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, Del.- The Delaware Department of Transportation says one of its plow trucks overturned Tuesday morning near Harrington in Kent County.DelDOT spokesman Jim Westhoff said the department was alerted about the accident around 6:45 a.m.. He said it happened on Route 14 west of Harrington.According to Westhoff, the truck driver was taken to the hospital for observation but no other injuries were reported.
There is no word yet on what caused the crash.
| {
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What To Do
The Virginia Welcome Center has found a new home in Main Street Station. Staffed by specialists from Virginia Tourism, the Welcome Center can give you all the information you need on excursion tours, restaurants, shopping, music venues and all the other attractions in the historic Shockoe Bottom neighborhood, Shockoe Slip, our downtown district and throughout the city. Just outside the station, the 17th Street Marketplace is a popular spot for dining and nightlife. And the connector path to the 52-mile Capital Bike Trail will soon cut right through our building.
Plan Your Visit | {
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No, Belarus Is Not Cut Off From The Internet, But New Restrictions Are Still Pretty Bad
from the could-be-worse-and-probably-will-be dept
There is a lot of excitement over news that Belarus has supposedly cut itself off from the rest of the Internet, with headlines like, "It is now illegal to access any foreign website in the Republic of Belarus". Given the continuing concern over human rights in that country, this story has a certain plausibility to it. But it's worth exploring what the law in question actually says, since the situation is rather more complex than such headlines imply.
Google Translate offers quite a clear translation of the new law (original in Russian), which has two main parts. The first concerns businesses: Business entities engaged in activities on the sale of goods, works and services in the Republic of Belarus with the use of information networks, systems and resources with an Internet connection, you should pay attention: if these networks, systems or resources are not available on the territory of Belarus and (or) not registered in the prescribed manner to the subjects can be applied to an administrative penalty of a fine from 10 to 30 base units. That seems to say that all online businesses must be either located in Belarus, or registered there, which might be a problem for Amazon, say. Presumably the company could get around this if it set up a subsidiary in Belarus, and then sold goods from the site amazon.by � except for the slight problem that this domain has already been taken by a water company. However, Amazon might well decide that it is not worth the effort, and simply block all connections from Belarus.
One issue is what exactly "services" includes in the above section. If, as some have suggested, this means companies offering email, it might stop people using Gmail, unless Google also sets up an arm in the country � wisely, Google has already registered its domain in Belarus, google.by. Clearly, much depends on how the law is interpreted (and IANAL).
As for non-commercial sites like Wikipedia, say, the paragraph doesn't seem to apply at all, since it only concerns businesses. However, they may well be caught by other parts of the law: Administrative penalty of a fine (ranging from 5 to 15 basic units) may be imposed on officials of the centers for collective use of the web services (computer clubs, Internet cafes, home networking, and other places, which provide shared access users of Internet services to Internet) in violation of legislation on the identification of client devices and users to record and store information about them, as well as Internet services rendered.
It should also restrict user access to Internet services to the information gap for distribution in accordance with the laws (the information content of which is directed to carry out extremist activities, dissemination of pornographic materials, etc.). In case of violation of requirements to restrict access to this information also applies a penalty from 10 to 30 base units. These sections deal with Internet cafes and even "home networks" � connections shared among households. It requires users to be registered, the sites they visit recorded, and the usual censorship of pornographic and "extremist" materials. It's easy to imagine even sites like Wikipedia being branded as such (after all, it happened in the UK), and thus being on the blacklist.
So while it is by no means true that Belarus has made accessing all sites outside the country illegal, it has certainly made it risky, if not impossible, to buy stuff on external sites. Worse, it confirms that Internet users must be spied upon, and "forbidden" sites must be blocked; taken together, these new measures allow the government of Belarus to exert extremely tight control over Internet users in the country. Moreover, with these systems in place, severing Belarus from the Internet for real would be relatively easy, if its government decided to take that extreme step.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
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Filed Under: belarus, censorship, foreign websites, internet filtering, privacy | {
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What are the prospects for revolutionary politics in the era of COVID-19? Amid the destruction, both human and economic, some have struck an optimistic note. Ben Tarnoff, for instance, in an article published in US magazine Commune, writes: “In retrospect, 2020 may end up being a 1968 or a 1917: a year of leaps and ruptures, and a dividing line between one era and the next”.
Many also thought that the global financial crisis of 2008-09 would be the death knell of neoliberalism. But instead of breaking with the economic orthodoxy that had triggered the crisis, governments shovelled trillions of dollars of public money into the coffers of big banks and corporations. Workers around the world paid a heavy price – savage austerity, further privatisations and relentless attacks on unions – for the ruling class’s determination to prop up its tottering economic model for a few more years.
But while neoliberalism was retained as the dominant economic model for capitalism, politically, it was dead in the water. Millions of people around the world came to see “centrist” politics for what it really is – a cover for the organised looting of society by a capitalist class drunk on greed. Financial markets boomed, but global elites and their political servants were battered by insurgent populist challenges on both the left and the right.
The COVID-19 crisis is a greater order of magnitude than the last financial crisis. Given the political bankruptcy of neoliberalism, it’s hard to see how it could ever be fully revived. The system can’t be saved this time via bailouts of the banks and major corporations. In their desperate efforts to save capitalism from total collapse, political leaders across the major world powers have launched aggressive government-led interventions into the economy and society.
This situation opens new horizons for the revolutionary left. One of the most stifling aspects of the neoliberal era has been its success in inculcating the sense, among wide layers of workers and the poor, that there is no alternative to capitalism. The idea that individual competition and the free market are the natural order of things is drummed into us from an early age. And the reality of capitalism we confront as we grow up only reinforces this.
The developments of the past month have shaken these assumptions to their core. Who would have thought, two months ago, that the thoroughly neoliberal and right-wing Coalition government in Australia would pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a doubling of dole payments, wage-subsidies and free childcare?
For decades, we’ve been told there’s simply not enough money for such things. Not enough for decent welfare, health care and education, and certainly not enough for anything “visionary” like avoiding catastrophic, runaway climate change. One thing that hopefully will come from this is people never again believing politicians when they say that “there’s not enough money”.
In our social isolation, we may dream of revolution. But what are the prospects of turning such dreams into reality? For this we need more than just imagination, we need struggle. And we need the kind of struggle that has been lacking in the neoliberal era – workers’ struggle. Amid the desolate landscape of mass unemployment and suffering caused by the pandemic and associated economic collapse, there are some small glimmers of hope in this regard. As Tarnoff writes:
“The pandemic spins up a cycle of proletarian self-activity. Workers everywhere now have an urgent issue to agitate around – their health – and are already organizing on that basis. Wildcat strikes have broken out among garbage workers, auto workers, poultry workers, warehouse workers, and bus drivers. Amazon has seen a wave of militancy, forcing management to promise better health protections and to extend paid time off to its entire workforce … Unionized nurses have rallied to protest shortages. Workers at GE have demanded repurposing jet engine factories to make ventilators.”
Similar struggles have broken out among key sections of workers in other hard-hit countries such as Italy, Spain and France. Even in Australia, there have been a number of small scale actions by workers over health and safety concerns, and signs of resistance among unionists in some sectors (notably higher education) to attempts by bosses to use the crisis as cover to attack wages and conditions. These are encouraging signs. For revolutionaries, however, it’s important to remember Gramsci’s maxim: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.
We have reason to be hopeful that the current crisis will be a turning point in the fortunes of revolutionary politics around the world. Even before the COVID-19 crisis broke, we’d seen a string of revolts shaking the establishment from Sudan to Chile, France to Iraq. The crisis will no doubt intensify the contradictions that drove these revolts. We should, nevertheless, harbour no illusions about the scale of the challenge we face.
In this period of profound destabilisation, we’re witnessing an almost complete consensus within official politics and the mainstream of civil society. In Australia, prime minister Scott Morrison is now governing at the head of a tacit political alliance incorporating not only the opposition Labor Party, but also the trade unions, big business organisations and all but the most right-wing fringe of the corporate media.
In country after country, the situation is the same. The usual noisy show of political fractiousness has been put on hold. Political and institutional authorities speak with one voice: in this time of crisis we should put our differences aside and work things out cooperatively for the common good.
This is a charade. The illusion of “national unity” is created not by any genuine convergence of interest between the working class and the capitalist ruling class, but because so many of the organisations and institutions that in ordinary times pose as critical voices within the political sphere now stand openly on the side of the capitalist state and the corporate elite it serves. The state remains, as Marx put it, “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie”. But with the voluntary silence of formerly critical voices, it appears a neutral body managing society in the interests of all.
These developments highlight something that was theorised, in different ways, by Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky in the tumultuous, crisis-ridden period between the two world wars. Both pointed to the way in which, in Western democracies, the rule of the capitalist state is maintained not only by the brute force of the police, the army and so on, but by the institutional authority of major civil society organisations (including unions) and reformist political parties.
The state in developed Western democracies was, for Gramsci, the “integral state” – a state that in ordinary times appears to stand suspended above society, but which in a time of crisis is revealed to be something that has, through the network of established political and civil society organisations, very deep roots. As Gramsci put it: “In the East [Russia], the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relationship between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed”.
Trotsky at times wrote in similar terms, particularly about the trade unions. Reflecting on their role both in fascist countries such as Germany and Italy, and in democracies such as France, in 1938 he noted an increasing integration with the state. “The cause of this tendency towards state co-optation”, he wrote, “is that capitalism in its decline cannot tolerate independent unions”. More and more, he argued, “the unions are directly integrated with the state, with capitalist proprietors. It’s only a difference of degree, not of nature”.
Those wishing to see the further development of the initial, inspiring flashes of workers’ resistance around the world will have to contend with this reality. The barriers to the widening of such resistance are formidable – in particular the entrenched union bureaucracies and reformist political parties whose every instinct in a crisis is to use their authority with workers to buttress the state and quash any serious outbreaks of unrest.
That’s not to say that revolution is ruled out once and for all. In periods of deep crisis, politics can develop at breakneck speed. The revolutionary upsurges that swept from Russia into Europe in the aftermath of World War One provides a clear example. The longer the crisis drags on, the more the spirit of national unity and cooperation will start to fray, and the national unity block will be revealed more and more as the dictatorship of capital that it is.
However, revolutionary socialists remain a tiny minority in Australia and in most other countries in the world. Tarnoff, perhaps unintentionally, highlights the isolation of the revolutionary left in the US when, at the conclusion of his article, he calls for a socialist project that is “equal to the radicalism of our reality”. This project, he writes, “must offer a socialism that is not a branch of progressivism or a wing of the Democratic Party but a truly anti-systemic alternative, one that promises, however improbably, an end to the death cult of capital and the elevation of human health, dignity, and self-determination as the supreme organizing principles of our common life”.
This is, indeed, what we so desperately need. But in the US, for the past two years at least, the tide has been flowing in the opposite direction. Many former revolutionaries have been drawn behind Bernie Sanders into the “democratic socialist” wing of the Democratic Party and have focused almost entirely on electoral politics rather than anything “equal to the radicalism of our reality”. The concurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the end of Sanders’ run for president may well provide an opening to push back on the reformist current. That, however, will require much more than just revolutionary hopes and dreams.
There is no substitute for the hard work of revolutionary organising and education, and of the day to day participation in the struggles of workers and the oppressed, wherever and whenever they may arise. Given the scale of the crisis and the quickening pace of political developments, however, this is unlikely to be a straightforward continuation of the practices of the preceding decades. Globally, new fronts of resistance are opening up almost daily. Even in Australia, the pace of events, relative to “normal” times, is dizzying. We’ll need, no doubt, all our reserves of energy, optimism and will, just to keep up.
We are small. But we stand on the right side of history. As Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy famously put it, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing”. | {
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The Turnbull government should rewrite its foreign donations bill to narrow the definition of political expenditure and make it less likely to harm advocacy by civil society groups, the electoral committee has recommended.
In a unanimous report released on Monday, the joint standing committee on electoral matters sought to preserve the consensus to ban foreign political donations by calling on the government to strip out more contentious elements of the electoral funding and disclosure bill.
GetUp characterised the report as a major backdown and argued the bill is unworkable but the Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, the chairwoman of the committee, told Guardian Australia it could be passed with adoption of mostly minor changes.
Major parties close to deal on charities and foreign donations Read more
In the majority report, the Coalition and Labor members recommended political expenditure should be defined as spending “to influence voters to take specific action as voters, so as not to capture non-political issue advocacy”.
The changes would allow higher reporting requirements to be imposed on campaigning groups such as GetUp while making it less likely they will capture charities and not-for-profits campaigning on issues such as increasing foreign aid or protecting the Great Barrier Reef.
It recommended dumping new proposed categories of third-party campaigners and political campaigners in favour of a new register for groups attempting to influence voters.
Joining the register could be done voluntarily but would be mandatory for organisations with significant political expenditure, which the report suggests would be the $13,500 threshold that triggers the requirement to submit a return to the Australian Electoral Commission.
The committee recommended the requirement for organisations to seek statutory declarations from political donors be reconsidered.
It also wants the government to reconsider changes to the definition of “associated entity”, which could see campaigning organisations classified as related to political parties merely if they agree on policy matters.
In a minority report, the Greens senator Lee Rhiannon took a harder line that the bill may infringe the freedom of political communication and recommended that issues-based advocacy should be explicitly exempted from the definition of political expenditure.
The GetUp national director, Paul Oosting, said the report was an acknowledgement the bill was unworkable and noted the report did not explicitly recommend passage of the bill.
He said it was encouraging the committee had endorsed concerns about the requirement for statutory declarations and the political campaigner category but “even if all the committee’s recommendations were adopted ... it still wouldn’t fix everything that’s wrong with the bill”.
“Charities and civil society groups would still face new barriers to speaking up for the communities they represent.”
Oosting called for the government to withdraw the bill and rewrite it from scratch after wider consultation.
The chief executive of the Australian Council for International Development Marc Purcell said the recommendations were “positive and constructive, but they raise more questions” and echoed the call for the bill to be withdrawn.
Reynolds said Australia was one of only a few western democracies that still allow “foreign interference” in the form of foreign donations and it was a “significant result” the committee had agreed to change this.
Reynolds refuted that the report is a major rewrite of the bill, telling Guardian Australia it made “minor administrative changes” to clarify the application of reporting requirements to charities.
“The committee agrees in-principal to the passage of this bill,” she said in the chair’s foreword to the report.
In the debate around foreign interference, Chinese-Australians suffer | Jieh Yung-lo Read more
Reynolds said the proposed new definition of political expenditure was “absolutely” clear. The intention is that policy-based issue advocacy will not be affected but “those that then take it into the polling booth” will be captured by higher requirements, she said.
The special minister of state, Mathias Cormann, has already acknowledged the government will need to amend the bill to win Senate support but has ruled out completely exempting charities from the foreign donation ban and political expenditure reporting requirements.
On Monday Cormann welcomed cross-party support for the “core proposition” of applying the foreign donation ban to all political expenditure, “including political expenditure incurred by charities”. He said the government would now consider proposed changes.
Labor has declared it would not support changes that would silence charities and not-for-profits.
Labor’s charities spokesman, Andrew Leigh, said “we’ve stood up for our democracy and protected civil society, especially our charities” but done so in a way that did not “throw the baby out with the bath water” by rejecting a foreign donation ban.
In the majority report the committee also asked the government to reduce penalties for failing to meet reporting requirements.
The committee was satisfied the bill should retain changes to public funding of elections which limit the amount political parties can claim to the amount actually spent, preventing them profiting from public funding. The Greens rejected this aspect of the bill. | {
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In the last year, cases of a ghastly but mysterious flesh-eating bacterial infection have more than doubled in Victoria, Australia, raising alarm among health experts.
There were 239 cases of the flesh-eating infections in the past 12 months, according to figures (PDF) released this week by health authorities. In 2016, there were only 102 reported cases, while 2015 and 2014 tallied just 58 and 47. And the rate of new infections is currently skyrocketing: in the past few months, case counts hit nine per week, according to Australia’s Nine News. The number of severe cases has also doubled.
While the rises alone are enough to worry health experts, the fact that virtually nothing is known about the cause of the infection has some dismayed.
“I’m at the forefront as a clinician trying to treat patients and getting more and more overwhelmed but also distressed at the fact that we are doing nothing to try and prevent people getting it in the first place,” Dr. Daniel O’Brien, of Royal Melbourne and Geelong hospitals, told Nine News.
Baffling bacteria
The infections are caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, a slow-growing bacterium that causes gaping, palm-sized ulcers. Sometimes called Buruli ulcers, the lesions seem to dissolve skin and gnaw away at tissue. The bacteria are known to lurk around Victoria, but experts don’t know where it lives or how it spreads.
“There are theories about transmission via mosquitos, theories about it being in the soil and getting through wounds, theories about whether some animals are involved, in that we know that some possums can be affected by it,” O’Brien said. “But we don’t actually know where it lives, why it’s there, and how it gets spread to humans. How can we possibility halt an epidemic when we don’t have that basic information?”
The bacterium was first identified in Australia in 1948, but the ulcers get their name from Buruli county (now called Nakasongola) in Uganda, where researchers reported large numbers of ulcers in the 1960s.
It’s now known to skulk in at least 33 countries, and the World Health Organization considers it “largely a problem of the poor in remote rural areas (PDF).” It causes a few thousand cases worldwide each year, most of which are in children under the age of 15.
Antibiotics are usually effective at treating the lesions. But, early treatment is critical to reducing skin loss and tissue damage. Victims often need surgery to clean out dead flesh and repair wounds.
Zombie limbs
There are currently no prevention strategies or vaccines. Despite decades of knowing about the bacteria, researchers are still stumped by them. A study published just this April added weight to the idea that the bacteria are somehow linked to disturbed water sources, such as those with flooding or deforestation.
A study out last month looked at where the ulcers show up on people. The study of 579 patients found that they tend to cluster on arms and legs. The researchers, co-led by O’Brien, concluded:
“We propose that targeting behavior by biting insects rather than direct contact with a contaminated environment best explains the lesion distribution we observed.”
One likely source of confusion for researchers is the slow-growing nature of M. ulcerans. It’s unclear how quickly symptoms show up after a person is infected, but authorities estimate that it’s somewhere in the range of four weeks to nine months. Such a large window can make it difficult to pinpoint when or where an exposure occurred, let alone how.
“For me this is an urgent health problem that our community needs addressed,” O’Brien said. “I think our government should be putting significant amounts of money into trying to stop it and that means research.”
This week, a 13-year-old girl from Tyabb, Victoria, started an online petition to urge Health Minister Greg Hunt to provide more research funding for the disease. The girl was stricken with a Buruli ulcer on her knee in April and is still recovering. She needed three surgeries to clear out rotting flesh. (Here's a picture of her ulcer, but warning, it's gruesome.)
“It’s still not looking that great,” she said. “We call it the zombie leg.” | {
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It wasn’t until Hurricane Katrina when the heckuva job done by the man of whom Ms. Noonan said, “if there’s a fire on the block, he’ll run out and help” revealed the true costs of obliviousness that the cult began to fade.
What’s more, the politics of stupidity didn’t just appeal to the poorly informed. Bear in mind that members of the political and media elites were more pro-war than the public at large in the fall of 2002, even though the flimsiness of the case for invading Iraq should have been even more obvious to those paying close attention to the issue than it was to the average voter.
Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy.
All this is in the past. But the state of the energy debate shows that Republicans, despite Mr. Bush’s plunge into record unpopularity and their defeat in 2006, still think that know-nothing politics works. And they may be right.
Sad to say, the current drill-and-burn campaign is getting some political traction. According to one recent poll, 69 percent of Americans now favor expanded offshore drilling and 51 percent of them believe that removing restrictions on drilling would reduce gas prices within a year.
The headway Republicans are making on this issue won’t prevent Democrats from expanding their majority in Congress, but it might limit their gains and could conceivably swing the presidential election, where the polls show a much closer race.
In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy. | {
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Esta mañana, el autobús transfobo de la asociación de ultras católicos «Hazte oír» ha visitado Sevilla dentro de la gira que está haciendo para difundir el odio hacia las personas transexuales. Centenares de activistas se han dado cita para recordarles a los ultras que no son bienvenidos.
La Policía nacional ha hecho acto de presencia para proteger a los ultras católicos, y ha cargado a caballo contra los manifestantes a la altura de San Telmo. | {
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Counting on food with fake fats to help you slip into last year’s bathing suit? Better count again. Because a new study with rats shows that low-cal fat substitutes can actually promote weight gain. The work appears in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience. [Susan Swithers, Sean Ogden and Terry Davidson, "Fat Substitutes Promote Weight Gain in Rats Consuming High-Fat Diets"]
Dieters can choose from an array of snacktackular options in which sugars and fats are replaced by artificial, low-calorie substitutes. That sleight of hand seems ingenious. You can let your body think it’s getting the sweets and fats it craves while keeping the calorie count to a minimum.
But the new study suggests that this strategy is likely to backfire. Rats that consumed a mix of full-fat chips and chips with olestra wound up eating more and got fatter than rats that noshed on regular chips alone.
Their bodies were apparently getting mixed messages. A mouthful of fat is usually a signal that calories are coming, and the body reacts by getting ready to burn fuel. But olestra, which tastes like fat, carries no calories at all. So the body soon learns to stand down in the face of fat. All fat. Even real fat. Because as Shakespeare almost said, a chip by any other name still swells your seat.
—Karen Hopkin
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.] | {
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TRACEY BENDINGER | Culture | Contact
Cailyn Burton, an aspiring French-Japanese fusion chef from Betoota Hills, was eager to show her family the final dish she prepared for Master Chef’s elimination round, however, she is tonight realising that her entire storyline has been cut from the show.
At the beginning of tonight’s episode, celebrity chef George Calombaris made an untruthful announcement saying that Cailyn had to leave the show due to the tragic death of her pet budgerigar, Boris, who had been with her family for years.
The Advocate sat down with Cailyn and her family to see if they had any idea why the producers would cut short her storyline, especially as they knew she was getting eliminated at the end of the episode.
“I have no idea, we didn’t leave on bad terms…George even said he would offer me a job!” said a confused and teary Cailyn.
“A paid one too apparently.”
While it may seem like a mystery to poor Cailyn, after reaching out to the show’s producers The Advocate can confirm that she was cut for being too normal.
“Yeah, she had to go” said one of the shows representatives.
“We need contestants to say how the show has helped them, make it seem like we empowered them.”
“You know, all that ‘have the confidence to do my own thing now’ shit each contestant spins after they get the boot?”
“It’s all bullshit, we force them to say that” | {
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Story highlights Pepper Schwartz: Graphic sex in "Blue Is the Warmest Color" causing controversy
She says Times critic said film is relevant for young teens; his 14-year-old saw it
She says: You kidding? Most kids very unprepared for film's level of raw sexuality
Schwartz: Not advisable for a parent to introduce this kind of sex to a youngster
The film "Blue Is the Warmest Color," a French import, has kicked up a storm of controversy, mostly because of its extraordinarily long, detailed and explicit lesbian sexual and romantic scenes. So graphic was a roughly six-minute coupling, that the Motion Picture Association of America gave the movie an NC-17 rating, that is, no one under 17 admitted.
But there was additional controversy when a prominent film critic suggested it could be a good movie to introduce one's teenage daughter to. In a blog post on The New York Times website about a theater in New York that chose to flout the MPAA rating, critic A.O. Scott said that "in some ways, because of its tone and subject matter, 'Blue' is a movie that may be best appreciated by viewers under the NC-17 age cutoff." His 14-year-old daughter had seen it twice at the Telluride Film Festival.
My take on his comment -- as a sex researcher, a university professor and a mom who has seen the film -- is: "Are you kidding?!" I would not recommend anything so vivid portrayed by a same-sex or opposite sex couple to any young person, particularly one who was not already sexually experienced.
Pepper Schwartz
Furthermore, while my family is hardly shy about sharing information and opinions on all kinds of sex, it would be awkward and inappropriate to be the one introducing either my daughter or son to three highly-detailed sex scenes (even simulated, which these are). We may have frank conversations about sex, but they're not fully illustrated, and that makes a difference!
If you have not yet sat down with your kids to look through pictures of sexual positions and intercourse, having them watch this movie would be a strange place to start. "Blue Is the Warmest Color" is not family entertainment. Its athletic, rough and tumble sexuality can look aggressive, even frightening, to an inexperienced young person, and it is hard to explain to many teens why that might also be loving.
In a perfect world, one would want one's child to go through stages of experiencing sex, from kissing to fondling to an intimate connection with a first lover. Perhaps this is idealistic, but at least their exposure to vivid images of sexuality might occur over time, graduated according to what they are ready to see and understand.
In any case, it's certainly not something they'd want to watch with their parents, although it's not clear whether Scott actually accompanied his 14-year-old to the Telluride screenings. I am also mystified that Scott talks about the movie as a realistic depiction of young love that teens will identify with. Huh? This is not a realistic depiction for most teenagers. Approximately 40% to 50% of them will not have had intercourse until they have graduated high school. Very few of them will have had a relationship of this caliber or impact.
How sexually explicit films affect kids is debated among health professionals and sex researchers. Some maintain that they can encourage sexual experimentation and a change in values in young people, while others disagree -- but as a parent, why go there? Why consciously risk flipping youngsters ahead of their own experience by introducing information before they are more erotically mature?
JUST WATCHED Discussion around students and sexting Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Discussion around students and sexting 06:13
One other reservation about taking a teen to this movie? I love a love story; gay, straight, bisexual or undecided. The chilling part of this film is that it's basically the story of an adult woman (she's 5 or 6 years older) poaching on a high-schooler. The issue is glossed over in the movie. But parents should be wary of taking their kids to see a movie that glamorizes sexual relationships between a sexy older person and a teen. Yes, it's only a movie. But it is one that can deliver a message.
Of course, there should be lots of conversations between parent and child on all these topics -- lesbian love affairs, affairs with older lovers, sexual desire when you are young -- before a child is launched into the adult world. But a parent exposing a child to deeply intimate sexuality -- people having oral sex together, slapping and grabbing each others' butts and bringing each other to orgasm -- is neither necessary nor desirable.
We can have, as sex educators call it, "a teachable moment" other ways. If your child does go see this film, by all means, discuss it. But I am pretty sure this kind of field trip would make parent and child feel they'd had an exceptionally squeamish, and highly regrettable, experience. | {
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It looks like Padmé Amidala wants to meet her son!
When Mark Hamill recently tweeted that he and Natalie Portman have never met, there was a great disturbance in the Force as many Star Wars fans just had their minds blown.
FUN FACT: I've never met this woman. https://t.co/YYIFku1CVQ — Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) June 9, 2018
However, maybe there'll be a family get together now, especially after the Oscar-winning actress revealed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that she would very much like to meet Hamill.
"It's such a shame, I would love to meet him," Portman said before turning to the camera, "Mark, I would like to meet you, come over!"
Colbert, a self-admitted uber-nerd (and very much so), took a moment to bask in the fact that he has met both and spent time with the two Star Wars actors. He also reveled in the fact they haven't met, claiming - in a rather funny moment - that he was the, "center of the Star Wars universe."
Then, he went on to jokingly point out that Mark Hamill never even wished her a "Happy Birthday," something which Hamill was quick to amend.
SHAMEFUL FACT: "Center of the #StarWars Universe" Stephen Colbert @StephenAtHome revealed I neglected to wish Natalie a #HBD- Please forgive me Ms Portman.❤️ from your thoughtless, ungrateful son, mh #AGoodFirstStep https://t.co/vqpim0klc3 — Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) June 15, 2018
Now, what we're all waiting for is when they finally meet! | {
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Two hours and 45 minutes of 70 mm film means The Dark Knight Rises is, literally, a big movie. Christopher Nolan‘s choice to shoot his new Batman film in full IMAX means that the IMAX film prints will weigh up to 600 pounds when fully assembled (and people wonder why theaters are switching to digital). In a new video posted from the Liberty Science Center in New Jersey, which has the largest IMAX screen in North America, you can see the incredible lengths some theaters will have to go to in preparation to show the epic conclusion of Nolan’s series.
Thanks to The Black Zebra on YouTube (via Comic Book Movie) for posting this video.
Here are some of the crazy numbers revealed in the video.
The film is two hours and 45 minutes long and will be delivered on roughly 50 reels. Those 50 reels will take about 10-12 hours to splice together and then six hours to move and string up to be screened. When complete, it’ll weight about 600 pounds. The gentleman from the Liberty Science Center said he hopes Warner Bros. delivers the film by July 13 otherwise it’s going to be a mad rush to get it ready for early test screenings prior to opening.
The film will also be screening in digital IMAX formats but, as has been well-covered on this site in the past, the film IMAX’s are the biggest and best. Over a third of the film will be presented IMAX while the rest will just be larger.
If you want to see The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX at the Liberty Science Center, the biggest IMAX in the country, head to this site.
A little technical but, still, very cool. Are you going to see The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX? | {
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North Korea has this year repeatedly provoked worldwide outrage with a series of nuclear tests and missile launches, prompting condemnation and threats from despot Kim Jong-un’s Western rivals.
And it has now been revealed the campaign of terror is partly thanks to China, who have been supplying North Korea with a key ingredient.
Beijing is believed to send Kim’s blood-thirsty Pyongyang administration rocket fuel dubbed “Devil’s Venom” - with fears growing the hermit state have already figured out how to manufacture the material itself.
The fuel, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH), is extremely tricky to create and is suspected to be supplies to the rogue state by China. | {
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Facebook Inc. shares are on pace to post their largest percentage decline in four years, as the company comes under fire from regulators for allowing a third-party group to access user information without those people’s permission.
The social-networking giant is facing its latest bout of scrutiny over the role third-party groups played in using Facebook’s FB, -1.73% platform during the 2016 presidential election. Regulators in the U.S. and U.K. have criticized the company for allowing Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that helped the Trump campaign, to access data on users without their express permission and hold that data for years despite saying that it had destroyed those records.
The stock plunged 6.8% in midday trading Monday. That would be the biggest one-day percentage decline since it tumbled 6.9% on march 26, 2014. The price decline of $12.53 would be the biggest since Facebook went public in May 2012.
Monday’s rout has wiped away almost $40 billion in market value from Friday’s close of $537.67 billion. The stock closed right at its 200-day moving average, a closely watched trend tracker that currently extends to $172.54, according to FactSet.
Many analysts acknowledged that the latest episode represents a public relations and regulatory risk to Facebook, though they were divided on the company’s ability to weather such challenges.
“It appears that data access by the original app developer was properly permissioned (i.e., this was not a ‘breach’ per se) and we note that Facebook has since upgraded its user privacy functionality and app review process to prevent similar abuse,” wrote Wells Fargo analysts led by Peter Stabler. “Nonetheless, this episode appears likely to create another and potentially more serious public relations ‘black eye’ for the company and could lead to additional regulatory scrutiny.”
Wells Fargo has a buy rating on the stock and a $230 price target.
GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives commented that this new wave of scrutiny could prompt Facebook to make additional tweaks to its news feed and broader platform. “It’s clear with more ‘heat in the kitchen from the Beltway’ that further modest changes to their business model around advertising and news feeds/content could be in store over the next 12 to 18 months,” he wrote.
Facebook announced at the start of the year that it would begin to prioritize content from friends and family members over content from publishers, and the company said on its latest earnings call that changes intended to de-emphasize viral videos had resulted in users spending 50 million fewer hours per day on the platform. Facebook has been able to overcome such issues so far, posting strong growth despite significant increases in ad prices.
Ives believes that Facebook “can keep regulators at bay” through investments in security, screening, and artificial intelligence but thinks that the next few weeks will require Facebook to “hand hold and assure its users and regulators around tighter content standards and platform security.” Ives rates Facebook stock “highly attractive” and has a $225 price target.
Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser, one of just two analysts with a sell rating on the stock, said he does not expect the latest revelations to pose a near-term risk for Facebook.
“This episode is another indication of systemic problems at Facebook, although the company’s business won’t likely be meaningfully impacted for now because we don’t think advertisers will suddenly change the trajectory of their spending growth on the platform,” Wieser wrote. The company may face “enhanced” risk now, from a regulatory perspective and in terms of what it allows third-parties to measure, according to Wieser. He thinks advertisers may grow frustrated if Facebook begins restricting various types of measurements.
Stifel analyst Scott Devitt said Facebook hasn’t moved swiftly enough to address security concerns about its platform and that the company has been too quick to brush off concerns from critics. He believes the changes Facebook needs to make to restore user trust and tackle these security issues could “ultimately lead to lower engagement and negative monetization implications.” Devitt rates the stock at hold with a $195 target.
Facebook’s debacle helped push the broader tech sector XLK, +0.83% lower. Shares of Twitter Inc. TWTR, -0.62% were down 1.7%, while shares of Snap Inc. have lost 3.4% SNAP, +0.25% and shares of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, -1.44% were off 3%.
The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.13% fell 1.8%, posting steeper losses than the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.84% and S&P 500 SPX, -1.15% , each off 1.4%. | {
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With all the talk about companies becoming more “agile” and outsourcing their IT operations to service providers, there's an interesting counter-trend starting to develop. While technology companies appear to be holding off on hiring because of economic fears, companies in sectors like healthcare and retail are moving to build their IT teams, in some cases reversing course on a strategy of outsourcing as much of their IT operations as possible.
Earlier this month, Best Buy announced that it would triple the size of the company's in-house IT staff by hiring 200 more tech professionals over the next year. Best Buy had largely outsourced IT operations, but the company's recently-hired CIO Jody Davis has reversed course. Davis told Retail Info System News, "We now want [to hire] talent as Best Buy employees. We need to develop a strategy of what we're going to build. We like to take control of our destiny."
Yes, many companies have shed services like e-mail, data center operations, and even desktop support to managed service providers, and have moved toward hiring IT contractors to handle application development and maintenance tasks—opting to focus on their “differentiators” to be more competitive. But over the past year, competition for IT skills has become increasingly fierce, and many companies are realizing that IT isn't just a support service—it's core to their business' future. And to take control of that future, HR professionals and recruiters say, more companies are looking to lock in IT professionals with the golden handcuffs of statutory employment.
Dheeraj Bharadwaj , human resources vice president at Atlanta-based IT solutions provider NIIT Technologies, told Ars that more companies are building up their internal IT staff and insourcing projects because they're looking for a more reliable and predictable pool of talent. Having a stronger internal IT team to lead projects “drives a high percentage of predictability in success,” he said, because “dependability, understanding of organization in quick judgments and knowledge of where to tap for resources are big advantages.”
For companies that have outsourced new projects or deferred projects entirely during the recession, the core IT staff “get hit by a feeling of saturation or stagnation due to repetitive work,” Bharadwaj said. “Due to the economy, very few organization have invested in new technology and projects, which are a great internal opportunity and tool to develop and retain talent.” By insourcing new projects instead of handing them off to contractors, companies can boost internal skills and avoid losing staff to the increasingly hot IT jobs market.
Scott Gordon, a partner at Vaco LLC, a Nashville-based tech recruiting firm, told Ars that there's a lot less discussion about outsourcing among his clients, and much more of a focus on internal hiring. He says he has seen an threefold increase in positions to be filled over the last 18 months. While he works primarily in developer recruitment, he says his firm has seen the same trend both with developers and with infrastructure IT positions.
“It wasn't this busy during the dot-com boom,” Gordon said. “The demand now is at the point where the candidates are more in command of the process than they know. They hear that the economy is about to tank, and assume there are hundreds available for their position, when it's exactly the opposite. I have candidates who've gotten seven to ten phone calls in the same day.”
Scott Swift, an IT recruitung consultant for IT recruiting firm TriNet, echoed Gordon's experience. He told Ars that finding IT talent "has become much more difficult over the last 6 months, as the demand for these candidates is high and competition is fierce among employers." That's good news for IT job seekers, but it's also a problem for companies that used to be able to rely on contract talent to fill in the gaps.
With talent in high demand, Gordon says most of the companies he deals with are now opting for permanent hires or contract-to-hire arrangements rather than looking for fixed-term contracts. And the companies looking to do contract hires are having trouble filling them. “It's much more difficult to find people for those because people not looking at short term opportunities because of fear over the economy,” Gordon said. “And the interview process for those is much longer.” He also says that some companies aren't moving fast enough to make hires and losing candidates as fast as he can deliver them. “Some clients are interviewing four or five times, not understanding the market. It's like putting rabbits in a box—I can put five in, and four will jump out.”
Gordon said that the shift from outsourcing has even led to overseas outsourcers sending him candidates for full-time positions in the US. “They call me, wanting to send me candidates from India and Ukraine,” he said. “It may be an indicator of how their business is doing offshore.”
Much of the insourcing growth is happening at small and medium businesses. According to market research data from SpiceWorks, a professional social networking site for IT professionals, 31 percent of SMBs planned to add to their IT staff this year. Finding that talent locally, however, is increasingly hard for small companies.
"SMBs are facing tough competition from companies such as Google, Facebook and LinkedIn who are aggressively hiring the best IT people available," said Swift, and the efforts to fill positions are taking longer and longer—and costing companies much more money to fill, regardless of the salary.
So to get the stability of dedicated staff without fighting the local market, some SMBs have shifted how they work with overseas IT, according to Rick Ramos, CEO of TeamLauncher, a company that specializes in hiring offshore talent for SMBs. TeamLauncher does traditional outsourcing arrangements, but it also acts as an agent for small and medium companies looking to hire overseas developers and designers—what Ramos calls “insourcing overseas”.
“We're getting a lot of midsized companies coming to us because they can't find labor locally, and want to have control over what people do,” Ramos told Ars. While TeamLauncher's business used to be mostly outsourcing, “the numbers have flipped” recently, he said, with 60 to 70 percent of the company's business now being remote staffing. “What we do is we allow people to develop teams within our office—we set up the space, and do everything to manage the hiring, but it's their employees.” With offices in the Philippines and India, Ramos says his company now helps manage about 460 overseas employees, mostly in small teams for small and midsized clients. “Our largest team is about 20,” he said. | {
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Image 1 of 5 A drawing of Peter Sagan's world champion's jersey (Image credit: Sportful) Image 2 of 5 Peter Sagan's world champion's jersey in the making (Image credit: Sportful) Image 3 of 5 The jersey design is printed (Image credit: Sportful) Image 4 of 5 Peter Sagan plays around on the podium, pretending to eat his gold medal (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com) Image 5 of 5 The men's road race podium of Michael Matthews (Australia), Peter Sagan (Slovakia) and Ramunas Navardauskas (Lithuania). It was the first time all three had made the podium in the elite race (Image credit: Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com)
Cycling kit maker Sportful have revealed Peter Sagan's World Championship jersey design. Sportful have published a series of photos, including a drawing of the final jersey, as they begin to make the Slovakian's kit.
There won't be much branding on the kit, other than the logos of the team's two main sponsors, as well as Sportful and the UCI.
Each of the stripes that make up the rainbow band will be three centimetres high, making a 15-centimetre band around the jersey's chest. Rainbow stripes will adorn the sleeve cuffs and the collar.
"The jersey has a very classic look even if it's a very technical Bodyfit Pro Race jersey," said Sportful Brand Communication Manager Daniel Loots.
"The UCI rules on the design are pretty strict; the rainbow bands and dimensions of the sponsor logo are limited in size and position and they have to be black. There's no fluorescent anywhere and that means we have a very classic design."
"Under UCI rules we can only have team issue shorts or white shorts. We haven't decided which Peter will wear yet but the rules mean he can't use black shorts."
Sagan is due to debut his kit at the Abu Dhabi Tour on October 8.
Download the Cyclingnews podcast on iTunes as we talk to Peter Sagan and more following his win at the World Championships. | {
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No wonder the state department tried to stop Marie Yovanovitch from talking. The former ambassador’s written testimony to Congress expresses clearly and in the most solemn of settings, what growing numbers American diplomats have been feeling: that their institution is being left to rot.
It is too soon to say whether her evisceration of the state department delivered behind closed doors, will mark a turning point in Donald Trump’s struggle to hold on to his office. There will without doubt be a counter-attack.
But Yovanovitch’s decision to ignore the state department gag and appear before the House committees – without having to be subpoenaed – has already cracked the wall of silence.
On Monday, the national security council’s British-born former senior director for Europe and Russia, Fiona Hill, is due to give her account. Hill, not a Trump loyalist but an expert on Russia and Vladimir Putin, resigned from her post in August. So she was in her job at the time of the infamous 25 July telephone conversation between Trump and the newly elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In that call, Trump sought to persuade the comedian-turned-leader to investigate the company that had employed Hunter Biden, the son of the former vice-president and Democratic presidential contender. At the time, his aides were conditionally offering a White House visit, and Trump had put a hold on military aid the new government in Kyiv desperately needed.
On Thursday, it will be the turn of the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who announced through his lawyer on Friday that he would be giving a deposition – again in defiance of state department instructions.
Sondland got his job after donating $1m to the Trump inauguration fund, but he is not a loyalist. He backed other Republican contenders for the 2016 nomination and only leapt onboard the Trump wagon when it was past the finish line.
In WhatsApp messages released by Congress, Sondland is revealed have led the effort to persuade Ukraine to launch the politically motivated investigations, bragging that he was acting on presidential authority, only to deny there was any quid pro quo when it became clear an investigation was in the pipeline.
It will be hard to stick to that story when confronted by his own words next Thursday.
Which way Sondland chooses to jump could have an important bearing on perceptions of the impeachment process among Republicans. Polls now show that half the electorate already support it.
As Yovanovitch was arriving on Capitol Hill on Friday, there were reports that more whistleblowers may be coming forward, and it seems probable that the ambassador’s words will inspire others to break ranks.
“Her quiet dignity stands in sharp contrast to the corruption of the president and many of his associates,” Nicholas Burns, former under secretary of state for political affairs, said. “Her open defiance may well encourage other career officials to come forward to tell the truth about Trump’s Ukraine policy.”
She gave a compelling account of her life: born to escapees from both Nazism and communism, an immigrant who rose to the top of US diplomacy and was appointed ambassador three times.
After more than three decades as a diplomat, under six presidents, she expressed her “deep disappointment and dismay” about what had happened to her faith that “we enjoyed a sacred trust with our government”.
“That basic understanding no longer holds true,” she said. “Today, we see the state department attacked and hollowed out from within.”
The harm would not just come from the exodus of talent, Yovanovitch said.
“The harm will come when private interests circumvent professional diplomats for their own gain, not the public good,” she went on. “The harm will come when bad actors in countries beyond Ukraine see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system. In such circumstances, the only interests that will be served are those of our strategic adversaries, like Russia, that spread chaos and attack the institutions and norms that the US helped create and which we have benefited from for the last 75 years.”
When Yovanovitch talked about private interests, it was clear what she was talking about. She had already speculated that it was private interests that were driving a quest led by Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to have her ousted from her position because of the embassy’s anti-corruption campaign.
The week’s dramatic news provided a vivid split-screen illustration of what private interests entailed. On one side a veteran diplomat walking purposefully through the halls of Congress on her way to testify; on the other, mugshots of Giuliani’s two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who had worked with Trump’s lawyer to look for dirt on the Bidens, and who had boasted they had helped get rid of Yovanovitch.
Booking photos for Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. Photograph: Alexandria Sheriff/Handout/EPA
The pair are charged with funneling foreign cash into the Trump campaign and into the coffers other Republican candidates, as well as seeking to buy politicians to grant a licence for a recreational marijuana farm.
In their wake they have left a trail of fraud accusations, and failed ventures including a movie that was to be called Anatomy of an Assassin, which collapsed when investors’ money evaporated.
This was the gang that was running a parallel foreign policy in Ukraine, sidelining Yovanovitch and other career diplomats. The longer they stay in the news, the greater insight the public will have into the corruption of US diplomacy that has been under way beneath the surface for nearly three years.
Kurt Volker, the former special envoy on the Ukraine tried to work with Trump’s shadow diplomacy, reasoning that it was the most effective way to reach US policy objectives. If Giuliani and Trump were placated, US-Ukraine ties would be strengthened in the face of the threat from Russia. But when his gung-ho texts became public he simply appeared complicit.
No one who knew him doubted that he was a dedicated public servant, but very few if any who think they can handle this president come away untarnished. He resigned from his envoy position, and lost his prestigious academic post as well.
Others still in the administration are likely to learn the lessons from Yanovanitch and Volker’s stories, and decide that now is the time to make a clean break. | {
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A subsidiary energy company that would deliver natural gas to LNG Canada’s Kitimat plant has filed an application for an injunction against the Unist’ot’en Camp, south of Houston, B.C.
Coastal GasLink, a subsidiary of TransCanada Pipelines Ltd., filed an application for an injunction on Friday to gain access to the Morice River Bridge, which it claims is being blockaded by the Unist’ot’en Camp and stalling construction on the project.
The Coastal GasLink pipeline would deliver natural gas, starting in an area close to Dawson Creek, all the way to the proposed LNG Canada facility in Kitimat.
The Unist’ot’en Camp was constructed in 2010 to assert and “reoccupy” the land of the Wet’suwet’en people, on which several proposed pipelines would be constructed. The Unist’ot’en are a clan of the Wet’suwet’en people.
In the application, Coastal GasLink’s proposed injunction would prohibit anyone from “physically preventing, impeding or restricting or in any way physically interfering” with access to the Morice River Bridge or the Morice West Forest Service Road, or coming within 10 metres of Coastal GasLink’s employees or vehicles in the area.
The application would also give police authority to arrest people breaching the injunction.
In a statement posted on its website, Coastal GasLink said that “this decision was not taken lightly” and is “a last resort and a necessary action in our efforts to safely gain access to the area.”
Coastal GasLink named Freda Huson and Warner Naziel, and referenced “others” involved in the bridge blockade, alleging that they were “preventing access” to the area. If the blockade stalled the project, the company claimed, there would be a “significant risk” that the project will miss the date of completion under the contract with LNG, which it claims added up to $24 million in contracts.
Karla Tait, an Unist’ot’en house group member, said in a statement that the two people named in the application were not hereditary chiefs and that the injunction ignored the group’s jurisdiction over the land, on which it operates a holistic healing lodge.
“The fact that this company can make a civil suit thinking that Freda Huson and Warner Naziel are the only ones standing in the way of their project is utterly ignorant and out of touch with all that we stand for as Unist’ot’en and as Indigenous people,” she said in the statement.
StarMetro Vancouver
[SOURCE] | {
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The company is seeking to remove six activists from the Polar Pioneer oil drilling rig, which is travelling to the Chukchi Sea.
MOSCOW, April 8 (Sputnik) — Lawyers for the Dutch oil giant Shell have filed a lawsuit with a US federal court against Greenpeace after its activists illegally boarded an Arctic drilling rig, media reports said Wednesday.
"Greenpeace has a demonstrated pattern of conducting direct actions against Arctic oil and gas operations that violate the rights of others and create dangerous situations for their targets, law enforcement, and their own members," the lawsuit asserts, as quoted by CBC.
The company is seeking to remove the six activists from the Polar Pioneer oil drilling rig, which is travelling to the Chukchi Sea, off the Alaskan coast, aboard a heavy-lift ship called the Blue Marlin.
According to the complaint, Greenpeace's ship Esperanza has been stalking the oil platform. The vessel is now trailing the rig at a safe distance after depositing the protesters.
Shell has been absent from the Chukchi Sea for three years after its oil rig ran aground there in 2012. Last week, the US Interior Department reapproved Shell's 2008 lease, prompting a relocation of its drilling equipment to the region.
Shell will be drilling in dangerous proximity to Wrangel Island reserve off the Russian Far East coast. The United Nations has classified it as a World Heritage Site due to the island's exceptional biodiversity. | {
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German spy agency the BND, said that Saudi Arabia was becoming more “impulsive” in its foreign policy, a claim rebuffed on Thursday by the German government.
The agency was in particular critical of Saudi’s defense minister, Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud.
A government spokesman said "The published assessment does not reflect the position of the German government.” The spokesman added a reaffirmation of Germany’s position that sees Saudi Arabia as an essential partner "in a crisis-ridden world," adding that the relationship is important "especially on the way to peace in Syria.”
He made it clear that Germany holds the Saudis in esteem, but from a more practical perspective, as a regional solution and effective fight against the ISIS is precedented on Saudi cooperation, according to the spokesman.
The BND briefing that caused the stir was first published in German media. It alleges that changes in Saudi foreign policy have been exaggerated since King Salman came to power in January, and was particularly critical of Saudi’s increasing military intervention in Yemen. Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of nine Arab states carrying out airstrikes and a naval blockade on Yemen since March 2015 to influence the outcome of the country’s civil war.
Since the Saudi-led coalition began its airstrike campaign, 78% or 20 million Yemenis have been under attack, in desperate need of food, water and medical aid. The situation has been called a “humanitarian disaster” by human rights groups.
The BND further mentioned Saudi Arabia’s decision to back Syrian rebels and Saudi policies in Bahrain, Lebanon and Iraq.
The briefing warned against the new leadership in Saudi Arabia saying "What was previously a cautious diplomatic stance of the elder leaders in the royal family is being replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention," further claiming that the Saudis were losing faith in the US’ ability to support their same sides of power.
As recently as July, the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, speaking with Al Arabiya News praised among other things, the Saudi role in aiming for stability in the region and fighting against Iran’s proxy fighters like Lebanon’s Hizbollah.
“Germany and Saudi Arabia have been partners for many years. We know each other well and trust each other. We both hold a leading position in our respective regions. We are both members of the G20. Our governments are firmly committed to working closely together, be it on crisis management in the Middle East or on topics such as energy and climate protection. There is mutual respect between our two governments,” the Foreign Minister said. | {
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You will learn when you start to do pick-up and seduction that “good girl” and “nice girl” are not the same thing.
Good girls will test you and they will do it tough. Remember anyway that there is one main thing good girls test for primarily: safety.
Realize that all the women you will meet in the course of your pick-up will try to have you become subservient to them.
This is deep in our culture and it is also hardwired in woman’s biology.
Thousands of years of evolution are at work.
Good girls will test you early on and try to have you become subservient to them just like any other kind of woman.
It is absolutely not true basing on my field experience that all the women will respond with sexual submission to men who do not supplicate.
Instead there are two groups with different behavioral response in regard to supplication.
The best women you will meet in the course of your pick-ups will actively try to have you supplicate in a way or another and will be extremely aroused sexually and attracted to you if you don’t.
They will test you hard for that, believe me, early on!
These are the best women and you want to go for them!
On the contrary the women who are trouble will do all what they can to have you supplicate and will become even more resistant to your pick-up and seduction if you don’t.
They will have a reaction to your response not easily recognized in the pick-up and seduction community: they will dump you if you don’t supplicate!
In this group there are the women to absolutely avoid!
For a good girl to be really such she has to be able to live with the fact that a man will not give up his pride, masculinity and sense of honor for a woman.
The women in this “try hard” group in regard to supplication are usually:
Women in provider-seeking mode who are not able to accept male leadership. You want to be the one to decide are you going to be a provider to a woman or not.
You don’t want to start so that she chooses you for that role by having you supplicate. Drop these ones early on! They mean trouble.
Women who are unable to have a healthy relationship with a man – for example man haters or women with psychological issues.
Women with an agenda. They want you to supplicate to get some advantage out of you.
These ones will try to have you supplicate and will become resistant to your seduction if you don’t because they are either scared of the feminine side in their personality or have an agenda.
The agenda could be at the simplest: getting married with you!
They try to have you supplicate with the purpose of controlling themselves. They can control their own horniness if the guy supplicates to them.
On the contrary the women of the first group – the one you want to choose for a relationship – want to feel the joy connected with their own horniness and the joy of being under a strong male’s leadership.
These are the women you want to screen in and seduce! The good girls this about is about!
During the process of pick-up it is important to quickly distinguish between these two groups. If you invest too much time in the women of the second group you basically get in trouble, get a lot of negative feelings and waste your own time.
To avoid subservient behavior and screen out the “bad girls” you need to do a few things:
Ask from yourself at any step when she does a move is she trying to have you supplicate.
If the answer is yes then you need to ask from yourself the following question: if I do not supplicate is her reaction an increased horniness and emotional submissiveness?
Of course to ask from you this question you need to be good enough to not supplicate.
If you answer is that she is not reacting with increased horniness and emotional submissiveness to your non subservient behavior then you have to consider these options:
1. Your game was not good enough. In this case learn from the experience.
2. She is trying to control herself for a reason.
In the case you feel she is trying to control herself for a reason (usually too much fear or an agenda) simply eject the girl.
She is not a good girl by definition!
She either has psychological problems or is trying to put you into the subservient frame for a reason.
If you are interested in getting to know better bad girls just go for it. If your goal is to find good girls at this stage you can already drop her.
At this stage you already know that she is not a good girl: she is controlling herself for a reason!
The reason is either big psychological problems or she has an agenda.
We will continue this conversation in the next article so stay tuned! | {
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My secret Santa did amazing with providing myself, my wife and our bunny with gifts! Little Dusty BunnBunn received lots of treats and things to chew on! It was so adorable for them to think about him like that! As for my wife and I, we received a $100 gift card to a local restaurant that we love going to for our anniversary and any other special occasions. Appealing to the military shenanigans, they gave us What Do You Meme card game/ party game for adults! They also gave us (myself more over) a $100 Sony PlayStation gift card! Thank you so much for the amazing gifts guys! Happy Holidays! | {
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“Flipping” an asset loosely means buying and swiftly reselling it to make a quick profit. You can flip stocks, trading them within 24 hours. If you want to flip houses, you can buy them, fix them up, put them back on the market, and—if you’re lucky—get your own hit HGTV show
In the art world, however, flipping is a dirty word. “It’s disgusting,” said art adviser Lisa Schiff, noting how speculative buying practices can harm young artists’ careers. Speaking more subtly, Dr. Elizabeth Pergam, who teaches at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, noted that rapid run-ups in auction prices lead to a widely-held idea that flipping is “not healthy for the market.” Regardless of the data, art flipping carries a significant stigma in an industry that runs on relationships and reputations.
Who flipping really hurts
Most artworks, unlike stocks and houses, are made by working artists who rely on sales to support their creative practices. Artists often work with gallerists, who sell their artworks to institutions and collectors and give them a large portion of the proceeds. Such private exchanges are considered primary market sales.
Once a collector decides to put an artwork up for auction, it enters the secondary market. Artists don’t benefit from any of these sales, except in the few jurisdictions with resale royalty laws ; most of the money goes to the consignors and auction houses. Heather Bhandari, an independent curator and educator who previously worked as a director at the Chelsea gallery Mixed Greens (which closed in 2015), believes that the art world frowns upon flipping in part “because the buyer rarely does anything to help increase the value of the work—they profit from artists’ continued hard work without paying anything to the artists.”
Christina Quarles Kerry James Marshall Gerhard Richter For Pergam, buying and selling a single work of art within 5 to 10 years is a rapid turnover, and constitutes flipping. Schiff prefers a you-know-it-when-you-see-it definition. “It’s always obvious,” she said. It happens when “this artist is too young to be at auction.” From Schiff’s perspective, a painting by, who’s in her mid-thirties, doesn’t have any place sharing an auction catalog with canvases byor. The latter artists are far more established, with roughly 30 and 50 additional years of artmaking to their names. They’ve had adequate time to develop their work, without facing the pressures of the art market.
Jeff Koons Takashi Murakami Jean-Michel Basquiat No one’s too concerned about flipping if the artist is well-established or dead—nobody is bothered on behalf of, or. But if an artist is just gaining traction in the art world, flipping can lead to spiking prices and ultimately destroy a career.
Lucien Smith Anselm Reyle Christian Rosa The trajectories of artists including, andillustrate the dangers of flipping. Smith’s work began appearing at auction in 2013, when he was in his early 20s. Artnet’s price database lists 116 results since then. Smith’s first canvas to go to auction, Hobbes, The Rain Man, and My Friend Barney / Under the Sycamore Tree (2011), sold for $389,000—well over twice its high estimate of $150,000. In recent years, however, Smith’s works have increasingly been “bought in” (not sold) or gone for prices in the $5,000–$20,000 range.
In a 2015 article for Bloomberg , James Tarmy tracked a similar downfall for Reyle’s market. In 2007, before the artist turned 40, a work of his fetched $634,000 despite its high estimate of $51,000. “In one year, Reyle’s record at auction had increased by more than 1,000 percent,” Tarmy wrote. After the financial crisis hit in 2008, however, Reyle’s market toppled. That year, a third of his work, according to Tarmy, sold below its estimate or not at all. “The bottom line: A work by the once-hot artist Anselm Reyle sold last year for about $66,000, $30,000 less than it fetched four years ago,” Tarmy concluded. Unable to sustain his studio costs, Reyle had to temporarily retire from painting.
What are flipping’s macro repercussions?
While most agree that flipping hurts young artists, it’s less clear how the practice impacts the market as a whole. Doomsayers assert that today’s flipping is a new, ramped-up phenomenon—indicative of a vulgar, fad-obsessed class of collectors—which is bad news for the art market as a whole. Yet in an article for the New York Times, Lorne Manley and Robin Pogrebin found that the pace for turning over art in 2013 “was only slightly faster than it was in the mid-1990s, signaling that the reselling may be just the latest iteration of a historical cycle, not a lasting change.”
New ways of tracking who’s hot and who’s not, however, are making flipping a more in-your-face phenomenon. ArtRank , which started as an art fund’s algorithm back in 2012, ranks artists by their investment potentials. Categories include “Buy Under $10,000,” “Buy Under $30,000,” “Sell/Peaking,” and “Undervalued Blue Chip.” Not a single image of an artwork adorns the site’s welcome page, suggesting that aesthetics, creativity, ingenuity, and self-expression—values that draw many people to art in the first place—have been totally superseded by quantitative concerns.
A cure for flipping?
Flipping isn’t good for galleries, which play a key role in nurturing artists’ careers. While they can put clauses in contracts, restricting collectors’ terms of resale, Pergam noted that “lawyers say those clauses are unenforceable.” Yet “if you buy art from respected galleries and they know you’ve sold it within 5, 10 years, they’re not going to sell you another one.” Auctions place no such restrictions on buyers. If you’re the highest bidder, you win the work—no matter your art world reputation.
Peter Doig It’s not just young, greedy collectors, new to the market, who flip, either. According to the New York Times article, artistaccused Charles Saatchi of flipping. Collector Stefan Simchowitz has even advocated the practice. Both men have amassed extremely influential collections. Galleries aren’t going to stop selling to them over infractions that make up a small piece of their larger portfolios.
Schiff asserted that art advisers must be vigilant, too. She said speculative buyers—“fake people”—try to hire her and her peers “as beards for bad behavior.” The art world itself weeds out art advisers whose clients speculate: If her clients flipped, Schiff noted, “I wouldn’t have any clients or be an adviser. I would get cut off from every gallery.”
Schiff added that she “loves the art world and artists” and has “no desire to destroy careers.” A client’s profit in the short term could diminish her livelihood, an artist’s, and that of the gallerist who sold the client the flipped work. According to artnet News , to guard against the practice David Zwirner has imposed financial penalties on salespeople who sell work that ends up on the auction block too quickly.
Both Schiff and Bhandari believe the onus is on auction houses to curb flipping. Schiff doesn’t think auctions should be sourcing and selling art by artists who haven’t reached a certain stage in their careers. Bhandari, on the other hand, advocates resale royalties.
“Regardless of when the secondary market sale happens, artists should share in the profit,” she said. “It is a way to bring more equity to the market. In other creative industries, royalties are a necessary income stream.” In the music industry, if someone wants to use your song for an advertisement, you often make money. Scholar Amy Whitaker believes that using blockchain to track an artwork could be a viable solution.
For her part, Pergam thinks the media and celebrity culture have helped feed the booming interest in contemporary art, which has led to flipping. “A lot can be attributed to the success of Art Basel in Miami [Beach] and that culture that’s sort of about glitziness,” she said. If rappers and movie stars are snapping up major works and going to art parties, perhaps bad actors will be encouraged to get in on the art-buying action—and turn a quick profit to further their exploits. That genie, however, doesn’t seem to be going back in the bottle anytime soon. | {
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Rock out to the softcover edition of 'Votes for Women: The Battle for the 19th Amendment' as well as the digital edition.
Free shipping to the U.S.!
Includes:
Print edition
E-book
Your name in the book
Less | {
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*Spoilers for Mass Effect and Dragon Age ahead! You've been warned!*
Recently on Reddit I saw a few posts regarding Dragon Age: Inquisition. While the majority of people were praising the game, the ending came under particular scrutiny, with one user saying "Dear Bioware, when designing endgame sequences, ask yourself: 'is this enough like Mass Effect 2's endgame? The answer is always No". While I certainly got a chuckle out of it, it makes a good point on the state of player choice.
BioWare got it right with Mass Effect 2. Depending if you're a Hammerhead or Mako fan or whether you preferred the heavier RPG elements of the original you might have some issues with the gameplay but in my opinion the story was nearly perfect. It was simple but compelling, well paced but allowed for freedom and most importantly, every choice you made had impact, particularly during the Suicide Mission ending. If you didn't make sure your companions were loyal, they would die; if you didn't make sure your ship was ready, people would die; if you delayed when you were clearly told time was of the essence, people would die.
It was perfect because every consequence was avoidable by player choice and nearly every choice had direct impact on the way the story ended. If you made terrible choices you could kill your entire team and die yourself; kind of a bummer sure, but it meant your decisions mattered. Nobody was going to Deus Ex Machina you out of the Collector Base. This is also why people had a problem with the Mass Effect 3 ending; because the choices you made, the alliances forged had little or no effect on the ending at all. Choice was seen as an illusion in that game when the potential result was limited to different coloured explosions.
In my opinion, Inquisition suffers from the same issue. Now let me be clear, I love Inquisition. I am currently in the 60th hour of my second playthrough and I'm planning a 3rd; I have a stack of games I haven't played yet because I've been swallowed whole by this game. The only issue I have (besides illusive schematics, I mean seriously where is the Tier 3 Rogue stuff!?) is the final encounter.
I spent 90 hours building my Inquisition, I recruited the Mages, redeemed the Grey Wardens, saved the Empress of Orlais and did countless war table missions and side quests to bolster my forces and it had exactly zero effect on my final confrontation. I fought Corypheus with my regular party and beat him and everything was fine forever. Yes, I know my forces were far away and could not march back fast enough but I think we all saw this for what it was; a cheap cop out to avoid having to include them in the final battle. That could have been fine, but nothing factored into the final battle. You only bring 3 of the 9 companions you spent 90 hours getting to know, the other 6 deciding you can probably handle it until the aftermath. Yes it's a 3 companion party system, but what were the other 6 doing, just chilling at Skyhold playing Wicked Grace?
I missed a few companion quests by chance in my first playthrough, nothing happened as a result. No other Inquisition soldiers appear; what, we didn't leave a few guards back at Skyhold to mind the gate? Not even Cullen or Leliana pick up a sword, despite them both being well-established as extremely capable fighters. Its this dissonance between the story I created and the ending I experienced which has made me look back at my favorite game of the year with such a critical eye.
Feels a bit lonely up here...
Oddly, the Adamant siege in the games second act conveys the weight of the Inquisition handily. Maybe the story team got their cutscenes mixed up but it certainly feels strange to have the epic scale confrontation come at the 40 hour mark of a 100 hour experience.
I want to reiterate that I love this game, I was just disappointed in how little my choices, my game impacted the conclusion. BioWare is the "Player Choice" company, their RPGs are based around the idea of the player authoring their own story where every decision is supposed to have weight. When Mass Effect 3 was pitched as having dramatically different endings, gamers were so incensed they approached the Better Business Bureau with claims of false advertising. It seems BioWare recognized the issue this time because Inquisition came with its Extended Cut DLC built in, a slideshow with a voiceover to address results of your actions; which I would bet is BioWare's effort to avoid another Mass Effect 3 debacle. Seeing similar issues appear not 3 years later from the same company nonetheless makes me worry the industry isn't learning from its mistakes.
The reason I don't feel bad or whiney or entitled for asking for more from BioWare is because I know they're capable of it. They had choice, stakes and consequence down pat in 2010, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to cut a Hinterlands quest or two to spend a little while longer on the ending. So for Mass Effect 4 or the next Dragon Age I'd just say one thing; "Is it enough like Mass Effect 2?" | {
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A study by Italian academics has tracked references to the militant group Isis in Arabic language social media posts and news articles from July to October. The analysis attempts to differentiate between positive and negative mentions of the group | {
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Brampton is set to receive more than $11 million in funding from the Ontario government to help fuel transit system expansion.
In an announcement on Tuesday (Dec. 19) at the city’s transit facility on Sandalwood Parkway, Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca announced the provincial funding breakdown. He was joined by mayor of Brampton Linda Jeffery and Harinder Malhi, the MPP for Brampton-Springdale.
The funding is up from the $10 million Brampton received for the 2016-2017 year.
Brampton is among 105 municipal transit systems servicing 142 communities the Ontario government is supporting across the province with the Gas Tax Fund. First started in 2004, the fund has been working toward providing $3.7 billion to municipalities in Ontario to finance various transit projects that will ease congestion and lower air pollution. This year a total of $357 million was given in funding in Ontario. This is expected to grow to $642 million by 2021-2022.
“Brampton Transit is growing quickly and we have experienced extremely high ridership growth,” said Jeffery in a media release. Jeffery went onto say that an increase in demand in the city has made this investment into the transit system a necessity.
Brampton’s rapidly growing population has been a part of the demand increase Jeffrey spoke of.
In Canada’s latest census, it was revealed that Brampton’s population grew 13.3 per cent to 593,638 in 2016 from the 2011 census results that recorded the population at 523,906.
In previous years, Brampton used the funding to purchase new buses, improve service on existing lines and help fund the Brampton Rapid Transit service on Steeles Avenue.
The new funding will be focused on improving the existing transit system in Brampton after a council vote in 2015 shot down plans to extend the proposed Hurontario LRT through city’s downtown area. This time around, the funding could mean more new buses, longer hours of service and more routes in Brampton.
Mississauga will also be receiving funding for public transit in the amount of $18 million, which is up from the $16 million that was released for the 2016-2017 year. | {
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A TEENAGER'S penis was "degloved" and his scrotum inverted after a horror bike crash.
The 14-year-old had been cycling along a pavement one-handed while holding a drink when he smashed into a parked car and his handlebars impaled his groin.
1 A 14-year-old boy suffered a horror groin injury after cycling along one-handed Credit: Getty - Contributor
He was taken to A&E at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, in a pelvic binder and the wound packed, according to an article published in BMJ Case Reports.
When he arrived, doctors found the handlebars had sliced through his pubic area leaving a 14cm-long wound across and a 10cm cut down into his perineum.
This had inverted his left scrotum and partially degloved the penis - meaning the skin and tissue is ripped away, exposing muscle or bone.
He was put under general anaesthetic so the wound could be washed out and the damaged tissue removed.
Post-op
They noted that some of the deeper layers of tissue that protect the penis and testicles had been exposed but were able to close the wound up after inspecting the area for foreign bodies and neurovascular damage.
At his post-operation follow up four weeks later, doctors said the boy had no significant vascular damage and normal sensation.
They were unable to say what impact the injury would have on his sexual function in the future.
He was discharged the next day with a course of antibiotics and support dressings.
Unusual case
Dr Hannah Thompson, professor of Paediatric Surgery, University of Oxford and John Radcliffe Hospital, said: "This case is unusual in both mechanism and resulting injury.
"Handlebar injuries causing blunt abdominal trauma are well described in the literature, however, reports of impalement or degloving injuries are spars.
This unusual case demonstrates the potential damage resulting from handlebar injuries even at low velocity Dr Hannah Thompson
"Most bicycle-associated injuries are skin abrasions, however, extensive morbidity has been described in association with bicycle injuries, especially handlebar injuries, due to the low surface area of the bare metal end of the handlebar."
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Dr Thompson continued: "It is important to note that impalement, as well as severe blunt intra-abdominal injuries may occur due to the small surface area at the edges of handlebars acting in a spear-like fashion.
"A prospective study of 813 bicycle-related injuries in children found 21 handlebar injuries, 10 of whom had life-threatening intra-abdominal trauma. In all 10, the bicycle handlebars had no plastic covering on the end of the handle."
She added: "This unusual case demonstrates the potential forces involved, and potential damage resulting from handlebar injuries even at low velocity." | {
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Childhood is the most important stage in human development, since exactly during this period the foundation for a healthy, successful and happy life is laid. Supporting child development is the strategic goal of society.
There are 5,623,387 children in Kazakhstan aged from 0 to 17 years, which is about 31% of the population. Since 2008, when the country switched to international criteria for live birth, Kazakhstan has made significant progress in reducing infant mortality. Neonatal mortality rates have been reduced by more than 50%.
However, despite a significant decline, infant mortality in Kazakhstan is still relevant. In the regions, programs for perinatal and neonatal care and care for sick newborns are not working effectively. UNICEF provides technical assistance to improve the skills and qualifications of health workers to support early childhood development. | {
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This article features the history of the placement of the milestones along the long road from Calcutta to Benares in the late 1820s. It inquires into the practices of measurement in early colonial India and attempts to understand how the numbers were produced as fixed and final entities of measurement practices. It exposes the confusion, recalcitrance, guesswork and reckoning behind the emergence of this numerate culture. The confusion over distance measurement was often attributed to the inauthenticity or absence of instruments, to the variation of routes followed by the surveyors. But in spite of all practical difficulties, the administration demanded precise distance charts to fix the payments of the postal runners. The officers had no options but to choose from a multiple number of distance charts and finalise the numbers inscribed on the milestones. This was the way “scientific” measurements were done and “exact” numbers were produced.
Subscribers please login to access full text of the article. New 3 Month Subscription to Digital Archives at ₹826for India $50for overseas users Get instant access to the complete EPW archives Subscribe now | {
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Only Eight People Have 50% Of The World’s Wealth, But I Might Be One Of Those Eight Someday So I Don’t Think We Should Do Anything About It
Wealth distribution across the world is highly unequal and the fact that only eight people hold on to 50% of the world’s money is shocking. Your knee-jerk reaction may be that we have to do something to balance the scales, but then again, one day I might be one of those eight people so let’s just leave things as they are, shall we?
Sure the odds are 8 in about 7.6 billion but you never know! Genetics, upbringing, socioeconomic status, and location all make it so you barely even have a chance to be even in the top 10% of wealthiest people.
But then again, what if one of them is me?
How about you walk a mile in my hypothetical Tramezza Leather Medallion-Toe Oxfords? I don’t think you want the government to take away your ability to own five houses or a Ferrari Segway, do you? Especially when I’m potentially days away from a billion dollar idea or winning the lottery even though I don’t buy tickets.
Do you want to have to pay taxes to support people who are as poor as me at this moment? Well, I certainly don’t. You can say I’m voting against my own interests but I’m only interested in the vast wealth I plan to accumulate through… whatever, I dunno how yet but it’s on my vision board so, yeah.
I may never use the acreage on the moon I will most certainly buy but I’ll be damned if the government tries to take away my money so I can’t afford it. And I know I don’t need a crystal iPhone dock or a Faberge Egg collection, but if the poor want to expense eggs then they should try to be more like me.
So call me a bootlicker if you must, because someday the boots I’ll be licking will be my very own Tramezza Leather Medallion-Toe Oxfords. You’re probably wondering why I wouldn’t hire my own personal bootlicker, but that would be a ridiculously frivolous and I don’t want to be greedy or anything. | {
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Riyadh, Saudi Arabia -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that President Donald Trump's threat to devastate NATO ally Turkey's economy if it attacks U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria underscores America's commitment to its partners.
Pompeo said he had yet to speak with Turkish officials or Mr. Trump about the president's Sunday afternoon threat, and that he assumed the president was referring to the imposition of sanctions should Turkey take military action against the Kurds in Syria, vital U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS.
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the U.S. would "attack again from existing nearby base if it (ISIS) reforms. Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds."
Starting the long overdue pullout from Syria while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions. Will attack again from existing nearby base if it reforms. Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds. Create 20 mile safe zone.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2019
Mr. Trump's decision to leave Syria, which he initially said would be rapid but later slowed down, shocked U.S. allies and angered the Syrian Kurds. A U.S. official told CBS News last week it was expected to take between 90 and 120 days.
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Pompeo said the U.S. message on the Kurds had been straightforward and unchanged since Mr. Trump made the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria last month.
"The administration has been very consistent with respect to our requirement that the Turks not go after the Kurds in ways that are inappropriate," Pompeo said. "If they are terrorists, we're all about taking down extremists wherever we find them. I think the president's comments this morning are consistent with that."
On Sunday, CBS News "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan asked Pompeo directly whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed not to attack America's allies in Syria.
"Yeah, look when President Erdogan and President Trump spoke, they talked about this issue. The Turks have made clear that they understand that there are folks down in Syria that have their rights," Pompeo told Brennan. "We also want to make sure that those in Syria aren't attacking -- terrorists aren't attacking Turkey from Syria. We're fully engaged. Ambassador Jeffrey is fully engaged in conversations with the Turks as well as with the SDF (Kurdish-led fighters) in Syria to make sure that we accomplish all of those missions. We can -- we can do each of those things."
Asked specifically about what Mr. Trump meant by devastating Turkey's economy if the country does attack the Kurds, Pompeo said Monday: "We apply sanctions in many places around the world. I assume he's speaking about those kinds of things but you would have to ask him."
Turkey lashes out over tweeted threat
Mr. Trump's tweet drew a sharp response from Ankara and the Turkish lira lost some 0.84 percent of its value against the dollar on Monday following the U.S. president's threat.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman responded to Mr. Trump on Twitter by saying that Turkey "fights against terrorists, not Kurds" as a people. "Terrorists can't be your partners & allies," the spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, said.
He said in Ankara's view there is "no difference" between the Kurdish YPG militia, which has led the U.S.-backed opposition Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and ISIS, and that Turkey would "continue to fight against them all."
Mr @realDonaldTrump Terrorists can’t be your partners & allies. Turkey expects the US to honor our strategic partnership and doesn’t want it to be shadowed by terrorist propaganda.
There is no difference between DAESH, PKK, PYD and YPG. We will continue to fight against them all. https://t.co/Yyzgyp9RQ4 — Ibrahim Kalin (@ikalin1) January 13, 2019
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also rebuked Mr. Trump, saying that strategic partners do not speak to each other through social media and stressing that Turkey is "not afraid of any threat. You cannot achieve anything with economic threats."
"We would do whatever is necessary to eliminate threat to our security," Cavusoglu added.
Mutual interest in Syria buffer zone
Pompeo said Mr. Trump's call for a 20-mile safe zone between Turkish forces and the Kurds was consistent with what the U.S. is trying to achieve in talks with the Turks. But, he said it remained a work in progress.
"We want to make sure that the folks who fought with us to take down the caliphate and ISIS have security and also that terrorists ... (in) Syria aren't able to attack Turkey, those are our twin aims," he told reporters in Riyadh after talks with Saudi officials.
"If we can get a space, call it a buffer zone ... if we can get the space and the security arrangements right, this will be a good thing for everyone in the region," Pompeo added.
For his part, Cavusoglu welcomed Mr. Trump's proposal for a 20-mile safe zone, saying Turkey had long advocated such a zone in northern Syria.
"They bandied this idea after they saw Turkey's determination," Cavusoglu said during a news conference. "We are not against it." | {
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Description:
Jemma looks hot in her tight fitting pants and heels. But she just wants to get comfortable, so she slowly strips out of her clothes and then then pulls on her hairy pussy now that she's comfortable! | {
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Some people think that rock climbing walls are fun, but to me it sounds as mundane as a game of golf. In one, you hit a ball, go find the ball and hit it again. In the other, you just… climb. It doesn’t sound like a great time to me. But these Star Wars rock climbing accessories might help make it more fun.
They come from UK-based Hang Fast Adventure Structures. Instead of grasping onto a rock shaped thing, you can now hoist yourself up using the Death Star or R2-D2’s head. If I had a whole wall of Droid heads and Death Stars, I might actually want to climb it.
They also have some triangular pieces, one of which has the Millenium Falcon on it, but it doesn’t look so hot in that shape. A Star Destroyer would have been better. If you are a rock climber who is also a Star Wars nerd, you might want to check them out here.
[via Geeks Are Sexy] | {
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Hei, denne artikkelen er over ett år gammel og kan inneholde utdatert informasjon
Rune Grahn (66), rektor ved Skedsmo VGS gikk av på dagen 8. april, bare et halvt år før han skulle pensjonere seg. Grunnen var knallhard kritikk fra Fylkesrevisjonen, som har gransket Skedsmo-skolens samarbeids-prosjekt i Russland, Moskva-skolen.
Moskva-skolen er finansiert over statsbudsjettet med 1,3 millioner kroner. I tillegg har Skedsmo VGS, som har vært ansvarlige for regnskapene, bidratt med 850.000 kroner fra sitt budsjett. Penger som egentlig skulle kommet Skedsmo-elevene til gode.
Fylkesrevisjonen mener at den russiske rektoren Evgeny Karpov har brukt store deler av disse midlene til å berike seg selv.
Det er sendt millionbeløp til skolen i Russland over flere år, uten at Skedsmo VGS har fått noen god dokumentasjon på hva pengene har gått til. Den dokumentasjonen som er framskaffet, viser at det er brukt store summer på alkohol, hotellovernattinger, restaurantbesøk, flybilletter og bensin.
Tidligere rektor ved Skedsmo VGS, Rune Grahn ønsker ikke å kommentere saken.
Også den russiske rektoren har trukket seg fra sin stilling.
- Full gjennomgang Fylkesrådmann Tron Bamrud mener at hele Moskvaskolen bør avvikles, og varsler nå en full gjennomgang av alle utenlandsprosjekter tilknyttet de videregående skolene i distriktet.
- Min vurdering er at Moskvaskolen bør avvikles. I lys av Moskva-saken må vi nok se på alle utenlandsprosjektene, sier fylkesrådmann Tron Bamrud til Dagbladet.
Akershus og Østfold fylkeskommunes rapport om Moskva-skolens prosjekt var ferdig 15. april. Den konkluderer med at rektor ved Skedsmo videregåendes utøvelse av myndighet tilknyttet Moskvaskolen «kan tendere til grov tjenesteforsømmelse».
Vodka og parfyme Blant funnene i rapporten er:
• Den russiske rektoren har selv fastsatt lønn for sine ansatte. Den best betalte læreren er hans egen kone, som for sin deltidsstilling fikk opp til tre ganger så godt betalt som andre fulltidsansatte.
• Bilag for 2010 viser at det er brukt penger på betydelige mengder matvarer, vin, vodka, øl, restaurantbesøk, hotellovernattinger, bensin, støvsuger, drill, DVDer etc.
Revisjonen kritiserte pengerbruken i 2011, men den russiske rektorens pengefest vedvarte:
• Da da de sjekket igjen i 2012, fant de at de norske offentlige midlene var brukt til blant annet flybilletter og hotellopphold for rektor og hans familie, restaurant og caferegninger med alkohol i stort omfang, bensin, sigaretter, sjokolade og teaterbilletter.
I tillegg, skriver fylkesrevisjonen, ble det brukt penger på hundeutstyr, kjole, champagne, parfyme og konfekt.
Det rettes også kritikk mot fylkesrådmannen, fylkesdirektøren og assisterende fylkesdirektør for at pengerotet i Moskva har fått pågå så lenge. Sistnevnte har vært på besøk på moskvaskolen flere ganger.
Vurderer politianmeldelse Mandag var saken oppe i kontrollutvalget.
Der foreslo leder av kontrollutvalget, Siri Baastad at fylkesrådmannen foretar en gjennomgang av Moskvaskolen helt fra oppstarten i 1994.
Kontrollutvalget har bedt fylkesrådmannen «gjennomføre de personalmessige konsekevensene som vil være en naturlig følge av de avdekkede uregelmessighetene og rapportens konlusjoner».
De ber også fylkesrådmannen vurdere om det er grunnlag for å politianmelde enkeltpersoner eller saken som helhet.
Saken legges frem for fylkestinget 6. mai.
Pengekurérer Den russiske rektoren, Evegny Karpov satt som rektor fra 1995 til han gikk av nylig.
Fylkesrevisjonens gjennomgang begrenser seg kun til de siste tre årene.
Men faren for mislighold strekker seg langt tilbake: Fylkesrevisjonen beskriver at metoden for å overføre penger til Moskvaskolen i en årrekke var å la pengekurerer fra Norge ta med seg store mengder kontanter, som rektoren la i sin personlige safe på skolen.
Kurerene skal typisk ha hatt med seg 20-40000 euro i kontanter på sine reiser til Moskvaskolen, heter det i rapporten.
Da skolen etter påtrykk fra fylkeskommunen begynte å sende penger via bank i 2011, svarte den russiske rektoren med å ta ut store menger kontanter etter hver overføring. Disse skal han ha oppbevart i en safe på skolen, som bare han har hatt tilgang til. | {
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(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
On Thursday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will release its report on “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration.” According to the report, first generation immigrants as a group increase the nation’s fiscal deficit. In other words, the government benefits they receive exceed the taxes paid.
The National Academies’ report provides 75-year fiscal projections for new immigrants and their descendants. The fiscal impact varies greatly according to the education level of the immigrant. Low-skill immigrants are shown to impose substantial fiscal costs that extend far into the future. The future government benefits they will receive greatly exceed the taxes they will pay.
On average, a nonelderly adult immigrant without a high school diploma entering the U.S. will create a net fiscal cost (benefits received will exceed taxes paid) in both the current generation and second generation. The average net present value of the fiscal cost of such an immigrant is estimated at $231,000, a cost that must be paid by U.S. taxpayers.
The concept of “net present value” is complex: it places a much lower value on future expenditures than on current expenditures.
One way to grasp net present value is that it represents the total amount of money that government would have to raise today and put in a bank account earning interest at 3 percent above the inflation rate in order to cover future costs.
Thus, as each adult immigrant without a high school diploma enters the country, the government would need to immediately put aside and invest $231,000 to cover the future net fiscal cost (total benefits minus total taxes) of that immigrant.
Converting a net present value figure into future outlays requires information on the exact distribution of costs over time. That data is not provided by the National Academies.
However, a rough estimate of the future net outlays to be paid by taxpayers (in constant 2012 dollars) for immigrants without a high school diploma appears to be around $640,000 per immigrant over 75 years. The average fiscal loss is around $7,551 per year (in constant 2012 dollars).
Slightly more than 4 million adult immigrants without a high school diploma have entered the U.S. since 2000 and continue to reside here. According to the estimates in the National Academies report, the net present value of the future fiscal costs of those immigrants is $920 billion.
This means government would have to immediately raise taxes by $920 billion and put that sum into a bank account earning 3 percent plus inflation per year to cover the future fiscal losses that will be generated by those immigrants.
To cover the future cost, each taxpaying U.S. household, on average, would have to pay an immediate lump sum of over $10,000. Costs would go up in the future as more than 200,000 additional adult immigrants without a high school diploma arrive in the country each year.
Again, converting a net present value figure into future outlays requires information on the exact timing of future costs that are not provided by the National Academies. However, a rough estimate of the future net outlays (benefits minus taxes) for the 4 million adult immigrants without a high school degree who have entered the U.S. since 2000 is perhaps $2.6 trillion.
One might argue that these estimates are exaggerated because many immigrants may return to their country of origin. But the report estimates already have a re-emigration rate of 31 percent built in.
A surge of low-skill immigrant workers may push down wages and thereby reduce consumer costs. But the National Academies report indicates such consumer gains would be modest, and if the wages of less-educated immigrants are driven down, the wages of less-educated U.S. workers will fall as well. Any consumer gains would come at the cost of wage losses for the most vulnerable American workers.
One might also argue that is it misleading to assign the costs of government “public goods” such as defense and interest of the national debt to recent immigrants. But the National Academies estimates exclude such public goods costs.
Advocates of ongoing, massive low-skill immigration have suggested that low-skill immigrants generate large-scale economic externalities that benefit U.S. workers. The National Academies report finds minimal evidence of such effects.
The continuing inflow of low-skill immigrants into the U.S. creates large fiscal burdens for U.S. taxpayers in both the present and the future.
Robert Rector, a leading authority on poverty, welfare programs and immigration in America for three decades, is The Heritage Foundation’s senior research fellow in domestic policy.
Jamie Bryan Hall is a senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. His research focuses on immigration and other issues in support of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity. | {
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The Metropolitan Branch Trail in Washington D.C. (Photo credit to Mixed Ginger)
Several businesses, nonprofits, and universities came together in 2017 to collaborate on a trail project that will greatly improve access in the downtown St. Louis area. The exact path of the Chouteau Greenway trail(s) has yet to be officially declared. It is likely to go from Forest Park, through the heart of the city, all the way to the Arch. This project is going to greatly improve access, sustainability, and health while fostering a greater sense of pride and community. While the metro is a green solution for some parts of the city, it is only one tool in St. Louis’ fairly empty tool box. With this trail all walks of life can actively commute to work and play areas.
The downtown area has begun to improve over the years and become more of a destination, but the issue with it is just that, it is a destination for the suburbs. With the trail there will be a greater incentive for people to migrate back into the city, because being able to walk, run, skate, or bike to work not only is green, healthy, and quick but it is also trendy.
Great Rivers Greenway is the nonprofit that is spear heading this effort, in addition to putting a number of other trails throughout the city, and has currently narrowed down the 124 proposals down to a final 4. Throughout the whole process Great Rivers Greenway and its partners have put effort into hearing community voices. You can be more a part of the community by getting involved in this thoughtful and needed project. The next input period will be in April, we’ll be sure to keep you posted.
If you’re interested in the economic, health, and community benefits of trails I suggest clicking through this website. I’ll warn you now though that it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole and lose a day.
If you have any thoughts on the article or suggestions for future articles, leave a comment below or shoot us an email at [email protected]. | {
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lolsanrolls submitted to thisisthinprivilege:
Thin privilege is being able to buy all types of food in your weekly shop and not have to be concerned with strangers judging you for your purchases.
Each week I buy all our groceries and put all the “junk” food (which is generally for my thin partner) at the start of the counter and ensure that all the fruit and veges are placed at the end. I do this so the junk gets bagged up fast and the customer behind me will be less likely to say something shitty if all they see is veges.
If I do not do this, if I put the veges up front or put the junk food wherever on the counter and am shopping alone (fat phobes are less likely to be assholes to me when I’m with someone thin), without a doubt the customer behind me will make a comment or pull a face and look me up and down.
“Where are your greens?!” -already bagged up you shithead
“That’s a lot of food for one person”- i buy for 2, thanks
“I hope you don’t eat all that in one week”- we might, or we might not. it certainly won’t make a difference to you.
“That’s a lot of bread. You know carbs aren’t that good for you?”- piss off, i love bread. Did you know that diet coke you’re buying is way worse for you?
“I’m just trying to help, Dear. You look like you need it”- i am an independent human being who doesn’t need your passive-aggressive attempt to shame me.
EVERYTHING a fat person does in public is judged negatively. And if we fight back or tell them to mind their own business we become the assholes! I’m so sick of passive aggressive nosy people. Mind your own selves, people! | {
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Egy olvasónk hívta fel a figyelmünket egy hibára a Revolut rendszerében, ami sokakat érinthet. A szolgáltatás használata nem százszázalékosan fájdalommentes (melyiké az?), és a mostani hiba az alkalmazás telefonkönyv-turkálós funkciójának pontatlanságából ered.
Olvasónk három hete regisztrált a szolgáltatásra, el is kezdte tesztelni, mit tud a Revolut. Beleegyezett, hogy az alkalmazás átnézze a telefonkönyvét, amiből kiemeli a kontaktokat, akik szintén használják a szolgáltatást. Meglepetten látta, hogy egy olyan ismerőse – nevezzük Katinak – is szerepel a listán, aki nem szokott élni ilyen high-tech szerekkel. Gondolta, teszteli a dolgot, és küldött Katinak 15 forintot. Az utalás át is ment probléma nélkül, de azért csak felhívta Katit, hogy megjött-e a pénz Revoluton.
Mi az a Revolut?
– kérdezett vissza Kati.
A kérdésre olvasónk megnézte a tranzakció részleteit, ahol már a kedvezményezett neve sem egyezett, Kati helyett egy bizonyos Jolánnak ment a pénz. A képen jól látható, hogy a két személy telefonszáma majdnem ugyanaz, gyakorlatilag csak az országkód különbözik (Jolánnak angol száma van, ami +44-el kezdődik). Ez azt jelenti, hogy a Revolut nem számol azzal, hogy a különböző országokban előfordulhatnak hasonló számkombinációk a telefonszámok között, amit pont országkóddal próbál a nemzetközi telefonszámok rendszere orvosolni. Ezt viszont pont nem nézi a Revolut.
Fotó: Olvasói fotó / Index
Olvasónk lelkiismeretesen írt is a Revolut ügyfélszolgálatának, hogy a hibát javítani kéne. Több kört is futott, több emberrel is csetelt, de a végeredmény mindig az lett, hogy ne aggódjon, vissza fogják szerezni a 15 forintját.
Ebből a telefonszámos kavarásból ered az is, hogy néhányan, akik regisztrálni próbálnak, azt az üzenetet kapják, hogy a számuk már használatban van.
Ilyenkor az történik, hogy más országban, más országkód mögött ugyanaz a telefonszáma valakinek, mint a miénk.
Mi is megkerestük a Revolutot az alkalmazáson belüli cseten keresztül. Az ügyintéző azt írta, hogy tudnak a problémáról, és dolgoznak azon, hogy kijavítsák. Azt javasolják, hogy amíg a bug nincs kijavítva, mindenki kérdezzen rá előre a kedvezményezettől, utalásnál hogy van-e Revolutja. Peches esetben előfordulhat, hogy nem annak megy a pénz, akinek küldenénk, hanem valaki másnak, akinek hasonlít a telefonszáma a mi címzettünkére. | {
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Monoranjan Bezboruah 952 days ago
President Trump in tonight''s State of the Union address asked for the same thing --to ask the various concerned Officials to meet and expedite the Permission for Project into a maximum period of 24 months, preferably to 12 months. Democracies lapse into stupor, and India simply cannot afford to let all these nonsensical Rules etc. and petty official doms delay the Move ahead. The largest Official building --Pentagon was built in 8 months, today, obtaining the various needed Permissions will take over 12 years! The same thing in India, officials simply keep you run around for no good reason. Way to go, have the shortest deadline, and such shortest time-lag should be sufficient to do the needful, as Time and Tide waits for None. Now, by the way, China is the fastest in getting things done or constructed, South Korea second. No wonder,they are way ahead of us! | {
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American moms apparently aren't the only ones locked in an epic battle between organic-juice perfectionists and bad-mother ne'er-do-wells. To hear feminist Elisabeth Badinter tell it, the mommy wars have spread to France.
According to the Guardian's Lizzy Davies, French moms have been seen as "the wonder women of Europe" for their ability to juggle jobs with a fertility rate higher than Britain's or Germany's. But Badinter (not pictured — that's Carla Bruni and her stepson Louis Sarkozy) is worried they can only juggle for so long. She says,
The majority of French women [now] reconcile maternity with professional life. Many of them work full-time when they have a child. They are resisting the model of the perfect mother, but for how long? I get the impression that we may now be at a turning point.
Evidence for said turning point includes, according to Davies, "the new image of the 'ideal mother' – one who breastfeeds for six months, does not rush to return to full-time work, avoids painkillers in childbirth, rejects disposable nappies and occasionally lets her baby sleep in her bed" and a possible trend of more French schoolgirls wanting to be stay-at-home moms. Cecilé Duflot, mom of four and leader of the French Green Party, says Badinter "is completely wrong … The examples she uses totally miss the point." But it's interesting to see issues of women's work-life balance — which in America so often seem related to our long hours, employment insecurity, and lack of a social safety net — still playing out in a more socialist country.
Of course, France is no utopia — like the US, it has serious problems with race and class. Still, it's sad that in a nation with reasonable workdays, paid maternity leave, and subsidized childcare, motherhood is still fraught with unreasonable expectations and infighting. Next thing they'll be telling us French women get fat.
G/O Media may get a commission Subscribe and Get Your First Bag Free Promo Code AtlasCoffeeDay20
French Philosopher Says Feminism Under Threat From 'Good Motherhood' [Guardian] | {
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Buy my book; Game Art (By No Starch Press)!
Digitally Downloaded editor-in-chief, Matt Sainsbury, has written a book about games as works of art, from America to Japan, Australia to Europe. Accompanied by gorgeous, high quality art and interviews with over 20 of the world's best game creators, this book is a collector's piece for fans of all kinds of games!
| {
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By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. GP article archive here. Originally published at DownWithTyranny
Image credit: Mike Thompson / Detroit Free Press
Like “swing vote” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor before him, “swing vote” justice Anthony Kennedy has been one of the worst Supreme Court jurists of the modern era.
With swing-vote status comes great responsibility, and in the most consequential — and wrongly decided — cases of this generation, O’Connor and Kennedy were the Court’s key enablers. They
Cast the deciding vote that made each decision possible
Kept alive the illusion of the Court’s non-partisan legitimacy
Each of these points is critical in evaluating the modern Supreme Court. For two generations, it has made decisions that changed the constitution for the worse. (Small “c” on constitution to indicate the original written document, plus its amendments, plus the sum of all unwritten agreements and court decisions that determine how those documents are to be interpreted).
These horrible decisions are easy to list. They expanded the earlier decision on corporate personhood by enshrining money as political speech in a group of decisions that led to the infamous Citizens United case (whose majority opinion, by the way, was written by the so-called “moderate” Anthony Kennedy); repeatedly undermined the rights of citizens and workers relative to the corporations that rule and employ them; set back voting rights equality for at least a generation; and many more. After this next appointment, many fear Roe v. Wade may be reversed.
Yet the Court has managed to keep (one is tempted to say curate) its reputation as a “divided body” and not a “captured body” thanks to its so-called swing vote justices and the press’s consistent and complicit portrayal of the Court as merely “divided.”
Delaying the Constitutional Crisis
The second point above, about the illusion of the Court’s legitimacy, is just as important as the first. If the Court were ever widely seen as acting outside the bounds of its mandate, or worse, seen as a partisan, captured organ of a powerful and dangerous political minority (which it certainly is), all of its decisions would be rejected by the people at large, and more importantly, the nation would plunged into a constitutional crisis of monumental proportions.
We are in that constitutional crisis now, but just at the start of it. We should have been done with it long ago. Both O’Connor and Kennedy are responsible for that delay.
O’Connor’s greatest sin, of course, was as the swing vote in Bush v. Gore, the judicial coup that handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It was also widely reported that on election night at a dinner party “Sandra Day O’Connor became upset when the media initially announced that Gore had won Florida, her husband explaining that they would have to wait another four years before retiring to Arizona.” (More on that here.)
Consider: If the Supreme Court were part of coup that makes a losing presidential candidate the winner, and makes that ruling along partisan and preferential lines that can’t be judicially defended, how could any decision issued by that court be deemed legitimate afterward?
Yet here we are, still publicly asserting the Court’s legitimacy, whatever people think privately, and still watching in horror as decision after decision dismantles old constitutional agreements and erects new ones.
The Legacy of Anthony Kennedy
Kennedy will be praised for his so-called “moderate” or “case-by-case” ideology, bolstered largely by decisions protecting gay rights. Perhaps that will be his legacy.
But in the main he has been horrible, a record of ideological and indefensible votes capped by his landmark decision in the Citizens United case. Enough has been written about that to make repetition here unnecessary. As noted, Kennedy not only provided the crucial “swing vote,” he also wrote the majority opinion, which in essence, reduced the broad and complex sweep of both public corruption and the appearance of corruption only to provable, documented, evidence-based quid pro quo exchanges. This is beyond naïve and touches itself the broader meaning of corrupt.
If justice exists in the world, his legacy will be this: First, in giving to Donald Trump the ability to hand a person of relative youth the fifth and deciding Republican vote on the Court, Kennedy has changed the Court for a generation. After his successor is confirmed, no good thing will come from the Court for the next 20 years, and much, perhaps fatal, damage will be done.
Second, thanks to Kennedy’s handing his seat to Trump, the next new justice will be unable to claim the propagandistic “swing vote” mantle held by O’Connor and Kennedy, which fact should destroy the Court’s perceived, illusory legitimacy forever. The full consequences of loss of legitimacy will be considered elsewhere, but suffice it to say that when a nation’s highest court is not just captured, but widely seen to be captured, a constitutional crisis is at hand.
This is the legacy Justice Anthony Kennedy, and though he may bask for the next few months in the glory of his pronounced moderation, the awful truth, to his enduring shame, should follow him to the grave — and be printed on it.
The Crisis to Come
Let’s close by quoting Anthony Kennedy in the Citizens United case, the most bizarre defense of a decision in the modern era. (There have been many bizarre decisions — the “money is speech” decision in Buckley v. Valeo is among the worst in the last 50 years, but none has been as bizarrely defended by the Court as Citizens United.)
Remember that in Citizens United the Court, building on the decision in Buckley, ruled that the First Amendment prohibits Congress from passing any law limiting so-called “independent expenditures” by corporations and unions to political campaigns. (Of course, those independent expenditures are almost never independent at all, but that’s another problem.)
To the objection that unlimited campaign contributions would foster widespread public corruption, Kennedy countered with this absurdity (quote taken from Jonathan Cohn here). In his majority opinion, Kennedy wrote:
[W]e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. … The fact that speakers [i.e., donors] may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt. … The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.
Each assertion above strains belief that the writer is sane. Consider those assertions in simpler language:
Gifts of money do not corrupt. Gifts of money don’t look corrupt. Influence over politicians does not corrupt. Voters will have no problem with nakedly bought elections.
The first three are either plain nonsense, in which case Kennedy is unqualified to sit on the bench at all, or nonsense in service of ideology, in which case Kennedy is a political actor on an already captured Court.
The obvious explanation is the latter.
But the worse of his assertions may be the fourth, which is also patently wrong. That assertion, which says in effect “and people will let us get away with all these changes,” has set the final table for the constitutional crisis to come — the one that questions the legitimacy of the Court itself and with it, perhaps, our entire political process.
That crisis, if it comes, will threaten the national fabric as fundamentally as any of the earlier three — the crisis of 1776, the crisis of 1860, and the Great Depression. We’re now much closer to that point than anyone with a microphone or media column inches will say. But you did hear it here. Stay tuned. | {
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Bimonia is one of the last Birdlings alive on this earth. The Birdlings see humans as sworn enemies, and Bimonia has been taught to kill on sight.
One day, Bimonia meets Tayo, a human child hunting in the forest. Bimonia fails to kill Tayo, and they instead become friends. Mother will be furious if she finds out, or worse, this relationship may cause tension between the two species to erupt.
The Last Birdling explores Bimonia and Tayo's fight for their friendship as the world threatens to tear them apart.
* * *
Unhack, the first game created under the InvertMouse name, was produced in 2012. That means The Last Birdling happens to be my fifth anniversary project. This game is a culmination of all the lessons I have learned through the past five years. Now, I would like to share with you several features available in The Last Birdling:
Dual perspectives:
The Last Birdling alternates between Bimonia and Tayo's perspectives. Follow their journeys from childhood to adolescence as they struggle to maintain their friendship against all odds.
Multiple endings:
There are 21 decisions to make throughout Bimonia and Tayo's journeys. Depending on their resolve, this story will conclude in one of five ways. Use the progress tracker to determine how to obtain every ending.
Glossary:
Dive into The Last Birdling's lore through the glossary page. Throughout your journey, you will find links that take you to relevant entries.
* * *
Thank you! I hope you will find the experience worthwhile. | {
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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
More green jingoism – President Macron of France is apparently now leader of the global climate effort, but for some reason Macron doesn’t qualify as enough of a climate leader to make it to the title of the article.
Climate change is World War III, and we are leaderless
By David Shearman
Posted Tue at 5:05am
“World War III is well and truly underway. And we are losing,” writes environmental activist Bill McKibben, so when Malcolm Turnbull implied that the insurgency that demolished his government was based on climate ideology, what lessons are there for Scott Morrison?
As a child in Britain during WWII, I lived in a street of mothers and children. Every father was away fighting. Each house and garden was surrounded by a metal palisade fence.
One morning the fences were gone, mother was delighted. Then a horse and cart came and took away every metal cooking pot and pan, some treasured, but mother smiled at her sacrifice. It was difficult for me to understand.
She had responded to the call from Lord Beaverbrook, Minister of Aircraft Production, for the women of Britain to: “Give us your aluminium. … We will turn your pots and pans into Spitfires and Hurricanes.”
…
Britain was a united and cohesive community. Young and old worked daily in small ways for the common cause. But most importantly, in the free world, two countries — Britain and the US — had leaders in Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt who could explain the need for duty and sacrifice.
Their like is yet to emerge today, and indeed the Western world is bereft, perhaps apart from French President Emmanuel Macron, who explained to Congress and the American people that secure borders are irrelevant to this threat, and all of us are world citizens needing to act in concert. “There is no Planet B,” he said.
…
Dr David Shearman is the honorary secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University. | {
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American serial killer Joel Rifkin killed 17 women in the 1990s before the police pulled him over for a missing license plate and discovered his latest victim in his trunk.
Who Is Joel Rifkin? Joel Rifkin is a serial killer who went on a string of murders in New York in the 1990s. In 1989, he killed his first woman. He discarded the bodies of his victims so they could not be identified. His reign of terror came to an end in June 1993, when Rifkin was pulled over by the police who discovered a corpse in his car. He was convicted of murder the following year and later pleaded guilty to additional counts of murders.
Troubled Childhood Joel David Rifkin was born on January 20, 1959, to two unwed college students. New York couple Bernard and Jeanne Rifkin adopted Joel three weeks after his birth. Three years later, they also adopted a daughter, Jan. In 1965, the family moved to East Meadow, Long Island, where Rifkin enrolled in Prospect Avenue Elementary School. Rifkin had difficulty fitting in with his peers and became a frequent target of school bullies. He was excluded from team sports and neighborhood games because of his sloping posture and slow gait. Suffering from undiagnosed dyslexia, he also struggled academically despite his 128 IQ. As Rifkin entered his teens, he desperately tried to fit in. He joined the track team with hopes of making friends, but his teammates frequently tormented him. Frustrated with athletics, Rifkin joined the yearbook staff. His camera was immediately stolen, and he was excluded from the wrap party at the end of the year.
Targeting Prostitutes The mistreatment and isolation eventually wore on Rifkin, who began retreating to his own disturbed world. He started having daydreams about raping and stabbing women. In 1972, inspired by the Alfred Hitchcock film Frenzy, Rifkin became fixated on the idea of strangling prostitutes. Around this same time, his parents gave him a car. He started using the vehicle to troll for prostitutes in nearby Hempstead, and later Manhattan. His passion for prostitutes would increase as he entered Nassau Community College in 1977. He frequently skipped his classes and rarely showed up to his part-time jobs, preferring to spend his time with prostitutes instead. His obsession drained Rifkin of what little money he had, causing him to move in and out of his parents' house throughout the 1980s. He also bounced from school to school, earning poor grades, until he finally dropped out in 1984. By March 1989, Rifkin could no longer fight the violent mental fantasies. Rifkin waited for his mother to leave on a business trip, and then picked up a young prostitute named Susie. He brought the woman back to his Long Island home, where he bludgeoned her with a Howitzer artillery shell. When she continued to struggle, he strangled her to death. He then dismembered the corpse with an X-acto knife, removing her identity by severing her fingertips and removing her teeth with pliers. He hid her severed head in an old paint can, and stashed the rest of her body into garbage bags. Rifkin dumped Susie's head and legs in the woods in Hopewell, New Jersey, and tossed the arms and torso into the East River back in New York. Despite Rifkin's elaborate attempts to conceal the murder, a member of the Hopewell Valley Golf Club found the can containing Susie's head several days later. Police were unable to uncover the victim's identity, or who was responsible for the murder.
Rising Body Count A year later, Rifkin claimed his second victim, prostitute Julie Blackbird. Again waiting until his mother was out of town, Rifkin drove Blackbird to his Long Island home. The next morning, Rifkin beat his victim‚ this time with a table leg‚ before strangling her. He dismembered the corpse as before, but this time he placed the body parts in buckets weighted with concrete and tossed the remains into the East River and a Brooklyn canal. Rifkin started his own landscaping business in 1991, and he began using the rented job site to stash corpses until he could properly dispose of them. Among his victims during this year were prostitutes Barbara Jacobs, Mary Ellen DeLuca and Yun Lee. Rifkin would go on to strangle 17 women, most of whom were drug addicts or prostitutes. The Police were rarely able to identify the victims, much less the perpetrator of the crimes. In June 1993, Rifkin strangled hooker Tiffany Bresciani and drove her back to his mother's home, stopping at stores along the way for rope and tarp, while Bresciani's corpse lay in the backseat of his mother's car. By the time he got home, she was wrapped in tarp and concealed in the trunk. Rifkin moved Bresciani into the garage, leaving her body in a wheelbarrow in the summer heat for three days. He was on his way to dump the corpse about 15 miles north of his home, when police troopers noted he was missing a rear license plate on his truck. When police attempted to pull Rifkin over, he began a high-speed chase instead. Panicked, he crashed his car into a utility pole in front of the local court house. As troopers came up to the car, they detected a strong odor from the back of the truck. It came from Bresciani's rotting corpse. Police took Rifkin into custody. | {
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Their digestive system just didn't evolve to handle grain or grain-based food like bread. Dogs can't eat grain either; despite being omnivores, they can't digest it properly, and even if they could, they can't convert it into sugars and store it for later use. (Cats, of course, can't eat grain because they're obligate carnivores.)
For that matter, HUMANS aren't really designed for grain either... grains have lectins, which are a type of protein that we can't digest. We normally digest proteins into amino acids where they are absorbed by our intestines. Since we can’t digest lectins, they pass through the wall of our gut undigested as complete proteins. This damages the gut, inflames our bodies, and makes them unable to absorb many of the good proteins that we get from other foods.
But that’s not all. The worst part is that our body’s immune system is at a high state of readiness around our gut. Now, when lectins pass through the gut as a complete, undigested protein, our body mistakes them for foreign invaders and attacks with the immune system. After repeated attacks from lectins, your body gets smart and makes antibodies to automatically attack these nasty proteins. It builds immunity. Problem is that sometimes, the lectin looks like normal body tissue, and you end up with an autoimmune disorder that attacks proteins that have a segment that looks like lectin. Some examples of proteins that your immune system might start attacking: Insulin (hello, diabetes) and Myelin Basic Protein (MBP) in your brain (hello, multiple sclerosis).
I could go on, but the TL;DR is that too much grain is bad for you. | {
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In a direct response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid on Monday revealed more temporary expansions of telehealth services for Medicare recipients.
“Today, we're announcing that we're going to go even further and we're going to be paying doctors to make phone calls with their patients and provide care over the phone,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced at a COVID-19 Task Force press briefing Monday afternoon. “And we're getting rid of long-standing barriers to telehealth in the Medicare program, allowing emergency rooms to use telehealth and eliminating requirements that some visits be provided face-to-face.”
In a larger announcement around new regulatory changes to combat the pandemic, also published Monday, CMS officials said the agency will “now allow for more than 80 additional services to be furnished via telehealth.” The agency also noted that under the expansion “new as well as established patients now may stay at home and have a telehealth visit with their provider,” and providers will have the ability to bill for telehealth visits at the same rate as in-person visits.
On top of several other additions, CMS also said physicians can supervise their clinical staff “using virtual technologies when appropriate, instead of requiring in-person presence.”
The news comes several days after the agency initially announced plans to broaden reimbursements for telehealth services and extend telehealth benefits for Medicare recipients. Further information on the agency's waivers and rule changes related to the COVID-19 pandemic can be found online.
Help us understand the situation better. Are you a federal employee or contractor with information about how your agency is handling the coronavirus? Email us at [email protected]. | {
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Three suspected ISIS militants have been sentenced to death by firing squad for beheading two Scandinavian hikers in Morocco last year.
Suspected ringleader Abdessamad Ejjoud and two others - believed to be Jounes Ouzayed and Rashid Afatti - were handed the maximum sentence on Thursday after begging Allah for forgiveness.
The men had filmed themselves beheading Norwegian Maren Ueland, 28, and 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, from Denmark, in Morocco's High Atlas Mountains in December.
Abdessamad Ejjoud (right) was handed the death penalty for beheading two Scandinavian hikers on Thursday, while two others - believed to be Rachid Afatti (left) and Ouziad Younes (centre) - were also sentenced to death
The suspected ISIS militants were handed the penalty for killing Maren Ueland, 28 (left), and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24 (right), in December last year
The footage was later circulated in Islamist circles online. In the video the men can be heard branding the women 'enemies of God'.
A separate video showed four of the men pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in front of a black and white ISIS flag.
All 23 defendants addressed the court on Thursday, most pleaded with Allah for mercy, before the judges retired to decide their fate.
In his closing arguments in June, the prosecutor described the three as 'human beasts' and asked for death sentences.
Thursday's sentencing marks the first time since 1993 that Morocco has handed out the death penalty.
The verdicts were given at a final court session of the 11-week trial in Sale, near the capital Rabat.
Journalists gathered outside the anti-terrorist court ahead of verdicts expected to be announced later Thursday in the case that has shocked the North African country.
'We expect sentences that match the cruelty of the crime,' lawyer Khaled El Fataoui, speaking for the family of Danish victim Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, told AFP.
Helle Petersen, her mother, in a letter read out in court last week, said: 'The most just thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve.'
Petitions on social media have likewise called for their execution.
Lawyers for the 23 accused men were in court for the sentencing on Thursday (pictured), where most begged for forgiveness from Allah
The three admitted to killing Jespersen, 24, and 28-year-old Norwegian Maren Ueland, whose family has declined to take part in the trial.
The prosecution has called for jail terms of between 15 years and life for the 21 other defendants on trial since May 2.
A life sentence has been sought for Abderrahim Khayali, a 33-year-old plumber, who had accompanied the three alleged assailants but left the scene before the murders.
The prosecution called for 20 years in jail for Kevin Zoller Guervos, a Spanish-Swiss convert to Islam.
The only non-Moroccan in the group, Guervos is accused of having taught the main suspects how to use an encrypted messaging service and to use weapons.
His lawyer, Saad Sahli, said Guervos had cut all ties with the other suspects 'once he knew they had extremist ideas' more than 18 months ago.
Members of the Moroccan security forces stand guard as a vehicle transporting jihadist suspects charged over the brutal murder of two Scandinavian women hiking in Morocco
All but three of those on trial had said they were supporters of the Islamic State group, according to the prosecution, although IS itself has never claimed responsibility for the murders.
The three killers of the women were 'bloodthirsty monsters', the prosecution said, pointing out that an autopsy report had found 23 injuries on Jespersen's decapitated body and seven on that of Ueland.
Ejjoud, an underground imam, had confessed at a previous hearing to beheading one of the women and Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter, the other, while Rachid Afatti, 33, had videoed the murders on his mobile phone.
The defence team argued there were 'mitigating circumstances on account of their precarious social conditions and psychological disequilibrium'.
Coming from modest backgrounds, with a 'very low' level of education, the defendants lived for the most part in low-income areas of Marrakesh.
Jespersen's lawyers have accused authorities of having failed to monitor the activities of some of the suspects before the murders. | {
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Okay, so the last time I tried using Air Canada’s paperless mobile check-in I got a message that my Nokia S60 handset, the world’s most popular mobile OS running on the world’s bestselling handset, wasn’t supported.
This time I actually got an SMS from AC, actually two — one with a helpful reminder of my flight number and departure time and the other with a link to the 2D barcode you see above.
You should have seen the look of abject terror on the counter agent’s face when I giddily showed her this at the airport. She made a feeble attempt to scan it with a reader she had then promptly asked me for my passport and printed up the usual paper boarding document.
Maybe I’ll have a better experience in Tokyo in a couple of weeks… | {
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BOSTON — Harvard graduate Jeff Bridich didn’t get a chance to visit his storied alma mater last week. He was too busy evaluating the Rockies’ performance against the Red Sox. He also took a day to fly down to the Southeast to evaluate talent for next month’s major-league draft.
Bridich, 38, is in his second season as Rockies’ general manager. He played catcher and outfield for Harvard and earned a degree in psychology. The team he’s trying to transform from perennial loser into a viable contender entered the weekend with a 22-24 record, 6 1/2 games behind San Francisco in the National League West.
Bridich sat down with The Denver Post to discuss his job and the state of his baseball team:
DP: When you attended Harvard, did you have any idea you would work in a baseball front office and then end up as a general manager?
Bridich: Not really. I was focused on playing baseball and attending school. There were no grand designs from an early age to do this job.
DP: How did Harvard prepare you for this job?
Bridich: One of the things that was most impressive about the university was the people I went to school with. You certainly learn a lot from the people around you at Harvard, because there was some much talent in so many different ways. That transfers to a job like this, where it’s too big a job to do everything yourself. It’s too big an operation and too big a job to try to micromanage and try to do it all yourself. Harvard helped teach me to learn to value and trust the people you have around you.
DP: Most outsiders are likely surprised that the Rockies have been playing at about .500 as we approach June. What are you pleased with so far this season?
Bridich: There are definitely things to be pleased about. I think we played very well in April. I think we played more complete games in April. Over the last month, I think we’ve been going through stretches where we get good pitching, then bad pitching. We get good offense, then bad offense. Sometimes they have not meshed very well. That makes it tough to go on long streaks of winning.
At the same time, we have maintained competitiveness, and so we have managed to be in and around .500 for the first two months of the season. So there are things to be happy about.
DP: What has not gone well?
Bridich: Some of the things we were focused on early, and especially during spring training, we have not done as well. Executing innings, winning innings and putting ourselves in a position to score runs in different ways, has really been a struggle for us lately.
We were doing it well early. But especially on the road, when you face tough pitching, and when you don’t do those little things, you are most likely going to pay for it. We know we can do it, we have shown that, but we need to get back to doing that. It has to be a team effort, it’s not just one guy.
DP: Meaning what, exactly?
Bridich: The ability to generate offense has to show up when you have guys in the middle of the order, like CarGo (Carlos Gonzalez), who was struggling. He knew it, everybody knew, and if we, as a team, don’t do the things we need to, especially offensively, it makes it really difficult to score runs.
It takes commitment from the players, yes. But it’s a full, organizational thing. It’s the players in our system, it’s the players up here. It’s the coaches in our system, it’s the coaches up here. It’s who we have to be, but we have gotten away from it lately.
DP: Jose Reyes is eligible to begin playing games in June when he returns from suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence policy. Do you have a game plan for when he returns?
Bridich: It’s a day-by-day (situation). Part of the agreement was getting him ready for June 1 and knowing that a two-week (minor-league) rehab stint is a probability. That’s part of the agreement. For his sake, for his health, we are focused on every day now, until the end of this month. That gets him into games in extended (spring) and so he’s ready to go.
DP: If there are interested partners, would you try to trade Reyes, even with his big contract? (Reyes is owed about $15 million this season, $22 million next season and also gets a $4 million buyout.)
Bridich: It is a big contract. But anything is possible. It’s very much like what I say in our wintertime situation. Is there anything that’s off the table? No. But this situation is what it is. We will see what comes of it, and handle it day by day.
DP: Fans are very eager to see starting pitcher Jeff Hoffman — the centerpiece of last summer’s Troy Tulowitzki trade — make his big-league debut. What is the game plan for him? Is there a timeline for his debut?
Bridich: For the most part, he has pitched very well. For his first stint in Triple-A, he’s done a nice job. There are very specific things — not large, general things — but very specific things, that he needs to continue to work on. But that’s actually a good thing. So we are not going to rush him.
DP: If you are still in the race around the all-star break, would that expedite any of your decisions, on Hoffman or anybody else who could give you that boost in the second half of the season?
Bridich: I think one of the things we are very focused on — in terms of what we do from a timing perspective — is that we want to put the player in the best position to succeed.
It’s like the Jon Gray decision. Everybody wanted Jon Gray called up, like, yesterday. But there were things he needed to work through, as we’ve all seen. The same goes for Eddie Butler. Now we are seeing better results. For most guys, it doesn’t just click and happen overnight.
So Jeff and some of the other players we think about as quality depth still are being challenged at Triple-A, and they have to meet those challenges to be ready for this level. But we are thrilled where Jeff is at. And remember, he’s not that far removed from Tommy John surgery (in 2014). So there is a lot that goes into it.
DP: How do you feel about your current rotation?
Bridich: Fortunately, right now we have five guys who are very competitive in our rotation. There are going to be little dips and bumps like Jon Gray had in St. Louis, where he wasn’t on his game. But to this point, with the five guys we have in our rotation now, that has not been the norm, it’s been the exception. So I feel good about it. | {
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SO whose idea was it to play twister in the vineyards on a Sunday afternoon?
Certainly not the staff and visitors at Keith Tulloch Wine in Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley yesterday, who were caught unawares when a tornado descended on the vines about 4.30pm.
Cellar door saleswoman Jackie Goodman said the sun was out and everything appeared normal when the twister touched down and started to wreak havoc.
“We didn’t even see it coming. It was so sunny outside and then a huge dark cloud came over the top with this enormous twister coming out of it down to the ground,” she said.
media_camera An image from a video which captured the moment a weak tornado struck a winery in the Hunter Valley.
“It lasted maybe half an hour. There was stuff flying through the air everywhere. It tore down one of our sheds so there were massive bits of roof flying around, there were sheets of metal, there were branches – it was crazy.”
The vineyard lost a shed and about 100 vines, but no-one was injured.
media_camera The aftermath following a tornado which hit Keith Tulloch winery at Pokolbin on Sunday. Photo courtesy of www.emmajanepitschphotography.com.au
media_camera Metal from a shed roof at Keith Tulloch Wine at Pokolbin in Hunter Valley after a weak tornado ripped through the site on Sunday afternoon. Picture: Keith Tulloch Wine
Weather Watch meteorologist Don White said tornadoes were rare but not unheard of in NSW.
“Just don’t call it a mini-tornado. There’s no such thing as a mini-tornado, except maybe what you get when you stir a cup of tea with a spoon,” he said.
Instead, Mr White described it as a “weak” tornado.
“Tornadoes are rated on a scale of zero to five and this one would barely be a zero,” he said.
“But it still did some damage.”
media_camera Pictured is the Keith Tulloch winery at Cessnock which yesterday was severely damaged by a tornado. Photo courtesy of www.emmajanepitschphotography.com.au
He explained that, in very basic terms, tornadoes formed when updrafts and downdrafts from a storm opposed each other to such an extent that they started to rotate.
Yesterday’s was the result of a single severe storm cell passing over Pokolbin, dropping more than 20mm of rain on the area, while the nearby town of Cessnock got just 1mm.
Tornado hits Pokolbin | {
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Image copyright Getty Images/BBC Image caption The new venue will hope to attract major artists and events like Adele, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and the world gymnastics championships
A 15,000-capacity indoor arena looks set to be built in Cardiff Bay on the site of the Red Dragon Centre.
With the Motorpoint Arena holding 7,000 people and Principality Stadium 74,000, city planners wanted a venue with a capacity between the two.
Various sites were mooted with an arena suggested as part of a £150m redevelopment of Cardiff Arms Park.
But Atlantic Wharf was chosen - and the Red Dragon Centre will be demolished to make way.
The centre opened in 1997 and is home to radio stations Capital FM and Heart FM, a casino, restaurants and cinema.
Before demolition work can begin, a new leisure complex will be built next door.
"We want to re-energise Cardiff Bay boosting its profile as a leisure-based destination," said Coun Russell Goodway.
"This new development can help to reinvigorate the area."
Cabinet members are set to grant permission for detailed work to begin next week with a planning application expected to be submitted in July 2019.
Image copyright Cardiff Council Image caption An artist's impression drawn up earlier this year of what the new arena could look like
The new arena would face Lloyd George Avenue and the Oval Basin outside the Senedd and Millennium Centre.
But work would be completed in stages - starting with a multi-storey car park on the Red Dragon Centre's overflow car park.
The new leisure complex would then be built on the main car park, with the existing one knocked down.
Economy Minister Ken Skates said the development was "crucially important".
Image copyright John Lord/ Geograph Image caption The Red Dragon Centre leisure complex has been a feature of Cardiff Bay for 20 years
Cardiff's and Bristol's councils have been trying to create a venue that would attract major acts and fans from south Wales and the south west of England for a long time.
A scheme next to Temple Meads station was first mooted in 2003, but was scrapped in September, with Bristol's mayor calling the £150m project "too risky".
Coun Goodway said there had been "significant interest" from arena operators wanting to run the new Cardiff venture, including Live Nation, who manage the city's Motorpoint venue.
"The additional footfall that the arena and new leisure and retail site will generate will also increase the demand for better transport links between the city centre and the bay," he added.
"This should only help to drive the need for the new metro system and putting an arena in the bay could also help speed up the completion of the Eastern Bay Link Road." | {
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AP
Tight end Jermaine Gresham visited with the Saints on Wednesday and it sounds like he could be in line for a longer stay in New Orleans.
Gresham’s been out of the spotlight for the last couple of months while recovering from surgery to repair a herniated disc in his back, but Saints coach Sean Payton said Thursday that the team has had him on the radar for a while.
“He’s a player we were obviously well aware of coming out of Oklahoma five years ago,” Payton said, via the New Orleans Advocate. “He’s recovering from an offseason surgery, and I thought the visit went pretty good. It would be about the fit. I think there’s a fit for us if it works out, and he’s a guy that we’ve studied quite a bit now in the last couple of months.”
If Gresham agrees about the fit, it may wind up eating into Benjamin Watson’s role in the offense. The team has talked up Josh Hill quite a bit this offseason as a receiving option at tight end since trading Jimmy Graham, which would leave an in-line role for Gresham that Watson is currently slated to fill in New Orleans. | {
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Map
from Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
Game... Enter game ID Enter random seed Download save file Upload save file
Type...
New game
Restart game
Undo move
Redo move
Solve game Link to this puzzle: by game ID by random seed
Sorry, this Javascript puzzle doesn't seem to work in your web browser. Perhaps you have Javascript disabled, or perhaps your browser doesn't provide a feature that the puzzle code requires (such as typed arrays ). These puzzles have been successfully run in Firefox 19, Chrome 26, Internet Explorer 10 and Safari 6.
Colour the map with four colours, so that no two adjacent regions have the same colour. (Regions touching at only one corner do not count as adjacent.) There is a unique colouring consistent with the coloured regions you are already given.
Drag from a coloured region to a blank one to colour the latter the same colour as the former. Drag from outside the grid into a region to erase its colour. (You cannot change the colours of the regions you are given at the start of the game.)
Right-drag from a coloured region to a blank one to add dots marking the latter region as possibly the same colour as the former, or to remove those dots again.
Full instructions | Back to main puzzles page | {
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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saved us in WWII? we created you in 1783 | {
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reclaimthebindi:
If dark skin doesn’t fit your ‘aesthetic’, rethink your ideals. | {
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Dowlad Deegaanka Soomaalida Itoobiya oo sheegtay in boqolaal Soomaali ah la laayay
Deegaanka Soomaalida oo sheegay in Oramadu ay boqolaal dishay
Wasiirka isboortiga iyo dhalinyarada ahna la taliyaha arrimaha saxaafada ee madaxweynaha Maxamed Bille 'Miig', oo u hadlay dowlad deegaanka Soomaalida Itoobiya oo BBC-da la hadlay ayaa sheegay in dad Soomaali ah oo aad u badan lagu laayay deegaanada xuduudaha ee ay wadaagaan maamulada Soomaalida iyo Oromada Itoobiya, wuxuuna falkaas ku eedeeyey ciidamada maamulka Oromiya.
Dilkaas oo lagu eedeeyay in ay gaysteen dad Oromo ah ayaa wararkii ugu dambeeyay ee soo baxaya waxa ay sheegayaan in xiisadaha ay sii faafayaan.
Wariyaha BBC-da ee magaalada Hargaysa Axmed Siciid Cige ayaa soo sheegaya in xalay labo qof oo Oromo ah lagu dilay bar koontarool oo ku taala wadad u dhaxaysa Hargaysa iyo Arabsiyo kadib markii uu nin askari ah rasaas ku furay.
Wasiiru dowlaha arrimaha gudaha Somaliland Maxamed Muuse Diiriye ayaa sheegay in askarii la xiray, lana baarayo sababta dilka keentay, wuxuuna intaas ku daray in ciidamada heegan la galiyay , lana faray in aanan wax la yeeleynin dadka Oromada ah ee ku sugan Somaliland. | {
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One North Texas city will not try to ban abortions.
The mayor of Mineral Wells, west of Fort Worth, wanted to create an ordinance banning abortion providers from operating in the city.
Supporters said it would have made Mineral Wells a “sanctuary city for the unborn.”
Mayor Christopher Perricone asked the city manager to add an item regarding the ordinance to Tuesday’s city council agenda. But, the city attorney advised council members the ban would conflict with federal law.
The council voted 5-2 against moving forward with the issue but still took time to hear public input.
“Mayor, I dare you to tell me you own my body like my rapist did. Because I told my rapist no,” said Isabela Villa.
“It’s disgusting that there’s this place in Fort Worth that I can visit where I know that babies go in there and they never come out,” said Evan Herd.
Mayor Perricone said his goal was to make it known that Mineral Wells doesn’t approve of abortion.
“Because life is being grown in that woman. Her choice is actually stopped because I have an obligation to protect that voiceless one inside her, that one that can’t stand up and talk,” he said.
Mineral Wells does not currently have an abortion clinic. But, Perricone said he got the idea from the East Texas city of Waskom. Last month, an all-male city council voted to ban any abortion clinics from opening in their city.
“If we’re going to take the stance that we believe that life begins at conception, that our duty as elected officials is to protect that life, then I feel that we need to take this strongest stand possible,” the mayor.
All three women on the Mineral Wells city council voted against moving forward. | {
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When the wanderlust starts to get unbearable, the heavy breathing that comes with the anticipation and you start feeling your feet to itch you know you have to do just one thing to do: get a backpack ready: prepare and select your meals for the first days -and remember to bring snacks and water. You are all set to conquer the unknown road. Check out the 10 world’s most Beautiful Subway Stations!
See also: CREATIVE TYPOGRAPHY BY JACOB EISINGER
Whether you are coming or leaving, this are the most important places in the city. They usually breath life and don’t really ever stop. Here you have a list of the 10 of the world’s most beautiful subway stations:
1. Champ-de-Mars Station in Montreal, Canada
Champ-de-Mars Station opened in October 14th, 1966, as part of the initial subway network of Montreal. Situated in Old Montreal in the Ville-Marie borough, the station is now on the Orange Line of the Montreal Metro rapid transit system.
The station is particularly spectacular on a sunny day, when the light enters the stained glass windows by Automatiste painter Marcelle Ferron. The windows comprise the artist’s masterpieces and, according to some, it’s her most famous work. Back in 1968, they were given by the Government of Quebec as the first work of non-figurative art commissioned for the metro.
2. Formosa Boulevard Station – Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Formosa Boulevard is a transfer station between the Red and Orange Line in Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. The station is famous for the “Dome of Light,” the world’s largest public art installation that comprises individual pieces of colored glass. Created by artist Narcissus Quagliata, the “Dome of Light” was completed just under four years and it was overseen by Quagliata himself, who had the pieces shipped from Germany for installation. This ceiling gives a really unique lighting to the building.
With a 30-meter diameter and a total area of 660 square meters, the dome tells the story of human life in four chronologically arranged themes: Water: The Womb of Life; Earth: Prosperity and Growth; Light: The Creative Spirit; and Fire: Destruction and Rebirth, with an overall message of love and tolerance.
3. T-Centralen Station – Stockholm, Sweden
In “T-Centralen,” “T” is an abbreviation for “tunnelbana,” which in Swedish means “underground” or “subway.” The T-Centralen station is the core of the Stockholm Metro; that means it’s the only station in which all of the three lines (Tub1, Tub2, and Tub3) meet. As such, this subway station it’s the one with the highest traffic in Stockholm.
4. Westfriedhof station light installation by Ingo Maurer – Munich Deutschland
Munich’s u-bahn subway system only began in 1972, but it has quickly grown into a 98 station system spread across the entire city. Due to its young age, Munich had the advantage of learning from the mistakes of other systems creating spacious and efficient stations. While the first stations were quite plain, the architecture of its new stations is often quite daring. Some stations that stand out include the colorful Dulferstrasse Station designed by Peter Lanz and Jurgen Rauch and Westfriedhof, which features lighting installations by Ingo Mauer.
5. Komsomolskaya Station – Russia
Located at the intersection of three major rail hubs, this cathedral of trains is the gateway to Russia. If the vast dome, portico, Corinthian columns, Baroque details, and chandeliers don’t impress you, then the mosaics surely will. The eight ceiling mosaics, designed by the legendary artist Pavel Korin, depict Russia’s heroes and finest victories. A unique and classic design that one could expect to see only in a king’s palace.
6. Kirovsky Zavod Station – St. Petersburg, Russia
The St. Petersburg subway might not be as majestic as its Moscow counterpart, but it is still impressive. In fact, it deserves a mention simply because it is the deepest subway station in the world by the average depth of all the stations.
The Kirovsky Zavod station opened on November 15th, 1955. Its name comes from the Kirov factory, which is nearby. In addition to grand halls and checkered floors, you can see a statue of Lenin here.
7. Zoloti Vorota Station – Kiev, Ukraine
Zoloti Vorota station is one of Kiev’s most well-known subway stops. It is named after the Golden Gates historical structure, and opened as part of the first stage of the Syretsko-Pecherska Line on December 30, 1989. A series of architects contributed to the design, yet the station itself was constructed thanks to Boris and his son Vadim Zhezherin, as well as the artistic architects S.Adamenko and M.Ralko.
See also: The 15 Most Beautiful Subway Stops in the World
It contains a column trivault with the theme of the Architecture of Kievan Rus. To be seen are large chandeliers with light bulbs in the shape of candles. Mosaics by artists G. Koren and V. Fedko can be found on the vault and columns, which are made of white marble with a matte polish, while the floor is made of granite.
8. Bund Sightseeing Tunnel – Shanghai, China
The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel may not officially be a subway station. However, it is a train trip well worth taking. To be exact, the Bund is a tunnel that runs underneath the Pu river. It has a weird lighting that gives that wonderland look.
Tourists can enter a small cable car, which takes them through the tunnel of colorful light beams, waving puppets and suddenly disappearing movie screens. During the journey, house music is played.
9. Central Park Station – Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Named after the nearby Central Park, this station lies on the Red Line of the Kaohsiung subway. A two-level underground station, the Central Park stop was designed by British architect Richard Rogers. Design-wise, purple is the prevailing colour throughout the station. The courtyard grass areas, in turn, are covered in a slope of yellow windmills shaped liked sunflowers. The lighting here is all natural and the nature part is really important and the plastic flowers really light up the ambiance.
10. Bockenheimer Warte Station – Frankfurt, Germany
The Bockenheimer Warte Station is one of the most important transfer stations of the Frankfurt subway system. Here the C-line crosses with the U6 and U7, as well as the U4 which runs in the D-tunnel. You can also transfer to various bus lines and trams here.
The construction of this station first begun in 1986 and expanded in 2001. The station is worth viewing not only for its underground architecture, but also for one of its subway entrances. Click here to see the unique entrance, which looks like a train bursting through the sidewalk from below. Architect Zbiginiew Peter Pininski said he felt inspired by surrealist artist René Magritte when creating it.
*sighing*
What do you think of these beautiful subway stations? Writing about subway stations make me anxious like something it’s telling me to move, move, move… Okay, I’m just going to put on my shoes there and head anywhere. Will you join me?
See also: CREATIVE TYPOGRAPHY BY JACOB EISINGER | {
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FORTALEZA, Brazil – Raphael Assuncao has done his best to separate himself from the frustration of not fighting for a UFC championship. However, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
Assuncao (27-5 MMA, 11-2 UFC) is one of the top contenders in the UFC bantamweight division. He meets fellow divisional standout Marlon Moraes (21-5-1 MMA, 3-1 UFC) in a rematch on Saturday, which headlines UFC on ESPN+ 2 from his native Brazil. UFC President Dana White once labeled the matchup a No. 1 contender bout, but with 135-pound champ T.J. Dillashaw in an odd position, there’s no guarantees.
Dillashaw (16-4 MMA, 12-4 UFC) unsuccessfully moved down to challenge flyweight titleholder Henry Cejudo (14-2 MMA, 8-2 UFC) at UFC on ESPN+ 1 this month. Now there’s talk of doing a rematch at bantamweight, which would once again put Assuncao’s timeline to fight for UFC gold up in the air.
Unfortunately that’s not an unfamiliar feeling for Assuncao.
“The champion needs to get his stuff together and defend his title,” Assuncao told MMAjunkie. “Now they’re talking about a title defense against Cejudo, so that kind of complicates things a little bit. … I think T.J. should’ve stayed at his weight and done what he was supposed to do at 135. He went down to 125, and now I’m sure he regrets what happened. He should’ve stayed at his weight class and taken responsibility at his weight class.
“Just like when I should’ve fought for the title before and Cody (Garbrandt) took my place, and it didn’t go well twice for him. In the back of my mind, I don’t want to be a hater, but it’s like, ‘See, that’s what you get.’ It should’ve been my turn. Same with T.J. That’s what you get when you should’ve defended your own title.”
UFC on ESPN+ 2 takes place at Centro de Formacao Olimpica do Nordeste in Fortaleza, Brazil. Assuncao vs. Moraes headlines the card, which streams on ESPN+.
There was some consideration on Assuncao’s side about simply holding out on the next fight and seeing if the UFC would pit him against Dillashaw. Then the promotion came along with the offer to do a second fight with Moraes, who Assuncao beat by split decision at UFC 212 in June 2017.
Although Assuncao would seemingly have more to lose in the rematch, he said the package that came along with the fight offer created a scenario that made sense.
“I got a new contract, got a new deal,” Assuncao said. “A little bit more money – not substantial, but we were renegotiating, and the main event was offered. For me, it’s not just about being the main event, it is a lot of eyes on us. It proves me. If I’m going to be a champion, this is a good start of a proving ground being a main-event fight. It was also part of the finalization of negotiations in my new contract.”
Considering the highly competitive nature of their first fight, a rematch between Assuncao, No. 2 in the latest USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA bantamweight rankings, and No. 5-ranked Moraes is actually quite logical. Assuncao has won an impressive 12 of his past 13 fights, while Moraes has done even better than that, emerging on top in 16 of his past 17.
With five rounds available for use in the rematch, there should be a much more definitive answer as to who is the better fighter.
“The physical attributes are going to be similar because we know each other physically, but as MMA fighters we are constantly changing and improving and a lot of factors come into play,” Assuncao said. “I don’t think it will be the exact fight. Obviously it will not be the exact fight, but I look at it is a whole different fight. My approach is all different. His approach is probably totally different, so I’m prepared for an all new fight.”
If Assuncao wins again, his argument for a title shot would be difficult to refute. His only loss at bantamweight came against Dillashaw at UFC 200 in July 2016 in what was a rematch of his win in their first fight at UFC Fight Night 29 in October 2013.
The trilogy is something Assuncao wants badly, and he’s trying to keep positive that it will finally come to fruition.
“I’m resilient; I’m pretty positive it’s going to work out my way,” Assuncao said. “I do have the expectation of being in a No. 1 contendership fight. I’ve mentioned and I’ve hoped and I’ve been in this situation many times. Hopefully this time it’s going to work. Right now the task at hand is Marlon Moraes once again. That’s all my focus right now. But obviously in the very back of my mind, I have the contendership fight.
To hear more from Assuncao, check out the video above.
For more on UFC on ESPN+ 2, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site. | {
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Head over to myblu.com to check out myblu and their $1.00 trial offer on a myblu kit. Check out myblu.com for full details | {
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Sample fares to GCT/Harlem-125th Street
On-board fares are indicated in red. | {
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Comitê Carlos de Ré da Verdade e Justiça do RS (*)
Há 46 anos, numa manhã de 11 de setembro, a artilharia aérea desabou sobre o Palácio Presidencial do Governo Chileno. Ao largo do país, projéteis de todo tipo ceifaram a democracia chilena, mutilaram seu povo, abortaram uma tentativa de libertação nacional. Usadas indevidamente, as forças armadas e de segurança foram instrumentadas para o crime político, para a tortura sobre mentes e corpos, para violar a Constituição republicana.
Seu corolário foram as delegacias abarrotadas, os campos de detenção e concentração, as salas de tortura, o bombardeio de bairros, a fim de carreiras profissionais, as perseguições a militares legalistas, a relegação de opositores, os crimes sexuais, o exilio de milhares de cidadãos, o desmanche de famílias, os fuzilamentos sumários e os quase 5000 mortos e desaparecidos listados até o presente.
Emulando os crimes de lesa-humanidade praticados até então na Bolívia, no Brasil e Uruguai, o regime ilegal chileno antecipou a barbárie que seria logo depois praticada na Argentina, com o beneplácito e reconhecimento oficiais dos governos norte-americanos. Por detrás do espanto que provocaram, estas violências foram a estrada aplainada para novos projetos econômicos, batizados de neoliberais, que renovaram a espoliação do trabalho e da natureza na América Latina, centenária vítima da associação de suas castas predadoras com poderes exteriores. As fardas realizaram o serviço sujo para o enriquecimento dos enfatiotados poderosos de turno.
Um total ainda impreciso cifra entre 120 e 150 o número dos cidadãos brasileiros sequestrados naquele setembro transandino, em campos de detenção que se espalharam da nortista Arica à Temuco sulina, com maiores concentrações em Concepción e na capital Santiago. Submetidos a diversos tipos de tortura, ombrearam com bolivianos, uruguaios, argentinos e diversas outras nacionalidades na resistência e energia solidária, mantendo no alto o nome da cada uma dessas nações, ante o delito orgânico e planejado, que incluía interrogatórios e sevicias dirigidos por repressores de seus próprios países.
Em seu trabalho de Memória, Verdade e Justiça, o Comitê Carlos de Ré tem contribuído para plasmar a memória do exílio dos cerca de 6000 brasileiros no Chile, assim como sua resistência e solidariedade, pondo acento constante na comovedora solidariedade com que foram acolhidos ao refugiar-se ali. Produzindo atos públicos, emitindo boletins, realizando pesquisas acadêmicas, entrevistas com exilados, busca em acervos jornalísticos e pessoais, oferecendo entrevistas a meios de comunicação, produzindo filmes para redes sociais, cruzando dados dispersos, disponibilizando material audiovisual para uso público, publicando livros, participando de eventos no Chile, tem procurado manter viva a ideia de solidariedade entre nossos povos.
Os mais significativos destes materiais têm como destino os acervos do Museo Nacional de la Memória y Derechos Humanos, o Memorial del Estadio Nacional, e a Casa de Memória José Domingo Cañas (ex casa de Theotonio). Fruto desta comunhão de laços de amizade, o Comitê é referido nas alocuções oficiais de 2015 e 2017 no Estádio e no Museu, pela voz de seus diretores Sra. Wally Kunstmann e Francisco Estevez.
No Estádio Nacional do Chile, cerca de 120 brasileiras e brasileiros padeceram sob o tacão do opróbio. Já o número de vítimas fatais em todo o país alcança a 8 cidadãos brasileiros, num período que vai desde antes do golpe de estado até muitos meses depois, incluindo duas vítimas raptadas no exterior do Chile pela Operação Condor. No audiovisual pode assistir-se biografias de Nilton Rosa da Silva, Wanio José de Mattos, Jane Vanini, Tulio Quintiliano Cardoso, Nelson de Souza Kohl, Luiz Carlos de Almeida, Maria Regina Marcondes Pinto e Jorge Alberto Basso. Estes compatriotas nossos deixaram seu sangue e vida no Chile, por isto comungam a honra e o direito de participar dos memoriais em que o Chile democrático e humanista celebra seus mártires.
Neste dia em que se rememora a brutalidade mas se faz com muito maior empenho o elogio da resistência e solidariedade, dizemos: Nunca Mais!
Porto Alegre, 10 de setembro de 2019.
(*) Comitê Carlos de Ré da Verdade e Justiça do Rio Grande do Sul
§§§
As opiniões emitidas nos artigos publicados no espaço de opinião expressam a posição de seu autor e não necessariamente representam o pensamento editorial do Sul21. | {
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In Josh Malerman's creepy horror novel Bird Box, Malorie and her two children haven't left the house in years, hiding out from a thing that, when seen, drives the viewer to crazed violence. Malorie decides to flee, and, blindfolded, she and her children sail down the river, followed all the while by the thing. This is Malerman's first novel (his day job is lead singer and guitarist for the band High Strung), but it's tightly written and full of an almost unbearable suspense. | {
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Home of the Original Camo Rings
Showcase your love of the outdoors with a beautiful outdoor themed or camo ring from Titanium-Buzz. Our original collection of outdoor rings is the first of its kind and includes a variety of designs for hunters, fishers, hikers, and more. The rings are made from lightweight materials like titanium or zirconium, and many styles include decorative inlays of authentic Realtree and Mossy Oak camouflage. Wear your ring while you hunt or subtly show off your passion for the outdoors at the office.
We carry camo wedding rings for men and women in a wide range of styles and sizes to suit every personality. Not sure what size wedding rings to order? No problem, head over to our ring sizing page for information on finding the correct size and what to do if your ring doesn't fit. We offer 1/4 sizes for most styles upon request to ensure that you get the perfect fit.
Exclusive Selections Featuring Realtree and Mossy Oak
Our Realtree and Mossy Oak Camo Rings match the camo you wear in the woods, but at home they'll do anything but blend in. These rings feature authentic Realtree and Mossy Oak camouflage that has been licensed through partnerships with Jordan Outdoors and Hass Outdoors for an authentic camo look. Every camo inlay is taken from a different swatch of camo, so no two of our rings are exactly alike.
Pick out one of our men's camo wedding rings to show your devotion to the hunt at the altar and every day after you say "I do." These truly unique camo wedding bands are all about celebrating your rustic sense of style. If you plan to stand at the altar in your favorite camo vest and tie - no judgment, by the way - then you're a prime candidate for one of these camo men's wedding bands from this authentic collection by Titanium-Buzz. Hunting boots and rifle optional at the altar.
We also have outdoor-themed and camo wedding rings for the ladies at Titanium-Buzz. Surprise your favorite outdoorsy lady when you get down on one knee with a pink camouflage wedding ring or something with an edgy, antler inlay. But don't worry, these ladies' styles can be ordered with plenty of bling, too. She'll be happy to show her traditional-meets-edgy sense of style one of our diamond camouflage wedding rings equipped with a sparkly center stone.
Made to Go with You on Intense Hunts
Our hunting scene and animal track rings are beautifully detailed and perfect for everyday use. Wear the tracks of your favorite prey or choose one of our intricate hunting scene rings featuring fishers, hunters, and outdoor landscapes. With so many designs to choose from, there's something for every type of outdoor enthusiast.
Whether you pick a stylish camo wedding ring or opt for a day-to-day style that celebrates your personality, you can be sure that these rings will endure. We offer outdoor rings made of rugged titanium, black zirconium, carbon fiber, Damascus steel, and other long-lasting wedding bands materials. If you pick one of our cool titanium outdoor rings, you can expect unrivaled durability, scratch-resistance and exceptional strength. In other words, these babies will stand up to the heat, even on sweat-inducing adventures.
Have other questions about how to get into the hunt? Give us a call toll-free at 1-866-215-1862 or simply send us an email.
Explore all available styles of wedding bands for men to find the most impressive ones.
Find Out More about Our Camo Rings | {
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One of the many vectors which delivers leaked information on upcoming phones is the device benchmark score. Many apps upload the results to online leaderboards for all to see. There's quite a bit of information to be gleaned from these online listings – basically the entire spec list. Now Sony is looking to plug this leak by blocking benchmarking apps.
A tester recently provided a screenshot of an unreleased Xperia device with a popup warning – in this case it was caused by attempting to install AnTuTu. The popup reportedly prevents you from loading the app at all. This is the first instance we are aware of where an OEM went out of its way to block benchmark leaks. It's pretty clever, though.
It's unclear how extensive the app blacklist is, or if there is a way around it for developers who (presumably) know what they are doing. Unless someone at Sony drops the ball, this is a warning you should never see on a retail device.
[XperiaBlog] | {
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Santiago Calatrava said the roof would open.
And evidently it will.
On Friday morning, a 5,700-pound glass panel was hoisted into place as a 355-foot-long operable skylight took final form in the Oculus pavilion of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by Mr. Calatrava. Another panel went up in the afternoon.
Those are among the last of 996 pieces of blast-resistant glass to have been installed at the Oculus since March 15. The glazing should be finished on Monday, said Steven Plate, director of World Trade Center construction for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is building the $3.9 billion rail, subway and shopping hub.
The winged Oculus is by far the most conspicuous element in the hub, which is nearing completion after 10 years.
Each Sept. 11, the skylight will be opened to the elements for 102 minutes, Erica Dumas, a spokeswoman for the authority, said. That is how long the 2001 terrorist attack lasted, from the time the first jetliner hit the trade center at 8:46 a.m. until the collapse of the second tower at 10:28 a.m. In the towers, on the ground and in the hijacked planes, 2,753 people were killed. | {
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Thursday during meeting at the White House on preventing school shootings, President Donald Trump said gun-free zones in schools are part of the problem.
Trump said, “We have to harden the schools, not soften them up. A gun-free zone to a killer or somebody that wants to be a killer, that’s like going in for ice cream. That’s like, here I am, take me. We have to get smart on gun-free zones. When they see it says this is a gun-free zone, that means nobody has a gun except them. Nobody will be shooting bullets in the other direction. And they see that as such a beautiful target. They live for that.”
He continued, “Frankly, you have teachers who are Marines for 20 years, and they retire and become a teacher, and they’re Army, they’re Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard. They’re people who have won shooting contest or whatever. This is what they do. They know guns, they understand guns.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | {
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DETROIT (WXYZ) — "There are a lot of ways to celebrate a retirement. Taking a photo in front of a building fire is not one of them," said Detroit Fire Commissioner Eric Jones.
This was his response to the social media post showing Detroit firefighters posing in front of a burning house. The photo was posted on New Year's Eve.
Source: Detroit Fire Incidents Page
The photo sparked some outreach in the comments. Some viewers thought the visual was in bad taste, while others congratulated the crew on their hard work.
Detroit Fire confirmed the house was vacant, as well as the home next to it.
Here’s the house today in SW Detroit.@detroitfire says the home was vacant. The one next to it is as well.
Dep. Commissioner Dave Fornell tells me fire crews could not go inside last night and could only defensively attack the fire. pic.twitter.com/BiG7stPPfR — Brian Abel (@BrianAbelTV) January 1, 2020
Read Jones' full statement below: | {
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AUBURN, Alabama -- Detectives were still gathering evidence this morning as steady rain began to fall at the scene of a shooting at an apartment complex in a popular student neighborhood.
Auburn police issued no official statement, but confirmed there was a shooting with multiple victims at the University Heights apartment complex at 202 West Longleaf Drive.
[Earlier:
]
Dozens of police cars, ambulances and fire trucks descended on the front of the complex late Saturday. One onlooker said he said a saw a body covered by police. Officers later put a tent around the crime scene to shield the view and protect the scene from rain. Evidence markers were placed throughout the parking lot.
The shooting appeared to take place directly in front of the apartment's office or clubhouse. Detectives combed through bushes and parking lots looking for evidence, aided by bright lights brought in by the fire department.
For several hours, even residents of the complex weren't allowed to enter. Eventually, police directed residents to park at a retail lot near College Street and walk to the apartments. They were escorted into the gates by police after their IDs were checked.
Many curious onlookers gathered to watch from the sidewalk. Some were apparent witnesses. Police took down statements and information from several people.
One man who seemed intoxicated was arrested at about 2 a.m., but it did not appear to be related to the shooting.
Police are expected to release an official statement later this morning. Police chief Tommy Dawson was at the crime scene. He has not confirmed the names of any victims nor given any information about a possible suspect. | {
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Climate change threatens our financial system in two ways. First, it poses a physical risk to property as climate-fueled extreme weather events—floods, hurricanes, wildfires—become more and more frequent. Second, it poses transition risks to our economy: investments in the fossil fuel industry may abruptly lose value as we transition to a clean economy, posing risks of financial crisis and destabilization. If we remain on a pathway to 2°C of warming (right now we’re on track for roughly 3°C of warming), the costs to the financial system could reach as much as $69 trillion by 2100. Other estimates put the global economic losses caused by climate change at $23 trillion—still roughly three or four times the scale of the 2008 crisis.
It’s clear that our entire financial system is in major danger from the climate crisis. And yet, neither the largest U.S. financial institutions, nor the public watchdogs that are supposed to hold them accountable, have taken adequate steps to address Wall Street’s role in exacerbating the crisis. In fact, many of the largest banks and asset managers have actually increased their holdings of fossil fuel assets since the Paris Agreement was signed. And in the two years immediately after the Paris Agreement was adopted, the six largest U.S. bank investors in fossil fuels companies loaned, underwrote, or otherwise financed over $700 billion for fossil fuel companies. Wall Street banks are making a quick buck accelerating climate change, all while communities across the country are suffering from the lasting impacts of industrial pollution and the increasingly devastating effects of climate change.
TOTAL FOSSIL FUEL FINANCING BY BANK (2016-2018)
In the two years immediately after the Paris Agreement was signed, these American banks invested hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuels. Source: Rainforest Action Network View in full screen.
There has been some movement by big financial firms. A recently leaked report from J.P. Morgan—the world’s largest financial backer of fossil fuel companies—stated that the climate crisis could lead to “catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.” Late last year, Goldman Sachs announced that it will spend $750 billion over ten years on sustainable finance projects, restrict financing to all new oil production and exploration in the Arctic, and impose stricter lending requirements for coal companies. And in a letter to investors earlier this year, Blackrock—the world’s largest asset manager—announced that it will exit investments with high environmental risk, like thermal coal, and launch new investment products that screen for fossil fuels. While these actions are a small step in the right direction, they are long overdue given the relative impact the financial industry has had on the climate crisis—and they’re not enough to protect us from a climate-fueled financial collapse, either.
We will not defeat the climate crisis if we have to wait for the financial industry to self-regulate or come forward with piecemeal voluntary commitments. Winning a Green New Deal and achieving 100% clean energy for our global economy—or enacting any of my 13 plans to defeat the climate crisis —will be near impossible so long as large financial institutions are allowed to freely underwrite investments in dirty fossil fuels.
This ends when I am president. A Warren administration will act decisively and swiftly to manage the risk that climate change poses to our economy by reining in Wall Street and ensuring our banks, asset managers, and insurers pay the true cost of climate change instead of passing it on to millions of Americans. We can make the financial system work for good as we transition to 100% clean energy, but first, we have to change the way Wall Street is currently doing business.
USE EXISTING FINANCIAL REGULATIONS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE BECAUSE IT IS A SYSTEMIC RISK TO OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM
Foreign financial regulators understand that the climate crisis poses serious risks to the financial system. European regulators are warning of a “green swan” event that could trigger a climate change-driven financial crisis. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, and the Governor of the Banque de France, François Villeroy warned that climate change poses a “catastrophic effect” to the global economy that could lead to “a sudden collapse in asset prices” similar to the to the 2008 financial crisis, and has urged central banks, such as the Federal Reserve Board, to play a much larger role in tackling the crisis.
I am sounding the alarm on Wall Street once again—just as I did in the lead up to the 2008 financial crash.
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was our country’s response to the 2008 crisis. It included tools that our federal regulators could use to protect the safety and soundness of our financial system. Regulators should use those tools now to address the systemic risk that climate change poses.
Specifically, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC)—a body created by Dodd-Frank to bring together heads of financial regulatory agencies to assess threats across jurisdictions and markets—should carefully examine the risks posed by climate change and use its authority to designate financial institutions as “systemically important” if appropriate. And the Federal Reserve should invoke its authority under Section 165 of Dodd-Frank to impose “enhanced prudential standards”—things like higher capital standards and margin requirement, or tougher stress testing—on large financial institutions based on their climate-related risks.
By using the authorities Congress has already given them, federal regulators can mitigate the climate-related risk in our financial system and help accelerate the transition towards a clean energy economy.
INCREASE CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY THROUGH THE SECURITIES & EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Publicly traded companies, including big banks, have an obligation to share important information about their business. But right now, these companies don’t share much about how climate change might affect their business, their customers, and their investors.
That’s a problem in two ways. First, there are a lot of companies that could be badly hurt by the likely environmental effects of climate change, and their financial implications such as stranded assets, and supply-chain risk. We’ve already seen how record storms, flooding, and wildfires can cause billions of dollars in damage. Second, global efforts to combat climate change will have an enormous impact on certain types of companies, particularly those in the energy sector. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures found that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and increasingly affordable deployment of clean energy technology could have “significant, near-term financial implications” for Big Oil and fossil fuel companies.
My Climate Risk Disclosure plan addresses these problems by requiring companies to publicly disclose both of these types of climate-related risks. It directs the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue rules that make every public company disclose detailed information, including the likely effect on the company if climate change continues at its current pace and the likely effect on the company if the world successfully restricts greenhouse gas emissions to meet the targets of the Paris Agreement. My plan also requires the SEC to tailor these disclosure requirements for specific industries so that, for instance, fossil fuel companies will have to make even more detailed disclosures.
But disclosure is just the first step. There is more the SEC can do to ensure companies are more accurately accounting for climate risk, which is why a Warren administration will go further by strengthening SEC rules that govern the climate change expertise in the composition of boards of directors, as well as in shareholder representation and disclosure in proxy voting. My administration will also require U.S. banks to report annually how much fossil fuel equity and debt is created, and/or held as assets, with respect to all fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure. And a Warren administration will work with the SEC Office of Credit Ratings to direct credit rating agencies to impose process standard—like climate due diligences—that incorporate the physical and financial risks that climate change presents to securities and other financial assets, as well as to the companies that issue them.
PROTECT PENSIONS
For the millions of public school teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other state and federal public employees who spend their careers in service to our government, pension funds provide a shot at a decent retirement. Most simply, pensions are deferred wages for our public employees. And yet today, our pension systems are failing our public employees. That’s in part because they are invested in fossil fuels—leaving all the risk of fossil fuel investments in hard working Americans’ retirement accounts.
One recent analysis found that pension funds would be significantly more successful without risky fossil investments. California’s $238 billion state teachers retirement fund CalSTRS—which serves nearly a million public school teachers—would have earned an additional $5.5 billion over ten years without its fossil fuel investments. And Colorado’s state pension fund PERA—which serves 600,000 current and former teachers, state troopers, corrections officers, and other public employees—would have earned almost $2 billion more in value. This matters for hard-working pension-holders: investments in fossil fuels over the last 10 years have lost many of California’s public school teachers $5,572 each, and cost many of Colorado’s public employees $2,900 each. And yet, despite calls from environmentalists to divest from fossil fuels, in January of this year CalSTRS rejected divestment, claiming it would have a “lasting negative impact on the health of the fund.”
As president, I will fight for every person’s pension, because every American deserves the right to retire with dignity after spending their career in service of our local, state and federal government. A Warren administration would explicitly state policy preferences for limiting climate risk, beginning with divestment from fossil fuels and prioritizing investments in environmental, social and governance (ESG) options. And I would go further by pushing the Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Labor—the two government bodies charged with regulating pensions—to declare carbon-intensive investments not consistent with a fund manager’s fiduciary duty to its clients.
And, as a matter of justice, we should tighten bankruptcy laws to prevent coal and other fossil fuel companies from evading their responsibility to their workers and to the communities that they have helped to pollute. In the Senate, I have fought to improve the standing of coal worker pensions and benefits in bankruptcy—and as president, I will work with Congress to pass legislation to make these changes a reality.
ENSURE INSURERS ACCURATELY PRICE CLIMATE RISK
Insurers are the financial intermediaries most directly exposed to climate change’s risks because their core business requires them to underwrite damages on physical property. As the climate crisis accelerates the size and scale of disasters, the models that insurers have long relied on are increasingly unpredictable, generating unprecedented losses. In 2017 and 2018 alone, insurance companies paid out an estimated $219 billion in natural disaster-related claims—the highest for any two-year period in history. One California-based insurer filed for bankruptcy after it couldn’t pay out the millions it owed policyholders whose homes had been destroyed in California’s Camp Fire.
But despite insurance companies knowing the size of the climate risk—they literally write it into their risk models—still they fan the flames of the climate crisis by underwriting the fossil fuel companies behind the crisis. Large insurers had over $500 billion in fossil fuel-related investments as of 2016. And of the combined $15 trillion in assets managed by the world’s 80 largest insurers, an average of only one percent is allocated to low-carbon investments. If insurers stopped providing insurance for coal-fired power plants it would be nearly impossible to secure financing for new power plants.
Instead of halting the effects of climate change, insurers are passing on the high prices to consumers—or foregoing offering protection to vulnerable Americans altogether. In some places, insurance companies are pulling out of areas entirely, leaving consumers exposed. For example, the number of new and renewed homeowners’ insurance policies fell by 8,700 in California counties at greatest risk for wildfires. But some insurance providers will still write policies in vulnerable areas, ratcheting up the monthly prices consumers pay to counterbalance their increased risk. Premiums rose in every single state in the nation over the past decade, with states in tornado alley experiencing the highest jumps by an average of over $500. And private companies are taking advantage of the price increases: the number of private flood insurers has more than doubled since 2016, and they’ve taken in an additional half a billion in premiums since the prior year.
It’s time to hold insurance companies accountable for the risk they’re spreading through the financial system—and through vulnerable communities. I’ll work with Congress to make large insurance companies doing business in the U.S. disclose the size of the premiums they’re deriving from coal, oil and gas projects, associated infrastructure, and companies. I’ll investigate insurers who talk out of both sides of their mouth when they deny coverage to policyholders under the guise of too much climate risk, while simultaneously insuring fossil fuel projects. I’ll push the SEC to require insurance companies to show that they have evaluated climate-related risks in their underwriting processes and in their reserves. I will reform the National Flood Insurance Program by making it easier for existing residents to move out of flood-prone properties – both inland and coastal – including a program to buy back those properties from low-income homeowners at market value. And within my first term I will ensure the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps are fully updated, so that we can raise the standard for new construction through the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard.
PERSONNEL IS POLICY
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, economic leaders from across the world highlighted the vital need to include climate risks in economic analysis. But Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin found himself in a minority of one, arguing that costs were being overestimated when considering the impacts of climate change. Either he’s uninformed or he’s lying: study after study shows that we are drastically underestimating the cost of the climate crisis.
I have often said that personnel is policy. The regulators in charge of protecting the American people need to understand the risk that the climate crisis poses to our entire financial system—and the millions whose livelihoods depend on it. That’s why I will appoint at every level of the system financial regulators committed to holding financial institutions accountable for climate risk. Here’s what that means:
I will appoint a Treasury Secretary who—unlike Steven Mnuchin—believes in the power of markets to help defeat the climate crisis: because right now, research in both of those fields shows how vital it is that we expose the climate risk.
I’ll appoint financial regulators—including Federal Reserve governors, Commodity Futures Trading Commission commissioners, and leadership of every other agency represented on the Financial Stability Oversight Council—who understand the clear threat climate change poses to our financial system and who implement policy that addresses financial institutions’ exposure to climate risks and hold them accountable to addressing.
I’ve already pledged to appoint an SEC chair who will use all existing tools to require robust disclosure of climate-related risks. I’ll also appoint SEC commissioners who will manage the threat climate change poses to the economy by pushing for corporate disclosure of climate risk and a shift of finances away from fossil fuels.
The size and the scope of the risk that climate poses to our financial system requires immediate action. I’ve committed to transitioning us away from Donald Trump’s climate-denying administration at a speed unmatched by any transition in modern history, so that we can begin tackling the urgent challenges ahead on Day One. As part of that transition, I will announce my choices for Cabinet, including a Treasury Secretary who understands the financial risks of the climate crisis, by December 1, 2020. And I’ll staff all senior and mid-level White House positions, like financial regulators, by Inauguration Day—so that we can begin de-risking our financial system from the moment I’m in office.
WORK WITH INTERNATIONAL ALLIES
One of the next catastrophic global financial crises may well be caused by the growing climate crisis. The 2008 recession proved how financial crises are no longer isolated: their impact echoes across countries. That’s why addressing the financial risks of the climate crisis is an international issue. But the United States isn’t just lagging behind other countries on addressing the climate risk: right now, we’re not even in the same league.
Leaders across the globe recognize the risk that the climate crisis poses to their financial systems: environmental concerns make up the top five long-term global economic risks for leaders surveyed in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2020. Many, many other countries have not only recognized the risk but are already taking steps to address it. The President of the European Central Bank has called for climate change to be an “essential part of monetary policymaking,” and the Bank of England has introduced stress tests to assess the UK financial system’s exposure to climate-linked financial risks. Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his fossil fuel cronies are letting the U.S. fall behind, putting the financial well-being of millions of Americans at risk.
A Warren Administration will work with international allies to build a more resilient financial and environmental future for our planet. And I’ll use every tool in the box to build that world. As President I’ll advocate for the Federal Reserve to join the global coalition of central banks known as the Network on Greening the Financial System. As we transition to a 100% clean energy economy, the United States should be a leader on the global stage, and having a seat at the table is the first step. As part of my New Approach to Trade, I will require implementation of the Paris Climate accord and the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies as preconditions for any trade agreement. My Green Marshall Plan will dedicate $100 billion to helping other countries purchase and deploy American-made clean energy technology that is manufactured right here at home. And we should end all American support for international oil and gas projects through the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. We should also commit to using America’s voting power in the World Bank and other global financial institutions to cut off investment in fossil fuel projects and to direct that investment into clean energy projects instead. Our efforts should be dedicated to accelerating the global transition to clean energy.
Climate change poses a systemic risk to the health and stability of our financial system. And yet, Wall Street is refusing to listen, let alone take real action. My plan to Stop Wall Street From Financing the Climate Crisis is just the first step to ensuring our financial system is ensured against the worst effects of climate change and Wall Street stops financing the climate crisis. | {
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prettyinpixiedust:
So one day a dwarf is talking to a human and finally realizes that when humans say woman, they generally mean “person who is theoretically capable of childbirth” because for whatever reason, humans assign social expectations based genital differences. (What a fucked up culture, the dwarf thinks.) But hey, better communication! So the next time the dwarf introduces theirself, they say, oh, by the way, I am what you call a “woman.”
And the trade negotiations just stop. They just stop cold. The tall people insist on speaking to the man, they insist on talking to the lady dwarf about all sorts of irrelevant bullshit, like recipes and childrearing and perfume
so the dwarf goes back home, enraged
and is like “BTW guess what happened, we’re all just going to be men forever now as far as the tall ones are concerned”
and everyone is justly horrified at this barbarism but they all agree to do whatever it takes to squeeze those tall bastards for all the resources they are worth
and the dwarves get surlier, and the trade agreements less generous
and the tall people are all “what a miserable and greedy race”
but really they’re just still nursing a grudge about how goddamn backwards and sexist the tall people are
because their best negotiator, one of their sacred cave people, got snubbed the instant she said she was capable of childbirth - and a mortal insult like that can never be forgiven | {
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Auto supplier Robert Bosch GmbH will build a 1 billion-euro ($1.1 billion) semiconductor plant, the biggest single investment in its history, as the maker of brakes and engines prepares for a surge in demand for components used in self-driving vehicles.
The factory in Dresden, Germany will start producing chips needed for autonomous vehicles, smart homes and Internet-linked city infrastructure in 2021, the world’s biggest car-parts supplier said Monday in a statement. It’ll employ as many as 700 workers once construction is complete in 2019.
“Expanding our production capacity will help us boost our competitive position,” Chief Executive Officer Volkmar Denner said in the statement, noting that the use of semiconductors is growing as “connectivity and automation rise.”
Bosch, known as a maker of traditional car parts such as braking systems and combustion engines, is also a long-time software developer and is increasingly investing in newer technologies as the nature of driving changes. The Stuttgart, Germany-based company been making chips for a range of products like smartphones for more than four decades. Last year, every car sold globally contained an average of nine chips made by Bosch, the company said.
While Bosch is focusing on technology and projects promising improved connectivity and cleaner city centers, the 130 year-old company has come under pressure about its alleged role in helping carmakers evade diesel emissions rules that have rocked the auto industry. Last month, Bosch was linked to emissions-cheating allegations against a fourth automaker, when it was named as co-defendant together with General Motors Co. in a lawsuit where owners of diesel-powered pickups accused the automaker of using illegal software.
The chips made in Dresden will be added to diverse Bosch products including airbag sensors, autonomous steering, pressure gauges and communication technologies, a spokesman said. | {
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Square Moves Into the Bitcoin World
Mike: Anyway, let’s get on to talking about the week in tech! And with that, why don’t we start off with Bitcoin? Square, the micropayments processing company co-founded by Jack Dorsey, recently started letting a small subset of users purchase Bitcoin using one of the company’s consumer-facing apps, Square Cash. It’s primarily a peer-to-peer money transfer service, but Square is dabbling in ways to make money from the app.
Now, you’ve written a bit about Square over the past year, including how the company was set to surge past the market cap of Twitter, Dorsey’s other beloved company. What should I make of this move? Is it something significant for the business or, alternately, is it a significant moment for Bitcoin? With all the daily vacillations in Bitcoin value, it’s hard for me to know if the currency is in a stable, real place with normal people or if it’s still a flight of fancy.
Nathaniel: Square’s stock jumped after this Bitcoin news got out. It reminds me a bit of the British company that saw its shares jump 400 percent last month after it simply added the word “blockchain” to its name. (For those tech readers who have successfully ignored all of this craziness, blockchain is the database technology that Bitcoin introduced.)
It seems hard to dispute that this is a very bubble-y moment for Bitcoin and all the blockchain and virtual currency stuff that have spun off it. A lot of the people buying right now probably don’t have a terribly strong thesis about why the technology matters — they just see it going up and want to get in on the action.
Bitcoin’s position as a new kind of global online gambling parlor has been particularly apparent in South Korea and Japan, which have risen out of nowhere over the last six months to become the largest markets for virtual currency trading. When I was asking around about this a few weeks back, I kept hearing how virtual currency trading fit neatly in countries where ordinary people have long speculated on foreign currencies. It’s worth keeping this in mind for anyone thinking of buying a Bitcoin through Square Cash. | {
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She was stabbed nine times and shot in the head while walking her son to his school bus stop. At least three assailants escaped on a motorbike. Mitu is only the second woman to be killed by extremists in the same fashion as the other recent attacks.
AD
Her husband, Babul Akter, was recently promoted to his new role after leading a slew of raids against banned Islamist extremist groups, such as Jamaat ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh. Police officials told the Associated Press that they couldn’t rule out that members of any of the groups Akter had fought against had carried out the killing.
Also Sunday, a 60-year-old Christian man, identified as Sunil Gomes, was hacked to death at a shop he owned in Natore, in the north of the country. The Islamic State’s news agency, Amaq, asserted that the group was responsible for his death. The Islamic State has claimed at least two other killings.
Bangladesh has been shaken by increasing religious tension as extremist groups gain sway. Besides the spate of attacks on individuals, extremist groups have bombed Shiite shrines in a characteristic attempt to foment sectarian violence.
AD
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A debate over whether Bangladesh should have a secular or Islamic government has defined the country’s politics since its birth after an independence war against Pakistan in 1971. The current government is secular and has spearheaded controversial prosecutions of Islamist figures for war crimes during the 1971 war, enraging many of the country’s fundamentalists. But although Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has asserted her commitment to secular values, she has been hesitant to speak out in support of the secular and atheist bloggers killed or injured in attacks. In an interview with Time magazine in 2015, she said, “Personally, I don’t support it, I don’t accept it. Why not? You have to have your faith. If anybody thinks they have no religion, okay, it’s their personal view. … But they have no right to write or speak against any religion.” | {
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Macron palus peaministril uue siseministri nimetamiseni ministri tööülesanded üle võtta.
Collomb teatas juba septembris, et loobub siseministri ametikohast, sest tahab 2020. aastal kandideerida uuesti Lyoni linnapeaks. Sellest ajast alates on ta olnud surve all otsekohe ametist lahkuda.
Ajalehe Le Figaro andmetel tahtis Collomb lahkuda juba üleeile, kuid Macron keeldus tagasiastumispalvet rahuldamast.
«Rünnakute valguses ministri vastu alates sellest ajast, kui ta kinnitas kandideerimist, väljendas vabariigi president uuesti oma usaldust tema vastu ja palus tal jääda täielikult pühendunuks missioonile hoida Prantsusmaa turvalisena,» teatas presidendiamet uudisteagentuurile AFP.
Collomb ütles eile pärast esialgse lahkumisavalduse tagasilükkamist, et kavatseb endiselt lahkuda, tekitades Prantsuse poliitilises eliidis segadust.
«Gérard Collomb on uuesti tagasi astunud. Kui kauaks jääb see episood kestma?,» küsis paremäärmuslaste liider Marine Le Pen.
Peaminister Édouard Philippe tühistas pärast presidendi palvet sekkuda kavandatud visiidi Lõuna-Aafrika Vabariiki, teatas peaministri kantselei.
Collomb avaldas soovi ministriametist lahkuda ja kohalike valimiste kampaaniale keskenduda pärast Euroopa Parlamendi valimisi järgmise aasta mais.
71-aastame Collomb oli 16 aastat Lyoni linnapea, enne kui Macron veenis ta siseministriks hakkama.
Collombi peetakse Macroni üheks lojaalsemaks ministriks ning tema valitsuse raskekaallaseks. | {
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Words can’t describe how sick this makes me.
KARACHI (AFP) – The lifeless bodies of two tiny babies are being given their final bath before burial in Karachi, after they were left to die in the southern Pakistani city’s garbage dumps.
“They can only have been one or two days old,” says volunteer worker Mohammad Saleem, pointing at the two small corpses being gently washed by his colleagues at a charity’s morgue.
In the conservative Muslim nation, where the birth of children outside of marriage is condemned and adultery is a crime punishable by death under strict interpretations of Islamic law, infanticide is a crime on the rise.
…The number of dead infants found last year — 1,210 — was up from 890 in 2008 and 999 in 2009, says the Edhi Foundation manager in Karachi, Anwar Kazmi.
Kazmi recounts the discovery of the burnt body of a six-day-old infant who had been strangled. Another child was found on the steps of a mosque having been stoned to death on the orders of an extremist imam who has since disappeared, he says. | {
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Comment: Of the over 700 articles and opinion pieces on the martial arts I’ve published, this one on Muslim Kung Fu has probably gotten the most reactions. Letters and question from all over the world have flooded in. There is a lot of interest there in Jiao Men, Islamic martial arts. Here is the first article of its kind…
(Originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of Inside Kung Fu.)
China is a dish spiced by many cultures. There are over 50 minorities among the Chinese besides the Han people themselves. A significant number, over five million of these, are Muslims – known in Chinese as the “Hui” people. In the tenth century large numbers of Persians and Arabs extended the Muslim trade routes deep into China. Many settled and widely dispersed through the country; some living among the general population, some sticking close to concentrated communities of believers.
Known for toughness, courage and high spirit the Muslim population of China has not been passive in its growth. Often exploited and suppressed they maintained a stubborn reliance on their beliefs and fighting skills. Butreprisals often came. In the Ch’ing dynasty (1644-1910), for instance, three Hui people walking together with weapons could be punished. If caught committing a crime they might even had their faces branded Hui Zei (Muslim Rebel). Such was the discriminatory treatment of Muslims throughout the empire. On the other hand, in the 13th century Muslim generals rallied under a new banner and helped establish the Ming dynasty – a high point of Chinese history. Unceasingly, Muslim martial artists adopted and perfected the indigenous arts of China. They developed a number of fists that are still practiced with honor today. But at the base was one particular exercise known as …
The Muslim Spring Leg
If there is one universally recognized set for the Muslim style it is the “springing leg” or Tan Tui. At first blush Tan Tui seems callously unimpressive. The moves are repetitious, stretched out, almost mechanical and performed up and back as though on a track; each segment is termed a “road.” The original style was subdivided into ten such roads. Later, a southern version was introduced that split some of the harder roads into more digestible bites and expanded the set to 12 roads. To this day, if you say you practice Tan Tui, those in the know will immediately ask “10 or 12?” Tan Tui is a popular set adopted by many styles and lent a special flavor by each. For instance, in one branch of mantis, there is a 14-road Tan Tui. With such popularity Tan Tui became one of the first universal kung-fu sets and therefore can claim a part as forerunner of contemporary wushu’s standardized forms.
Tan Tui, as we have said, is not a flashy looking set. Mostly straight punches and kicks, it seems to some to possess a robotic aspect that makes it look more like work than fun. But tan Tui is so profound that many boxers throughout history have specialized in its technique. For instance, the wide-open punches of Tan Tui, known as yoke punches, are designed along the lines of Chinese medical practice to stretch and invigorate the meridians of the body. Simultaneously, the yoke punch, with its exaggerated arm extension, is a perfect indicator of the placement of the student’s waist. Shoulders, which normally fly upward in the beginning student, are so stretched they naturally drop and relax. The same benefits go for the extended long leg kicks of the art. As the name suggests Tan Tui attempts to strengthen the abdominal muscles of the practitioner by forcing him to extend while kicking. The striking leg must immediately elevate from the ground with minimal cocking action.
In true northern kung-fu long fist fashion, Tan Tui encourages the student to find his maximum range of motion before tightening and shortening up. Tan Tui disallows the beginner’s tendency of bent limbs and tensed muscles to create power. It lives up to its name of long fist by making the student think in a new way, in a sense reprogramming his ideas of power generation and range of motion.
In due course, after the student has learned the ten basic roads the real training should begin. This is a good example of ancient training methods versus more contemporary ones. Nowadays, having completed the tan Tui, the student immediately moves onto another more interesting and diverse set of actions. This is too bad because the training has really just begun. For instance, since the ten roads are each separate they can be done in any order. A good Tan Tui instructor will then have the student mix and match roads until any road can be done in any order at will. Then the roads are again practiced with shuffling steps, changes of speed, and angled steps breaking the robot-like aspect completely. This challenges the students’ creativity and ability to respond. Finally the actions from the roads are completely mixed so the student may start with No. 1, switch to No. 8, and finish with No. 5 without losing place or direction. From a simple series of movements the student is now only a small step from basic sparring practice.
Tan Tui is said to have been created in the Ming dynasty by ChaShagmir (a distinctly Muslim name even in Chinese). Chamir, as he was called, was among those who went to the coast to protect the shores of China against raids by Japanese pirates. However, on this long journey he became sick from the harsh weather conditions. He was left to recuperate in a mountain village in GuanXian County. His hosts in this small village were so kind to him that when he recovered that autumn and watched them practice their kung-fu after harvest he decided to teach them the art he had devised. They were grateful and his art spread far and wide from this origin. People took the first syllable of his name “Cha” and thus the style known as “Cha Chuan” – Cha Fist, was born. Originally its basis, the Tan Tui set, was composed of 28 routines — one for each letter of the Arabic alphabet. Eventually everything was compiled into the ten road spring leg which remains with us today.
Those familiar with Arabic religious poetry will note that many root words in Arabic are without vowels and can be rearranged to create other meanings and levels of understanding. This rearrangement, also familiar to certain Christian and Jewish sects, was considered a valid study for all students of the Bible, Torah and Koran. And note as an interesting sidelight that this is precisely the method of teaching for the Tan Tui, taking ten routes (roots) and reassembling them to form new meanings and combinations still related to the original exercises.
There is an old saying in kung-fu that one form mastered is worth a hundred tasted. But too often people take this to indicate a mindless repetition of the form. Tan Tui is a perfect example of what form mastery is meant to entail. Rather than learning flashier new forms which ultimately reduce to the same moves in new combinations with a little “Hollywood” thrown in, the traditional student of kung-fu developed power and stability with familiar movements before gradually altering them to new situations. He reinvested and compounded his knowledge. It was a wise way to save and to practice.
Known throughout China Tan Tui is particularly practiced in Henan, HeBei, Shantung and Sha’anxi provinces. Since its origins lie with the Hui people there is even a proverb: From NanJing the best Tan Tui is that of the Hui people” which becomes the pun, “Hui (Muslim) Hui (best) Tan Tui.”
Cha Chuan
As it progressed Cha style and other Muslim boxing methods became known under the general name of Jiao Men (sect fighting). Of the many jiao men forms one group in particular, the ten sets of Cha Chuan, is famous. Like the ten core sets of Shaolin, these famous forms encompass the entire repertoire of the Cha style, not counting weapons. The first one taught is generally Cha No. 4, a famous long fist form.
Cha is a particularly beautiful style. Like any northern long fist it is big, proud and fluid. Stances are lower than in most Shaolin-type styles with special emphasis on height changes, waist turning and hip control. But it is Cha Fist’s special emphasis on timing which is particularly interesting. Most beginning kung-fu practitioners sweat buckets just to coordinate hands and legs as a single unit. But as the Cha student progresses this simplified coordination step and punch, kick and palm slowly disappears. It is replaced by a subtle offset rhythm speeds from each other and from the legs.
Cha Fist excels in broken rhythm, offset rhythm and all sorts of movements that seem to set up a timing, violate it and dovetail right back into the proper beat, converging at just the right moment. “Convergence” is the key word here. As in all advanced kung-fu the practitioner is looking for limbs to travel at different rates and then converge just at the moment of completion.
Seen in this light all those different moves and stances in kung-fu forms are more than just beautiful postures. Each group is actually an entirely different task requiring different coordination and convergence. Cha fist maintains the ancient and subtle variations in timing, pace and execution that make for distinctive, not cookie-cutter, kung-fu.
The Muslim Contribution
On the stage of world history the Muslim world has been an important player, especially in relations with the East. The followers of Islam were the first to bridge the gap between Chinese and Western medicine and they started that 1,000 years ago. Alchemy, beginning in China, was transported directly through the Arab world to the West and rooted itself as the beginnings of modern chemistry.
The Muslim fist in China has also made worthy contributions. When the newly formed Republic of China began its creation of a generic, contemporary version of Wushu it looked to Jiao Men as its basis. The reasoning was interesting. Muslims, as a whole, had always been isolated within the minorities of China and therefore had far less traffic with other groups. It was thought, therefore by the powers that be, that Muslim fist must be essentially more “pure” than many other style. It was adopted as the basis of contemporary long fist and many of the first long fist sets issued by the government office were based on Cha Chuan.
In certain widely accepted styles the Muslim presence has also been strong. In Hsing-I for instance, many of the great practitioners were of Muslim origin and it may be that the real rudiments of the style are from Muslim culture. In weapons work, too, Muslim fist is well-represented with Jiao Men boasting five tiger hook sets and over ten saber sets. And last but not least, Muslims were often placed in the dangerous position of bodyguard because of their relatively nonaffiliated status with other Chinese elements. Rising to this occasion they developed the beautiful and powerful style known throughout the world as Pa Chi Ch’uan (BaJiQuan – Eight Extremes Boxing). As the Chien Lung emperor stated in the 19th century, “For health we have Tai Chi, for protection Pa Chi.”
So universally recognized was Pa Chi as one of the most no-nonsense styles that even in our present era it was considered without equal. Witness the fact that a famous Pa Chi teacher was the instructor of Chiang Kai Shek’s, Mao Tse Tung’s and Sun Yet Sen’s bodyguards. That’s right the men who protected these three sworn enemies were all kung-fu brothers.
In modern times we are constantly assailed with representations of Arab culture as seemingly comprised of religious fanatics and terrorists. Martial arts training is a nice antidote for cultural ignorance. We are allowed through it to replicate the actions practiced by different people from different cultures who lived centuries from us. We cannot only improve our health and our skills but don another person’s shoes and walk down his path, or in the case of Tan Tui, ten roads.
Photographs by Debbie Shayne
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Wie betreibt man die Dekolonisierung einer Fachzeitschrift? Der Chefredakteur der „American Historical Review“ erklärt, wie er die Vielfalt der Autorenschaft und die Lebhaftigkeit der Debatte steigern will.
Feuer und Flamme für diese Staatlichkeit: Das Titelbild des Februarheftes der AHR zeigt das Plakat eines anonymen Künstlers aus dem Bestand der Digital Somali Library der Indiana University. Ein Aufsatz von Julie MacArthur im Heft behandelt unter dem Titel „Decolonizing Sovereignty“ Ausnahmezustände an der Grenze zwischen Kenia und Somalia. Bild: Oxford University Press
Die „American Historical Review“ (AHR), die 1884 gegründete Hauszeitschrift der American Historical Association (AHA), gab vor einem Jahr bekannt, dass sie ihren Inhalt „dekolonisieren“ wolle – wegen des Eindrucks, dass es an Diversität fehle, bei den Autorinnen und Autoren wie bei den Themen. Anfang dieses Jahres wurden die von Chefredakteur Alex Lichtenstein im Februar 2018 zur Einleitung des Prozesses der „Dekolonisierung“ ergriffenen Maßnahmen auf der Jahresversammlung der AHA in Chicago erörtert. Im Februarheft der Zeitschrift hat Lichtenstein zu diesen Diskussionen Stellung genommen und weitere Maßnahmen angekündigt. F.A.Z.
Warum hält die American Historical Association es für geboten, ihre Zeitschrift zu dekolonisieren? Historiker schreiben über Dekolonisierung, so dass man ihre Vertrautheit mit dem Begriff voraussetzen kann. Welchen Sinn hat es, ihn metaphorisch im wissenschaftlichen Publikationswesen zu verwenden?
Zunächst sollte ich betonen, dass diese Initiative von mir ausging, nicht von der AHA. Zwar arbeitet der Verband tatsächlich auch selbst ernsthaft daran, die Historikerzunft für eine größere Vielfalt von Stimmen und Erfahrungen zu öffnen. Und bislang unterstützt die Organisation die Veränderungen, die ich vorgenommen habe. Aber diese Bemühungen entspringen der redaktionellen Freiheit, die ich habe. Mit Bedacht habe ich den Terminus „Dekolonisierung“ und nicht „Diversität“ benutzt, weil er nicht nur die Hinzufügung ausgeschlossener Stimmen impliziert, sondern einen Wandel der Vorstellungen davon, welche Arten von Text überhaupt als Wissenschaft zählen sollen. Ich verwende den Begriff nicht metaphorisch, sondern eher als ein Signal für den Willen, etwas Neues zu versuchen. Abgesehen davon glaube ich an eine Politik der kleinen Schritte. Ich erwarte nicht, dass die AHR das Ancien Régime der Wissenschaftlichkeit in einem einzigen revolutionären Moment überwindet. In der Hauptsache geht es um den Willen, ein paar Risiken einzugehen mit dem, was wir publizieren, während wir weiter einige der traditionellen Formen von Gelehrsamkeit auf unseren Seiten bewahren. Kritiker mit Witz könnten auf die Idee kommen, mir Neokolonialismus vorzuwerfen!
Während Ihre Zeitschrift Forschung aus der ganzen Welt publiziert, dient sie gleichzeitig als amtliches Organ der professionellen Geschichtswissenschaft in den Vereinigten Staaten. Diese Nation, gegründet von früheren britischen Kolonien, wurde im Laufe ihrer Geschichte selbst zu einer Kolonialmacht. Gibt es einen nationalen Kontext für Ihre Adaption der Idee der Dekolonisierung?
Ich sehe hier eigentlich kein nationales Projekt, aber ich kann mir zwei Blickwinkel denken, von denen her die Sache so verstanden werden könnte. Wenn die AHR erstens tatsächlich die offizielle Stimme der amerikanischen geschichtswissenschaftlichen Profession ist (eine fragwürdige Prämisse), dann ist dies in der Vergangenheit eng ausgelegt worden. Gewiss konzentrierte sich die Zeitschrift zweitens mindestens in ihren ersten sechs oder sieben Jahrzehnten stark auf amerikanische und englische Geschichte und sah die Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten im Wesentlichen als eine Erzählung von weißen Männern an. Das ist in der amerikanischen Historikerzunft allgemein nicht mehr der Fall und auch in dieser Zeitschrift nicht. Gleichwohl müssen wir ständig daran erinnert werden, dass die amerikanische Geschichte nicht jene ältere Saga von weißer Besiedlung und Ausbreitung ist, mit der Beimischung von ein paar anderen Erfahrungen. Man versteht die amerikanische Erfahrung zum Beispiel nicht, wenn man nicht sieht, dass die schwarze Geschichte konstitutiv ist für das, was einen Amerikaner ausmacht. Keine umfassende Darstellung der Kolonien ist zulässig ohne Aufmerksamkeit für das spanische Kolonialreich und für die „First Nations“, die sich schon in Amerika befanden.
Um Wissenschaft anzuziehen, die bislang unterrepräsentiert war, haben Sie auch Gattungen (wieder-)eingeführt wie Filmrezensionen, Archivberichte („History Unclassified“) und Podcasts. Wie haben die Mitglieder der AHA auf Ihr Reformprogramm reagiert?
Bis jetzt scheint es eine sehr populäre Initiative zu sein. Ich habe nur einen einzigen Brief bekommen, in dem mir vorgeworfen wird, ich würde das Erbe der westlichen Zivilisation zerstören. Wie ich erwartet hatte, haben andererseits einige Leute, die dieses Projekt wichtig finden, beklagt, dass ich zu langsam vorgehe. Ein anderer Einwand macht geltend, ich nähme durch den neuen Raum für Texte jenseits des durch Peer Review approbierten Aufsatzes das Risiko in Kauf, dass zwei Schienen in der Zeitschrift entstünden: eine für traditionelle „ernsthafte“ Wissenschaft und eine für die „anderen“. Ich sehe das nicht so, aber man muss die Möglichkeit dieser Lesart im Auge behalten.
Ich sehe Ihr Vorhaben als Instrument eines Qualitätsmanagements, das darauf zielt, die vielen Varianten innovativer Wissenschaft zu berücksichtigen, die es sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten gibt. Aber einzelne deutsche Wissenschaftler haben die Befürchtung geäußert, die Dekolonisierung der AHR laufe auf die Einführung einer Frauenquote in der Wissenschaft hinaus.
Diesen Einwand verstehe ich nicht. Zum Beispiel versuche ich daran zu denken, wie viele unserer „Leitbesprechungen“ Bücher von Frauen zum Gegenstand haben. In der Vergangenheit war das Ungleichgewicht eklatant, und hier kann man es leicht korrigieren. Denn wenn man im Jahr etwa dreißig Bücher für längere Rezensionen auswählt, gibt es keinen Grund dafür, dass nicht wenigstens die Hälfte von Autorinnen stammen sollte. Und doch sind im vergangenen Jahr alle meine „guten Absichten“ in dieser Beziehung kläglich gescheitert. Daher habe ich mir für dieses Jahr ein Ziel gesetzt. Ich wähle kein Buch eines männlichen Autors für eine Leitbesprechung aus, wenn ich nicht gleichzeitig auch ein Buch einer Autorin vergebe. Wir wollen nicht dem Eindruck Vorschub leisten, nur männliche Wissenschaftler schrieben „wichtige“ Bücher. Auch bei der Suche nach Gutachtern sollte es normalerweise möglich sein, sicherzustellen, dass Frauen in gleicher Zahl wie Männer herangezogen werden. Wenn das eine „Quote“ ist, dann sei es so: Meine männlichen Kollegen sollten erleichtert sein, dass die Arbeitslast gleichmäßiger verteilt wird! Wenigstens in diesem Zusammenhang scheinen amerikanische Forscher nicht dieselbe Angst vor „Quoten“ zu haben wie ihre deutschen Fachgenossen.
Mehr zum Thema 1/
Sie haben fünf „Associate Review Editors“ ernannt, um interessante Bücher sowohl über den als auch aus dem Globalen Süden zu identifizieren.
Das ist nur eine der Aufgaben dieser assoziierten Redakteure, die uns auch dabei helfen werden, geeignete Rezensenten zu entdecken. Vielleicht müssen wir einen weiteren Schritt tun und uns um direkte Kontakte in den Verlagsmetropolen des Globalen Südens bemühen, zum Beispiel in Mexico City, Lagos, Dakar, Kingston, Johannesburg, Delhi und São Paulo, wo ich kürzlich eine Woche verbracht habe. Meine brasilianischen Gastgeber haben mir die Zahlenverhältnisse verdeutlicht: Die Tatsache, dass die AHR im Jahre 2018 weniger als hundert Rezensionsexemplare zur lateinamerikanischen und karibischen Geschichte erhielt, bedeutet, dass wir eine große Zahl von in Lateinamerika selbst publizierten Titeln nicht zu Gesicht bekommen haben. Sie werden uns nicht zugeschickt. Wir müssen einen Weg finden, das zu ändern. In São Paulo habe ich ein außergewöhnliches Museum der Einwanderung besucht. Das sollten wir rezensieren, und ich habe einen brasilianischen Wissenschaftler um eine Rezension gebeten. Im Afro-Brasilianischen Museum habe ich ein „quardinho“ entdeckt, eine grafische Geschichte brasilianischer Sklavenaufstände – auch dazu habe ich eine Rezension in Auftrag gegeben. In einer Buchhandlung fiel mir ein Buch über die „öffentliche Sklaverei“ in Brasilien (Sklaven im Besitz des Staates oder der Gemeinden) in die Hände, „Escravos da Nação“ von Ilana Rocha, das bestimmt nicht zur Besprechung an unsere Redaktion geschickt wird, wenn wir es nicht beim brasilianischen Verlag anfordern.
Eines Ihrer Ziele ist die Rekrutierung von jüngeren Forscherinnen und Forschern wie auch von Vertretern kleinerer Subdisziplinen. Wie haben sich Ihre Maßnahmen bezahlt gemacht, etwa die Entsendung von „Botschaftern“ zu Tagungen spezialisierter Verbände?
Diese Arbeit ist im Fluss. Wir müssen da proaktiver werden. Im März habe ich als Vertreter der AHR am Treffen der African American Intellectual History Society teilgenommen. Dort entsteht besonders viel spannende neue Forschung, und ich konnte einige Wissenschaftler unserer Kartei von Rezensenten hinzufügen sowie mögliche Aufsatzeinreichungen anregen. Ein anderer solcher Ort ist die Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). In diesem Jahr trifft sie sich in Neuseeland, also werde ich bis zum nächsten Jahr warten.
Im Februarheft erwähnen Sie eine Statistik, wonach vierzig Prozent der zwischen 2000 und 2015 in der AHR publizierten Aufsätze Themen des Globalen Südens behandeln. Diese Zahl ist durchaus beeindruckend. Wie wollen Sie erreichen, dass auch die Zahl der Aufsatzautoren mit Stellen im Globalen Süden steigt?
Das ist eine gewaltige Herausforderung. Eine Schranke ist die Sprache. Wir werden Geldmittel für Übersetzungen finden müssen oder Wissenschaftler mit Arbeiten in spanischer, portugiesischer oder (in Afrika) französischer Sprache ermutigen, sich mit Kollegen zusammenzutun, die auf Englisch schreiben. Ich hoffe auch, dass ich Wissenschaftler im Globalen Süden bewegen kann, historiographische Essays über jüngere Schlüsselwerke in der jeweiligen gelehrten Verkehrssprache zu verfassen. Aber ich muss diese Personen finden.
Im vergangenen Jahr konnte man noch den Eindruck haben, dass Sie die Peer Review nicht antasten wollten. Im Editorial des Februarheftes beziehen Sie nun einen kritischen Standpunkt gegenüber einem Verfahren, das als Mechanismus des Gate-Keeping gilt. Was bewog Sie dazu, das Konzept des Gate-Keeping selbst in Zweifel zu ziehen?
Ich glaube nicht, dass es die Funktion der Peer Review ist, Exklusivität zu garantieren. Im Gegenteil meine ich, dass sie in einer demokratischen Weise praktiziert werden kann, so dass sich spannende neue Forschung entfaltet dank einem Dialog zwischen Gutachtern und Autoren, der in mehrere Überarbeitungen mündet. Als Chefredakteur möchte ich die Peer Review so einsetzen, dass diese dialogische Begegnung angeregt wird. Das unterscheidet sich stark vom Gate-Keeping, das ich ganz und gar nicht schätze, weil es neue Ideen erstickt, insbesondere diejenigen, die aus Forschungsfeldern hervorgehen, die historisch als die „Peripherie“ bestimmt wurden.
Neben den unpublizierten, anonymen „reviews“ der „peers“ gibt es die publizierten „book reviews“. Eine Frage zu beiden Genres: Wie wollen Sie das Rezensieren als so etwas wie eine Kunst der wissenschaftlichen Geburtshilfe ausgestalten, wenn doch viele Rezensenten ihre Tätigkeit als akademisches Schlachtfeld anzusehen scheinen?
Das Rezensieren von Büchern ist etwas ganz anderes. Die Peer Review soll in der Tat wissenschaftlichen Ideen zur Geburt verhelfen; die Buchkritik muss hingegen in gewissem Rahmen polemisch sein. Natürlich gefällt es mir nicht, wenn unsere Zeitschrift zu einem Schlachtfeld gemacht wird, wo Wissenschaftler nur daran interessiert sind, im Wettkampf Treffer zu setzen. Aber ebenso langweilen mich die blutleeren Rezensionen, die den Inhalt eines Buches zusammenfassen und dann das Ganze mit ein paar netten Worten glasieren. Als Dienstleister, der in Fällen von Bewerbung und Beförderung das Imprimatur erteilt, stehe ich nicht zur Verfügung. Sobald ein Buch publiziert ist, sollte der Autor bereit sein, sich gegen scharfe Kritiken zu verteidigen. So kommt die Wissenschaft voran, und mir scheint, dass viele von uns ein bisschen zu dünnhäutig geworden sind. Warum setzt man Gedanken in die Welt, wenn niemand ihnen widersprechen soll? Um die Wahrheit zu sagen, würde ich mir also mehr kritisches Engagement (natürlich im Einklang mit dem nötigen Respekt) in unserem Rezensionsteil wünschen. Dem müsste allerdings eine kräftigere Debatte in der Rubrik „Zuschriften“ entsprechen. Im Aprilheft publizieren wir einen Austausch zwischen Michael Gomez und vier Rezensenten seines Buches „African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa“ – ein schönes Beispiel dafür, wie ein Autor Kritik akzeptieren und beantworten kann, mit Eleganz und entschiedenem Widerspruch.
Sie kommunizieren offen über den Wandlungsprozess der Zeitschrift und haben dieselbe Transparenz für das Verfahren der Peer Review angekündigt, das ein Podcast erklären soll. Was kann sich bei der Peer Review ändern, solange die Gutachter anonym bleiben?
Ich meine, dass das Verfahren der Peer Review so weit wie möglich anonym bleiben sollte. Das fördert den ehrlichen Dialog auf beiden Seiten. Ich bitte zum Beispiel gerne junge Wissenschaftler darum, Aufsätze von Autoren weiter oben in der Hackordnung zu begutachten. Das erfordert Anonymität, und ich bin nicht bereit, sie einer sogenannten „offenen“ Peer Review zuliebe aufzugeben. Der Dialog über Ungedrucktes verlangt, jedenfalls gegenwärtig, einen gewissen Grad von Blindheit, damit Macht neutralisiert wird.
Haben Sie Kenntnis von anderen Fachzeitschriften, die in Ihre Fußstapfen treten?
Ich bilde mir nicht ein, dass ich etwas besonders Originelles tue. Ich folge den Fußstapfen von Studierenden und Gelehrten, welche die Natur der intellektuellen Arbeit in der modernen Welt überdenken, und es gibt noch viel, was ich von ihren Initiativen lernen kann. So bin ich optimistisch, dass andere Zeitschriften schon Praktiken anwenden, die zur Idee der Dekolonisierung passen. Mit Rücksicht auf Status und Sichtbarkeit der AHR hoffe ich allerdings, dass unsere Bemühungen dabei helfen können, diese Transformationen zur legitimieren. Aber wir sind Nachfolger, keine Anführer.
Wenn Sie bedenken, dass Zeitschriften von langfristiger Planung abhängen und Veränderungen Zeit brauchen, welche Zeitschrift stellen Sie sich dann für den Zeitpunkt Ihres Abschieds vom Chefredakteursamt vor?
Meine Ernennung ist wirksam bis August 2021. Das bedeutet, dass ich für ein weiteres Dutzend Hefte die redaktionelle Verantwortung trage. Was ich in dieser Zeit erreichen kann, ist begrenzt. Meine bescheidene Hoffnung ist es, eine klare Agenda zu setzen, welche die nächste Chefredakteurin oder der nächste Chefredakteur weiterverfolgen oder modifizieren kann. Sie oder er wird ein breiteres Spektrum von Gattungen erben; weniger Betonung auf den durch Peer Review abgesegneten Aufsatz als Goldstandard der Wissenschaftlichkeit; mehr Stimmen aus dem Globalen Süden; und eine Zeitschrift, welche die demographische und soziale Dynamik der Historikerzunft stärker reflektiert, während diese Zunft weniger weiß wird, weniger männlich, weniger heterosexuell, weniger konservativ im Methodologischen und, freimütig gesagt, weniger von universitären Stelleninhabern betrieben. Einer der härtesten Aspekte dieses Wandels wird, um der Wahrheit die Ehre zu geben, der Kampf gegen den Elitismus sein, der alle diese Kategorien gleichermaßen betrifft.
Die Fragen stellte Birte Förster, die von 2008 bis 2016 die Redaktion der Rezensionszeitschrift „Neue Politische Literatur“ leitete. | {
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ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 14, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Attorney Mary Merrell Bailey, founder and managing partner of Your Caring Law Firm located in Central Florida, today predicted that the nation's large number of aging adults will impact the way estate attorneys practice in the future. According to Bailey, many attorneys will be shifting their focus from "estate planning to estate probating."
Bailey observed a trend in her practice where clients are seeking probate services for family members who have died intestate. She also cited statistics from the U. S. Census Bureau regarding the country's record number of seniors over age 65. Bailey pointed out that as large numbers of the elderly population pass away, the demand for probate services will increase for those who die intestate.
"Studies have shown that approximately 60-70% of Americans do not have a will or estate plan," said Bailey. "Until more Americans make estate planning a priority, it stands to reason that just as a rising tide lifts all ships, intestacy will become an even greater problem 10-20 years down the road. It is my hope that National Estate Planning Awareness Week will bring this issue the visibility it deserves."
Bailey clarified that while these sobering statistics present a challenge to the estate attorney whose business model is based primarily on Trust planning, the new reality is that it simultaneously presents a new business opportunity. "Trust planning will never go away, but attorneys will need to place an equal amount of focus on probate services if they want to capture a share of that market," she said.
In 2013, WealthCounsel, an organization of estate planners of which Bailey is a member, conducted a nationwide survey of practitioners to gain insight about trends in their practices, including the primary reasons that clients engage in estate planning. Bailey praised WealthCounsel's survey, which found that nearly 60% of those who seek estate planning services do so in order to avoid probate court. Furthermore, 57% of the respondents stated that their clients plan in order to spare loved ones the chaos that occurs when parents die intestate.
As heirs are thrown into the fray-of-delay and endure complex probate proceedings, they are presented with a teachable moment, Bailey noted. "For many, the light bulb goes on and they vow to spare their own families the discord that results from poor planning. Ultimately, the pendulum will shift back to planning as those clients who were refugees from the probate process engage in proactive planning," she added.
Estate attorneys, especially those practicing in states with large populations of seniors such as California, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York, will have a strategic advantage as the focus shifts toward probate issues, according to Bailey. "The key is to prepare your practice in advance and have a plan to execute on what is certainly to become the new normal."
About Your Caring Law Firm
Your Caring Law Firm is a boutique law firm founded by Mary Merrell Bailey Esq. CPA MBA MSTaxation MSAccounting and Hallie Zobel. Located in Maitland, FL, the firm offers probate, wills, trusts and planning services to clients throughout the Central Florida region. With deep roots in the community, Your Caring Law Firm prides itself on its ability to deliver a rare combination of sophisticated legal advice that draws upon sound business, tax and accounting knowledge, while providing a caring, attentive environment for clients to make some of the most important decisions of their lives. For more information, visit YourCaringLawFirm.com.
SOURCE Your Caring Law Firm | {
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Mountains soaring high as if to kiss the sky and glistening while trapping the sun behind them, these sights are obvious ones to overwhelm any living soul. A country situated right at the foot of the Himalayas, Nepal offers a plethora of such scenes and options to trek to the base camps of some of the highest and most exciting peaks of the world.
Base camps have been exciting destinations for intrepid travellers from all over the world. Usually, a base camp trek does not require any professional climbing experience and can be undertaken by anyone in good physical and mental shape. They can be of varying difficulties and provide unique opportunities to experience the local lifestyle of the specific regions. Some of the best options for base camp trekking in Nepal are as follows:
Everest Base Camp Trek
Everest base camp
The Everest base camp trek takes you to the base of the highest peak in the world. It is one of the most famous and beautiful base camp treks in Nepal. This trek gives you the opportunity to trace some footsteps of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa and Sir Edmund Hillary when they first scaled Everest back in 1953. The base camp is at an incredible height of 5364 meters and the trek takes around 16 days. The best time to go is either between March and May or September and December. This trek costs around US$1300.
Related:
Some Highlights of Everest base camp trek
A short flight to Lukla, regarded by most as the most dangerous airport in the world,
Visit Namche Bazaar, a major trade hub in the region,
Majestic views of the Everest Peaks from Kalapatthar (5550m) and other vantage points,
Option to visit the Khumbu glaciers,
Beautiful Sherpa Villages and Buddhist Monasteries including Tengboche Monastery
Find the package...
Annapurna Base Camp Trek
Annapurna base camp
The Annapurna mountain range which is named after the Hindu goddess of food and nourishment is a famous destination for travellers. The trek to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) reveals majestic views of mountains in the range which include Annapurna I (8091m), Annapurna II (7937m), Machhapuchhre (6997m) and others. This moderate difficulty trek takes around 15 days and can vary depending on the route chosen and takes one up to the height of 4130 meters above the sea level. It costs around $960 and the price can vary depending upon the group size and mode of accommodation chosen. The best time to travel is from February to Mid-June and from September to November.
Some Highlights of Annapurna base camp trek
Incredible views of the mountains in the Annapurna range,
Sunrise view from Poonhill vantage point,
A unique mix of Tibetan and Nepalese culture,
Himalayan Villages untouched by modern influences,
Several natural hot springs for travellers to relax at (depending upon the route chosen),
Staple desert of the region- Homemade apple pie
Book your trek now.
Manaslu Base Camp Trek
Mt. Manaslu
Mt. Manaslu (meaning the Spirit Mountain) is the eighth highest mountain in the world standing at 8163 meters above the sea level. This base camp trek is one of the most untouched trekking destinations in Nepal. It provides incomparable views along with huge biodiversity and unique cultural heritage. This base camp is estimated to be situated at an altitude of around 4400 meters above sea level. A round trip can take up to 18 days and tea house lodging is the prominent mode of accommodation. This trip is best done in either March-May or Sept-November.
Related:
Some Highlights of Manaslu base camp trek
Unexplored trails and small crowds
Cross high altitude passes like Larke La pass (5160m)
Visit famous old monasteries such as Sama Gompa
Spectacular views of Himal Chuli (7853m), Ganesh Himal (7422m), and entire Manaslu Himalayan Range, etc.
Homestay experience with the locals
Opportunities to view blooming Rhododendron flowers during the season
Detailed information:
Kanchenjunga Base Camp Trek
Mt. Kanchenjunga
The Kanchenjunga base camp trek is one of the more strenuous base camp treks in Nepal. This mountain lies in the easternmost part of Nepal and borders Sikkim in India. The mountain is the third-highest in the world and has two base camps where the scaling of the Kanchenjunga summit begins. The north base camp is situated at a staggering height of around 5143 meters above the sea level and the south base camp is at a height of 4500 meters. The trek to north and south base camps can take up to 19 days and 22 days for completion. The best time to go is between March-May and Sept-December.
Related:
Some Highlights of Kanchenjunga trek
Unspoiled wilderness to be explored
Option to visit the Pathibhara Temple- An important Hindu pilgrimage site
Visit Kanchenjunga Conservation area, home to thousands of unique flora and fauna
Explore quaint local villages and their ancient culture on the way
Whether you are an experienced climber, a traveller, or a mountain enthusiast, Nepal offers you a ton of options and it is solely up to you to choose the base camp trek that suits your preference. A trip to one of the mentioned base camps is bound to be a thrilling experience. Moreover, the pride and emotions upon achieving the feat of conquering a base camp are of such magnitude that the feeling will fill you with the zest for years to come. So, pick a base camp, pack your bags and get ready to delve into the Himalayas in Nepal. Book now... | {
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NATO will create a Trust Fund to support the defense potential of
Ukraine on the long-term perspective, NATO high-rank official reported
at a briefing on June 23 talking about an agenda of forthcoming meetings
of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Foreign Ministers in
Brussels on June 24-25.
He said that the Trust Fund and assistance package for Ukraine are
being discussed now only as an initial project. These measures don’t
foresee direct military aid to this country, and would be focused on
reforming the armed forces, the modernization of logistics,
communication systems, command and control, and the education and
training of staff. | {
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Dov'eravamo rimasti con il cucinino? Ah sì, alle rifiniture del pavimento e al montaggio degli infissi.Ecco, adesso che la "scatola" muraria è completata, viene l'aspetto (per me) più complicato: l'arredamento.È un passaggio che inizialmente mi dà noia, in quanto mi obbliga a sospendere la costruzione vera e propria per dedicarmi a decorare i vani con tutti gli accessori e le suppellettili che ne caratterizzano l'uso, e che una volta chiuso il solaio non riuscirei più a collocare.Nel caso specifico del cucinino parliamo di un ambiente piccolo ma piuttosto carico, nel quale possono trovare posto molti oggetti di uso comune, non necessariamente collocati in modo ordinato.Alcuni di questi li avevo già preparati (ad esempio il lavabo), ma per lo più si tratta di un lavoro d'improvvisazione realizzato con oggetti di recupero.Prima di tutto vediamo il completamento dei muri, che nel passaggio precedente è rimasto in secondo piano per dare maggiore visibilità al montaggio delle porte.Il lavandino, sbattuto di qua e di là mentre lavoravo alle murature, trova adesso la sua collocazione definitiva sotto la grande scaffalatura a muro, che sarà ben visibile anche dalla finestra.Queste immagini sono precedenti al completamento delle mensole, ma le posto adesso perché la volta scorsa mi erano sfuggite. Comunque, ecco qui la versione definitiva mentre viene ispezionata (ed approvata) dal committente:Quella coppa che si vede sul secondo ripiano è un vecchio acquisto che avevo fatto insieme ai ratti del fiume sotterraneo, ma non troverà posto nel cucinino. Penso piuttosto che, visto il suo aspetto ricco, la inserirò nel salone principale, magari sul tavolo davanti al camino.Parlando di camini, all'angolo opposto del cucinino si trova l'angolo cottura, dove per l'appunto sto per collocare gli ultimi pezzi del caminetto. Immediatamente dietro l'architrave ho collocato una barra di ferro alla quale verrà appesa, tramite un gancio, la pentola. Prima di questo, avevo realizzato delle scanalature sull'architrave stesso per collocare lì i ganci in posizione fissa, e anche se quella soluzione è stata poi scartata, ho deciso di non sostituire il pezzo e di utilizzarlo così com'è.La cappa è formata da lastre di ardesia che si appoggiano ad angolo con una leggera inclinazione verso l'interno, che le porterà a chiudersi sulla parete di fondo. Al loro interno, il muro retrocede gradualmente dando così origine alla canna fumaria, che correrà interna alla parete per tutta la sua lunghezza.E con il completamento del camino, inizia lo studio e la posa dei primi accessori. In questo caso si tratta appunto del gancio in ferro e della pentola.La base di partenza è una scodella di rame (accessorio per presepe) alla quale rimuovo l'ansa per sostituirla con un manico in filo di rame. Poi espongo l'oggetto a fiamma diretta fino a renderlo incandescente, per raffreddarlo di colpo in un bicchiere d'acqua. Il risultato è una patina scura naturale (fissata) che dà alla pentola un aspetto decisamente più vecchio e autentico.E poi mi piace giocare col fuoco...La prima prova di montaggio della pentola è interessante ma dà soltanto una vaga idea di quello che sarà il risultato finale, anche perché la luce usata è fredda e proviene dall'esterno.Una volta completato l'arredamento del cucinino scatterò altre foto, questa volta con le lampadine giuste, e il risultato sarà ben diverso. Ve ne do un'anteprima, ma il resto lo vedremo nel prossimo capitolo dedicato all'arredamento di tutto il cucinino...MATERIALI:ardesia, colla bianca, filo di ferro, filo di rame, accessori per presepeSTRUMENTI:tenaglie, pinzette, carta abrasiva, seghetto, fornello | {
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AUSTIN — Texas lawmakers on Wednesday agreed that distracted driving remains a problem on Texas roadways but said it is unlikely the Legislature will toughen the ban on texting anytime soon despite highway and police officials continuing to sound the alarm.
“We had hearing after hearing and session after session to get that passed,” Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville said during a hearing Wednesday. “I think that one is resolved about as far as it could go.”
Committee members, during the discussion of ongoing safety efforts, instead said they supported the $600 million over the next two years that the Texas Department of Transportation has directed to other safety efforts, such as rumble strips along state roadways to alert drivers drifting off the road and cable barriers to stop vehicles from crossing highways into oncoming lanes.
Texas leads the nation in roadway deaths, though its fatality rate — the number of deaths for every 100 million miles of vehicle travel — continues to decline slightly. Texas, TxDOT and Houston-area officials have focused greater efforts on roadway safety in recent months and set goals of eliminating roadway deaths within 30 years.
OUT OF CONTROL: Houston’s roads, drivers are nation's most deadly
One area public safety and transportation officials said must be addressed is increasing instances of distracted driving, often caused by cell phone use by motorists. Hank Sibley, acting chief of the Texas Highway Patrol, part of the Department of Public Safety, estimated at least 10 percent of fatal crashes highway patrolman respond to involve distracted driving.
Texas banned texting while driving in 2017, but wrote the law in a way to protect other uses of a cell phone, such as typing directions into a navigation app or controlling music. The resulting prohibition, Sibley said, is difficult to enforce.
Many Texans, meanwhile, do not even know there is a ban, according to researchers. A study released in August by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute found distracted driving was least prevalent in Wichita Falls, in far north Texas near the Oklahoma border, where about three-quarters of drivers were aware of the texting ban and 6 percent of drivers were observed using phones while driving. In Houston, which fared worst among metro areas, about 60 percent of drivers were aware of the ban and 9 percent were seen on their phones behind the wheel.
Robert Wunderlich, a TTI researcher and head of the institute’s Center for Transportation Safety, said one factor between the two may be that Wichita Falls has a citywide cell phone ban that prohibits holding a phone while driving, while Houston has no such limits.
Despite the connection, Nichols said he does not expect the Legislature to tweak the law.
DESIGN CHANGES COMING: TxDOT commits $600 million to reducing roadway deaths
The same is true for another oft-sought safety improvement, Nichols said: A helmet requirement for motorcyclists. The research is clear, he said, but so is the sentiment that the legislature cannot compel personal behavior.
Even if they do not agree on every issue, safety advocates said they welcomed the discussion and the support for TxDOT’s funding.
“Just having the discussion is a good thing,” said Jay Crossley, head of the nonprofit Farm & City which has advocated for efforts to eliminate road deaths and increased funding for safety changes to highways.
[email protected] | {
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LONDON (Reuters) - Iran has broken the terms of its 2015 nuclear deal and must immediately stop and reverse its activities, a spokesman for Britain’s Foreign Office said on Sunday.
Iran said on Sunday it will boost its uranium enrichment in a few hours above a cap set by the nuclear deal, a move that could eventually culminate in the return of all international sanctions on Tehran.
“Iran has broken the terms of the JCPoA,” the Foreign Office spokesman said, referring to the deal’s formal name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
“While the UK remains fully committed to the deal, Iran must immediately stop and reverse all activities inconsistent with its obligations. We are coordinating with other JCPoA participants regarding the next steps under the terms of the deal, including a Joint Commission.” | {
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Googleは、動画に記録されている対象物や、対象物の動きをキーワードとして検索できるAPI「Cloud Video Intelligence」（プライベートベータ版）を公開した。同APIを使うと、ある動画に「トラ」が映っているかどうか、映っているとしたらビデオのどの部分に映っているのか、何が「走っている」のか「泳いでいる」のかなどが調べられる。
動画に映っているものの検索が可能に（出典：Google） 動画に映っているものの検索が可能に（出典：Google）
Cloud Video Intelligenceは、動画内の情報を言語化できる技術。「犬」「花」「人間」といった名詞や、「走る」「泳ぐ」「飛ぶ」といった動詞を使って、ビデオ内を検索できる。
人工知能（AI）技術の一種である深層学習（ディープラーニング）を応用し、Googleの機械学習フレームワーク「TensorFlow」をベースに開発した。すでに「YouTube」などで使われているそうだ。
Googleは、メディア企業が膨大な非構造化データである動画ライブラリを同APIで解析し、カタログ化することで価値を高められる、としている。また、ビデオ管理ソフトなどでの活用も考えられるという。
ビデオ全体を通し、映っている対象物をリスト表示（出典：Google） ビデオ全体を通し、映っている対象物をリスト表示（出典：Google）
同APIの紹介ページでは、映像に映っている対象物の候補を提示するデモが体験できる。以下の画像は、その動作の一部をとらえたものだ。
これだけで「キリン」と推定（出典：Google） これだけで「キリン」と推定（出典：Google）
笑顔の人間も判別（出典：Google） 笑顔の人間も判別（出典：Google）
「ネコ」に見えないこともない（出典：Google） 「ネコ」に見えないこともない（出典：Google）
自信なさそうに「魚」（出典：Google） 自信なさそうに「魚」（出典：Google）
人間が世話をしているからか「ペット」だと思ったらしい（出典：Google） 人間が世話をしているからか「ペット」だと思ったらしい（出典：Google）
実写とアニメの区別も可能（出典：Google） 実写とアニメの区別も可能（出典：Google） | {
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How American males feel about themselves has been in a steady decline since the 2008 recession – but Establishment pundits and scholars continue to seem clueless about its causes. Instead, they continue to treat men as self-defeating idiots.
On Oct. 16, The New York Times looked at the waning American male worker in an op-ed, and as might be expected the editorial avoided examining underlying sexism towards men in the age of ascendent feminism. Although the NYT has eagerly examined problems and their causes for female workers, using the trope of the hard-working virtuous victim oppressed by selfishly powerful men, the newspaper lacked the courage and honesty to investigate oppressive causes in the case of male workers.
So what are the causes? The trope of the wounded male is ready fodder for gender activists and even misandrists. Robert Bly more sympathetically points to the male wound as the beginning of masculine growth. David K. Flowers unsympathetically argues that there are too many parasitic men living off the good graces of dysfunctional women. And The Wall Street Journal states that the waning male energy in our nation is due primarily to the loss of low-skilled jobs traditionally held by working class males. While all of these explanations point in different directions, all overlook how males have been much greater victims of sexism in a society that has historically entrusted to men the most high-risk work and sent them into every war.
It is not hard to see that the NYT’s vain attempt at balancing its recent news coverage of women’s issues is related to the presidential election. And if so, it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t because it fails to dig into the deeper causes for mass withdrawal by men from society and economy. For instance, while the NYT op-ed does cite Princeton Economist Alan B. Krueger’s recently published paper, “Where Have All the Workers Gone?”, the NYT does not probe further into the reasons male workers are experiencing historic levels in both unemployment and despair. In addition, the editorial does not ask how globalization, anti-unionism, and feminism have combined forces in making it socially and economically acceptable to be openly misandric in the news, on film and television, and in schools and workplaces. Sure, the NYT‘s attempt picked up on Krueger’s study about the failing well-being of American adult men, arguing that seven million men (or 11.4%) between the ages of 25 and 54 have left the labor force, not to return, but the NYT‘s opinion eschews addressing key contributions from those in masculinity studies or men’s rights. And why is this?
I maintain that the American Establishment has ignored and will continue to ignore identifying the causes of an ever expanding masculine crises (war veteran despair and suicide, increasing male unemployment, massive male incarceration, demonizing “deadbeat” dads, drugging boys in schools, and so on) until it is too late. The Establishment has little interest in questioning the political and economic strategy that currently favors a gynocentric world view as a female-centered society is favored for avoiding impediments in the march of global capitalism and expanding markets. | {
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— An Elizabeth City State University student who has lived and voted in his college town since 2009 found his candidacy for city council thwarted by a decision by the local elections board.
Montravias King, an ECSU senior, was surprised that the Pasquotank County Board of Elections ruled that his residence, in a college dorm, didn't count toward the residency requirement to run for office.
He filed to represent the city's Fourth District, only to see his name removed from the ballot.
"The residency requirements for a candidate are the exact residency requirements for a voter," King said, noting that he has worked, volunteered and voted in Elizabeth City for four years.
The state NAACP worries that the county elections board's actions will have a ripple effect on student voters in Pasquotank and across the state.
Pete Gilbert, chairman of the county's Republican party, challenged King's candidacy. Gilbert says a college dorm isn't a legal residence because it's closed for part of the year. He's challenged dozens of ECSU student voters on similar grounds in recent years.
The newly appointed Republican majority on the board agreed with Gilbert, a move King's lawyer says violates long-established state and federal legal precedent.
"The (U.S.) Supreme Court has already ruled on this decades ago," lawyer Jeremy Collins said. "College students have the right to vote in the town where they go to school."
On Tuesday, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice filed an appeal to the Pasquotank Board of Elections on King's behalf.
"I think it's sad that we have to deal with these challenges," King said. "College students should be encouraged to participate in the community that they call home. This has been my home since the summer of 2009."
William Skinner, the lone Democrat on the board, said Wednesday that the law is very clear, and King should have remained on the ballot.
"If you can vote in any political district, you should be able to run for office there," said Skinner, who voted to keep King's name on the ballot. "You can't deny a person who's been voting if he wants to run."
The two Republican board members, who were with Skinner in Cary Wednesday for training, declined to comment.
Pasquotank is not the only county making it tougher for students to vote. The Watuaga County elections board decided to close the early voting site at Appalachian State University and shut down an Election Day precinct there. Forsyth County is considering shuttering early voting at Winston-Salem State University.
Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP, says it's a blatant attempt at voter suppression.
"It's a vulgar manipulation of the political process for one's own partisan reasons," he said. "We will not take it, we will not stand for it, and we will win."
NAACP attorney Al McSurely says the group will ask U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate counties where Republican-majority boards of election are making changes to accepted practice.
"There a pattern of it across the state," McSurely said. "They come in with an agenda, like this thing is already pre-written and brought in on a platter." | {
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Golan Heights – Join statement by Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom
26 March 2019
On behalf of France, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and Belgium, we would like to make a brief statement on the occupied Golan Heights, in the context of the US Presidential Proclamation issued yesterday stating that the United States recognizes that the Golan Heights are part of the State of Israel.
Our position on the status of the Golan Heights is well-known, and we would like to make clear that this position has not changed.
In line with international law, and relevant Security Council resolutions, notably Resolutions 242 and 497, we do not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967, including the Golan Heights, and we do not consider them to be part of the territory of the State of Israel.
Annexation of territory by force is prohibited under international law. Any declaration of a unilateral border change goes against the foundation of the rules-based international order and the UN Charter.
We raise our strong concerns about broader consequences of recognizing illegal annexation and also about the broader regional consequences./. | {
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Much of the tech world’s attention is focused on the Stop Online Piracy Act this week, with Wikipedia and others planning to black out their sites Wednesday to protest the bill and its companion Protect IP Act. Don’t look for Microsoft to join them, but the company is now weighing in on the issue — saying in response to an inquiry from GeekWire this afternoon that it doesn’t support SOPA.
“We oppose the passage of the SOPA bill as currently drafted,” a Microsoft spokesperson says via email. “We think the White House statement points in a constructive way to problems with the current legislation, the need to fix them, and the opportunity for people on all sides to talk together about a better path forward.”
That White House statement, issued this past weekend, cited problems including SOPA’s planned use of the Domain Name System to shut down sites found to be in violation of copyright laws. But administration officials also called online piracy “a real problem that harms the American economy” and encouraged opponents and supporters of SOPA and PIPA to work together to come up with constructive solutions.
Microsoft has a multifaceted stake in the issue. The company operates major online sites and services such as MSN.com and Skype, but it also knows the challenges of piracy first-hand through Windows and other parts of its traditional business.
Along with Apple, Adobe and others, the Redmond company is a member of the Business Software Alliance, which originally voiced its support for SOPA but has since softened its stance, saying that SOPA needs work and “could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors.”
Opponents say SOPA goes too far by allowing the shutdown of sites accused of enabling copyright violations, which get an expanded definition under the bill. Google said today that it will put a message on its site on Wednesday highlighting its opposition to SOPA.
Previously: Can this song help kill SOPA? ‘The Day the LOLcats Died’ | {
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Picture: Pablo Iglesias, secretary general of Spain’s new left Podemos party, greets his supporters as he arrives to speak at a party conference in Barcelona last month.
The prospect of populist left election victories in Greece and Spain this year is real. So real, in fact, that the survivors of the old, un-populist left from the 20th century have concluded, in advance, that disaster looms.
All across the social media you can, as you search for the words Podemos and Syriza, read as many denunciations from the hard left as you can critiques from the right.
Though insignificant in themselves, the pained outrage of these far-left groups is a signal that something big and real is happening in European politics. To me it looks like a new form of social democracy is being born – and one moulded to a very different set of priorities to those that guided Labour and its socialist variants in the 20th century.
It was the Bloomberg journalist Joe Wiesenthal who invented the term for it: “Tsiglesias” – a portmanteau for the Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras and Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias. But what does Tsiglesias actually stand for? When in office how might it react? And if successful, is it replicable across Europe?
Iglesias’s party did not exist 18 months ago; Syriza – a more conventional product of the new left of the 1970s – has evolved both its politics and structure rapidly as the prospect of coming to power looms. But if you look at their respective manifestos, they are moulded around the 2014 Euro election programme of the European left, whose 52-strong group in the European parliament is four members bigger than Ukip’s.
Debt restructuring
At the centre of the economic policy is debt restructuring: the proposal that the scale of debt reduction facing most of peripheral Europe is so large that it will suppress growth for a generation. A reversal of austerity, some mild fiscal expansion and the reversal or end of privatisation programmes completes the basic list.
Though this runs at odds with both the principles and rules of the eurozone, almost none of the new-left populist parties wants to leave it. Instead they propose the ECB becomes a true lender of last resort, using quantitative easing to revive consumption and manage debt forgiveness.
The new-left parties, in other words, want Europe to become a Keynesian fiscal union with a high welfare state. It is not the status quo but it is not what the Marxist professors who staff their economics departments dreamed of when they were on the streets in 1968 either.
The apoplectic reaction of free-market commentators to the possibility of a Syriza government in Greece, or a Socialist-Podemos coalition in Spain later this year, poses an interesting question, whose answer could shape politics in Britain just as much as in the Euro periphery.
Is a Keynesian welfare state, committed to public ownership and deficit-financed growth either possible, or permissible, in the European Union?
So far, much of what’s driven Euroscepticism has been the desire of conservative voters in various EU countries to take back control of issues important to the right: migration, business regulation, crime, agriculture and foreign policy. There’s been barely a glimmer of opposition to the EU project among traditional social democrats.
Taking leads from Greece and Spain
But the electoral logic of Greece and Spain may be about to change that. Within a month, Tsipras stands a 50:50 chance of becoming the Greek prime minister. Though he is ready for a prolonged negotiation with Frankfurt and Washington over debt reduction, he is pledged to cancel the austerity measures imposed by Greece’s creditors on day one.
A clash with the ECB, the commission and probably parts of the Greek state are pretty likely thereafter – and the outcome will be watched closely across Europe. Because if basic Keynesianism and an expanded welfare state are not permissible, and if the European institutions are seen actively to collude with attempts to sabotage them, a change of sentiment about the EU on the centre-left might follow.
If you study the programme of the new European left, much of it is not economic. Podemos, which has recruited thousands of young activists from the indignado protest movement of 2011, led its manifesto with demands to repeal anti-protest laws, for abortion rights and for the right of Spanish regions independence.
Syriza’s 2012 programme emphasised – as well as anti-austerity policies – demands like drug decriminalisation, de-militarisation of the police, withdrawal from Nato and recognition of Palestine.
The principles that radicalised young people across Europe in 2011-12, and which have continued to guide numerous protest movements since then, are summed up by the oft-repeated phrase: “I don’t want to live in an economy”.
The one thing Bolshevism had in common with mainstream social democracy was that they were defined by economic programmes. The new populist left has begun from the recognition that – in the highly marketised, globalised and granular economy created in the past 25 years – social justice begins at a small scale and from below.It is as much about restoring the power of agency to deprived and shattered communities, and autonomy to peoples lives, as it is about delivering percentage points against various economic measures.
And the absolute baseline for the youth swarming into the new left parties is that the state must get out and stay out of their private lives.
What about at home?
In Britain – beyond the one-man turbulence that is Russell Brand – the only political force that understood the power of these issues was the Radical Independence Campaign in the Scottish referendum. It promoted the idea that Scotland should become the “warm south of Scandinavia” – and if you think about it, all Podemos and Syriza are really trying to do is bring the Scandinavian model to the Aegean and the Med.
But here’s the problem: in a neoliberal world, even the basic welfare state can look revolutionary. Most projections for the survival of free-market capitalism involve the creation of greater inequality, a smaller state sector and a lower-paid workforce.
It is, then, most likely not over some prolonged debt restructure process that a populist left government in Greece or Spain might clash with the Euro authorities and the local elites; rather, on “Scandinavian” issues like police demilitarisation, abortion, the re-regulation of the labour market or an attempt to provide basic humanitarian solutions for illegal migrants clamouring at the borders of both countries.
For more than a decade, radical demonstrators have held up banners saying “Another World Is Possible”. This year we might get to see what phase one of that other world looks like. The question it poses for the EU institutions and the elites who run them is existential: is another strategy even tolerable?
The answer will make 2015 a critical year for the wider left in Europe. The whole crisis and decline of European social democracy after 2008 was triggered by the conviction that alternatives to austerity do not exist. For politicians like Ed Miliband, Francois Hollande and for that matter Jim Murphy, it is not the fate of Syriza they should be focused on but the fate of their own sister social-democratic party in Greece, Pasok. It, currently, stands on 4.6 per cent. Two years ago it ruled Greece.
However inexperienced, naive, and lacking in machine-party discipline the new populist left in Europe is, it is setting the agenda.
Follow @paulmasonnews on Twitter | {
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The recent AIPAC meeting brought four of the five remaining presidential candidates – all except Bernie Sanders – to Washington to grovel at the feet of the Israel lobby, a depressing scene, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
A depressing sameness characterized the speeches of presidential candidates to the recently concluded exercise in fervid conformity that is called the AIPAC annual meeting. Although the event and the organization ostensibly are dedicated to support for, and friendship with, the state of Israel, in practice the dedication was instead to the policies of the right-wing government that currently holds power in Israel, which is something different.
There was nothing approaching a free and open discussion of what policies would be in the interest of the peace and security of Israel and that a true friend of Israel would support. There was no mention of the occupation that, in the course of nearly half a century, has become Israel’s defining characteristic and the single biggest barrier to Israel being able to enjoy a future as a democratic and Jewish state.
The Republican candidates all found somewhat different ways to say they would destroy the agreement that limits Iran’s nuclear program. Such destruction would, of course, serve the purpose of the Netanyahu government in helping it to fulminate endlessly about Iran as the “real problem” in the Middle East, taking attention away from every other problem; maybe we would even see a return of cartoon bombs to the rostrum of the United Nations.
But the candidates did not explain how destroying the agreement, which would mean the Iranians could spin as many centrifuges as they want, enrich as much uranium as they want to whatever level they want, and kick out all of the extra international inspectors provided for in the agreement, would somehow be in the interest of Israeli security. As leading Israelis who have dedicated careers to their nation’s security recognize , it would not be.
Perhaps one question of interest regarding the candidates’ otherwise drearily similar speeches to the AIPAC meeting was who, in this contest in pandering, could out-pander the rest. Donald Trump made a go of it, evidently erasing some of the suspicions he had aroused among this constituency with earlier sinful suggestions such as that a posture of neutrality would be needed for the United States to do something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
No such lines were crossed in Trump’s speech at AIPAC, and he got a positive reception that would remind some observers of how earlier notorious demagogues could whip up frenzy in a crowd.
But the prize for out-pandering the others should go to Ted Cruz’s speech , as measured by sheer shamelessness in using extreme and outright deceitful rhetoric. Speaking after Trump, Cruz made sure that no one would ever suspect him of falling into that disgraceful state known as neutrality or to do anything that might lead to creation of a Palestinian state.
To make doubly sure no one missed the point, in the second sentence of his speech, right after saying “God bless AIPAC” and stating how thrilled he was to be there, Cruz declared that “Palestine has not existed since 1948.” And if any resolution on Palestinian statehood were to come to a vote at the United Nations, said Cruz, “I will fly to New York to personally veto it myself.”
The thesaurus of extreme terminology at Cruz headquarters must be terribly dog-eared after preparing this speech, including, among much else, the portions about the Iran nuclear agreement. According to Cruz, the agreement “is Munich in 1938” and risks “catastrophic consequences” by “allowing a homicidal maniac to acquire the tools to murder millions” — never mind that the agreement is all about taking tools away from the Iranians.
Among the cascade of deceitful references throughout the speech is a bizarre comparison in which Cruz says that the nuclear agreement “gives over $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khomeini, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism,” and that this “dwarfs the $3 billion we give each year to the nation of Israel,” a difference that is “unconscionable” and “fundamentally immoral.”
No attention is paid to the fact that U.S. aid to Israel comes straight out of the pockets of American taxpayers whereas frozen assets that have been unfrozen under the nuclear agreement already belonged to the Iranians and the United States is not “giving” Iran any of this, that the amount of unfrozen assets not already spoken for to settle existing accounts is far less than $100 billion, and that Ayatollah Khomeini has been dead for 26 years.
The one remaining presidential candidate who did not speak to the AIPAC meeting was Bernie Sanders. Sanders, campaigning elsewhere, instead submitted a written statement that addresses important issues involving Israel. Sanders, who happens to be the only Jew in the presidential race, notes at the outset of his statement that he is the only candidate with personal ties to Israel, having spent time there on a kibbutz as a young man.
The leading issue that Sanders addresses in the statement is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What he says about it is vastly different from what the other candidates, and especially the Republicans, said about it in their speeches. What he says also should be seen as eminently reasonable by those who genuinely want peace to replace that conflict and by those who are true friends of Israel.
It is a well-balanced statement that recognizes that peace “will require compromises on both sides” and will mean “security for every Israeli from violence and terrorism” as well as “security for every Palestinian.” Sanders does not shy away from using the word “occupation,” and he notes that “it is important to understand that today there is a whole lot of suffering among Palestinians and that cannot be ignored. You can’t have good policy that results in peace if you ignore one side.”
The depressing sameness of speeches at the AIPAC meeting suggests that with the election of anyone other than Sanders, there will be a depressing sameness in U.S. policy toward Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beginning next January. That will mean Israel continuing down the path of apartheid and isolation, with more endless conflict and more shedding of blood of Israelis as well as Palestinians, and Israel moving farther away from ever being a peaceful, democratic, Jewish state.
Barack Obama still has almost ten months to shift that momentum at least somewhat. He already has shown a willingness and ability to defy the rightist Israeli government and the lobby that works on its behalf when he waged the political battle needed to bring the Iran nuclear agreement into existence.
He has given ample indication that he fully understands the underlying issues. He has given other indications of being able and willing to set some new directions notwithstanding the longevity of old, stale, and destructive directions — notably with his changing of U.S. policy toward Cuba. And he never needs to run in any election again, not even for dog-catcher.
Mr. Obama should, sometime before the end of summer, give a major speech that lays out the main terms of what knowledgeable observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have long understood to be necessary parts of any final settlement of that conflict. This would not preclude necessary negotiation of details between the parties, but would lay out the framework for a two-state solution that has been clear for some time.
You might call this an updated version of the Clinton parameters. Then in the autumn the United States should not just not veto, and not just accept, but should sponsor and promote a resolution of the United Nations Security Council that incorporates this framework.
Mr. Obama would be able to do this secure in the knowledge that he can make a case that is strong and truthful on multiple grounds. This step certainly would be very much in U.S. interests, given the damage to those interests of being associated with the continued occupation. It would be in the interests of justice and self-determination for the Palestinian people. And it would be in the interests of Israel, by helping to pull Israel off its current self-destructive path.
The rightist government in Israel would scream, as would the U.S. lobby that works on its behalf. Until and unless there is significant political change in Israel, the combination of religious rationalization, economic greed, and government-stoked fear that has powered the tenacious clinging to conquered territory will still be a major barrier to a peaceful path.
But a change in U.S. direction — if speeches and resolutions are backed up with corresponding use of material U.S. leverage — might at least lead Israeli voters and true friends of Israel elsewhere to see that the days of U.S. abetting of the self-destructive behavior are over, and to acknowledge that the conflict with the Palestinians over land and sovereignty cannot indefinitely be wished or bludgeoned away. And that would mean the new U.S. president, whoever he or she is, would be facing a new situation and new possibilities, different from the one that persists today.
To return in the end to the United States’ own interests — as we always should — the slogan that the Trump campaign uses, about making America great again, has some relevance. A really great nation does not display the obsequiousness toward another government that was on display in the arena where AIPAC met, and people who want to lead a great nation should not display it either.
We should ask, as President Bill Clinton did after his first meeting with a bullying Benjamin Netanyahu, “Who’s the [expletive deleted] superpower here?” | {
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[7:19 PM] cloppyhooves: you come home and waifu is sexin' one of her family members
[7:19 PM] cloppyhooves: what do
[7:20 PM] reahidru: Examine family memeber
[7:20 PM] plotospex: Utterly perplexed do
[7:20 PM] sammiepie: which family member?
[7:20 PM] cloppyhooves: Pick one and answer based on that
[7:21 PM] reahidru: Examine twin sister
[7:21 PM] reahidru: (Fuckin score)
[7:21 PM] tsiugnil: ^
[7:21 PM] sammiepie: ^
[7:21 PM] sunasmine: ^
[7:21 PM] reahidru: ^
[7:21 PM] cloppyhooves: "Oh hi. We were having an argument on who's plot was tastier, but we can't seem to reach
[7:21 PM] cloppyhooves: a consensus."
[7:21 PM] cloppyhooves: What do
[7:22 PM] sunasmine: taste test
[7:22 PM] sunasmine: (waifu wins)
[7:22 PM] reahidru: BLIND taste test
[7:23 PM] cloppyhooves: They tie a blindfold around you and push you onto the bed
[7:23 PM] cloppyhooves: You hear a voice say "Subject 1" and you can feel somepony hoveing over you
[7:23 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:24 PM] tsiugnil: taste
[7:24 PM] sunasmine: taste?
[7:24 PM] cloppyhooves: You reach your tongue out until it makes contact with sweet flesh
[7:25 PM] cloppyhooves: It tastes utterly delicious, completely like <WAIFU FLAVOR HERE>
[7:25 PM] cloppyhooves: You hear giggling as you continue to lap up some more juices
[7:25 PM] cloppyhooves: You hear some moving around, and feel a presence above you again
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: "Subject 2"
[7:26 PM] sunasmine: ask for palette cleanse
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:26 PM] plotospex: Likcu~
[7:26 PM] sunasmine: gotta make it fair
[7:26 PM] tsiugnil: [hey rozzak: http://amberblade.tumblr.com/post/11177240121/]
[7:26 PM] plotospex: (except spelled correctly)
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: You ask for a palette Cleanser
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: You have to be fair, after all
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: You hear your waifu giggle
[7:26 PM] cloppyhooves: "Certainly"
[7:27 PM] cloppyhooves: You suddenly feel a mouth around yours, its tongue making its way into yours
[7:27 PM] sammiepie: [do twin ponies have different cutie marks?]
[7:27 PM] tsiugnil: [that could get confusing...]
[7:27 PM] reahidru: [They're mirrored of course]
[7:27 PM] plotospex: [if not, are personality traits genetic for ponies?]
[7:27 PM] sunasmine: [ i woudld argue no, unless they have same specia ltalent]
[7:28 PM] cloppyhooves: You reciprocate the kiss, letting the tongue explore around your mouth, before it breaks
[7:28 PM] cloppyhooves: away from you
[7:28 PM] cloppyhooves: "Alright, *now* subject 2"
[7:28 PM] plotospex: [by "if not" I mean "if so"]
[7:28 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:28 PM] sunasmine: lucku~
[7:28 PM] plotospex: licku~
[7:28 PM] sammiepie: ^
[7:28 PM] sunasmine: or licku~
[7:28 PM] rozzak: [are we "lab raping" ?]
[7:28 PM] reahidru: [Scroll up lazy bones]
[7:29 PM] rozzak: [NO]
[7:29 PM] rozzak: [I AM DRY BONES]
[7:29 PM] cloppyhooves: You reach your tongue out once again, and begin running your tongue around the flesh
[7:29 PM] cloppyhooves: you find, taking a taste of the juices dripping out of it
[7:29 PM] tsiugnil: [ps ponies have cutie marks on both sides, which are themselves mirrored]
[7:29 PM] tsiugnil: [rozzak, look at my link for you]
[7:30 PM] cloppyhooves: It tastes exactly the same as before: sweet, delicious, and exactly like <WAIFU FLAVOR>
[7:30 PM] cloppyhooves: You run your tongue along the slit a few more times before she pulls away
[7:30 PM] tsiugnil: they're both our waifu?
[7:30 PM] reahidru: Announce that you can not tell them apart by taste alone
[7:30 PM] cloppyhooves: They undo your blindfold, sitting side by side
[7:30 PM] cloppyhooves: "Okay, who tastes better?"
[7:30 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:30 PM] rozzak: [Hey I distinctly remember reading a hentai with this very same plot, pun intended}
[7:30 PM] plotospex: Okay, so when we asked for the cleaser, waifu giggles
[7:31 PM] plotospex: But she couldn't have bent down if her plot was over you
[7:31 PM] plotospex: Thus, waifu was #1
[7:31 PM] plotospex: Say #1 was a little better.
[7:31 PM] rozzak: I also did a science project like this in highschool
[7:31 PM] sunasmine: [the taste of pony plot?]
[7:31 PM] rozzak: :)
[7:31 PM] rozzak: [Sorta]
[7:31 PM] sammiepie: nah, say they're both perfect
[7:32 PM] rozzak: Say you cant decide you need another taste
[7:32 PM] plotospex: ^
[7:32 PM] sammiepie: ^
[7:32 PM] plotospex: Let's derail science and turn it into ponysex.
[7:32 PM] cloppyhooves: You look down in though: who's plot *was* better?
[7:32 PM] cloppyhooves: You decide you can't really tell them apart
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: When you look back up and say it, however, the two of them are making out and don't hear
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: you
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: They both look at you
[7:33 PM] tsiugnil: [data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lt9y4wWeIF1r50fu2o1_1280.jpg]
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: "Oh, sorry, what did you say? We got a little...distracted"
[7:33 PM] guest-34321 entered the room.
[7:33 PM] guest-34321 changed nickname to sillybear25
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: They both have the same expression, with the same half-closed eyes
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: A trail of saliva lingers between their mouths before dropping
[7:33 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:33 PM] reahidru: ==>Make this face :I
[7:34 PM] plotospex: Oh, so the blindfold came off
[7:34 PM] plotospex: Huggu~ both with one arm, tongue~ in between theirs
[7:34 PM] plotospex: In between their tongu~s, that is
[7:34 PM] sammiepie: ^
[7:35 PM] rozzak: Blindfold them now....
[7:35 PM] joeshmo101: ^
[7:35 PM] sunasmine: ploto^
[7:35 PM] rozzak: <
[7:35 PM] sammiepie: >
[7:35 PM] sillybear25: v
[7:36 PM] joeshmo101: -_-
[7:36 PM] cloppyhooves: You lean over to them and huggu both with one arm, and bring your head between theirs
[7:36 PM] cloppyhooves: The three of you start your three-way makeout
[7:36 PM] cloppyhooves: As you look at their faces, their eyes are close, completely into the kiss
[7:37 PM] cloppyhooves: If you hadn't been aroused eariler, you certainly are now
[7:37 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:37 PM] reahidru: Check inventory
[7:37 PM] plotospex: Check map
[7:37 PM] sammiepie: ask them to do some taste testing of their own
[7:37 PM] plotospex: Actually ^
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: You have stuff in your pockets, but it seems irrelvant right now
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: You don't have a map
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: You break the kiss and tell them that it's time for their own taste-test
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: They both look at you seductively
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: "Oh?" Says your waifu. "How's this going to work?
[7:39 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:40 PM] guest-34417 entered the room.
[7:40 PM] joeshmo101: I knew this would ahppen...
[7:40 PM] rozzak: [cloppy you gave me a boner, you should know thats a hard this to do....just sayin]
[7:40 PM] reahidru: "Well you'll be comparing... uhh me to uhhh... me"
[7:40 PM] plotospex: "My *PENIS* has two sides. I'm curious if they both taste the same."
[7:40 PM] guest-34417 changed nickname to vpt2
[7:41 PM] rozzak: Asshole vs Penis?
[7:41 PM] sammiepie: ^
[7:41 PM] reahidru: [That's hardly a fair fight]
[7:41 PM] cloppyhooves: (Heh, whoo)
[7:41 PM] plotospex: Or I guess not two sides because it's not a 2d object, but shuu up you know what I mean
[7:41 PM] rozzak: Asshole simulation is awesome
[7:41 PM] guest-34462 entered the room.
[7:41 PM] guest-34462 changed nickname to lazeraze
[7:41 PM] reahidru: [But still ^]
[7:41 PM] vpt2: DERAILMENT! Random Request: Anyone seen the image of Human dash and non human dash?
[7:42 PM] vpt2: (caption: "are you sure you're me" or summat)
[7:42 PM] joeshmo101: I know waifu gives the best blowjobs, but does her twin as well?
[7:42 PM] cloppyhooves: Yes, I'm getting it for you right now
[7:42 PM] lazeraze: Stick it in the pony hole.
[7:42 PM] rozzak: [im sure my ass tastes good,,,,)
[7:42 PM] lazeraze: (I bet it does)
[7:42 PM] sillybear25: [I've seen it, but I don't have a link to it atm
[7:42 PM] vpt2: cloppyhooves is best pony
[7:42 PM] sunasmine: {i know the one your taling about but son't have link]
[7:42 PM] plotospex: http://i.imgur.com/9votK.png
[7:42 PM] cloppyhooves: (Yeah, that was it)
[7:42 PM] cloppyhooves: (Plotospex beat me to it)
[7:43 PM] plotospex: Oh wait, you were getting it too
[7:43 PM] plotospex: Oops
[7:43 PM] tsiugnil: (where the hell ARE you ez?)
[7:43 PM] tsiugnil: (finding pics is your job)
[7:43 PM] lazeraze left the room.
[7:43 PM] cloppyhooves: So, what is this taste test that you're organizing?
[7:44 PM] equius_zahhak: [sorry, was snackin']
[7:44 PM] vpt2: Well if you all are chalelnging each other to post speed..... who can find the non-colored
[7:44 PM] joeshmo101: ^me
[7:44 PM] vpt2: version first?
[7:44 PM] cloppyhooves: http://img.ponibooru.org/_images/7920bee59d4ff60b63b7dbb04cca3726/35964%20-%20artist%3Ameg
[7:44 PM] equius_zahhak: http://tiny.cc/uikbu
[7:44 PM] sammiepie: butt vs. penis
[7:46 PM] cloppyhooves: Is everypony in agreement on taste test of BUTT vs PENIS
[7:46 PM] tsiugnil: right nipple vs left nipper
[7:46 PM] tsiugnil: nipple
[7:46 PM] vpt2: 1 and 1 .... someone request something of them MORE obscure to settle it...
[7:47 PM] tsiugnil: (i'm mostly not here)
[7:47 PM] joeshmo101: I want what I suggested
[7:47 PM] vpt2 left the room.
[7:47 PM] sunasmine: competering bj's?
[7:48 PM] sammiepie: nah, that's not a taste test
[7:48 PM] joeshmo101: ^
[7:48 PM] tsiugnil: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtwppaX2yl4]
[7:49 PM] cloppyhooves: http://poll.pollcode.com/ujGP
[7:52 PM] cloppyhooves: (looks like competing blowjobs wins)
[7:53 PM] cloppyhooves: You looks from one to the other
[7:53 PM] tsiugnil: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x12s6WEjnDA]
[7:53 PM] cloppyhooves: "How about you do the tasting while I do the testing? I wanna see which of you gives the
[7:53 PM] tsiugnil: [RD's face...]
[7:53 PM] cloppyhooves: best blowjobs..."
[7:53 PM] cloppyhooves: They look at each other, then back at you, and smile
[7:54 PM] cloppyhooves: Waifu ties the blindfold back around you
[7:54 PM] cloppyhooves: (dat RD face)
[7:54 PM] cloppyhooves: They guide you sit on the edge of the bed, and you feel a pair of hooves on your thighs
[7:54 PM] cloppyhooves: "Subject 1, when you're ready"
[7:54 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[7:56 PM] joeshmo101: wait, is this the same subject 1 as before or did we randomize?
[7:56 PM] cloppyhooves: (Randomized)
[7:56 PM] cloppyhooves: (You can't science with bias)
[7:57 PM] cloppyhooves: (Proceeding, cause there isn't really anything you *can* do)
[7:57 PM] sunasmine: [lol]
[7:58 PM] cloppyhooves: You lie back a bit, waiting and focusing all of your attention on your penis
[7:58 PM] tsiugnil: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6mUhaqHYyc]
[7:58 PM] cloppyhooves: So much so that, as you feel a pair of lips evelope around it, you let out a gasp
[7:59 PM] cloppyhooves: The mystery mare slides further down until she has half your length in her mouth
[7:59 PM] cloppyhooves: As she does, she runs her tongue all around the surface of your cock, circling around it
[7:59 PM] cloppyhooves: in loving strokes
[8:00 PM] cloppyhooves: she goes just a bit further, then withdraws a bit until she's back at just the tip
[8:00 PM] cloppyhooves: You can feel the tongue run across the head of your penis, and you shudder in pleasure
[8:00 PM] cloppyhooves: You now feel the mare moving up and down your shaft, continuing to work her tonue all
[8:00 PM] cloppyhooves: around as she does
[8:01 PM] cloppyhooves: You are breathing a little hard, and you grip the bed in reaction to how much pleasure
[8:01 PM] cloppyhooves: you can feel shooting through you
[8:01 PM] cloppyhooves: After several blissful moments, you feel the lips slide off you
[8:02 PM] cloppyhooves: "Hey," you hear. "I can't let you go *too* far. *She* still needs a turn."
[8:02 PM] cloppyhooves: The hooves move away from your thighs, and a new pair replaces them
[8:02 PM] cloppyhooves: "Subject 2."
[8:03 PM] sammiepie: go
[8:03 PM] joeshmo101: wait,three ponies??
[8:03 PM] plotospex: What, it's just 2
[8:03 PM] sunasmine: just two ponies
[8:03 PM] sunasmine: waifu and waifu twin
[8:04 PM] cloppyhooves: Your cock is still throbbing from the last "test", but it does not have much time to
[8:04 PM] tsiugnil: WE'RE A PONY
[8:04 PM] joeshmo101: STOP
[8:04 PM] cloppyhooves: recover before you feel it slide into another warm, wet enclosure
[8:04 PM] cloppyhooves: (Why stop?)
[8:05 PM] joeshmo101: at who was said hey, I can't let you get to far"?
[8:05 PM] cloppyhooves: Whoever it was who was blowing you
[8:05 PM] sunasmine: subject #1
[8:05 PM] cloppyhooves: You can't tell; you have a blindfold on
[8:05 PM] joeshmo101: nvm, carry on
[8:05 PM] joeshmo101: (I thought it was before subject one had finished, and speaking in the third person
[8:06 PM] joeshmo101: made me think there was another pony)
[8:06 PM] cloppyhooves: This mare is quick to get into the thythm the other had stopped, sliding up and down
[8:06 PM] cloppyhooves: with an expert use of her tongue
[8:07 PM] cloppyhooves: Your eyes roll back as this mare continues to work her magic
[8:07 PM] joeshmo101: [so are we just doing this tonight or are we going back to A New Leaf?]
[8:07 PM] cloppyhooves: (I didn't even know I was going to be doing this, heh)
[8:07 PM] cloppyhooves: You think you hear her snickering, and are confused for a moment
[8:08 PM] reahidru: [Just pretend it's an intermission]
[8:08 PM] cloppyhooves: You don't have time to think, though: you feel her hooves press a bit into your thighs
[8:08 PM] cloppyhooves: and suddenly feel the entirety of your erection enclosed in moist warmth
[8:09 PM] cloppyhooves: The sudden senstaion causes you to gasp and moan, and your tongue lolls out
[8:09 PM] cloppyhooves: "Hey, no fair!" you hear from the other pony
[8:09 PM] cloppyhooves: The mare is keeping your member all the to the hilt in her mouth, using the entirely of
[8:09 PM] cloppyhooves: her tongue to run over the entirety of your flesh
[8:10 PM] cloppyhooves: Pleasure is radiating through every square inch of your loins, up through your chest and
[8:10 PM] cloppyhooves: to your head
[8:10 PM] cloppyhooves: The mare finally withdraws, sliding all the way off
[8:10 PM] cloppyhooves: You're a little sad to feel her leave; your penis is throbbing hard, desparate for more
[8:11 PM] cloppyhooves: attention
[8:11 PM] cloppyhooves: They again take the blindfold off you, standing side by side
[8:11 PM] cloppyhooves: "So, who won?"
[8:11 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[8:11 PM] sammiepie: say nopony yet
[8:12 PM] sunasmine: that was just the first round?
[8:12 PM] plotospex: "#2, but she went all the way. It's only fair that #1 gets another shot."
[8:12 PM] sammiepie: ^
[8:13 PM] cloppyhooves: "Well, Subject 2 was better, but I think you claimed she was cheating, didn't you?"
[8:13 PM] cloppyhooves: "I'd said it's only fair that you get a redo."
[8:14 PM] cloppyhooves: Er, replace "you" with "Subject 1"
[8:14 PM] cloppyhooves: You think you see one of them grin, but it's so imperceptible that you can't tell who it
[8:14 PM] cloppyhooves: was
[8:15 PM] cloppyhooves: The blindfold comes back on
[8:15 PM] cloppyhooves: Hooves once again rest on your thighs
[8:15 PM] cloppyhooves: "Alright. I'll make sure this one...counts."
[8:16 PM] cloppyhooves: You cock surges with pleasure as you feel it once again inside a mare's mouth
[8:16 PM] cloppyhooves: The mare slides up and down a bit a few times, before pressing into your thighs as the
[8:17 PM] cloppyhooves: other had
[8:17 PM] cloppyhooves: You let out still more moans as you feel her lips touch the hilt of your penis once again
[8:17 PM] cloppyhooves: (whoops, forget the "her")
[8:18 PM] joeshmo101: (why forget her?)
[8:18 PM] plotospex changed nickname to plotospexohnobrb
[8:18 PM] cloppyhooves: (The word "her" shouldn't have been there)
[8:19 PM] sunasmine: [" as you feel lips touch "?]
[8:19 PM] cloppyhooves: (yeah)
[8:19 PM] joeshmo101: (still works either way)
[8:19 PM] cloppyhooves: You feel the tongue within stroke your erection lovingly
[8:20 PM] cloppyhooves: It slides around the entire length, before you start to feel it ticking the tip
[8:20 PM] cloppyhooves: The mare is making quick licks on the head of your penis, and the sensation is almost
[8:20 PM] cloppyhooves: overwelming
[8:20 PM] cloppyhooves: you wriggle around in your seat, the pleasure racing though you
[8:21 PM] cloppyhooves: Your breathing has become more intense, and all you can focus on is the mare's tongue
[8:21 PM] cloppyhooves: still carresing your cock and ticking your tip
[8:21 PM] cloppyhooves: After what seems like an eternity, she slides off of you, and they take the blindfold off
[8:21 PM] cloppyhooves: They once again ask who the winner is
[8:22 PM] cloppyhooves: Your cock is throbbing, getting very near the brink of orgasm
[8:22 PM] cloppyhooves: It begs to be touched once again
[8:22 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[8:23 PM] joeshmo101: clop, then pass out
[8:23 PM] sunasmine: try to find a way for both of them to go at once?
[8:23 PM] sammiepie: ^
[8:23 PM] sammiepie: ask them to do a lightining round
[8:23 PM] sunasmine: [ don't have any ideas how though]
[8:24 PM] guest-35227 entered the room.
[8:24 PM] guest-35227 changed nickname to hermocrates
[8:24 PM] guest-35233 entered the room.
[8:24 PM] guest-35233 left the room.
[8:24 PM] hermocrates: Hi everypony!
[8:25 PM] cloppyhooves: Your mind is clouded with lust, but you manage to form some words between your breaths
[8:25 PM] sunasmine: [heya]
[8:25 PM] cloppyhooves: (Hey)
[8:25 PM] joeshmo101: say: "Winner? Me!"
[8:25 PM] cloppyhooves: "You two don't make this easy, do you? I'd say it's time for a *LIGHTING ROUND*."
[8:25 PM] sammiepie: [hi]
[8:26 PM] joeshmo101 left the room.
[8:26 PM] cloppyhooves: They giggle, and you waifu tells you "Oh, you won't *release* the answer? *Come* on, tell
[8:26 PM] cloppyhooves: us. Just *blurt it out*."
[8:27 PM] guest-35269 entered the room.
[8:27 PM] guest-35269 changed nickname to rozzak_sketching
[8:27 PM] cloppyhooves: Your arousal increases even more, and your penis is quivering
[8:27 PM] guest-35272 entered the room.
[8:27 PM] rozzak_sketching: Yum
[8:27 PM] rozzak_sketching left the room.
[8:27 PM] guest-35281 entered the room.
[8:27 PM] cloppyhooves: "But sure, how do you want to..."finish" this?"
[8:27 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[8:27 PM] guest-35281 left the room.
[8:27 PM] guest-35272 changed nickname to joeshmo101
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: (if you guys can't come up with anything, I'll go with my own idea)
[8:28 PM] joeshmo101: what did I miss since flash crashed
[8:28 PM] joeshmo101: ?
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: They giggle, and you waifu tells you "Oh, you won't *release* the answer? *Come* on, tell
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: us. Just *blurt it out*."
[8:28 PM] sunasmine: [lets eee if we can come up with somthing]
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: Your arousal increases even more, and your penis is quivering
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: "But sure, how do you want to..."finish" this?"
[8:28 PM] cloppyhooves: (that's what you missed)
[8:29 PM] sammiepie: tell them they both need to go at once so you can get a side by side comparison
[8:29 PM] joeshmo101: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8txk6EhYZKA
[8:29 PM] hermocrates: [Who are we "with" right now?]
[8:30 PM] cloppyhooves: (Waifu and her twin sister)
[8:30 PM] sunasmine: [waifu and waifu twin]
[8:30 PM] cloppyhooves: "I think you guys need to both go at once. I need a side-by-side comparison"
[8:30 PM] hermocrates: [Oh sweet, wolfgirl twins!]
[8:31 PM] cloppyhooves: They both grin, and pounce onto your legs, one set of hooves on each
[8:31 PM] cloppyhooves: the two begin each licking either side of your penis
[8:31 PM] cloppyhooves: They alternate: one makes long strongs down the side while the other makes small circles
[8:32 PM] cloppyhooves: all over, from base to tip
[8:32 PM] cloppyhooves: The pleasure is unbearble; you feel ready to relase your sweet semen all over them
[8:32 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[8:32 PM] sammiepie: let them know you're close
[8:33 PM] joeshmo101: ^
[8:33 PM] hermocrates: [But wolves don't have hooves. . . .]
[8:33 PM] cloppyhooves: (replace it in your mind as necessary)
[8:33 PM] sunasmine: [pony wolves have hooves i guess?]
[8:34 PM] rozzak: [Drew the philosodash FMA story board FUCKING AWESOME, be prepared folks]
[8:34 PM] cloppyhooves: "I..." you pant. "I can't take...much more..."
[8:34 PM] rozzak: [probably tomorrow]
[8:34 PM] cloppyhooves: They look at each other, and move back a bit
[8:34 PM] hermocrates: [Lookin' forward to it! I've enjoyed your stuff so far :) ]
[8:34 PM] plotospexohnobrb changed nickname to plotospex
[8:35 PM] cloppyhooves: They press their cheeks together, and line them elves up with your penis
[8:35 PM] cloppyhooves: "Go ahead" they say in unison
[8:35 PM] cloppyhooves: ...
[8:35 PM] cloppyhooves: (Whoops, *themselves)
[8:35 PM] cloppyhooves: (not them elves)
[8:35 PM] sammiepie: let go all over their faces
[8:35 PM] sunasmine: clop to the finish on their faces?
[8:35 PM] hermocrates: [Dem elves! So gods-damned short!]
[8:35 PM] tsiugnil: [joe: why is there russian singing over nazi pigs? i confuzzed]
[8:35 PM] sillybear25: (elves? When did elves get involved? :P)
[8:36 PM] joeshmo101 left the room.
[8:36 PM] guest-35428 entered the room.
[8:37 PM] cloppyhooves: You see the two of them side-by-side, eyes closed, mouths open
[8:37 PM] guest-35428 changed nickname to joeshmo101
[8:37 PM] hermocrates: [You didn't miss anything this time]
[8:37 PM] cloppyhooves: They've gotten you so close that you don't even need to touch yourself; the thought alone
[8:37 PM] cloppyhooves: (well, and the sight of them) is enough to push you past the edge
[8:38 PM] cloppyhooves: You feel pressure building in your loins as your member quivers
[8:38 PM] cloppyhooves: You feel the pleasurable contractions building in within you, and you let out a low moan
[8:38 PM] cloppyhooves: Your semen begins shooting out, landing in ropes across their faces
[8:39 PM] cloppyhooves: As you continue to feel the pleasure of release, you see your penis ejaculate all over
[8:39 PM] cloppyhooves: them
[8:39 PM] cloppyhooves: your seed is streaked across their cheeks, some landing on their eyes, some in their
[8:39 PM] cloppyhooves: hair, and even some in their mouths
[8:40 PM] cloppyhooves: As the orgasm finally dies down, then two of them open their eyes and look at each other
[8:40 PM] cloppyhooves: They giggle at their appearance, and begin to lick your semen off of each others faces
[8:41 PM] cloppyhooves: you continue to hear the licking and giggling as you lie back, recovering from your
[8:41 PM] hermocrates: [^ Why doesn't this happen in porn more often?]
[8:41 PM] cloppyhooves: powerful orgasm
[8:41 PM] cloppyhooves: You sigh
[8:41 PM] cloppyhooves: She really needs to come over more often, you think to yourself
[8:41 PM] cloppyhooves: THE END?
[8:41 PM] sammiepie: the end | {
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Kim Yo-jong (left) trails her brother as they arrive to cast their ballots in Sunday's election. Photo: AFP | {
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4th July 2014
Ocean inside Titan could be as salty as the Dead Sea
Scientists analysing data from NASA's Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn's largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as Earth's Dead Sea.
The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini's repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using the Cassini data, researchers presented a model structure for Titan, resulting in an improved understanding of the structure of the moon's outer ice shell. The findings are published in this week's edition of the journal Icarus.
"Titan continues to prove itself as an endlessly fascinating world, and with our long-lived Cassini spacecraft, we're unlocking new mysteries as fast as we solve old ones," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Additional findings support previous indications the moon's icy shell is rigid and in the process of freezing solid. Researchers found that a relatively high density was required for Titan's ocean in order to explain the gravity data. This indicates the ocean is probably an extremely salty brine of water mixed with dissolved salts likely composed of sulfur, sodium and potassium. The density indicated for this brine would give the ocean a salt content roughly equal to the saltiest bodies of water on Earth.
The Dead Sea, Israel
"This is an extremely salty ocean by Earth standards," said the paper's lead author, Giuseppe Mitri of the University of Nantes in France. "Knowing this may change the way we view this ocean as a possible abode for present-day life, but conditions might have been very different there in the past."
Cassini data also indicate the thickness of Titan's ice crust varies slightly from place to place. The researchers said this can best be explained if the moon's outer shell is stiff, as would be the case if the ocean were slowly crystalizing and turning to ice. Otherwise, the moon's shape would tend to even itself out over time, like warm candle wax. This freezing process would have important implications for the habitability of Titan's ocean, as it would limit the ability of materials to exchange between the surface and the ocean.
A further consequence of a rigid ice shell, according to the study, is that any outgassing of methane into Titan's atmosphere must happen at scattered "hot spots" – like the hot spot on Earth that gave rise to the Hawaiian Island chain. Titan's methane does not appear to result from convection or plate tectonics recycling its ice shell.
How methane gets into the moon's atmosphere has long been of great interest to researchers, as molecules of this gas are broken apart by sunlight on short geological timescales. Titan's present atmosphere contains about five percent methane. This means some process, thought to be geological in nature, must be replenishing the gas. The study indicates that whatever process is responsible, the restoration of Titan's methane is localised and intermittent.
"Our work suggests looking for signs of methane outgassing will be difficult with Cassini, and may require a future mission that can find localised methane sources," said Jonathan Lunine, a scientist on the Cassini mission at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and one of the paper's co-authors. "As on Mars, this is a challenging task."
Size comparison of Titan (lower left), Earth and the Moon.
Comments » | {
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Cue the Neil Degrasse Tyson meme, looks like we have a bad ass pair of socks over here! They came in the mail today! Thank you gifter! | {
"pile_set_name": "OpenWebText2"
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NEW DELHI: Treatment at AIIMS is likely to get costlier. The institute, in its latest proposal to the standing finance committee which meets on Tuesday, has proposed a hike of nearly 20-30% on its charges for various tests and procedures, including all heart surgeries.
For example, according to the proposed changes, closure of atrial septal defect, a birth defect, would cost Rs 46,000 for general ward patients and Rs 70,000 for patients admitted in the private ward. The existing package rate for ASD closure is Rs 40,000 and Rs 57,000 respectively for the two categories.
AIIMS spokesperson Dr Amit Gupta said the package rates are meant only for patients who do not fall in Below Poverty Line category. "Those who can afford should pay. We are not charging anywhere near market rate," he said.
AIIMS has also proposed to revise the package rates for various treatment and procedures conducted at its dental centre and it has proposed to include new tests in department of paediatrics on chargeable basis. A faculty member, who did not want to be named, termed the move regressive. "In a poor country like India, where most people cannot afford treatment at private hospitals, how can the state absolve itself of the responsibility to provide health facilities? If AIIMS becomes even half as costly as the private hospitals, 90% of patients will not be able to afford treatment," said a doctor.
Some faculty members also questioned the legitimacy of the standing finance committee to consider the agenda. "The standing finance committee mostly comprises ex-officio members," said a senior faculty member.
Sources said the idea to make AIIMS self-reliant or run it on a revenue generation model had been proposed in 2005 and 2010 but was shot down by members of parliament and doctors, who felt it would affect poor. In 2010, AIIMS initiated a study to determine user charges for various services. The circular asked for the list of all procedures with respect to which user charges could be fixed.
The SFC meet on Tuesday will also discuss award of work of Rs 505 crore for National Cancer Institute in Jhajjar, setting up of burns and plastic surgery unit at the trauma centre and procurement of MRI machines. The proposals will then be sent to the institute body and governing body, for final nod.
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