the aforementioned shared passwords, critical information stored as clear text, and vulnerable router and BAS software.
Poulin says the team stopped there because they had enough proof. The IBM X-Force team members then explained their findings to the company operating the BAS as well as the individual IoT device manufacturers. Poulin adds all concerned parties diligently patched the vulnerabilities.
Lessons learned
The IBM X-Force crew created a list of what BAS operators should check (though it's useful to all inter-connected businesses):
Ensure all device software is up-to-date.
If there is no business justification for remote access, disable remote administration of the BAS equipment.
Do not reuse, share, or store passwords in clear text.
Employ secure engineering and coding practices for authentication control, execution of shell commands, and password encryption.
Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) systems can be used to scan network activity between the router, the BAS system, and embedded devices to identify suspicious activity.
Not an isolated incident
Unfortunately, this lax attitude is not an isolated occurrence. One of the questions in a January 2015 survey by Facilities Management News and Education asked, "Which of the following best describes the actions you are currently taking concerning cyber security of building automation systems?" The results:
Not currently taking any action: 35%
Gathering information about cyber security: 15%
Evaluating building automation system(s) for cybersecurity: 14%
Planning to improve cyber security for building automation systems: 7%
Currently implementing or have completed actions to improve cyber security for building automation systems: 29%
Regrettably, the people most excited by this survey are the bad guys.
Also see | {
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(ANTIMEDIA) New York City, NY – Fox lies. Brian Williams lies. Most news organizations have become nothing more than corporate and government sponsored public relations machines. So, which outlets should you follow?
Mint Press News: The outlet just celebrated their second anniversary. The focus of Mint Press is definitely geared towards civil liberties violations and attacking the corporate masters of the political elites. Relentless in the pursuit of helping the reader connect the dots inside of the story.
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The Free Thought Project: One of the fastest growing independent media outlets on the internet, TFTP’s mission is to expose police and government misconduct. Often featured on Cop Block and Police the Police, they are at the forefront of the police accountability movement.
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Fifth Column: New outlet designed to bridge the gap between independent and mainstream media with a heavy focus on investigative journalism. Employs staff from most of the other outlets on this list.
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Revolution News: For a window into what’s truly going on outside of the US, RevNews is the site to follow. They cover conflicts, protests, and revolutions from all over the world and America. Many of their stories have live video feeds from location, giving the reader an unadulterated view of the news.
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Common Dreams: Possibly the oldest alternative news site on the web. It started back in 1997. The outlet is very upfront about its left-leaning tendencies, which allows the reader to adjust. The outlet maintains a unique “progressive newswire” that is featured prominently on the site.
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The Pontiac Tribune: The Tribune stands out for not only covering mainstream stories from a different point-of-view, but for being willing to delve into topics many outlets shy away from. A close affiliation with Storm Clouds Gathering helps to constantly provide unique content.
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Of course, if you are reading this, we hope that you are already following us here at Anti-Media. Did we miss anyone?
Disclosure notice: The author’s work has appeared on more than half of the above sites.
This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune-in to The Anti-Media radio show Monday-Friday @ 11pm EST, 8pm PST. | {
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Andy Russell from the Diocese of Southern Virginia has served as a Young Adult Service Corps volunteer in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, Tanzania. The experience, he says, has helped him to grow and expand his outlook on life. "It's all about relationships, walking together, building community, being a global family united by Christ," he says. "One of the great things about YASC is that I fee... | {
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Hayley Benton
[email protected]
1. It's campaign season: Check out Asheville Art Museum's political exhibit.
Art, like politics, can create change, which is why the Asheville Art Museum’s new exhibit, featuring political art, is titled "Creating Change." Let's face it: One of the biggest emotion-evoking issues right now is the election, and art is meant to illicit an emotional response. Running now through Oct. 30, "Creating Change" features photography, sculpture, paintings and prints from the 1930s to the present that challenge viewers to reflect on difficult issues and motivate viewers to action. The Asheville Art Museum is located in Pack Sqaure. A Sept. 30 Art Break event will feature a professor of political science, and an opening reception will be held for the exhibit on Oct. 7. For more information, head to ashevilleart.org.
2. Plan a day trip: Tweetsie Railroad opens its annual Halloween event.
This one's a little far out there, but it should be fun nonetheless. Plan a day trip to Blowing Rock this weekend for Tweetsie Railroad’s Ghost Train Halloween Festival, running Friday and Saturday nights from Sept. 23 through Oct. 29. The ghostly event opens at 7:30 p.m. each evening, and guests will be treated to the Ghost Train ride, a haunted house, Halloween shows, a 3-D maze, the "freaky forest," a warp tunnel and the Spooktacular Black Light Show. The theme park's regular attractions are open during the day. Tickets to the evening event are $36 per person and must be bought in advance at tweetsie.com.
3. "When Jekyll Met Hyde" opens at Magnetic 375.
When The Magnetic Theatre opened its world premiere of Steven Samuels’ "When Jekyll Met Hyde" in 2011, the play was an huge hit, selling out nearly all of its extended run. This year, featuring an unusual twist, "When Jekyll Met Hyde" will be presented in an all-new production honoring the source material’s Victorian setting. Even if you've seen it before: the folks at Magnetic explain that you're in for a new treat. The play opens with low-cost previews on Sept. 29 and 30, and opening night is on Oct. 1. Performances run Thursdays through Saturdays through Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. each night. Previews cost $16 online at magnetictheatre.org and $19 at the door. All other performances are $21 online and $24 at the door.
4. Sara Watkins performs at the Grey Eagle.
Here's the first of two Grey Eagle shows you should see this week: Sara Watkins. The singer-songwriter is playing a seated show in Asheville on Sept. 25. She packs a powerful voice and plays the fiddle, and we've got a full story on her performance here. Mikaela Davis opens up the show with her combination of psychedelic rock, folk and chamber pop. The show begins at 8 p.m. and costs $17 in advance at thegreyeagle.com.
5. Don't be offended by Wheeler Walker Jr.
OK — be offended if you want. But don't let it ruin your good time. Wheeler Walker Jr. is the musical persona of comedian Ben Hoffman, but his outlaw country music is no joke (though it is a little bit silly). He's the most profane country singer around, and he's coming to the Grey Eagle on Sept. 28 for a 9 p.m. show. For more information on the show or on the artist behind "Redneck Sh*t," click here. Tickets are $15-$18 and can be purchased at thegreyeagle.com. | {
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Today one of the world’s largest domestic markets for elephant ivory begins to wind down. China is closing 67 of its licensed ivory facilities, including 12 of its 35 ivory carving factories and several dozen of its more than 130 ivory retailers, according to a notice from the country’s State Forestry Administration, which oversees wildlife trade issues. The rest will be closed before the end of the year.
The Chinese market is believed to be one of the major drivers of elephant poaching in Africa, which has suffered a massive decline in elephant numbers in recent years. Some 30,000 elephants are killed by poachers each year, a rate that will extinguish Africa’s elephants within just a few generations if nothing changes.
"These closures prove that China means business in closing down the ivory trade and helping the African elephant," said Peter Knights, CEO of the nonprofit WildAid, which first reported the closures, in a press release.
The international trade in ivory has been banned since 1990, but many countries, including the China and United States, have continued to allow domestic sales of ivory.
Battle for Elephants: China's Ivory Market Our cameras were allowed into a luxury goods store showroom in Beijing, where reporter Bryan Christy explains how those auctions complicate what's for sale legally and what's not.
In 2015 Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama made the historic announcement that the two countries had agreed to “nearly complete” bans on their domestic ivory markets. In China demand for ivory is primarily driven by the desire for status symbols among the growing middle and upper classes. Ivory carvings, chopsticks, and jewelry are seen as a way to show off wealth. In the U.S. the ivory trade has for many years been allowed for ivory brought into the country legally before 1990, ivory taken from elephants killed before 1976, and for a range of antiques and trophies from legal sport hunting.
In June 2016 the U.S. passed new regulations banning the buying and selling of almost all ivory, with exceptions for century-old antiques and a few other categories. This move essentially fulfilled the U.S.'s pledge. And at the end of 2016, China announced that its near-total ban would be in effect within the next 12 months, although it didn’t provide specifics.
Today’s move to close down carving factories is the first concrete step in fulfilling China’s side of the deal.
"China's steps to move from stated intentions to end the commercial sale of ivory to concrete actions mark an exciting new chapter in the fight to preserve elephants in the wild," says Catherine Novelli, Under Secretary of State under Obama, who was instrumental in bringing about China's commitment to shut down its domestic ivory market.
View Images Some 30 percent of Africa’s savanna elephants have died, mainly at the hands of poachers, between 2007 and 2014. Photograph by Michael Nichols, Nat Geo Image Collection
Until quite recently, the Chinese government had promoted its ivory trade. It licensed new carving factories and retailers and declared ivory carving to be part of its natural heritage. It now has several dozen tons of ivory stockpiled, primarily from a sale in 2008 authorized by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which regulates wildlife trade.
China has released a set amount of raw ivory to its factories each year for carving and sales. This slow drip of ivory into the domestic market caused its value to skyrocket, but a new study released this week by the Nairobi-based nonprofit Save the Elephants finds that during the past three years, the price of ivory has dropped by nearly two-thirds.
Interact with Time Line markers to view milestones Taking more than 200 tons of ivory out of global markets Ivory Crushes and Burns Targeting ivory trafficking with new policies and resolutions Global Action Fighting trafficking with legislative measures U.S. Action NG STAFF
Save the Elephants researchers Lucy Vigne and Esmond Martin attribute the price drop to several factors: an economic slowdown, a crackdown on corruption (ivory items are often used to curry favors with officials), public awareness campaigns about poaching, and the government's commitment to close the trade.
"The ban has had an effect in the [price drop] as legal traders want to sell off their ivory before it is illegal," Vigne wrote in an email.
The government has not said what it plans to do with its ivory stockpile once the ban is fully implemented. (Read more: With Ivory Ban Imminent, What Will Happen to China’s Legal Stockpile?)
View Images This state-owned ivory carving factory, one of the China’s biggest, employed more than 20 carvers at its peak. It is one of several dozen that will shut down this year. (Photo by Brent Stirton, Getty Images Reportage, Nat Geo Image Collection
Some Chinese artists worry that the tradition will be lost. Zhang Minhui, a respected leader in the ivory carving community, told the Guardian earlier this year that his carving factory has been preparing for the shutdown for a while, gradually transitioning to ox bones and mammoth tusks. Still, he thinks the focus needs to be on conservation in Africa, not on demand in China.
"Yes, elephants should be protected, but so should the tradition and art of ivory carving," he told the Guardian in January. "Honestly, we artists don’t need a lot of tusks. Those from elephants' natural deaths are more than enough for our creative works because each piece takes months, sometimes years, to finish."
Many conservationists, on the other hand, argue that any legal market for ivory encourages and facilitates poaching by providing cover for the trade in trafficked tusks.
The Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong also has a thriving ivory market, which is regulated separately from mainland China's. Conservationists fear that Hong Kong's market may heat up in response to the shutdown in China. But Hong Kong too is considering closing its market. Last year, it announced a five-year plan to phase out the trade, and on Monday, its Legislative Council began debate on the proposal.
On March 28, Hong Kong convicted two people for illegal ivory possession, using radiocarbon dating to prove that the ivory was obtained after the 1990 international ban. They were fined $770 and $1,030. | {
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Why Sex With a Malignant Narcissist is a Dangerous Power Play by Shahida Arabi
Out of all of the weapons a narcissistic abuser can use to demean you, sexual manipulation and coercion is an underrepresented subject in the realm of domestic violence. Yet it is one of the most powerful ways that malignant narcissists (those on the high end of the narcissistic spectrum) exploit and mistreat their victims.
It should come to no surprise that being intimate with a narcissist is often compared to sleeping with the enemy. This is because any sexual relationship with this type of manipulator is rarely without an agenda or consequences. Due to their lack of empathy, antisocial traits as well as severe sense of entitlement, they are capable of limitless cruel and callous interpersonal exploitation without remorse.
I've spoken about the role of sex as a 'bonding' tool for the narcissist to groom their victims in my article, Your Brain on Love, Sex and the Narcissist, as well as its powerful impact on biochemical bonding with abusive or otherwise toxic people. However, the plethora of methods through which abusive, malignant narcissists exploit the sexuality of their victims can be diverse and horrific, going beyond just biochemical bonding in the bedroom and crossing over to emotional and psychological violence.
For the malignant narcissist, sex is yet another weapon that can be used against you - not only to bond you to them, but to further degrade and diminish you as a human being. Sex with a malignant narcissist is not, as it appears on the surface (or in the passionate throes of the idealization phase), an emotionally fulfilling act of intimacy, but rather a manipulative mechanism for the abuser to coerce their various sources of narcissistic supply to do their bidding. It is used as ammunition to humiliate the narcissist’s various lovers, micromanage the sexual agency of their victims and to create love triangles among various members of their harem with their primary romantic partner or spouse.
Identifying the tactics of sexual manipulation can be indescribably healing and validating for any survivor who has gone through the often unspeakable methods used in this arena – after all, revealing is healing.
Here are seven ways narcissistic abusers exploit sex and sexuality to further diminish you, as well as some tips on how to take your sexual power back from an abuser.
(1) They love bomb their victims about their sexual prowess in the idealization phase, only to later devalue their skill set.
In the beginning of the courtship, these types of toxic partners usually fast-forward the physical aspect of the relationship. They seduce their victims not just sexually, but psychologically and emotionally, caressing them both with their physical touch as well as their love-bombing words. They do this for a reason: they want to ensure that you associate them with pleasure on every level, with investment and with a false sense of intimacy early on, so that you are less likely to backtrack on the relationship once you start noticing the red flags.
To understand why you might be blindsided by their sexual maneuvers, remember that your reward circuits are firing up when you first meet the narcissist and you’re less likely to focus on discrepancies or inadequacies while feeling the dopamine rush. In fact, the unpredictable nature of the relationship and intermittent love-bombing as it goes downhill actually strengthens these reward circuits in the brain rather than deterring them.
Part of the seductive allure of the narcissist is that he or she will convince you that you are special and unique to them, in every way. Narcissistic abusers will often claim that you are the "best" they've ever had in bed, that you outstrip any other partner in sexual prowess or that their sexual attraction to you is unsurpassed by any other lover. This is a way to "hook" their victim into trusting them and to break down their defenses, causing any sexual activity with a narcissistic partner to be muddied with the fog of illusion.
It does not matter what the actual quality of the sex is like, because a sense of emotional intimacy and safety with our partners often heightens the sexual experience nonetheless. A love-bombed victim is sure to feel like they are experiencing the best sex of their lives, if under this perpetual sexual idealization. As the victim glows with feelings of desirability and of being wanted by the narcissist, they also feel the emotional high of being cared for, nurtured, and physically intimate with their new partner.
Narcissists may also excessively objectify your body in unnerving, yet oddly ‘flattering’ ways. A common way they do this is by reducing you to a body part by developing a hyperfocus on your assets, rather than appreciating you as a full human being. Yet they do so in a manner that is outlandishly affectionate, so that victims are thrown into confusion about whether they should feel pleased or disturbed.
This dehumanization becomes more potent in the devaluation phase of the relationship, when the emotional or even physical abuse begins to escalate. Should the victim ever dare to question or challenge any of the narcissist’s sexual desires in the devaluation phase of the relationship (or sometimes even in the idealization phase), these toxic partners will later "flip a switch" on the very qualities and traits they idealized. They will do so in a way that devalues you as a sexual object rather than acknowledging your full humanity.
This goes for all of your other characteristics too – there is no limit on what these emotional predators can devalue and diminish about you during the abuse cycle. Once the devaluation of your abilities, skill sets, physical characteristics and sexual desirability kicks in, you will begin to feel as if sex with the narcissistic abuser is more like an act of identity erosion rather than an intimate experience with your partner. And no wonder: it feels coerced, empty, and degrading to physically connect with someone who is now psychologically and sexually terrorizing you.
(2) Abusers use sex as a "reset" button with which they can resume the relationship as if the abuse never occurred.
As the devaluation and discard phases of the relationship sets in, narcissists are prone to using sex as a quick and easy 'reset' button to resume the relationship and sweep any abusive experiences under the rug so they can continue to perpetuate the abuse cycle. They may convince the victim to engage in wild, passionate makeup sex in order to "reconnect”; they might suddenly seduce their partners right after an abusive incident to merge the memory of pain and pleasure. Make no mistake: it’s all a pattern of destructive conditioning designed to destroy the victim’s sense of security in the relationship. The emotional rollercoaster is emboldened by the abuser’s frightening and unpredictable behavior which combines intermittent kindness and affection with mind-blowing acts of full-frontal cruelty.
This can occur even in the event of a break-up. A recent study showed that those with darker personality traits such as narcissism or psychopathy maintain contact with their ex-partners for practical reasons, such as the possibility for sex and access to that partner’s various resources. It is no wonder, then, that even after a break-up or tumultuous period in the relationship, narcissistic abusers are quick to facilitate a seemingly innocent meeting with their victims that always, suspiciously enough, end up in bed. This is why maintaining No Contact (or Low Contact if co-parenting) is so important to ‘wean’ yourself off of the addictive cycle.
Once the victim is hoovered back into the traumatic vortex of the relationship, the devaluation and abuse begins again, and the cycle repeats itself until the narcissist discards the victim or the victim leaves. The victim is then made to feel used and more devalued as he or she realizes that the sex was not a heat-of-the-moment affair indicative of an uncontrollable passion, but rather a deliberate ploy to get back in their heads as well as their beds.
(3) Malignant narcissists justify their infidelity, rationalize lewd remarks, actions or excessive pornography use by blaming and gaslighting their victims.
Narcissistic abusers tend to triangulate their victims with harem members, "friends," previous lovers, and even complete strangers. They may frequently engage in flirtatious or even sexually lewd remarks in public or on social media platforms with others outside of their intimate relationship. These overt flirtations serve to make their victims uncomfortable and on edge, uncertain about their own desirability, while their more covert, hidden flirtations serve to garner a steady flow of narcissistic supply outside of the relationship.
Narcissistic partners are able to use all the attention they’re receiving to bolster their belief that they are prime real estate for romance. This also strokes their ego: they feel self-important and desired by many as they are able to use their victims to vie for their approval and compete for their affection. That is why it is so important for survivors, when they realize triangulation is occurring, to not fall prey to the game of competing. Recognize your own irreplaceable qualities and refocus on what you can do to detach and extricate yourself from the abusive relationship instead. No healthy partner would ever want you to “compete” for them; in fact, the most loving partners usually communicate to their significant partners how much they appreciate and adore them on a daily basis.
One of the most common ways narcissists employ triangulation, is, of course, infidelity. Malignant narcissists may emotionally or physically cheat on their partners and then accuse their partners of cheating on them (a form of projection). In their delusional and grandiose worldview, they feel entitled to be unfaithful, but their victims are still their “property,” and thus must be controlled. Some narcissists will also claim they have a sex addiction and are unable to “control” themselves.
Narcissists may also use excessive consumption of pornography as a way to triangulate their partners with constant comparisons to the performers on screen or by spending more time on their computer and less time interacting with their intimate partners. According to recent research, a person’s narcissism levels and the numbers of hours spent consuming pornography are positively correlated.
These partners will then justify their pornography use or real-life infidelity (whether it be emotional or physical) by pointing out some sort of perceived physical or sexual shortcoming in their victims, convincing them that their victims are too "uptight" or too "promiscuous" to be sexually effective or desirable.
What survivors need to understand is that a narcissistic abuser who is roaming online dating sites while married, picking up partners on the side on Facebook or flirting lasciviously with their “friends” in front of you should not be the one accusing others of sexual inadequacy. Their lack of loyalty to their partners is an indication of their own malignant traits and inability to be intimate, rather than any deficiencies in their victims.
(4) They compare their victims to previous partners in terms of their bodies, sexual preferences, attitudes and capacity for engaging in certain sexual acts.
This is perhaps the one of most vile ways that narcissistic abusers diminish their victims in the devaluation or discard phases. The ex-partner that the narcissistic abuser once devalued in terms of their appearance or sexual performance is suddenly compared to the new victim in ways that are unfathomably hurtful and unsettling once the new victim becomes the recipient of the abuse. They may praise the ex-partner's appearance, sexual abilities, sexual stamina, or frequency of sexual engagement in a way that devalues the current victim's. The claims of "He or she did this - why can’t you?" are common.
This is a form of horrific triangulation that is meant to undercut the sexual confidence of the victim. It is used by the narcissist to ensure that you feel less confident in your sexual abilities. After all, the less sexually confident you are, the less likely you’ll move onto another partner. At least in the narcissist’s mind. Oddly enough, they fear that you will jump into the sack with someone else soon after their relationship with you is over - so by diminishing your sexual performance, they kill two birds with one stone. They not only belittle your sexuality, they also potentially coerce you into seeking their approval in the bedroom, often to the extent of going against your own boundaries. By lowering your self-esteem and confidence in this area, they gain the satisfaction of knowing that you may be less likely to sexually engage with someone else if you have their abusive remarks still playing as a record in your mind.
To combat internalizing their harsh remarks, survivors of narcissistic abuse must learn to self-validate when it comes to their sexual abilities and body image. Recalling positive feedback from previous, healthier partners can be one way to counter the absurd claims of your abuser; cultivating a healthy self-love for your appearance and abilities can be another. You may also want to explore self-care methods and diverse healing modalities that help you heal from any sexual trauma that you may have experienced in the abusive relationship.
(5) They are hypercritical of their victim's appearance, sexual desire, sexual history, and/or gender identity or expression, failing to account for the complexity of their identities.
Many narcissistic abusers suffer from what is known as the Madonna-Whore complex. They tend to categorize their victims into either sexually pure or promiscuous nymphomaniacs. To them, there is no sexual middle ground. In their limited perspective, partners cannot be both sexual and balanced. This form of black-and-white thinking can also extend to the narcissist’s perceptions of the victim’s personality as a whole, playing hand-in-hand with gender stereotypes as well. For example, if a victim is successful or intelligent, she is seen as less ‘feminine.’ Or, if a male victim is sensitive and empathic, he is seen as less masculine or powerful by a female narcissist. In the narcissist’s mind, it seems unacceptable that someone could be both sensitive and powerful, or that one could be both feminine and successful.
Therefore, it comes as a surprise to a narcissistic abuser when he or she meets a target that embodies seemingly “contradictory” traits that are often socially stereotyped as separate. For example, a partner who is sexy, yet well-rounded, funny, articulate, successful and intelligent all at the same time is a threat to the narcissist’s rigid dichotomies. In response, the narcissist may try to erode the qualities that contradict each other by categorizing his or her victims as one or the other.
This form of rigid dichotomization applies to how abusers use their victim's sexual history or preferences against them. It manifests in the way that they suggest their victims are too 'uptight,’ ‘sexless,’ or 'frigid' if their victims are more sexually reserved due to the emotional abuse – or to calling them 'easy' or 'sluts' if they are more sexually liberated in the bedroom or sexually determined to please their partners in response to the abuse. This often comes with the double standard of the narcissistic abusers themselves being either sexually reserved (usually common with cerebral narcissists) or more sexually experienced (more common with somatic narcissists).
(6) In the worst-case scenarios, malignant narcissists may even sexually coerce their victims into sex acts they are not comfortable with or invite other people into the sexual dynamic of the relationship without regard to the victim’s feelings or desires. They may also deliberately re-traumatize you using your sexual trauma history.
Narcissists on the high end of the spectrum can go as far as to coerce their victims into scenarios they are not comfortable with or do not consent to - such as threesomes, orgies, swinger scenarios, cuckholding, etc. These coercions can happen in other ways as well - they may try to force the victims into sending them provocative photos or coerce their victims to make sexual videos with them. They have no moral qualms about using these photos or videos for the purpose of emotional blackmail later on, should they ever lose control over their victims.
There are even darker implications at work with this method. Some narcissistic abusers will go so far as to use your past sexual traumas against you. They may claim that your sexual assault or rape was your fault, or that it took away an essential part of you or that it “damaged” you in some way (this is, and always will be, victim-shaming nonsense). They may use degrading lingo in the bedroom to covertly retraumatize and shame you. They do this so they can dig deeper into the sexual wounds that already exist and to gaslight you about their sexual and emotional abuse. After all, if they’re able to convince you that your past sexual traumas robbed you of something or made you defective sexually and emotionally, they’re more likely to leave you feeling uncertain about the abuse taking place.
With all that being said, perhaps the most horrific way this can take place is not in a romantic relationship with a malignant narcissist, but in the context of narcissistic parents and their children. A narcissistic parent may sexually abuse their children as they have no sense of boundaries, and see their children as objects, extensions of themselves. This terrifying degradation and erosion of a victim’s boundaries, along with emotional withholding and punishment if the victim does not comply with the narcissist’s desires, can be unbelievably traumatic.
Even if there is no sexual abuse, it is not uncommon in narcissistic families for there to be covert emotional incest and overdependence encouraged among siblings or narcissistic parents and their children due to the ‘enmeshment’ and ‘parentification’ present in these toxic families. This can occur more underhandedly too: narcissistic parents may speak inappropriately in front of their children about their sexual exploits or treat them as sexual objects (for example, enrolling their children in child beauty pageants).
Narcissistic parents may also go on the other end of the spectrum and try to micromanage every facet of the sexuality of their children – for example, refusing to speak about sex at all and shaming them for their sexuality. This is especially rampant in more oppressive households where children of narcissistic parents are punished for engaging in sex or expressing their sexuality in any way.
You may have experienced loving affection from a narcissistic father, for example, up until the age where you became a teenager. That is when the surveillance, monitoring and shaming usually begins. To the abusive parent, children who are becoming aware of their sexuality and entering puberty represent a threat: they are no longer able to be controlled and thus their desires or burgeoning questions must be stifled to keep them in a sort of perpetual ‘childhood.’
Narcissistic mothers are also well known for competing with their daughters, as well as envying the beauty and youth of their offspring. In these situations, children of narcissistic parents find that they have less of a parent than they do a toxic caretaker that teaches them unhealthy ideals about sex, sexuality and self-confidence.
In paving the path back to freedom, survivors may find it helpful to seek professional support to regain their sense of sexual agency and security, address any childhood wounding if any, as well as engaging in mind-body techniques that enable them to feel safe in their bodies again. Yoga and meditation, for example, can be incredible pathways to regain mastery of the mind and body and has been shown by research to be helpful for trauma survivors.
(7) Malignant narcissists show sexual disinterest to deliberately instill insecurity in their victims. Simultaneously, they may accuse their victims of sexually withholding even after heinous acts of physical or psychological violence.
These types of abusers are known for shaming their victims for being "childish" for not giving into their sexual demands and depicting sex as an "adult" act that they have to engage in to meet the standards of the narcissist. It is one thing to address a lack of sex in a relationship, but a whole other ball game when shaming and abuse comes into the mix.
No one is allowed to abuse you, demand sex, and then have the nerve to shame you for refusing to engage with them intimately. If your partner is subjecting you to stonewalling, emotional invalidation and verbal abuse, they should not be expecting a sexual or emotional connection with you - they have already violated your mind, and they are not entitled to your body.
Narcissistic abusers may even attack their victim's femininity or masculinity in the process of doing this, claiming you’re somehow less of a “real woman” or “real man” if you’re unable to meet their constantly shifting sexual goal posts. This is a direct attack on your identity and is meant to make you feel sexually incompetent and unworthy.
Remember: a healthy partner would never attempt to force or coerce their partners into sexual acts they are comfortable with or make them feel guilty when they feel too emotionally drained to engage sexually with an abusive partner.
Abusive narcissists may also withhold any sexual interest or seeming desire towards their victims deliberately, in order to degrade a victim's sense of desirability throughout the relationship. In the idealization phase, they may crave sexual interaction with you 24/7; in the devaluation phase, they’ll claim you never sexually excited them at all. Their sexual disinterest is deliberately demonstrated to make you feel lacking or unworthy of inspiring desire in your abuser – and to make you feel inclined to prove them wrong.
To be clear, every relationship has a sexual ebb and flow – there may be normal stages of sexual disinterest depending on the circumstances. Constructive feedback from a healthy partner can often help both partners to grow, sexually or otherwise. However, in an abusive relationship with a narcissist, sexual disinterest, contempt and disdain is used periodically to demean the victim, especially after incidents of abuse.
Rather than taking the bait, realize that it’s a hook to get you back into the abuse cycle. Instead of falling for it, become sexually disinterested and disengaged from the narcissist instead. You’ll be shocked at how quickly they sexually re-idealize you when they’ve lost control. By that time, you’ll be well on your way to the nearest exit.
These forms of sexual abuse and coercion can leave a startling impact on the victim, who is likely to feel less sexually confident and more trauma bonded to his or her abuser throughout the cycle of abuse. The key to healing from this form of sexual manipulation is first identifying it, learning which tactics our abusers used to subjugate us sexually, and target any areas of trauma and self-doubt. Loving our bodies, self-validating when it comes to our sexual abilities and our capacity to emotionally connect during intimacy can be monumental in our healing journey.
While sex to the narcissist is more about a power play than an equal partnership, you can still take your power back. Survivors of malignant narcissists ultimately have the advantage in this scenario once they begin to heal. We are able to authentically establish an emotional as well as sexual connection with our future partners without manipulation or coercion involved. We have the ability to sustain healthy relationships that are fulfilling on an emotional, physical and spiritual level – and this is something the narcissist will never have.
Copyright © 2017 by Shahida Arabi.
All rights reserved. This article is derived from copyrighted excerpts from Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself. No part of this entry may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author. This includes adaptations in all forms of media. | {
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The Aussie photographer who took the now viral image of Usain Bolt smiling during his 100m semi-final at the Olympic Games admits he "took a punt and it worked".
Getty Images photographer Cameron Spencer is the man behind the image, which many sport commentators have said was one of the greatest moments captured in Rio.
Spencer was shooting the high jump when he decided to run across the field and capture the Jamaican sprinter's semi-final.
"Fortunately Bolt was running in the second semi and I decided to shoot a slow pan shot of him running past," he told 612 ABC Brisbane's Terri Begley.
"I stopped on the 70 metre line and waited for him to come by; no-one expected him to slow down and give a big smile to my direction.
"I couldn't believe it. I wanted to get a nice shot of him in action and it wasn't until I looked at the back of my camera when I realised he was smiling.
"As a photographer you want to try and do something different and I took the punt and it worked out."
'I was lucky the result was what it was'
Spencer said he could tell Bolt stopped to enjoy the last 20 metres knowing he had the race won.
"I think he was smiling at the other guys in the race but it happened to be in my direction," he said.
"The cheeky grin is such a reflection of his personality as he's such a larger-than-life character and an entertainer who loves to show off to the crowd."
Getty Images had 11 photographers covering the race, which allowed Spencer to take a risk by shooting a slower image.
"The chief photo manager told me there was 600 photographers at the 100 metres that evening; there were many lenses pointing at him," he said.
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"I was lucky the result was what it was as I had only had minutes to prepare."
Photo to go straight to the pool room
The image has since been shared around the world on social media and has been seen by Bolt.
"I've heard he's seen it and he likes it," Spencer said.
"We're trying to get him a print and get one signed for him and one for myself ... that would be nice for the pool room.
"Everyone loves shooting Bolt as he's a rock star of the Olympics and I think anytime you get a picture like that it's pretty awesome."
Rio is Spencer's fifth Olympics, having covered three summer and two winter games during his career.
"There's world interest in Olympics," he said.
"I say to people that it's the hardest I ever work, but I have four years to recover from it.
"The reward is always getting the great imagery and I think everyone is on an adrenalin rush when we're here.
"I think people will continue to see it on websites, publications, magazines and things like that ... who knows, someone might take a better picture tonight.
"I'm going to enjoy the feedback I'm getting at the moment while people are liking what they're seeing." | {
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Russia’s ambassador to Australia Grigory Logvinov said: “I said we have no evidence. The British stubbornly denied giving any evidence.” (AAP Image via AP) Russia’s ambassador to Australia Grigory Logvinov said: “I said we have no evidence. The British stubbornly denied giving any evidence.” (AAP Image via AP)
Russia’s Ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday the world will enter into a “Cold War situation” should the West continue its bias against Moscow in response to the nerve agent attack against a former Soviet spy in Britain. “The West must understand that the anti-Russian campaign has no future,” Russian Ambassador Grigory Logvinov told reporters in Canberra. “If it continues, we will be deeply in a Cold War situation.”
Russia denies any part in the March 4 nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England. The United States and governments across Europe are expelling Russian diplomats en masse in response.
Australia said on Tuesday it would expel two Russian diplomats, prompting Logvinov’s impromptu address to the media on Wednesday morning. Logvinov rejected claims that Moscow was behind the attack and said Russia has yet to decide on its response to the diplomatic action by British allies.
“I said we have no evidence. The British stubbornly denied giving any evidence. They have denied following the provisions and protocol of the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” he said.
📣 The Indian Express is now on Telegram. Click here to join our channel (@indianexpress) and stay updated with the latest headlines
For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App. | {
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At school we were taught about the glorious past of Muslims. We read about the wars that we won. We were taught about our ‘martyrs’. We cheered for our cricket team. Every cricket match against India was treated like a war. I was taught nothing positive about the 100 years of united India under British rule. Our history books erased the memories of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians. They were replaced by the contributions of ‘glorious’ Muslims. The aristocratic Mughal were celebrated, the Westernised Turks were glorified and the Central Asian conquerors were cherished.
My history books said nothing about the Rajputs who were the real builders of Lahore and the direct ancestors of many families in Punjab. Those books spoke nothing about Rani Lakshmi Bai, the Rani of Jhansi; Mangal Pandey or Tantya Tope who fought gallantly against the East India Company in 1857. They spoke nothing of Bhagat Singh, Udham Singh, Sukhdev and Kartar Singh for their efforts for liberation. While my Urdu textbook contained generous excerpts of poetry from the likes of Iqbal and Hali, it completely forgot to mention Firaq Gorakhpuri. Yes, all memories of united India were erased from my mind.
There was some mention of how Muslims of India were subjected to oppression by the Indian National Congress, particularly during the years of Congress ministries. But the textbooks completely forgot to highlight that the Congress was a secular party and many of its leaders were Muslims, too. My school did not teach me that our leaders, including Mohammad Ali Jinnah, would stand up to defend a freedom fighter like Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak; that Mr Jinnah was born into an Ithna-Asheri Shi’ite family; and that he lived as a tolerant, liberal individual and favoured secularism. I have grown up saluting a founder who adorned the Jinnah cap and sheerwani and looked rigid and Islamic. I was never introduced to the liberal, secular man who dressed elegantly and enjoyed reading Shakespeare.
As I explored the world of books on my own and met people of different communal backgrounds, I came to know that I have much in common with people on the other side of the border. The hatred was an effort in futility. I hope that one day, our textbooks will discard the sentiments of hatred and teach our children the truth. As an independent thinker, I know that the disease of intolerance can only be treated at the grassroots level and we need to fix the problem at its root.
Ayesha Aizaz Qureshi
Published in The Express Tribune, August 28, 2012. | {
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Statistics from 256 SolForge drafts
I've been playing SolForge for about a year, if memory serves. A few months ago, I started recording data on the draft tournaments I played, both to try to assess my skill level, and to see if I could learn anything about the metagame. The results after 256 tournaments are visualized below.
I previously published my data after I'd reached 100 tournaments. Each chart below is accompanied by a link back to its earlier counterpart, for easy comparison.
Shortly after I published those earlier results, SolForge's tournament structure changed. The casual draft queue was added, and the payouts were altered. People were concerned about what it meant for their ability to draft regularly.
During my first 100 drafts, I had to take a break at one point to replenish my ticket supply. But since the changes, I've never been unable to draft—for free—when I wanted to, although more than once I've had to multi-forge my excess cards. My win ratio is only a little higher than it was before. I can't say if the new payout schedule is good for other players—I understand that players who regularly go 1-3 are disappointed by it. But it's working fine for me. I feel confident saying that if you have a win percentage in the mid-60s, a mostly full card collection, and are willing to spend your extra cards and silver on nothing but entering tournaments, then you too can be "quasi-infinite".
See the Reddit thread for discussion of this article. If you're just here to download the spreadsheet, skip to the end.
Finishes
Decks drafted: 257
Tournaments completed: 256
Longest winning streak: 15 games
Longest losing streak: 8 games
Win ratio 63.8% is the more precise number this time, up by 2 full percentage points from last time. Can't complain about that.
Finishes The 3-1 bar is gradually pulling away from the 2-2 bar.
Win ratio by day of week Mondays continue to be bad days for me, and there are enough drafts on record that I think this is probably not just a fluke. One possibility is that there are more skilled players around on Monday, but that doesn't make sense to me; I'd expect skilled players to play frequently, not just one day a week. The more likely explanation is that there's some psychological difference in me on Mondays. Am I gloomy about the start of the workweek? More willing to take risks that don't pan out?
Cumulative win ratio at intervals The previous version of this chart wasn't clear, but this one shows definite improvement. Each of these points represents my win ratio since the beginning at a certain point in time, so it's likely to continue to plateau. I might choose a different approach for this chart next time.
When going 3-1, which round was lost? Last time, this chart showed that I was much more likely to lose rounds 1 or 2 than rounds 3 or 4. This time, the chart is a lot closer to flat. We'll keep an eye on it, but I don't expect to see anything surprising.
Factions
% of decks containing each faction Compared to last time, I'm drafting Alloyin less often and Tempys more often. I do think Tempys has gotten a little stronger recently... among other things, it's picked up a couple of powerful Allied heroics in Spite Hydra and Gemhide Ravager.
% of decks with each faction pair The biggest change here is that the Nekrium/Tempys slice of the pie has doubled in size. Accordingly, as we'll see in a moment, my win ratio with that faction pair dropped by over 10 percentage points.
Win ratio with each faction All of these bars have grown slightly taller, but the relationship between them is pretty much the same. Comparing this chart to my most-picked factions suggests that I'm probably under-drafting Nekrium and Alloyin.
Win ratio with each faction pair Nekrium/Uterra, which was already very high, now towers above the other bars. It's not just because of individual high-powered cards like Dysian Broodqueen or Bramblewood Tracker—though those certainly help—but also because those factions, in general, have the fattest creatures. If I could give just three words of advice to novice drafters, they would be these: fat wins games.
This chart excludes Weekend Warrior drafts, since they may use non-standard card pools. It seems like every faction except Tempys has been growing in strength over time, although probably what we're really seeing is just my win ratio getting better over time.
This chart excludes Weekend Warrior drafts, since they may use non-standard card pools. The tall bar for N/T prior to set 3 is mostly a fluke because I didn't play that faction often. I'm surprised to see the big jump for A/T since Imprisoned Heralds. I guess I've been doing better with it, but I can't really explain why.
Rarity
Most heroics in one deck: 9
Average heroics per deck: 2.66
It's true, I once drafted a deck with nine heroics. Not junk heroics either; highlights included Borean Windweaver, Frostfang Maiden, Hammerfang, Emberwind Evoker, and two Gemhide Ravagers. Yes, I went 4-0.
The charts in this section exclude High-Rarity Draft tournaments, since the number of legendaries received in that event was fixed and not relevant to the normal drop rate. I didn't bother to exclude Guaranteed Legendary Draft, because I only played it once.
% of decks with at least one legendary Last time, 22% of my draft decks included a legendary, but now it seems I had just been unusually fortunate. This chart only accounts for legendaries that I actually drafted, not ones that I was offered but passed, so you could pull legendaries a little more often than this if you wanted to. In an event that will surely never occur again, I was once offered Binben, Lightning Herald twice in the same draft, and passed them both. It's a build-around card that didn't really fit with the deck I was putting together.
Legendary drop rate by drafts played/day If this chart is hard to understand: on days when I played six drafts in the same day, I acquired legendary cards at a rate of one third of a card per draft. It seemed to me like I started pulling legendaries less frequently once I started drafting more frequently. This chart is a clumsy way to try to investigate that. But it doesn't support the hypothesis at all. I'll keep tracking this just for kicks, but it seems likely that the effect was all in my head.
Win ratio with vs. without legendaries After 100 drafts, I was actually doing worse with a legendary than without. Now I'm doing better, but it's still not a huge difference—not the kind that would make you worried that legendaries are overpowered.
Win ratio by number of heroics This chart is a lot more boring if you ignore the extremes, where the sample sizes are low. Even so, it might suggest that it's a little better to have more heroics (which is a contrast to the earlier version). I can certainly think of several heroics that are snap picks if you see them, and Bramblewood Tracker in particular is probably the best card in draft right now.
Card Type
Fewest spells in one deck: 0
Most spells in one deck: 12
Average number of spells per deck: 6.24
When I posted my first set of results, people were surprised at my high average number of spells per draft (7.21). I took their advice to heart and was able to shave almost a full card off that average. I might be able to go lower, but probably not much... and there's such a thing as having too few spells, too.
Win ratio by number of spells It looks like the optimal number of spells in a draft deck is four or five, though I wouldn't say we have a large enough data set or a sufficiently pronounced effect to make a rule out of it.
Average spells per draft by finish It's perplexing how these numbers go up and down, but I think the general message is still that having fewer spells is better.
The Elite tournament
Thanks to skipping the December Elite constructed tournament, and playing frequently over the holidays, I'd amassed enough Elite tickets to enter January's Elite draft tournament four times. Unfortunately, my results were poor:
2-4 with an Alloyin/Nekrium deck
5-1 with a Nekrium/Uterra deck
0-6 with an Alloyin/Uterra deck
1-5 with a Tempys/Uterra deck
I started recording my drafts because I wanted to know if I was good at SolForge. Now, with a 64% win ratio, but such a disappointing performance in the Elite tournament, I'm less certain about it than ever. I've been thinking about this in the days since the tournament, and I've had two insights.
The first is that two of my Elite decks were with the two faction pairs that I've historically done the worst with (A/N and T/U), whereas my best performance was with my best pairing (N/U). Normally I let my factions be decided by whatever good cards I see in the first few picks. That's well and good when I'm doing a normal draft, but in the Elite tournament, with more at stake, I should have forced a faction combination that I know I can do well with. I collected this data, and then I didn't use it when I needed it.
My second realization is that I rarely feel like I deserve either my wins or my losses. If I see good cards in the packs, and draw more levelled cards in the games, then I win, and if not, then I lose. The gaps in power—especially between cards of different levels—are usually too great to overcome otherwise.
(Why isn't my win ratio 50%, then? I don't know. Sometimes you do get the opportunity to overcome bad luck with smart plays. And often I can tell that I'm playing against an inexperienced opponent. Is 65% just a win ratio that means "I'm not new to this game?")
The spreadsheet and script
The ODS spreadsheet on which this data is based is available here, as is a blank copy for your own use. Some columns have been added and some formulas have changed since the previously released version. If you were using that earlier version, I think the safest way to transfer the data would be to copy and paste a column at a time. Not all of the new (or old) columns may be of interest to you; it's fine to hide any that you're not using.
The Ruby script that I wrote to generate the charts in this article is also available. For notes on its dependencies and how to use it, see my comments in the previous article. Note that it now expects the CSV file to be named "sf_drafts.csv" (for little other reason than my own natural programmer's capriciousness). Bug reports are welcomed, and, if you're lucky, might actually get worked on at some point. | {
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Last week, right-wing preacher Lance Wallnau called on God to turn Hurricane Irma away from the coasts and back into the ocean.
That didn’t work. Irma hit large parts of Florida, and while the worst case scenarios didn’t pan out, Irma did plenty of damage that will seriously affect how Floridians live and work for the foreseeable future.
So what do you do if you’re Wallnau and you publicly prayed for Irma to do no damage? Do you admit it didn’t work? Do you question whether God listened to you?
Of course not. Wallnau claimed last night that his prayers diverted the hurricane’s path.
“I’m happy for what we were able to see happen with the hurricane in Florida,” he said. “I’m telling you, this hurricane went where the Everglades is instead of where Miami is. It’s like, boom, prayer moved it.” “It went from a category five to a four to a three to a two to a one,” Wallnau celebrated. “It’s an amazing intervention of God and we have to praise God.”
This makes as much sense as thanking God after a car accident because the victims were left paralyzed instead of dead. When it comes down to it, you’re still thanking God for ruining lives a little less than He could have… even when He (supposedly) had the power to ruin no lives.
If the devastation caused by Irma is the result of prayer working, Wallnau should rethink the goodness of his God.
And, by the way, every single hurricane, no matter how powerful it gets, eventually loses power. No hurricane stays at Category 5 forever. They lose strength over time. That’s literally how hurricanes work.
(via Right Wing Watch)
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Three of Ontario’s major teachers’ unions are taking steps toward potential strikes as they negotiate with the government for new contracts.
Discussions between the province and education unions started a few months ago amid the Ontario government’s move to increase class sizes. A recent wage cap bill has also angered teachers.
While teachers receive a salary for their role, there are many expenses and actions they do that are unaccounted for or are considered voluntary, according to education professionals.
What teachers are paid for
Teachers are paid to perform their duties under the School Boards Collective Bargaining Act, based on how they’re stipulated in a contract, according to Harvey Bischof, the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF).
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“It’s sort of a combination of their duties under the Education Act and then how that’s exactly spelled out under the collective bargaining agreement,” he said.
“That’s teaching their classes, that’s evaluating students, it’s doing some level … of supervision, like [in] hallways and cafeterias, and what we call on-calls, which is covering for a teacher who might be absent.”
It’s also expected that teachers communicate with parents — for example, in situations where students might be at risk, Bischoff said, adding that staff meetings are also covered.
Vidya Shah, an assistant education professor at York University, told Global News that teachers are also required to provide support for students with special needs.
“It involves ensuring that their accommodations and modifications are being met,” she said. “It involves providing opportunities in which … students with different learning styles can be enriched.”
What teachers aren’t paid for
According to Shah, many teachers pay expenses out of their own pockets to fill gaps that exist in the classroom budget.
“There’s a lot of children that might come to school not having had breakfast or not having money or food for lunch, and so a lot of teachers will spend money on breakfast items or snacks in the classroom,” Shah said.
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“Some teachers will spend money on classroom supplies.”
Other expenses teachers will pay for out of pocket, she added, include art supplies, posters or murals for the classroom, extra photocopying if there’s a limit, classroom libraries, professional learning resources, technology and sometimes furniture.
READ MORE: Ontario government walks back plan to expand high school class sizes
“Depending on sort of the level of poverty in the area, teachers might be paying for hats or coats or gloves or socks for the students or bringing in their own,” Shah said.
“It’s sort of unaccounted expenses in education that get taken up by teachers.”
The OSSTF sent Global News an exhaustive list of duties that are considered “volunteer time” for teachers.
Some of what’s included in the list is as follows:
Extra help and exam prep
Coordinating announcements
Student council and parliament
Coaching sports
School clubs (anything from chess to debate club)
Graduation preparation
Award ceremonies
Athletic banquets
Science fair
Career day
Reference letters for graduating students
University and college visits with students
Assemblies
School dances
Open houses
Prom
Foreign exchange
Day field trips
International field trips
Fundraising
Bake sales
READ MORE: Ontario high school teachers union says contract talks with government have stalled
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“[It’s] all of the extracurricular activities — that is, of course, a vast array of sports,” Bischoff said. “It’s things like drama productions, the school musical. It is all kinds of clubs.”
Co-curricular activities occur before, during and after school, with some happening on weekends, Shah said.
“Teachers are giving up their time to be able to do that,” she added.
According to Shah, there’s also an emotional toll that the job takes on teachers.
“So many teachers take home the woes and the worries and the struggles that their students face every day in school,” she said. “That is something that is unaccounted for as well.
2:25 Elementary teachers in Ontario vote in favour of strike Elementary teachers in Ontario vote in favour of strike
Potential strikes
Prior to the current Progressive Conservative government, teachers have paid out of pocket for many parts of the job, in terms of money, time and emotional wellness, Shah said.
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“All the extra responsibilities of teaching that we don’t actually name, and teachers do it because they deeply care about their students,” she said.
“While [teachers have] been filling that gap, the government is now engaging in even greater cuts to schools, and so it’s making it near-impossible to create those kinds of positive, effective learning environments.”
Elementary teachers will be in a legal strike position on Nov. 25, and high school teachers will be in a legal strike position next week, although they haven’t yet submitted the required five-day strike notice.
Catholic teachers have voted 97 per cent in favour of a strike but aren’t yet in a legal strike position, while talks between the government and French teachers continue.
— With files from The Canadian Press
1:42 Education unions to hold strike votes Education unions to hold strike votes | {
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In the wake of Nike’s announcement that Colin Kaepernick — the quarterback who sparked a wave of protests by NFL players in 2016 when he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality — would be one of the faces of the company’s 30th anniversary “Just do it” advertising campaign, the mayor of a Louisiana town took official action in protest against Nike.
Ben Zahn III, mayor of the Jefferson Parish city of Kenner, issued an memo to the Director of Parks and Recreation requiring that “any booster club operating at any Kenner Recreation Facility” clear all purchases of apparel, shoes, and athletic equipment and products with that director. The memo also declared that “under no circumstances will any Nike product or any product with the Nike logo be purchased for use or delivery at any City of Kenner Recreation Facility:
It disappoints me that this is happening in my state. The Mayor of Kenner is trying to ban all Nike apparel and equipment from children’s sports and playgrounds. I would like to have a conversation with him when i return from this European Tour. Not to fuss, just to build. pic.twitter.com/gRCoCN3nQP — Dee-1; IG @dee1music (@Dee1music) September 9, 2018
Kenner city councilman Gregory Carroll took to Facebook to express his opposition to the mayor’s “disturbing” memorandum, stating that he was “not made aware of this decision beforehand” and that he would be meeting “with the Mayor and other Council members in an effort to rescind this directive”:
As quoted by BuzzFeed News, the councilman also noted that “the memo didn’t ‘make a lot of sense,’ since the city doesn’t spend a lot on Nike equipment or apparel, given its cost”:
“If we spent $1,000 on Nike, that would be a lot,” he mused. “And we can’t discriminate against anybody or company because of our laws. If we did, we’d be breaking our own rules. I think [the mayor] just got caught up in all this stuff and made a move off-the-cuff. We’re all trying to figure out where this came from.”
Jay Banks, a city council member from nearby New Orleans, also took to social media to post a picture of himself holding a Nike shirt outside a Nike-branded store, declaring that “I have never felt a need to purchase one of these before but I am compelled now”:
Mayor Zahn subsequently released a statement asserting that his intent was “to protect taxpayer dollars from being used in a political campaign”: | {
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May 02, 2017
An enthusiastic crowd of staff, students, alumni and friends reacted with raucous applause at the news that Come From Away, the Broadway blockbuster musical that got its start at Sheridan, racked up a total of seven 2017 Tony Award nominations, including one for Best Musical. Other nominations include Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Jenn Colella), Best Book of a Musical (Irene Sankoff and David Hein), Best Original Score - Music and/or Lyrics Written for the Theatre (Irene Sankoff and David Hein), Best Lighting Design of a Musical (Howell Binkley), Best Direction of a Musical (Christopher Ashley) and Best Choreography (Kelly Devine).
The crowd gathered at Sheridan’s Oakville campus, which is home to the Canadian Music Theatre Project (CMTP), the incubator that first developed and produced Come From Away. They were connected by video link with an audience in Gander, Nfld., so that the two communities, each of whom have a connection to the show, could simultaneously tune in to the live broadcast of the Tony Award nominations to learn first-hand if the show would receive a Tony nod.
“With a producing credit on the show, Sheridan is thrilled to be nominated for a Tony Award in the category of Best Musical,” says Dr. Mary Preece, President and Vice Chancellor at Sheridan. “We believe we’re the first post-secondary institution in the history of the Tony Awards (and certainly the only Canadian one) to have a Tony Award nomination for best musical, to our name.” | {
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WingX
Introducing CFI Free!
What is CFI Free!?
CFI Free is our latest initiative to support the CFI community and to provide WingX Rewind, the best flight analysis tool on iPad, free to CFIs so that they can efficiently use the too-often neglected post-flight time to analyze, debrief and even playback an ILS approach, base-to-final turn, and DME arc in real-time right in WingX on your iPad for incredible flight analysis ability.
To get your free WingX subscription:
Scan your CFI Certificate
Send an email to [email protected] with the subject on "CFI Free!" and attach your scanned CFI Certificate
Note: It may take 2-3 business days for your subscription to take effect (or more during the initial rollout). You will be emailed once we have setup your account.
Question and Answers:
Q: Is this a limited time offer?
A: No, but we reserve the right to terminate the CFI Free! initiative at any time. Existing accounts will not be affected.
Q: Will I get 'demo' subscriptions with limited functionality?
A: No. You will get the real WingX subscription, the Advanced IFR subscription, and the Synthetic Vision subscription.
Q: I already have a WingX subscription, does this help me?
A: Yes. You will have the WingX subscription, the Advanced IFR subscription, and the Synthetic Vision subscription and when the year is up (and assuming we have not canceled or modified the 'CFI Free!' offering) you can extend the subscriptions for another year.
Q: What will my expiration date be?
A: The expiration date for any subscription will be the later of your current expiration date and a date one year from the time we update your account with CFI Free!.
Q: Will I need to renew CFI Free! after one year?
A: Yes. Just resend the email as described above.
Q: With some EFB apps it seems like I have to pay for features such as terrain, obstacles, airport diagram geo-referencing or even simply being able to write on approach charts with a pencil. Do I have to pay extra for these features in WingX?
A: No. Again, your subscriptions will not be restricted. BTW: The WingX subscription includes Airport Diagram geo-referencing, terrain, obstacles, split screen, and many more features and yes even the pencil.
Q: You recently released WingX Rewind that enables pilots to record and playback flights including pitch and bank if I have an AHRS-enabled device. Is WingX Rewind included in CFI Free!?
A: Yes - absolutely. In fact, all pilots get WingX Rewind as part of the base WingX subscription - WingX Rewind does not require some kind of 'Pro' upgrade. A primary reason for our decision to start the CFI Free! initiative is to get WingX Rewind into the hands of CFIs because we believe WingX Rewind is such a fundamentally important technology for flight instruction.
Q: Can we tell other CFIs about this?
A: Of course, help spread the word in forums, at your FBO, and feel free to forward this link.
Like us. Follow us. Watch us.
Everything written on this page as well as the CFI Free promotion is subject to change at any time. Our plan is to continue to provide CFI Free indefinitely, but we figured we'd add this text just in case we change our minds. | {
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Questing Ooze
A naturally occurring creature made up of organic materials. The slimy nature of these materials gave birth to the name Ooze.
Some Oozes mindlessly move about the world accumulating various weapons, equipment, or even other living creatures into their sticky bodies.
Other varieties of this slimy creature seem to have an unknown purpose and actively use the compiled gear of enemies they slay. ___________________________________________________________________________
Portfolio | LinkedIn | Tumblr | Facebook | Twitter
For freelance inquiries email me at:
[email protected] | {
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Premier Dalton McGuinty needn’t worry — if Toronto Mayor Rob Ford doesn’t want it, Mississauga will be only too happy to take the province’s money to build light rail transit (LRT).
That’s the cheeky suggestion proffered by Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion in a letter to Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne.
“If any Toronto transit contracts are cancelled I want to inform you up front that we could use the money that has been allocated for those projects, for transit projects in Mississauga,” McCallion says in the Dec. 3 letter obtained by the Star.
The letter surfaced just as McGuinty and Ford had their first face-to-face discussion Tuesday on the fate of Toronto’s Transit City light rail plan.
Ford wants to build subways instead of LRT with the $8.15 billion the province has committed to Toronto over the coming decade.
McGuinty has repeatedly said he’s willing to work with the new mayor but there’s no more money coming to Toronto for transit and he’s not picking up the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars in contract cancellations and work already finished on Transit City.
McCallion wants to build LRT on Mississauga’s busiest bus corridor, Hurontario St., and that project is already included in the 25-year provincial transportation plan, although it has not been funded.
“Metrolinx has recently approved the business case analysis for LRT with results that are very favourable compared to other projects currently allocated for funding in Toronto,” McCallion said in her letter, which is copied to Mississauga MPPs, councillors, Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell and Metrolinx CEO Bruce McCuaig.
Mississauga and Brampton are already moving ahead on the project’s design so it’s ready to roll as soon as money becomes available.
Above-ground LRT costs about a third as much as subways — the TTC estimates about $100 million per kilometre compared to about $300 million for tunneling.
Ford hasn’t specified whether he would agree to underground LRT such as that being planned for the Eglinton line of Transit City, rather than subways which carry more riders. But once a project goes under the road the costs are about the same as subways, according to TTC chief general manager Gary Webster.
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Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Aspyr Media told me today that Civilization VI [ Steam ] for Linux & Mac will get cross-platform multiplayer when the next patch drops for us.This is awesome to hear, since I know a few people waiting on it. The new 'Spring 2017 Update' is a big one too, with lots of balance changes, AI tuning, bug fixes and more. You can find all the changes to come in these patch notes Once the patch lands, we should then see the Persia and Macedon Civilization & Scenario Pack DLC support Linux too.We will hopefully livestream another weekly session soon, when Samsai can recover from the nukes that were dropped on him. It's a damn fun game and I'm looking forward to playing more of it. You can read my previous review here | {
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MALK Organics products are dairy-, soy-, gluten-, GMO- and lactose-free and vegan friendly. No carrageenan. No binders. No colors or sweeteners Mother Nature wouldn’t recognize. Made with six ingredients or less, and more than one cup of sprouted organic nuts in every bottle, Cold-pressed with the latest technology to retain all the nutrients without losing any of the flavor. Get real with MALK Organics. The delicious alternative to artificial. | {
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Then there are the effects we can predict. If we really let Citigroup go bust--wipe out everyone except the depositors up to the FDIC insured limit--there are some fairly predictible effects. Being an economics writer, and therefore prizing gains from trade, I will outsource my explanation to another blog:
Remember back to last September. What was the lesson of Lehman Brothers? The most important asset a bank has is confidence. If people are confident in a bank, it can continue to do business; if not, it can't.
For the last six months, where has that confidence been coming from? Not from the banks' balance sheets, certainly. And not, I would argue, from the dribs and drabs of capital and targeted asset guarantees provided by Treasury and the Fed. It has been coming from a widespread assumption that the U.S. government will not let the creditors of large banks lose money, out of fear of repeating the Lehman debacle.
The story goes something like this. Let's say that Citigroup were restructured - via bankruptcy, or via government conservatorship - in such a way that creditors did not get all their money back. (None of this applies to FDIC-insured deposits or to recently-issued senior debt that is explicitly guaranteed by the government.) They might be forced to convert debt for equity, or they might be stiffed altogether. The first-order concern is that this would have ripple effects that could take down other financial institutions. According to Martin Wolf, bank bonds comprise one quarter of all U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds; losses would be spread far and wide, hitting other banks, pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds, and so on. If Citigroup did not support its derivatives positions, then institutions that bought credit default swap protection from Citi would face further losses. (I believe that most U.S. banks were net buyers of CDS protection, however.) The fear is that it will be impossible to predict how these losses will be distributed and who else might go down.
The second-order concern is bigger. After all, Lehman did not seem to force any major financial institution into bankruptcy, although it may have twisted the knife that AIG had already stuck in itself. Once investors figure out that bank debt is not safe, they will refuse to lend to any banks, and we are back in September all over again. Or almost: it is possible that the Federal Reserve's massive efforts to provide liquidity to the banking system will be enough to keep banks functioning. But who wants to take that risk?
This is why, for the last five months, the government has been doing everything it can to imply that bank creditors (at least for "systemically important" banks) will be protected, without saying so explicitly, because that would suddenly increase the potential liabilities of the government by trillions of dollars. | {
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Doctors give Pasechnik three to six months to live.
A blogger whose pen name is Fashik Donetskiy has said leader of the so-called "Luhansk People's Republic" ("LPR") Leonid Pasechnik is terminally ill.
The blogger reported on Telegram that Pasechnik's condition is inoperable and doctors give him three to six months to live.
"The Kremlin is now holding consultations who will replace the "LPR" leader. [Former 'LPR' leader] Igor Plotnitsky's candidacy is under consideration. Is the toad coming back?" the blogger said.
Read alsoKremlin congratulates "DPR/LPR" leaders on victory in pseudo-elections
As UNIAN reported earlier, on November 21, 2017, a conflict escalated in Luhansk between the leaders of the "LPR" militants, Igor Plotnitsky and Igor Kornet, while other groups of militants controlled by the neighboring "Donetsk People's Republic" and forces of the Russian FSB security services also joined the feud.
On November 23, 2017, Zoryan Shkiryak, the advisor to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, informed that Plotnitsky had fled Luhansk for Russia, while 1,000-strong regular units of the Russian Army entered the city, including special forces of the GRU [military intel] and special forces of the Russian interior ministry, along with heavy military equipment: tanks, armored personnel carriers, and artillery units.
Later, Alexander Chalenko, a journalist cooperating with Russian propaganda media, said that Plotnitsky had left for the Russian city of Voronezh, where he is allegedly doing business.
In September 2018, Plotnitsky was spotted in a restaurant in Moscow, Russia. | {
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Posted on May 15, 2011
DIscussing the right’s attack on hip-hop and Common’s invitation to the White House | {
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Mass participation public arts events for the First World War Centenary are promised as part of a new £10 million Lottery-funded project called 14-18 NOW
© IWM (Q 9885)
A scheme that will see leading artists from around the world respond to the First World War Centenary has been announced as part of the UK’s official centenary programme.Under the title, the £10 million Lottery-funded project aims to build on the many artistic responses to the First Word War – from poetry and visual art to music and film – and will feature contemporary artists from a range of disciplines.The intention is to “look afresh at the First World War and the wider social, political, scientific and technological developments of the period, exploring the full range of their resonance today”.Scheduled for launch in early 2014 under the Directorship of Jenny Waldman, who was responsible for delivering Cultural Olympiad finale, the London 2012 Festival, 14-18 NOW will centre around three key moments: August 4 2014 (Anniversary of the Declaration of War), July 2016 (100th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme) and November 2018 (Centenary of the Armistice).The first events, which are yet to be fully outlined, will take place from June to August 2014 leading up to a large-scale participatory event on August 4 to mark the actual centenary of the outbreak of war. The hope is to engage as many people as possible with a particular focus on young people.Cultural organisations across the UK including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Opera House, Tate Liverpool and Liverpool Biennial, Welsh National Opera and National Theatre Scotland have already signed up to work on the project.The BBC is also a key partner and will present a number of projects including events as part of the BBC Proms. Channel 4 is also involved.The project complements the, which was established by Imperial War Museum in 2010 to bring together not-for-profit organisations from around the world. The scheme will present more than 4,000 events across the country from 2014-18.(November 2013)(October 2013)(August 2013)(June 2013)(May 2013) | {
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While Toren and Kevin were at the HP Lovecraft Film Festival, Joe was at VCON 40 talking “Time Travel” with Eric Fell, Barbara Beall, Joe Haldeman and Mr. Dr. Greg Bole!
Music: “Out of Line” by Aphasia
Links
Images
Videos | {
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President Obama told a group of governors Monday that more must be done to prevent gun violence, after a shooting in Kalamazoo, Michigan this weekend.
Six people were killed and three wounded Saturday night by Jason Brian Dalton, an Uber driver who allegedly went on a shooting spree that lasted nearly five hours. Mr. Obama told members of the National Governors Association, who had gathered at the White House for a meeting Monday, that he called the mayor, sheriff and police chief in the town to offer federal support for their investigation.
He praised the local officials and first responders for an "outstanding job" but said there were still families who were shattered by the violence.
"Earlier this year, I took some steps that will make it harder for dangerous people like this individual to buy a gun. But clearly, we're gonna need to do more if we're gonna keep innocent Americans safe," Mr. Obama said, referring to executive actions he took earlier this year to try to increase the frequency of background checks.
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"I have got to assume that all of you are just as tired as I am of seeing this stuff happen in your states. So that's an area where we also need to partner and think about what we can do in a common-sense way, in a bipartisan way, without some of the ideological rhetoric that so often surrounds that issue," he said.
Mr. Obama and the governors also discussed the state-federal relationships in fighting terrorism, the Zika virus, energy issues, trade, and prescription drug abuse. | {
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Quebec's largest women's organization said it was the target of hateful comments on social media after announcing support for the hashtag MonVoileMonChoix, or My Hijab, My Choice.
The Fédération des femmes du Québec (FFQ) said it was inundated with hateful, Islamophobic messages. Some said the hashtag encourages women's oppression.
Amel Zaazaa, one of the people who launched the hashtag, said that after widespread support for MNA Catherine Dorion, who was criticized for wearing a hoodie to the National Assembly, she wanted to highlight a double-standard.
"We wanted to show that the fight against the Bill 21 is a feminist issue," said Zaazaa. "Since this law was put in place, several women have lost their jobs and even, some of them, are leaving the province."
The Fédération des femmes du Québec decried the comments it received after supporting the MonVoileMonChoix hashtag. (Fédération des femmes du Québec)
After the FFQ posted its support for the hashtag, commenters criticized the initiative. One comment compared the hijab to "an abomination from brainless radicals." Another said that "nothing was more enslaving for a woman than to wear the veil."
Zaazaa said that the hijab is about inclusion and choice.
In a statement on Tuesday, the FFQ decried the comments it had received and said it was "a tiny reflection of what the Muslim women have experienced in their daily lives since the passage of [Bill 21]."
"Our role is not to meet the demands of people projecting a racist and Islamophobic vision of the struggle for feminism but to defend the right of all women," the FFQ wrote.
Zaazaa hopes that, in light of Dorion being denied access to the legislature, people also think of the Muslim women who will "never have access" to certain fields.
"There's a law that excludes them of all positions of power," she said. "It's not only sexist, it's also Islamophobic."
The law will go before the Court of Appeal, where Zaazaa hopes it will be deemed unconstitutional. | {
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Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: by 10.52.171.43 with SMTP id ar11cs11662vdc; Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:14 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.229.61.96 with SMTP id s32mr1503129qch.46.1321542012762; Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:12 -0800 (PST) Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: from mail.clintonemail.com (ool-18bbeabb.static.optonline.net. [24.187.234.187]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id s9si7534958qcy.155.2011.11.17.07.00.12 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 17 Nov 2011 07:00:12 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 24.187.234.187 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) client-ip=24.187.234.187; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 24.187.234.187 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) [email protected] Received: from CLNTINET08.clinton.local ([fe80::3c3c:8a15:4320:37a9]) by CLNTINET08.clinton.local ([fe80::3c3c:8a15:4320:37a9%11]) with mapi; Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:00:12 -0500 From: Justin Cooper <[email protected]> To: Doug Band <[email protected]> CC: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:00:10 -0500 Subject: Re: Thread-Index: AcylOZqAY9qKMXLaRLmFYfkwfuybvg== Message-ID: <[email protected]> References: <786762D781A7FF4FAC9060892B40448822792CF48F@CLNTINET08.clinton.local> In-Reply-To: <786762D781A7FF4FAC9060892B40448822792CF48F@CLNTINET08.clinton.local> Accept-Language: en-US Content-Language: en X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable MIME-Version: 1.0 I have to agree. I think there WJC may have some real serious conflicts if we start to make = too many rules. It may be time to update some procedures but we can not ignore the nexus of= WJC's life. On Nov 17, 2011, at 9:50 AM, Doug Band wrote: > Also > I signed a conflict of interest policy as a board member of cgi > On it, I wrote that my wife designs bags for cgi, and loses money doing s= o plus donating her time > And that teneo represents 4 cgi sponsors, 3 of which teneo brought to cgi > . > Oddly, wjc does not have to sign such a document even though he is person= ally paid by 3 cgi sponsors, gets many expensive gifts from them, some that= are at home etc >=20 > I could add 500 different examples of things like this and while I remove= d lasry bc they are all on the offense, I get the sense that they are tryin= g to put some sort of wrong doing on me after the audit as a crutch to chan= ge things and if I don't mention things like lasry where they all have issu= es, I may regret it >=20 > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Doug Band > Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2011 09:39 AM > To: '[email protected]' <[email protected]>; 'jpodesta@american= progress.org' <[email protected]> > Cc: '[email protected]' <[email protected]>; Justin Cooper > Subject: Re: >=20 > Apologies > I know I stalled on this=20 > But I would like to get this out by cob today >=20 > Pls let me know if you have comments asap > Thx >=20 > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Doug Band > Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 04:46 PM > To: John Podesta <[email protected]> > Cc: Cheryl Mills Mills <[email protected]>; Justin Cooper > Subject:=20 >=20 > attached is a draft reflecting Jon's suggestions > i removed he lasry section all together >=20 > im not sure that i put the memo in order pursuant to the section rearrang= ement > so if i didn't, it was unintentional >=20 > any further recommendations are appreciated as i think this is a very imp= ortant document >=20 > i would like to get it to them tomorrow or as soon as possible so please = let me know your thoughts >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 >=20 | {
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House Republican leaders pressed Democrats to get behind President Trump's request for $5 billion to fund his border wall, as lawmakers began a lame-duck session in which averting a partial government shutdown is the top priority.
Congress must pass several spending bills in order to avert the shutdown, and Mr. Trump is insisting that funding for his border wall be included in that legislation. At a press availability this morning, House Republican leaders said supporting that request is an important security issue.
"I hope the Democrats can find a way to put politics aside," said Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who will become House minority leader in the next Congress. "Everybody realizes our immigration system is broken and we can solve this problem once and for all."
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"Hopefully after the elections, Democrats realize a secure border should not be a Republican thing, it should not be Democrat thing," outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan said.
Congress has to act on seven spending bills by Dec. 7, funding Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the State Department, among others. Five of the 12 annual spending bills have already been passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president, funding operations for those departments through Sept. 2019.
"We need border security in this country, and if that means a shutdown I would totally be willing to shut it down," President Trump said in an interview with Politico on Tuesday.
In addition to passing funding for the border wall, Ryan said Congress should use the remaining weeks of Congress to pass a farm bill and reform the criminal justice system.
"We want to reform our criminal justice system," Ryan said.
The issue of criminal justice reform has bipartisan support, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not committed to bringing it up for a vote, and some Republicans still want changes in the measure. | {
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Justice Requires Hope by policyfix
By John Hutton
Sunday, August 10th, marked the 40th anniversary of what has come to be known as Prisoners’ Justice Day in Canada. Ever since the suicide of Edward Nolan in a segregation cell at Milhaven Institution on this date back in 1974, Canadians have held a vigil to remember all who have died while incarcerated. Many prisoners fast and decline to work on that day while those outside the prison walls renew the call for changes to the correctional system.
This year, the anniversary is a sombre one as we seem to be moving backwards at an ever increasing rate, undoing many of the improvements made to our correctional system following Nolan’s death. Under the guise of getting ‘tough on crime’ over the last several years Canada’s prisons have become increasingly violent, over-crowded institutions. Unfortunately, although not unexpectedly, this serves to create ‘tougher’, more violent criminals, something that should be a concern for us all.
Figures for 2012-13 show an increase in recidivism in the area of violent crimes for those released from prison, within five years after the end of their sentence. While the increase is small it is only the tip of the iceberg. Many of those incarcerated under conditions created by the government’s ‘tough on crime’ initiatives, including Bill C- 10 enacted in 2012 have not yet been released, so the effects of these changes on recidivism have yet to be seen.
Unfortunately there is every reason to believe that those released from prisons in future will be far less likely to integrate safely back into the community. Speaking in an interview with CBC recently, former prison chaplain Kate Johnson described seeing a dramatic increase in overcrowding following tougher laws and parole rules. At the same time however, one tool after another was stripped away from the Correctional Service of Canada as they work to rehabilitate inmates before release.
The tools lost are all in key areas, including employment, educational programs, and access to parole. An ex-offender’s ability to find and keep employment when they return to the community has long been seen as a key factor in reducing recidivism. Yet the federal government has moved away from funding community based employment programs designed to help ex-inmates find work. Here in Manitoba, the federal government closed the prison farm at Rockwood and the large metal workshop at Stony Mountain Institution– taking away most of the opportunities inmates had for learning and practicing employment related skills while in custody. Education can also help an ex-offender find work but changes in the last three years have decreased access inmates have to learning programs.
Over the last six years changes in both law and policy have made it much harder for inmates to apply for and receive parole. This means that the amount of time an ex-offender is able to spend in the community on supervised parole with supports and conditions designed to help them reintegrate safely is decreasing, which will certainly increase recidivism.
Forty years ago prisoners banded together and fought back in order to find a sense of hope and purpose for their lives. These efforts and those of groups like the Elizabeth Fry and the John Howard societies have resulted in a renewed focus on rehabilitation and reintegration within Canadian prisons which we cannot afford to lose. If men and women cannot see a life for themselves beyond bars, and do not have the supports in place to reintegrate successfully the cycle of crime and violence will continue. A smart on crime approach must include humane and effective prisons which encourage hope instead of taking it away.
John Hutton is the executive director of the John Howard Society of Manitoba, an organization that works with the incarcerated. First printed in the Winnipeg Free Press Aug.8, 2014.
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Holy Batman Day!
For me everyday might be Batman day. I am a huge, HUGE batman fan. Batman has always been my favorite comic hero. He has gone through many changes through out his tenure and honestly I have been a fan of all of them for one reason or another.
So in celebration of Batman Day on September 17, 2016, I asked my team to put together a retrospective of what we have been able to do to date. As our licensing rights started with Mez-itz you will see lots of them. Looking back at it all now, I didn't realize just how many versions of the caped crusader we've made.
Also, we are flashing back to our first One:12 Collective figure that launched a brand we are all very proud of here. The Dark Knight Returns Batman in his many renditions and let's not leave out the Dawn Of Justice Batman figure. These figures are truly something special and I feel they just get better with each one.
Last up is our new One:12 Collective Joker figure. I am extremely impressed with what my team has gotten done on him. From his maniacal grimace to his slightly disheveled three piece suit, he reeks of chaos and menace. With the clown prince of crime on the loose, Gotham's Dark Knight cannot be far behind — we have been working on something very special for our One:12 Collective Batman.
Stay tuned, same blog time, same blog channel!
~ Mez | {
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Earlier today we reported that in a dramatic and, what to many may seem unfair variation of "carrot and stick" negotiations conducted by European bureaucrats, the EU threatened Greece with indefinite suspension from the Schengen passport-free travel zone unless it overhauls its response to the migration crisis by mid-December, as frustration mounted over Athens’ reluctance to accept outside support.
The slap on the face of the Greeks was particularly painful because this warnings of an temporary expulsion from the EU happens just days after Turkey not only got a €3 billion check from Europe because it has been far more "amenable" in negotiating the handling of the hundreds of thousands of refugees that exit its borders in direction Europe, but also was promised a fast-track status in negotiations to be considered for EU accession and visa free travel. Ironically, it is also Turkey which is the source of virtually all Greek refugee headaches as the following map shows.
We summarized the situation earlier as follows:
"not only do the Greeks suffer under the weight of 700,000 refugees crossing into its borders from Turkey and headed for a "welcoming Germany" which is no longer welcoming, now they have to suffer the indignity of being ostracized by their own European "equals" who are being remarkably generous with non-EU member Turkey, which may very well be funding ISIS by paying for Islamic State oil and thus perpetuating the refugee crisis, while threatening to relegate Greece into the 4th world, and with visa requirements to get into Europe to boot!"
However, it appears there is much more to this story than merely a case of vindication against the Greeks.
As Steve Peers from EU Law Analysis writes, according to a leaked Council memo, Europe's intention is to put the framework in place for a comprehensive suspension of Schengen for all countries, for a period as long as two years, not just Greece in the process effectively undoing the customs union aspect of the European Union, which also happens to be its backbone.
The following is Council document 14300/15, dated 1 December 2015. It's entitled 'Integrity of the Schengen area', and addressed to Coreper (the body consisting of Member States' representatives to the EU) and the Council - presumably the Justice and Home Affairs ministers meeting Thursday 3 and Friday 4 December.
The first three parts aren't exceptional, but part 4 calls for the start of a process to officially allow the reimposition of internal border controls in the Schengen area for up to two years. Legally, this has to be triggered by 'serious deficiencies' in the border control of a particular Member State. This has been reported as a plan to suspend Schengen as regards Greece. But the wording of the document suggests a much broader intention - applying to the whole of Schengen. This intention is clear from the reference to continuing in force the border controls that many Member States have imposed this autumn, which can only be imposed for a maximum period of six months. The purpose of using the 'serious deficiencies' clause, instead of the normal clause on suspending Schengen, is clearly to allow a much longer suspension period. It may be that not every internal border would be subject to checks, but the intention seems to be to issue a blank cheque to this effect.
Document follows:
INTRODUCTION
The migratory and refugee crisis has put the application of the Schengen acquis and of the asylum acquis under severe pressure during the last years, with an unprecedented influx of migrants over the last months. In this context, several Member States have temporarily reintroduced border control at their internal borders, with reference to a serious threat to public policy or internal security as provided for by the Schengen Borders Code. Temporary controls at internal borders have also been carried out by a Member State for reasons related to terrorism, following the attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015. In addition, some Member States have taken specific measures to reinforce the control at their external borders.
In its Conclusions of 9 November 2015 on measures to handle the refugee and migration crisis, the Council has identified a number of measures to implement fully the orientations already agreed by the European Council [1]. These measures address a wide range of issues, including in particular reception capacities, hotspots, relocation, return, readmission, resettlement, lack of cooperation of migrants, contingency planning, the functioning of the Schengen area, external and internal borders, smuggling in human beings, visa policy, a common information strategy and the use of the Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR).
In the Conclusions adopted on 20 November 2015 on Counter-Terrorism after the Paris terrorist attacks by the Council and Member States meeting within the Council it was agreed to implement reinforced measures for the purpose of fighting terrorism, including strengthening controls at external borders[2].
Under point 9 of its Conclusions of 9 November 2015, the Council decided "to conduct at the December Justice and Home Affairs Council, on the basis of the 8th bi-annual reporting by the Commission, a thorough debate on the functioning of the Schengen area (1 May 2015 - 31 October 2015) and on the lessons learned from temporary reintroductions of controls at internal borders".
In Coreper on 26 November 2015 the Commission indicated, however, that the said 8th bi-annual report would not be ready for the meeting of the JHA Council in December 2015, but would be integrated in the future border package. The Presidency concluded that Ministers would be invited to hold a debate on the functioning of the Schengen area on the basis of a Presidency paper.
With a view to preparing this debate, the Presidency issued a questionnaire on lessons learned from temporary introductions of controls at internal borders [3]. The Presidency has prepared the present paper in the light of replies from Member States, having in mind also major issues that have been raised during recent months regarding the functioning of the Schengen area, with a focus on border controls.
ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION
The Presidency invites the Council to hold a debate on the functioning of the Schengen area and to address in particular the following issues related to internal and external border controls.
1. Consultations between Member States – Based on the information available to the Presidency, it appears that, in situations where some Member States have applied recently Article 25 of the Schengen Borders Code to reinstate temporarily controls at internal borders, there has not been sufficient prior consultation with other Member States. The same has been noticed for technical reinforcement of borders between border crossing points, for changes in national policies leading to filter migrants at border crossing points and for organizing the transit of migrants from one border to next. This has severely hindered the possibility for neighbouring countries to prepare themselves for changes in migratory routes and for all Schengen countries to handle migratory flows in a coherent manner.
In addition, procedures approved by Coreper in March 2015 for improved information sharing on temporary reintroduction of border controls at internal borders have not been fully respected in all cases.
The Presidency proposes that:
even in emergency situations falling under Article 25 of the Schengen Borders Code and requiring immediate action, a Member State deciding to temporarily reintroduce internal border controls should make all efforts to inform neighbouring Member States sufficiently in advance to allow neighbouring Member States to adjust to the new situation and, where possible, to cooperate to reduce the negative impact of the reintroduction of internal border controls;
Member States reconfirm their commitment to fully apply the procedures for improved information sharing on temporary reintroduction of border controls at internal borders agreed in Coreper in March 2015. [4]
2. Securing external borders – A number of irregular migrants entering the EU, or exiting an EU country to re-enter later in the EU, pass through the so-called "green land borders" (the parts of the land borders between border crossing points). According to Frontex, more than 1,2 million illegal border crossings have been detected at the EU external borders for January - October 2015, an increase of 431% compared with the corresponding period in 2014. In addition, a number of illegal crossings have not been registered. The exact figure is unknown.
Also in the context of the fight against terrorism, the Council concluded on 20 November 2015 that control at the external borders which are most exposed should be strengthened "in particular by deploying, when the situation so requires, rapid border intervention teams (RABITs) and police officers in order to ensure systematic screening and security checks".
In view of the critical situation that the EU is currently confronted with, the Presidency proposes that:
considerably more efforts should be made to prevent illegal border crossings (entry and exit) through the external "green land borders" and to ensure that external borders are crossed only at the border crossing points referred to in Article 4, subject to the exceptions in Article 4(2), of the Schengen Borders Code;
RABITs are deployed as necessary for that purpose. This is at present particularly relevant for external land borders in relation to the Western Balkan countries route;
A Frontex operation at the northern borders of Greece be deployed without delay to address severe difficulties encountered with neighbouring countries.
3. Increasing checks regarding illegal migration – Irregular migrants who have entered the Schengen area and have not been registered at their arrival should not be able to stay in that area undetected for long periods of time.
The Presidency proposes that:
the possibilities for checking persons inside the Schengen area, including by the use of relevant databases, are fully exploited to ensure that irregular migrants are detected and registered and their cases processed.
4. Addressing serious deficiencies in external border controls – Several Member States have recently reintroduced temporarily internal border control pursuant to Articles 23-25 of the Schengen Borders Code. Under these provisions, a Member State may not implement such controls for more than a total period of six months. A prolongation of this situation would require the adoption by the Council, upon a proposal from the Commission, of a recommendation in accordance with Article 26 of the Schengen Borders Code. Such recommendation may be adopted in exceptional circumstances to address a situation where a Schengen evaluation has identified persistent serious deficiencies relating to external border control and the measures referred to in Article 19a of the Schengen Borders Code are not effective. Where in such cases the overall functioning of the area without internal border control is put at risk, and insofar as the exceptional circumstances constitute a serious threat to public policy or internal security within the area without internal border control or within parts thereof, the period for the reintroduction of internal border control may be extended up to a total maximum of two years.
On this basis, the Presidency: | {
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The old (left) and the new logo of Osmania University.
Hyderabad: The original logo of Hyderabad's Osmania University which had Noorun Ala Noor written in Urdu on it was changed 50 years ago.
On the occasion of OU’s 100th anniversary, some activists and alumni are filing a petition to change the logo of the university. The Osmania University, one of the oldest universities in India, will be celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
When OU was set up, its emblem had the Nizam turra (crown) of Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam and the founder of Osmania University.
The crown was surrounded by wandering beams of lights and the words Noorun Ala Noor were printed in Arabic. It means knowledge is light. Above it was an Arabic inscription of Prophet Mohammed’s words, “I am the city of knowledge and Ali is its gate.” Later, only the Urdu letter Ain remained. The present emblem contains inscriptions in Telugu and Hindi. The new logo says Tamso Ma Jyotirgamaya in Hindi and Telugu but has the Urdu word Ain in between.
Dr Chiranjeevi Kolluri who is a social activist and a retired doctor is fighting to bring back the original logo of OU. He said, “After Hyderabad was merged into India, Nizam’s crown was removed from the OU emblem. This was understandable as India is a democracy. But slowly the Urdu inscription was also removed. Urdu medium courses were changed to English and the language become extinct in OU.”
"Urdu is integral to this region. Its removal from the emblem is irrational as OU was the first university in the country to start courses in Indian languages,” Dr Chiranjeevi Kolluri added.
The activists said that injustice was done to Urdu.
The activists also plan to submit a memorandum to the OU Vice Chancellor and then to appeal Deputy CM Kadiyam Srihari who is also the in-charge of centenary celebrations. They said that if they don't get a positive response they will knock on the doors of the court. | {
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Canton de Vaud : Montreux accueille la réunion Bilderberg
La 67e réunion Bilderberg a été tenue secrète jusqu'au dernier moment. Elle se tiendra de jeudi à dimanche à Montreux.
Environ 130 personnes de 23 pays ont confirmé leur participation à l'édition de cette année à Montreux. Keystone
Un panel de personnalités et dirigeants européens et nord-américains se retrouveront de jeudi à dimanche à Montreux. Au menu de cette 67e réunion de Bilderberg, tenue secrète jusqu'au dernier moment: des discussions informelles sur des défis politiques et sociétaux.
Fondée en 1954, la réunion est une conférence annuelle destinée à favoriser le dialogue entre l'Europe et l'Amérique du nord. Environ 130 personnes de 23 pays ont confirmé leur participation à l'édition de cette année, annonce mardi la conférence dans un communiqué.
Parmi les participants figurent notamment le ministre français de l'économie Bruno Le Maire, le Premier Ministre des Pays-Bas Mark Rutte, la ministre allemande de la Défense Ursula von der Leyen. Côté suisse, le patron de Credit Suisse Tidjane Thiam, le président de Tamedia Pietro Supino et le président de la Confédération Ueli Maurer sont annoncés. Le Département fédéral des finances a confirmé sa venue à Keystone-ATS. Il sera présent les trois jours.
La conférence réunit des dirigeants politiques, mais aussi des experts de l'industrie, de la finance, du monde universitaire, du travail et des médias. Environ deux tiers des invités viennent d'Europe et un tiers d'Amérique du Nord.
C'est la première fois que la rencontre se tient en Suisse romande. St-Moritz (GR) l'avait accueillie en 2011.
Privé et confidentiel
Particularité: elle a un caractère «privé». «Les participants y prennent part en tant qu'individu plutôt qu'à titre officiel, et ne sont pas liés par les conventions de leur fonction. Ils peuvent prendre le temps d'écouter, de s'interroger», note le communiqué. Aucune résolution n'est votée, aucune déclaration de principe publiée.
La réunion «offre une opportunité de débattre dans un cadre à taille humaine, en dehors des contraintes classiques de la diplomatie», explique André Kudelski, seul membre suisse du comité d'organisation, dans une interview à «24 heures». Les participants peuvent faire état des discussions qu'ils ont entendues mais ils s'engagent à ne pas attribuer telle idée à telle personne, garantissant la confidentialité.
Pour André Kudelski, il ne s'agit pas d'un club de puissants, ni d'une organisation supranationale privée. «Ces critiques relèvent d'un pur fantasme complotiste. La conférence est d'abord un forum de discussion», explique-t-il.
Les organisateurs ont prévu onze thèmes de discussions fort différents comme «Quel avenir pour l'Europe ?», le Brexit, les changements climatiques, l'éthique de l'intelligence artificielle, la Chine ou encore l'avenir du capitalisme.
Montreux, ville de conférences
Pour le syndic Laurent Wehrli, ce type de rendez-vous rappelle que sa ville «est aussi un lieu d'accueil pour les conférences diplomatiques. Il y en a régulièrement à Montreux». Comme souvent, il délivrera le discours de bienvenue, en ouverture de la conférence. Les mesures de sécurité ont été définies d'entente entre les autorités fédérales, cantonales et les organisateurs. «Nous n'allons pas fermer la ville pour une telle réunion», a-t-il expliqué. Il ne sera néanmoins pas possible d'entrer dans l'hôtel qui accueillera la rencontre, mais les routes qui passent devant et derrière l'établissement resteront ouvertes à la circulation, a-t-il rassuré.
«Il n'y aura pas de restriction pour la population», confirme Jean-Christophe Sauterel, porte-parole de la police vaudoise. «Les Montreusiens ne vont pas s'apercevoir de grand-chose, car l'événement sera relativement confiné». Même si certaines personnalités bénéficieront de mesures de sécurité particulières. | {
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Nick Dolding / Getty Images
Where you live affects who you date—and who will absolutely refuse to date you. In honor of Valentine's Day, the real estate website Trulia commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a survey looking at the intersection of attitudes about housing and romance. Are homeowners regarded as “marriage material” more so than noncommital renters? Are people more interested in potential mates if they live alone? Just how bad is your love life impacted if you live with your parents? When it comes to dating and housing, what’s hot and what’s not?
Owners vs. Renters
While owning a home has always been a part of the traditional American Dream, it’s apparently not a deal breaker (or maker) when it comes to dating. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of unmarried U.S. adults said that homeowners had no significant “home advantage” in terms of attracting dates. Only 28% of those surveyed said they’d prefer someone who owned a home. So you can’t really use the fact that you’re a renter as an excuse for why you can’t find a date. Well, perhaps guys can use that more as an excuse than the ladies: While just 19% of men say that they have a preference for dating homeowners, 36% of women prefer dates who own property.
(MORE: Who Qualifies for the $26 Billion Foreclosure Settlement?)
Homeownership = Marriage Material?
Buying a home demonstrates some level of commitment. But for the most part, owning a home is not viewed as a sign that you’re ready, or even interested, in marriage. In the survey, 43% of unmarried U.S. adults said that homeownership is not an indication of a person’s desire to get married or be in a serious, long-term committed relationship. However, young people are more likely to view homeowners as capable of committing to a partner. A higher percentage of millenials equate homeownership to stability and commitment. Baby Boomers, by contrast, are generally past the stage of first-time homeownership, so it matters less to them in terms of viewing the commitment potential of a new partner.
Lose the Roommate
The majority of those surveyed (62%) say they’d rather date someone who lives alone. Location matters too: When comparing the preferences of men and women, Trulia found that more men would rather date someone who lives alone in a big city. On the flip side, more women would go for a date with someone who lives solo in a house in the ‘burbs.
Move Out Already!
Nearly 25 million adults live at home with their parents because they’re unemployed or underemployed, they’re trying to pay off student loans or save money to buy a place, or for any number of other reasons. While calling mom and dad your “roommates” may be a smart financial move, it’s the kiss of death for a healthy dating life. Trulia’s survey found that only 5% of unmarried adults would be open to dating someone who lived with their parents.
(MORE: More Young Adults Are Poor, Live With Their Parents)
Shacking Up to Save
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of unmarried renters said they’d be willing to consider living with their significant other in order to save money. Somewhat surprisingly, more men than women said they’d be very willing to make the commitment of cohabitation.
Everyone Loves Master Bathrooms
Trulia posed the question: “If you were in the market for your first home today, what home amenities would make you fall in love with a home?” The results show that, for the most part, men and women largely want the same things. The top amenity for both sexes is a master bathroom, followed by a walk-in closet. More women (72%) are infatuated with a walk-in closet than men (55%), but there are apparently plenty of metrosexual males in need of closet space, as well as a gourmet kitchen—No. 3 on the list of most-desired home amenities for both sexes. Perhaps men and women aren’t as different as we’ve been led to believe.
Michael Corbett is the real estate and lifestyle expert at Trulia, an online real estate resource. He is also the host of NBC’s “EXTRA’s Mansions and Millionaires;” appears regularly on ABC’s “The View” and Fox News; and is author of three real estate books: Find It, Fix It, FLIP IT!; Ready, Set, SOLD! and Before You BUY! | {
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Summary of Tinospora cordifolia Primary information, health benefits, side effects, usage, and other important details
Tinospora cordifolia is an herb used in Ayurveda to enhance vitality. It is being researched for a variety of health effects, including its effect on diabetes, glucose metabolism, inflammation, immune system support, and neurology.
Tinospora cordifolia supplementation improves the ability of macrophages, an immune system cell, to consume their targets, though this effect is not immunostimulatory. Supplementation can also ward off allergies. One study suggests Tinospora cordifolia is as potent as Spirulina as an anti-allergic supplement.
Preliminary evidence suggests Tinospora cordifolia may provide benefits for people with diabetes. Supplementation of Tinospora cordifolia can reduce the body’s absorption of sugar-derived carbohydrates, and it may also play a role in reducing the pathologies associated with diabetes, like retinopathy and nephropathy. There is currently no human evidence for these effects.
Tinospora cordifolia may be a monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitor, which means it may raise catecholamine levels. The plant may also contain phytoandrogen, which means it can protect against DNA damage induced by the environment and radiation therapy. Finally, Tinospora cordifolia may have Adaptogen-like properties. | {
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Analysis
Given he is trailing Biden in the polls by an average of seven points, it is Trump who needs a thumping debate victory to give his campaign a surge of momentum.
September 29, 2020
by Matthew Knott | {
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Here are all the lyrics to all the songs on the new Semi-Twang recording The Why & The What For. Click on the artwork to travel to CD Baby and buy one… Then get your hootenanny organized!
1. The Wrong Side Of The Tracks
There are flowers
And there are weeds
Nags and thoroughbreds
Lap dogs living the life of ease
And mutts that won’t get fed
There are mansions on the hill
And shacks in shanty town
Bluebloods tryin’ to look away
When poor folks come around
You can wish upon a star
But that won’t change your luck
Drop some coin down in that well
And wish that you had a buck
Some folks can fit everything they own
In a dimestore paper sack
But a man can’t help if he was born
On the wrong side of the tracks
You can’t move a mountain
If the mountain sits on you
And there is no accountin’
For the things some people do
They drop some coin down on the ground
And tell you how you should act
No, a man can’t help if he was born
On the wrong side of the tracks
2. 52 Jokers
The lion’s head is mounted on the wall
The bearskin rug beneath you starts to crawl
Oh 52 Jokers — They all know your name
On silver trays the champagne flows like wine
You rock the cash bar trying to numb your mind
Oh 52 Jokers — Find you just the same
Laugh track’s cranked up through a Marshall stack
And everything you think is feeding back
Oh 52 Jokers — They all criticize
Another toast — another glass
Another dance — just might be your last
Best man’s weaving — he’s half in the sack
The band just tried to murder Paint It Black
Oh 52 Jokers — Cut you down to size
The lights are spinning way above your head
The chandelier now hanging by a thread
Oh 52 Jokers — Wearing joker capes
The Mickey Finn is kicking in you feel
Like lying down and quitting this whole deal
Oh 52 Jokers — there is no escape
Another toast — another glass
Another dance — just might be your last
3. Au Contraire
Au contraire
I beg to disagree
You say it wasn’t you
I know it wasn’t me
Au contraire
We’re not seeing eye to eye
And now I must point out
What you have let slip by
Just a little thing
Far as you’re concerned
But I feel like
Yes I’m getting burned
Au contraire
Please let me call your bluff
You’re selling me thin air
I believe I’ve had enough
Au contraire
Looking in the horse’s mouth
And now I see the truth
I see that I want out
You just walk away
With what you haven’t earned
I’ll just chalk it up
One more thing I’ve learned
Au contraire
Just one minute of your time
While we add up two and two
And try to make it rhyme
Au contraire
Let’s just make that au revoir
Now it’s the longest day
And it’s the saddest hour
People treat you well
Everywhere you go
But the way you act
Man you’d never know
Au contraire
Au contraire
Au contraire
Au contraire
4. The More She Gets The More She Wants
Not Content
Not content with her old haunts
The more she gets
The more she gets the more she wants
Practicing
Those jibes and taunts
The more she gets
The more she gets the more she wants
Coming out
Coming out a debutant
The more she gets
The more she gets the more she wants
Like a flag
Unfurled she flaunts
The more she gets
The more she gets the more she wants
Losing sleep
Losing sleep looking gaunt
Cause what she gets
What she gets she don’t want
She steps in line
Right near the front
The more she gets
The more she gets the more she wants
The more she gets the more she wants
The more she gets the more she wants
The more she gets the more she wants
5. You Love Everybody
When you think of
Everyone you hated
seems so easy
to be jaded
But you love everybody
You love everybody
You love everybody
Like the first one
In your head
Like the last one
Up in your bed
But you love everybody
You love everybody
You love everybody
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Whooh!
Tell me baby
Honey please
Don’t you want
Want a man like me?
If you love everybody
You love everybody
You love everybody
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah
Whooh!
I know it
And you know I know it
6. Contents Under Pressure
Sign on your head — Contents Under Pressure
Someday you’re gonna blow sky high
People gonna point and say my my
The one that blew he was the quiet kind
Let it go now — let it go
Something’s got to give— contents under pressure
Why you want to live like you do
Building up inside of you
The big explosion it’s overdue
Let it go now — let it go
Pointing out the one you’ll get
You can’t forgive — you surely can’t forget — oh no
Saying you won’t budge — contents under pressure
How can you hold a grudge for so long
It tears you up — it brings you down
The gauge on your head it’s spinning round
Let it go now — let it go
Everyday you walk the ledge
So afraid that you might lose your edge
7. Love Interest
Yeah she’s my love interest
Yes she’s a real princess
I can call her when I’m low
And she’ll be there
She will I know
She’ll be there
She will I know
And we’re nocturnal creatures
Going to a double feature
Says she’s gonna meet me at the show
And she’ll be there
She will I know
She’ll be there
She will I know
Did I neglect to mention
She’s got all my attention?
And if there’s somewhere that we want to go
She’ll be there
She will I know
She’ll be there
She will I know
She’ll be there
She will I know
She’ll be there
She will I know
8. Making Everybody Cry
Is anybody in their right mind?
Or has this great big world gone mad?
There’s people treating people unkind
They’re making everybody sad
Did anybody see what happened?
Or was it just too much to face?
With all our troubles overlapping
It makes the world a sadder place
And I wonder why
It is this way
The way it is and it’s always been
And it’s going to stay
Now everybody make your own bed
You know that’s where you’re going to lie
I ask you keep these words in your head
Stop making everybody cry
And I wonder why
It is this way
The way it is and it’s always been
And it’s going to stay
Now everybody make your own bed
You know that’s where you’re going to lie
I ask you keep these words in your head
Stop making everybody cry
Stop making everybody cry
9. Miss Watson
Elementary Miss Watson
Let’s discuss this in my Datsun
You want love I believe I got some
Elementary Miss Watson
Young Miss Livingston I presume
Let’s slip out and take a look at the moon
My head is reeling from your perfume
Young Miss Livingston I presume
Alas Miss Yorick I know her well
Down on the beach playin’ with her shells
I hear the ocean she hears wedding bells
Alas Miss Yorick I know her well
Elementary Miss Watson
Let’s discuss this in my Datsun
You want love I believe I got some
Elementary Miss Watson
Miss Watson
Miss Watson
I believe you got some
Out in your Datsun
And you know I want some
Miss Watson
Miss Watson
Miss Watson
10. A Handsome Man
The reason why I’m walking round
Without a bloody trail
A handsome man
A handsome man
A handsome man can’t go to jail
Take a look at you average con
He’s ugly without fail
A handsome man
A handsome man
A handsome man can’t go to jail
Every single time
For every single crime
He’s gonna get away
He’s never gonna pay
Open up them iron doors
And give me back my bail
A handsome man
A handsome man
A handsome man can’t go to jail
Every single time
For every single crime
He’s gonna get away
He’s never gonna pay
Open up them iron doors
And give me back my bail
A handsome man
A handsome man
A handsome man can’t go to jail
11. Dark Out
Dark out
It’s dark out
Left me in no-man’s land and it’s dark out
Talk out
Baby talk out
Say you don’t need a scene and so you walk out
Yeah you walk out
One little thing you ought to know
One little thing before you go
Oh I love you like anything
And it’s dark out
Dark out
It’s dark out
Left me in no-man’s land and it’s dark out
Talk out
Baby talk out
Say you don’t need a scene and so you walk out
Yeah you walk out
And it’s dark out
Yeah dark out
12. Foghorn
Everything is true
That you thought was false
Things come out to get you
When the nightbird calls
And when the foghorn blows
Gonna tear down these walls
Sittin’ by myself
At the end of the pier
Cryin’ man oh man
Get me outta here
Cuz when the foghorn blows
Gonna shed another tear
To the ships at sea it’s a long long way to go
Lyin’ on the waves you can’t see the shore
Listen to the foghorn blow
Blow baby blow
It’s an S.O.S.
From some poor S.O.B.
It’s a distress signal
From some soul lost at sea
And when the foghorn blows
They’ll be comin’ after me
To the ships at sea it’s a long long way to go
Lyin’ on the waves you can’t see the shore
Listen to the foghorn blow
Blow baby blow
Everything is true
That you thought was false
Things come out to get you
When the nightbird calls
And when the foghorn blows
Gonna tear down these walls
All Songs Written By John Sieger
Except #4, 5 & 10 Written By John Sieger & Michael Feldman
Published by Stwangtoons/MCM BMI | {
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President Donald Trump’s frosty relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) resulted in cancelation of a celebration involving heads of state, The New York Times reported Monday.
Citing senior administration officials, The Times reported Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from NATO “several times over the course of 2018.”
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Retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, the former supreme allied commander of NATO, said Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin won just by Trump mentioning the subject.
“Even discussing the idea of leaving NATO — let alone actually doing so — would be the gift of the century for Putin,” Stavridis said.
America’s allies have fretted Trump’s attacks on the organization.
“NATO had planned to hold a leaders meeting in Washington to mark its 70th anniversary in April, akin to the 50-year celebration that was hosted by President Bill Clinton in 1999,” The Times reported. “But this year’s meeting has been downgraded to a foreign ministers gathering, as some diplomats feared that Mr. Trump could use a Washington summit meeting to renew his attacks on the alliance.” | {
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Ornithology: An Interview with Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird Takes Off.
Andrew Bird is evolving. He still whistles mellifluously, and his violin continues to be his alter ego, the magic cloak that dissolves his shyness. His lyrics are just as grandiloquent as ever, and his loops are still wrapping around audiences, pulling them into his onstage multi-instrumental—violin, guitar, mandolin and glockenspiel—spectacle. But Bird, the Chicago-born, -raised and -made artist who has particularly avoided categorization, someone who wishes his music wasn’t labeled “indie rock” but usually is, continues his evolution with “Noble Beast,” his latest record, released last month in conjunction with an instrumental album.
Critics have said the 14-song album is Bird’s most approachable, mainstream record to date, with pop-like undertones and even some repetition, tokens the virtuoso has in the past vehemently avoided. Asked what he’d think if he listened to “Noble Beast” at 22, a time when he, perhaps more opinionated, tuned out the contemporary music scene and instead stayed up all night listening to old jazz records, swing, calypso and folk, the now 35-year-old Bird says:
“I think I would be—I had very different tastes in some ways back then. I was more impatient. I might have found some things I'm doing now as being boring, whereas now I see it as being patient. I found a lot of indie rock or pop music just repetitive and boring when I was 22. Now I get it a little more. I understand space. Back then I was all jacked up ready to express myself.”
Back then Bird would go to the Green Mill at 11 a.m. to listen to the jukebox in solitude. A then-recent graduate of Northwestern University, where he'd studied classical violin, he'd been surrounded by music his entire life (he started studying the violin at four, following the Suzuki method, which emphasizes learning by ear in a nurturing environment). In his early 20s, Bird played anywhere he could—at weddings, funerals, Wisconsin's Renaissance Fair—anxious to prove he could make a living as an artist. He’s never had a job other than music. Looking back, he says it was "kind of stupid” and that he “overdid it.” Bird ended up blowing out his arm and developing tendonitis. “I didn't fix my tendonitis,” he says. “I just got a record deal and went on the road and only played three hours a day instead of eight to 10.”
That deal was when he got a surprise record contract from Rykodisc. He formed a band, Andrew Bird’s Bowl of Fire, and they recorded “Thrills” in New Orleans in 1997. The band went on to release two more albums, laden with folk, jazz and swing influences. This was just the start of what would be almost a decade of struggling as an artist, trying to sell small shows, records and an audience.
Sitting at Francesca’s Forno on a December evening with a blizzard forecasted to arrive any moment, Bird’s just come from painting the walls of his Bucktown apartment in bold colors, he says. It's time to relax—both here and at his farm in Elizabeth, Ill.—before his own storm, the release of the album and subsequent tour. It had been just announced that he’d headline the Hideout’s inaugural concert in D.C., a sort of kick-off for his own tour, with a drummer, guitarist and bass player. Bird, a musician who's thrived on being fringe, who still enjoys biking around town putting up his own posters, is poised to become what he’s both sought and fought—incredibly popular. His third and current label, Fat Possum, expects this, his eighth studio album, recorded in Nashville and at the Wilco Loft in Chicago, to be the one to make him an unequivocal star, and they’ve thrown unprecedented promotional support behind it. In September, 13,000 people showed up for his Millennium Park concert, rushing the stage in an after-concert frenzy, and his upcoming April show at the Civic Opera House sold out within a couple of hours (they then added a second show). But Bird watchers aren’t gazing upward only in Chicago. Performing more than 200 concerts a year across the globe, he just played a sold out show at Carnegie Hall. In fact, he’s selling out everywhere.
Bird, tall, slim and dressed in jeans and a sweater over a button-down, with a wave of brown hair falling in the middle of his forehead, eyes dark and deep set, is thoughtful and soft-spoken, although as he gets more comfortable, his speaking voice becomes soulful. He’s shy and makes no effort to cover it. “I feel very comfortable onstage and very uncomfortable offstage, mostly,” he says. It’s performing that clearly drives him. His parents tell him that at three and four he’d perform for elevators full of people, singing Christmas carols in July. It’s the same boy who would become painfully shy in public school, but would be able to get up in front of the class and effortlessly give a book report. Bird says he makes records today so he has an excuse to be onstage and play shows.
“It’s an adventure,” he says. “And it’s real. People are getting out of their houses or apartments and coming into a dark room or space to be involved in this sort of music ritual. It's a pretty special thing. I put much more stake in that than the record as an object or a document of sort.”
Onstage, as he crisscrosses and bounces with his instruments, often times wearing only his trademark colorful socks, manipulating the pedals of his looping station, he flourishes on keeping his routine slightly different and avoiding formulas, often improvising. “As soon as an idea is fresh, I really want to show it to people,” Bird says. “There's nothing like that feeling of playing a song for the first time for an audience, whether it's finished or not. It’s like it's been your companion for a while, and you get really excited about it. You try to recapture that moment every night, but it’s hard because you don’t always have new songs to share with people.”
In the time he says he spends alone and in the themes he brings up repeatedly, it’s evident that Bird is pensively buried in his thoughts, in the often-paradoxical world of the artist. As more of the world listens to his music, he frets about being too loyal to his own ideas and to what he's done, worried about falling into a pattern. Bird mentions “loyalty” a lot in reference to his work, as in avoiding it. He discusses the struggle in making the right things “precious.” Most of his friends (along with his mother) are print artists—Audrey Niffenegger, Chris Ware, Jay Ryan—and he admires their ability to let go, to not be too loyal to each print. He scrapped two recordings of his album “The Mysterious Production of Eggs” before the third was a charm. Lately the meticulous Bird been going back to old songs he wrote and changing lines that bother him. The song “Headsoak” from “The Swimming Hour” has “a couple regrettable lines,” he says. He struggles between taking his time and being fussy about lyrics and working fast and not trying too hard.
“Sometimes an idea will just go away for a year and then pop back up,” says Bird, who feels that if you have to write it down, it’s not worth remembering. “I just prefer to keep an idea kind of mysterious. I don’t want to know where it’s coming from and nail it down. I get a lot of ideas, just sounds wafting out of windows. There’s nothing like being in a foreign city and kicking around for a couple of hours with no agenda. It’s incredibly inspiring. I take those ideas back to my barn, and they're all kind of packaged up in my brain. I just take them out and fold them throughout the day. That’s what motivates me, knowing there’s no formula for it, no guarantee of writing a great song. I try to get as far along on a song with just this not-really-trying-too-hard approach.”
But Bird's loquacious lyrics, full of words from a science textbook, are anything but a songwriter’s simple happenstance. For this album, he went to Garfield Park Conservatory and the Field Museum for linguistic inspiration. “I figured novelists do that,” he says. “Actors do method acting. Why can’t a songwriter also do that sort of thing? I got some good lines out of it. Like, ‘The colony of dermestids undressed and digested.’ Usually I don’t force songs that much, but in this case I just wanted to try it out. Also, I just really wanted to finish the song instead of waiting for stuff to pop into my head. It could take another couple of years if taking that passive approach that I usually do.”
The natural world reigns as a centerpiece in most of his work, and the melodic whistling and last name serve to tightly anchor that, so much so that one wonders, was he really born a “Bird”? He was. Growing up in Lake Bluff, the second youngest of four children, Bird remembers wandering through ravines with a Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass, “throwing myself on a pile of decaying matter, going inside there, pretending that I was microscopic.” While never interested in nature in an academic way, he embraced its passageway into a fantasy world.
“I guess the two big themes of the last couple records are childhood and nature, and they’re just areas you can go—they're uncorrupted,” Bird says. “You can’t really argue with nature. You can't argue with childhood imagination. So it kind of makes sense. I think you're just looking for subject matter that's fresh and pure and free from insincerity and pretentiousness.”
Still Bird maintains that his lyrics have more to do with how they sound than what they mean. He usually starts constructing a song without lyrics or an instrument—only with melodies. With four or five songs typically swirling in his head, he says he tries to keep the process “non-deliberate.”
“There's a certain rhythm or pace that employs your body so your mind can just—that's the whole ‘whistle while you work’ thing,” he says. “That’s literally what I do. I just stir it around in my head and let the music come out through whistling. If I’m in my apartment in Chicago, I’ll eventually pick up my guitar and start singing sounds and vowels, which then start to sound like words. I only do it if I’m inspired to do it, but I usually am inspired. If I’m out at my barn and melodies pop into my head, I’ll go over to my looping area and just start trying things out. I can get up to six or seven layers. I’ll create the parameters of the melody and do counterpoint. I can keep it running and go off and take a shower or take care of something else, but my barn is just a big open space, so I’m hearing it. And I start singing to it, even though it’s across the room, my little nook there in the sort of tapestry of violins.”
About lyrics, he says, “But you do have an audience, and you don't want to take their attention for granted in terms of the content of the songs. I do really care mostly about the melodies, but the voice gives the melodies a human weight and a human presence, and I figure, I've got your attention, let’s talk about something interesting. I’ve got a handful of I guess what you’d call relationship songs, but I feel like that's well covered. [Love songs] have to be so simple and sincere that they stand out. I kind of want to save those emotions for—I wouldn't want to sing 12 love songs night after night after night and have to believe in them every night, you know. I prefer subject matter that’s kind of more of a blueprint—you can read into it what you will. It could be a relationship between two people or some geo-political conflict. ‘Not a Robot, But a Ghost’ from the new album is one that could be seen that way. You could read it as a protest song or it could be a personal protest song, between two people. Some of the songs get quite complicated, and then I just like to switch it up. Then the next song is going to be so basic and so elemental and emotional that it's made precious.”
Bird learned how to loop several years ago—when he had more free time—out at his farm. Looping is basically overdubbing live on top of music, building layer upon layer. He says he likes that it’s quick, neither killing the inspiration nor making him self-conscious, and that to make a new idea, he has to erase the old one. He describes the loop as a “sound sculpture,” a “block of sound I can visualize between me and the audience,” adding notes where they’re needed. He usually starts with a pizzicato pattern, with its rhythmic shape.
“I add some bass or cello with another analog pedal that drops it an octave,” he says, along with maybe some whistles and claps. “I can get seven or eight tracks going. It’s a pretty amazing tool. People think it must be a lot to think about onstage, but it’s actually a very intuitive device. Because the violin is a linear instrument, you really can’t do much counterpoint with it. It's also up against your throat, so it’s hard to sing. So it was really an ideal tool. It creates sort of a symphonic sound, but I don't really use it to replicate a symphony. I use it as a completely different instrument.”
When Bird’s back home in Chicago, he likes to bike around town, just “running errands,” visiting friends, meeting with local artisans, like Ian Schneller, who makes his Victrola-like speakers. “Some of the more satisfying things I’ve done over 12, 13 years in the city is just riding around on my bike, taking care of business,” he says, smiling after emphasizing the latter part. Some of that business is designing the record covers, which he says is “hugely” important to him. The visual side of his music, from posters to record covers, “saved me and continues to save me from being so focused on music that I lose perspective.” For a limited edition of “Noble Beast,” he worked with Chicago artist Diana Sudyka to create illustrations for each song, something that reminds him of a Shel Silverstein book.
“‘Fits and the Dizzy Spells’ was the most elusive one because I’m talking about volcanoes and tectonic plate shifts, aubergines and nightmares,” Bird says. “Just the general vibe of the song is flail. So I thought how about some animal that's out in the field just freaking out, distracting its predator by just flipping out, confusing him. So Diana did this beautiful drawing of kind of a bird of paradise.”
Bird, who says he doesn’t “really have a sense of the music world,” sees somewhat of a leveling of the musical playing field, which he recognizes has helped an artist like him reach a greater audience. He says there’s also an increased demand for content, online extras and bonuses. “You just have to be careful that things aren’t devalued and you’re spread too thin,” he says. It’s the tricky balance between spreading and promoting what one's done and coming up with new concepts, furthering oneself as an artist. “It’s amazing how many ideas you’re really capable of kicking out in one day, as long as you have the life energy to do it. But you just have to not let the gears start to slow down so much and not be too precious about what you've just made.”
Published: February 18, 2009
Issue: February 2009 Design Issue | {
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In both cases, the couples had prepared for a medical emergency, creating living wills, advanced directives and power-of-attorney documents.
As recounted by Ms. Langbehn, the details of the Miami episode are harrowing. It began in February 2007, when the family including three children, then ages 9, 11 and 13 traveled there for a cruise. After boarding the ship, Ms. Pond collapsed while taking pictures of the children playing basketball.
The children managed to help her back to the family’s room. Fortunately, the ship was still docked, and an ambulance took Ms. Pond to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial. Ms. Langbehn and the children followed in a taxi, arriving around 3:30 p.m.
Ms. Langbehn says that a hospital social worker informed her that she was in an “antigay city and state” and that she would need a health care proxy to get information. (The worker denies having made the statement, Mr. Alonso said.) As the social worker turned to leave, Ms. Langbehn stopped him. “I said: ‘Wait a minute. I have those health care proxies,’ ” she said. She called a friend to fax the papers.
The medical chart shows that the documents arrived around 4:15 p.m., but nobody immediately spoke to Ms. Langbehn about Ms. Pond’s condition. During her eight-hour stay in the trauma unit waiting room, Ms. Langbehn says, she had two brief encounters with doctors. Around 5:20 a doctor sought her consent for a “brain monitor” but offered no update about the patient’s condition. Around 6:20, two doctors told her there was no hope for a recovery.
Despite repeated requests to see her partner, Ms. Langbehn says she was given just one five-minute visit, when a priest administered last rites. She says she continued to plead with a hospital worker that the children be allowed to see their mother, even showing the children’s birth certificates.
“I said to the receptionist, ‘Look, they’re her kids,’ ” Ms. Langbehn said. (Mr. Alonso, the hospital spokesman, says that except in special circumstances, children under 14 are not allowed to visit in the trauma unit.) | {
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KFC, one of the world’s largest quick service restaurant chains, announced a new global sustainability commitment that all plastic-based, consumer-facing packaging will be recoverable or reusable by 2025. The goal supports KFC’s long-term plan to implement a more sustainable packaging strategy in its restaurants—by both developing and using sustainable packaging options—and builds on progress already made in some markets to eliminate plastic packaging items.
“As a global brand that operates more than 22,000 restaurants in over 135 countries, KFC is in a position to have a real impact on how the industry approaches waste and packaging management overall,” said Tony Lowings, CEO of KFC, in a statement. “With environmental sustainability as a core aspect of how we do business, this commitment represents a public acknowledgement of the obligation we have to address these serious issues.”
To meet these goals, KFC has developed a roadmap that includes partnering with major suppliers and franchisees globally to identify plastic alternatives in each market. The restaurant chain is working on several key initiatives related to achieving these goals, including conducting an audit of current systems with franchisees to identify plastic waste reduction opportunities; partnering with suppliers to identify sustainable packaging alternatives for items like straws, plastic bags, cutlery and lids; and setting market-specific goals to reduce, reuse and recycle. KFC will support franchisees to define and implement their own sustainability agenda to address the unique needs of local markets and customers. Markets will also continue to have their own, additional local sustainability goals that vary based on local market conditions and regulations.
Several markets have already announced plans to reduce the use of certain plastics, including KFC Singapore’s intention to stop providing plastic straws and cup lids in its 84 restaurants; KFC Romania’s and France’s common goal to replace all plastic straws with paper; and KFC India’s removal of consumer plastic bags from its restaurants and ongoing transition to sustainable alternatives for plastic cups, bowls, sporks and straws.
In addition to KFC’s new plastics goal and the existing commitment by its parent company Yum! Brands, Inc. to source 100 percent of fiber-based packaging from certified or recycled sources by 2020, KFC has committed to global packaging innovation by signing on as a supporting partner with NextGen Consortium. NextGen is a multiyear, multi-industry global consortium that aims to advance the design, commercialization and recovery of food packaging alternatives. Through this partnership, KFC hopes to identify fiber packaging solutions that are recoverable across global infrastructures.
KFC has a long commitment to driving sustainable initiatives, which includes a commitment publicly announced by KFC U.S. in April 2017 that, by the end of 2018, all chicken purchased by the company would be raised without antibiotics important to human medicine (as defined by the World Health Organization)—a goal the brand successfully achieved. Recognizing the rising public health concerns about the increased threat of resistance to human antibiotics, KFC has advanced this initiative while keeping both customers—and the health of the flocks from which they source—top of mind. | {
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There was no getting around the fact that Monday night's Saints-Vikings game would be all about Adrian Peterson's return to Minnesota ... until it wasn't, thanks to Saints coach Sean Payton's game plan. At least one former Vikings great got his time to shine in his return — Randy Moss, who was honored at halftime of the season opener at U.S. Bank Stadium.
As for the game itself, a 29-19 Vikings win, New Orleans' boosted offense had its hands full with Minnesota's stingy defense. The Vikings had their own new faces, namely rookie running back Dalvin Cook, to break in against the Saints.
STEELE: Diggs give Vikings the spark they needed against Saints
Sporting News provided live scoring updates during Monday night's Saints-Vikings game. Here's how it went down.
Saints-Vikings: Scores, results, highlights
(All times ET)
10:06 p.m.: Game. Rookie running back Dalvin Cook rushed for 127 yards and broke Adrian Peterson's record (107) for rushing yards by a rookie running back in his Vikings debut. Peterson ironically watched from the opposite sideline, where he was most of the game rather than on the field. The future Hall of Famer carried the ball just six times for 18 yards in his Saints debut. We don't think he was happy about it.
Sam Bradford (27 of 32, 346 yards, 3 TDs, 143.0 rating) managed to outplay Drew Brees (27 of 37, 291 yards, 1 TD, 104.7 rating) in a game in which the Vikings out-gained the Saints 470-344 in total yards.
10 p.m.: Touchdown. The Saints scored their first touchdown of the game way too late, in garbage time and down three scores against the Vikings. Drew Brees naturally refused to quit, though, and found Coby Fleener for an eight-yard touchdown pass with 1:56 to play in the game. 29-19, Vikings.
9:50 p.m.: Field goal. Kai Forbath's 45-yard field goal with four minutes to play put the Vikings up by three scores and presumably sealed the game. Minnesota was able to milk 3:49 off the clock during its eight-play, 48-yard drive. 29-12, Vikings.
9:39 p.m.: Field goal. Four field goals of 25 yards or less generally is a good sign of red-zone woes. That was the case for Saints on Monday, as they failed to score a touchdown deep in Minnesota territory yet again. But they at least were able to cut the Vikings' lead to 14 at the five-minute mark with Wil Lutz's 20-yarder. 26-12, Vikings.
9:27 p.m.: Touchdown. The Vikings took a commanding lead early in the fourth quarter when Sam Bradford found Kyle Rudolph on a corner route at the goal line for a touchdown. The score capped another long drive for Minnesota — nine plays, 89 yards, including a 32-yard run by rookie Dalvin Cook. 26-9, Vikings.
9:25 p.m.: Start of fourth quarter.
9:15 p.m. Field goal. An eight-play, 83-yard New Orleans drive that included a 52-yard pass from Drew Brees to Tommylee Lewis stalled at the Minnesota 6-yard line, where Wil Lutz connected on a 24-yard field goal, his third successful kick of the game. 19-9, Vikings.
8:54 p.m.: Field goal. A seven-play, 54-yard drive on the Vikings' first possession of the second half, which almost ended with a Latavius Murray fumble (recovered by offense), instead ended with a 32-yard field goal by Kai Forbath. 19-6, Vikings.
8:48 p.m.: Start of third quarter.
8:34 p.m.: Halftime. Minnesota held a 229-118 total yards advantage over New Orleans after the first 30 minutes. The Vikings had just three 80-plus-yard drives throughout the entire 2016 season — they had two before halftime Monday, not including a 74-yard drive in the second quarter. Sam Bradford had a great first half: 17 of 20 for 197 yards and two touchdowns, both to Stefon Diggs.
8:30 p.m.: Touchdown. Sam Bradford to Stefon Diggs. Again. The Vikings' QB put the ball where it needed to be, and the receiver made an impressive catch while getting both feet down in-bounds on the side of the end zone. The score capped a massive 10-play, 95-yard drive that took just 1:40 and left three seconds on the first-half clock. 16-6, Saints.
8:07 p.m.: Touchdown. It was all Sam Bradford. The Vikings needed just three plays to march 74 yards for the first touchdown of the game. An incredible completion into a tight window by Bradford set up the score on the next play: an 18-yard completion off play-action to Stefon Diggs on a corner route in the end zone. 10-6, Vikings.
8:02 p.m.: Field goal. Wil Lutz nailed his second field goal of the first half, a 21-yarder, to give the Saints the lead after another long drive — 13 plays, 74 yards. Veteran New Orleans right tackle Zach Stief was injured on the drive, but he was able to walk off the field on his own power. 6-3, Saints.
7:39 p.m.: End of first quarter. Two drives — one for each team — took up almost all of the first 15 minutes. New Orleans had run two plays on its second drive before the end of the quarter. The Saints held a 62-48 total yards advantage over the Vikings.
7:35 p.m.: Field goal. The Vikings saw the Saints' impressive opening drive and raised them an even more impressive opening drive. Kai Forbath made a 24-yard field goal after Minnesota's 14-play, 78-yard drive stalled at the New Orleans 7-yard line. 3-3, tie game.
7:21 p.m.: Field goal. An impressive first drive of the season for the Saints stalled at the Vikings' 25-yard line, where Wil Lutz made his 43-yarder to give New Orleans the lead. The 13-play, 56-yard drive took 6:39 off the first-quarter clock. 3-0, Saints.
7:11 p.m.: Kickoff. The Vikings won the toss and elected to defer to the second half. Saints running back Trey Edmunds returned the kick to his own 19-yard line.
6:35 p.m.: Drew Brees pregame hype speeches never get old.
"It's the first game of the season
Monday Night Football on the road
it doesn't get any bigger and better!"
-@drewbrees' pregame huddle! pic.twitter.com/jkEIF16Vgd — New Orleans Saints (@Saints) September 11, 2017
5:43 p.m.: Vikings and Saints inactives were announced.
5:23 p.m.: Welcome back to Minnesota, Adrian Peterson. | {
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First lady's office pushes back against Giuliani on Stormy Daniels comment Giuliani said the first lady believes Trump denial about Stormy Daniels affair.
First lady Melania Trump’s office is sending a strong and clear message when it comes to Rudy Giuliani: Mrs. Trump speaks for herself, thank you very much.
On Wednesday when addressing a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was asked about first lady's reaction to an alleged affair between Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels.
Giuliani replied, the first lady “believes her husband, and she knows it’s untrue. I don't even think there's a slight suspicion that it's true.
But Thursday, the first lady’s spokesperson forcefully swatted back.
“I don’t believe Mrs. Trump has ever discussed her thoughts on anything with Mr. Giuliani,” Stephanie Grisham, communications director for the first lady, told ABC News.
Mrs. Trump, who just Wednesday re-emerged for the first time after weeks out of the spotlight, has not discussed the alleged sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels in public. Mrs. Trump was a young mother at the time of the alleged affair.
Daniels went public about her relationship with Trump early this year in an attempt to void a nondisclosure agreement and bring attention to a $130,000 hush money payment the president's lawyer made just weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Trump now admits he reimbursed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, for the payment.
In Israel, Giuliani went on to criticize Daniels’ credibility and allegation she had an affair with Trump because she is a porn star.
“Look at his three wives. Beautiful women. Classy women. Women of great substance. Stormy Daniels?” Giuliani said while shaking his head. “I’m sorry I don’t respect a porn star the way I respect a career woman or a woman of substance or a woman who has great respect for herself as a woman and as a person and isn’t going to sell her body for sexual exploitation.”
Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti replied by calling Giuliani a “misogynist” on Twitter.
“Mr. Giuliani is a misogynist. His most recent comments regarding my client, who passed a lie detector test and who the American people believe, are disgusting and a disgrace. His client Mr. Trump didn’t seem to have any “moral” issues with her and others back in 2006 and beyond,” Avenatti tweeted.
On Thursday, Giuliani was asked to explain his comments.
“So the point I made about her industry is, it's an industry in which you sell looks at your body for money. That's demeaning to women, the way I was brought up and the way I always believed the feminist movement has,” Giuliani said.
“The only reason I answered it was to, I think, say what the vast majority of Americans would say to somebody engaged in the kind of behavior she’s been engaged in – which is looking for money.”
ABC News' Ben Gittleson contributed to this report | {
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Runaway Cow in Jamaica View Full Caption
JAMAICA — This cow was on the lam.
A wayward bovine was captured at a parking garage at Archer Avenue and 165th Street in Jamaica after it went on the run Thursday afternoon — a day before its scheduled slaughter, police on the scene said.
► UPDATE: Runaway Cow Saved From Jamaica Slaughterhouse One Day After His Great Escape
NYC: Video of a cow running around in Queens earlier today on 164 St and Jamaica Ave. pic.twitter.com/c5ONO8u4RR — NYC Scanner (@NYScanner) January 21, 2016
An NYPD spokesman first tweeted about the loose ruminant.
Just in case you're wondering: there is cow on the loose in Jamaica, Queens — J. Peter Donald (@JPeterDonald) January 21, 2016
The animal led police on a wild cow chase after it was initially spotted on Jamaica Avenue and Merrick Boulevard at about 12:45 p.m., an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Look what I just saw on Jamaica avenue son Posted by Shakeller Thompson on Thursday, January 21, 2016
After officers cornered it in the parking garage, the animal was corralled and led into a trailer.
It was then returned to Archer Halal Live Poultry across the street from the car lot.
The animal had escaped while workers tried to put it in a pen, said Archer Halal employee Adad Deopersaud.
The cow's dash for freedom was all for naught, however, as it was slated for slaughter on Friday.
“Tomorrow, we’ll kill it," Deopersaud said. "Every Friday we kill animals." | {
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The manhunt for Richard Matt and David Sweat: High Sierra in upstate New York
By David Walsh
2 July 2015
In the 1941 film High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh, Humphrey Bogart plays Roy Earle, a career criminal who has just been pardoned and released from prison after eight years. The crime boss who helped free him expects Earle to participate in the robbery of a hotel in an exclusive resort town in California.
The heist, of course, goes wrong. Along with a woman he’s met and fallen in with, Marie (Ida Lupino), Earle hides out. But then his only surviving confederate informs on him. The newspapers now call him “Mad Dog Earle.”
In the final scene, Earle holds off a small army of police from a location on a steep, rocky mountain side. Shot from behind, Earle dies calling out Marie’s name.
Bending over his corpse, she asks a reporter, “Mister, what does it mean… when a man… crashes out [escapes from prison]?” “Crashes out? That’s a funny question for you to ask now, sister. It means he’s free.” “Free?”, she asks him. Then, as she passes closer to the camera, she repeats, “Free.”
Walsh’s High Sierra came to mind in the wake of the sad, predictable end on June 28 to the three week-long manhunt in upstate New York for escaped convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat, with Matt dead and Sweat, wounded, in custody once again.
The pair, incredibly, had managed to escape from the maximum security Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, twenty-five miles west of Plattsburgh and about the same distance from the Canadian border. It was the first ever escape from the prison in Dannemora, built in 1865.
Matt and Sweat were convicted murderers. Each committed terrible crimes. But are there not always stories behind such crimes? Do they come out of the blue?
Nothing is so simple and crude as the American media presents it. Criminals are criminals, according to them, and that’s the end of the story. On the other hand, bankers who steal billions and US presidents who preside over illegal wars and drone strikes always receive the benefit of the doubt. In those cases, a more nuanced view is indispensable.
Matt, apparently a very bright and charismatic individual, who liked to paint, was especially violent, seriously damaged. One of the only figures in the whole case to exhibit any decency or rationality has been Matt’s son, 23-year-old Nick Harris. Harris has no illusions about Matt, who beat his mother, but he explained that his father, according to a news report, was “subject to early trauma at the hands of a deadbeat father and ultimately ended up a ward of the state.”
Harris told the media, “He was left as an infant in a car. Everybody is born innocent, but he was raised around crime. Then he went into foster care.”
Harris denounced the manner of his father’s death, which may well have been cold-blooded murder.
Sweat’s story is not so different: a broken home, in foster care, in and out of prison. According to the Times, “Since he entered prison at age 19, Mr. Matt has known freedom only a total of about four-and-a-half years. Since he was first locked up at 17, Mr. Sweat has been out just three years.”
Nothing can twist and ultimately destroy the human soul as effectively as the penal system.
Matt and Sweat were products of American society—in other words, of its profound economic and moral dysfunction.
Even if someone has committed a serious crime, there is no reason sympathy and an effort to understand the source of the tragedy should be excluded. There is no reason to turn a human being into a monster, or obliterate him.
The absence of sympathy, of compassion, is appalling. Although rehabilitation was never genuinely pursued in the prison system, except in rare cases, for many years it remained the official goal. No longer. Politicians, editorialists, pundits now look at social life through the eyes of prison guards.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, currently under investigation for corruption, told reporters on June 28, “The nightmare is finally over.”
Cuomo commented, “If you were writing a movie plot, they would say that this was overdone. You had hacksaws delivered by a facilitator in ground-up meat. You had two prisoners who were on the honor block. They hack-sawed through the back of their cell. They got into the catwalks. The catwalks brought them into a labyrinth of tunnels where they came across a contractor’s job box, large tool box. One of the prisoners was a burglar, knew how to pick the lock, picked the lock repeatedly. They used those tools then to do the work of breaking the wall, cutting the pipe, cutting the chains and making [their] way to the sewer pipe.”
Yes, but if a movie were made of the recent manhunt, and one might very well be made, what would it say? From whose vantage point would it be told? With whom would it sympathize?
In High Sierra, although Earle is portrayed as a hardened and sometimes ruthless criminal, he remains a complex human being. He befriends and helps an older couple from Ohio who lost their farm in the Depression. He raises the money so that a young girl can have her clubfoot repaired.
Earle comes from a poor farming background himself. He is instinctively hostile to the crowds in the rich resort town where the robbery is to take place. The movie-going audience is expected to root for Earle, not the cops tracking him.
The film’s script was written by John Huston, the future director, a left-wing figure, based on the novel by W. R. Burnett, the famed novelist and screenwriter. Burnett was responsible for, or had a hand in, dozens of films, including Little Caesar, Scarface, Dark Hazard, The Dark Command, This Gun for Hire, Background to Danger, Yellow Sky, The Asphalt Jungle and The Great Escape.
The original novel was even more explicit in its Depression-era populism than the film could be, in the face of censorship.
At one point Earle has this exchange with Marie:
“Look. A few guys have got all the dough in this country. Millions of people ain’t got enough to eat. Not because there ain’t no food, but because they got no money. Somebody else has got it all. OK. Why don’t all them people who haven’t got any dough get together and take the dough? It’s a cinch. A bank looks pretty tough, don’t it? OK. Give me a chopper and a couple of guys and I’ll loot the biggest bank in the USA. I’m just one guy. What could ten million do?”
“They’re all scared,” said Marie, beginning to yawn. “Anyway, that’s communism or something.”
“OK. So what? Like in prison. A guy would get to talking like I am and some guy would yell: ‘Communist!’ and it would shut him up. But that don’t scare me. Call it what you like. It’s still good sense.”
A film made (or novel written) today about the New York state manhunt would likely adopt the point of view of the “heroes” who shot Matt three times in the head or the “courageous” state trooper who fired twice at an unarmed, fleeing Sweat and struck him in the back.
“The nightmare is finally over.”
The daring, complicated escape by Matt and Sweat generated a massive manhunt by 1,300 officers from a dozen police agencies. A $75,000 bounty was put on each man’s head by the government.
The escape also set off a media frenzy, hysterical, bloodthirsty and vindictive. To read the newspapers, including the “liberal” New York Times and the gutter right-wing New York Post, or listen to the television news, one would have thought that Matt and Sweat were master criminals.
In our estimation, the media in their coverage of the manhunt, egging on the dogs, helicopters and heavily armed officers, exhibited far more brutality than the poor wretches on the run. There was no need to kill Matt or Sweat, except to make an example of them, and to satisfy the sadism and ruthlessness of the authorities.
Dannemora (as the institution is known) is a brutal prison, referred to as Little Siberia because of the climate and the severity of the conditions. In a 2014 report, the Correctional Association, an independent non-profit, noted that the “Clinton Correctional Facility has an infamous history of staff violence, brutality, dehumanization and racist attitudes that are an affront to any sense of humanity…
“Our investigation revealed that these longstanding abuses at Clinton remain pervasive. The CA’s review of conditions at the prison found frequent infliction of solitary confinement for months and years, inadequate medical care, a high incidence of suicides and self-harm, and a dearth of meaningful programs.” The conditions at the prison, the organization said, “epitomize the worst aspects of mass incarceration in New York State.”
The authorities, for their part, expressed outrage that anyone would dare to try and escape their clutches. That merely shows their own obtuseness and savagery.
Matt and Sweat had spent years in the prison and faced being incarcerated for the rest of their lives. How can one not feel a certain respect for their remarkable escape, which expressed the striving of all human beings—including criminals—for freedom?
The prison or prison camp movies that one remembers concern the time-consuming, sometimes years-long, often heart-breaking efforts to break out of confinement: A Man Escaped, Papillon, Escape from Alcatraz, The Great Escape, Stalag 17, The Hole, La Grande Illusion, The Shawshank Redemption … According to Governor Cuomo, a shill for real estate developers and Wall Street speculators, “One escape is one escape too many.”
And how could one not feel some sympathy for the escapees’ desperate situation, as they—more or less hopelessly—tried to evade the dragnet closing in on them. How many people in their heart of hearts hoped that the pair would disappear and never be found?
In High Sierra, Marie says to Roy, “How was it? I mean, knowing you’re in for life. I should think you’d go crazy.”
He replies, “Yeah, lots of them do. I was always thinking about a crash-out… We were just getting ready for another crash-out when my pardon came… You always hope you can get out. That sort of keeps you going.”
There is no humanity to be found in the American political and media establishment. None. Every instance of opposition, even individual resistance, is to be met by overwhelming and deadly force.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. | {
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Kid Gets A Taste Of His Own Medicine After Slamming Into A Couple On A Ride! | {
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india
Updated: Jan 06, 2015 01:22 IST
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday "circumstantial evidence" indicate the Pakistani boat, that was intercepted by Indian Coast Guard on New Year's night and sank off the coast of Porbander, had suspected terror links.
Parrikar's comments comes amid questions about the veracity of claims that a 2008 Mumbai attack-style operation had been foiled. There were also reports claiming the vessel was a fishing boat or one smuggling contraband and not carrying terrorists.
"There are speculations but I don't intend to be part of speculations except saying one very important aspect that the location (where the boat was found) is not a normal route for fishing boat," Parrikar told reporters on the sidelines of a defence ministry event.
Dismissing claims that the occupants of boat were smugglers, Parrikar said he would classify them as "suspected or possible terrorists" as the suicidal act of setting the boat on fire after being intercepted showed that they were "committed" and indicated suspected terror link.
"...circumstantial evidence indicates what I am saying," he said.
Parrikar said the boat was neither in a fishing area nor on any busy route preferred by smugglers to sneak in. He added that even
smugglers of gold, drugs and other contraband normally take a busy route since it is easy to hide and mingle with other boats.
"It does not indicate any type of smuggling activity but some other kind of activity. We are not sure what is that other kind," he said.
"Smugglers don't keep in touch with Pakistani maritime agency, or their army or international contacts".
He said intercepted satellite communication showed they were interacting about passing of cargo and talking about families of some of the boat members.
"A normal boat, even carrying some drugs, can throw away their drugs and surrender. No one is going to kill himself unless you are motivated enough to do that."
He said the actions of the boat men backs what he has said.
"Not speculating that it had explosives but it had some activity in mind that does not fit the description of smuggling boat. Which smuggler would commit suicide? That much I can say," Parrikar said.
The defence minister said the boat was in an isolated location when spotted by surveillance aircraft which tracked it for about 12 hours.
"The coast guard has done the right job at the right time based on intelligence inputs as they reacted immediately. The boat was on
surveillance for 12 hours and it was intercepted as soon as possible," he added.
Parrikar underlined that operating procedures for coast guard are clear.
"It was dark and it was laden with explosives... which appears to be at least partly correct. It could have induced injuries and damage to coast guard," he said.
Asked about the presence of a second boat, he said it was in Pakistani Exclusive Economic Zone.
Parrikar pointed out that intelligence inputs were very clear even about the exact position of the boat.
The Congress party has asked the government to come clean on the matter leading to a slug fest with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party which accused the former of providing "ammunition to Pakistan" and speaking their language besides playing "petty politics" on terror.
According to reports, intelligence agencies had picked up phone intercepts from the boat near Karachi that "expensive cargo"was to be delivered near India.
On Friday, a possible 'terror' attack was averted when a suspicious fishing boat carrying explosives in the Arabian Sea was intercepted near the India-Pakistan maritime boundary, approximately 365 km away from Porbander.
The four people on board ignored warning shots from the coast guard and tried to flee but could not make it and set the boat on fire.
The boat sank in the early hours of January 1, and the people on board could not be saved or recovered.
Report out soon
Parrikar also said all details relating to the sinking of the Pakistani vessel would be released soon, adding India was in touch with Pakistani maritime officials and army.
"They are doing analysis. We will release it once they complete the analysis in 2-3 days. May be it will take four days. Let them do the analysis and after that we will release it."
(With inputs from PTI) | {
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