President Barack Obama led civil rights pioneers Wednesday in a ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech roused the 250,000 people who rallied there decades ago for racial equality.
Large crowds gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where the first black U.S. president spoke just after 1900 GMT – the same time that King delivered his spellbinding speech.The first march was early in the turbulent 1960s, when the South still had separate restrooms, schools and careers for blacks and whites, and racism lingered across the country. In the two years following the march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act to outlaw discrimination, and King received the Nobel Peace Prize.
“There were couples in love who couldn’t marry. Soldiers who fought for freedom abroad but couldn’t find any at home,” Obama said, speaking of that era. “America changed for you and rtls,” he added later.But he pointed to the nation’s economic disparities as evidence that King’s hopes remain unfulfilled.
Obama has said King is one of two people he admires “more than anybody in American history.” The other is Abraham Lincoln. Thousands of people were in attendance in wet weather.Two former presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, spoke movingly of King’s legacy – and of problems still to overcome.“This march, and that speech, changed America,” Clinton declared.
Carter said King’s efforts had helped not just black Americans, but “In truth, he helped to free all people.”Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx were among the celebrities.Winfrey said King forced the nation “to wake up, look at itself and eventually change.”
International commemorations were being held at London’s Trafalgar Square, as well as in the nations of Japan, Switzerland, Nepal and Liberia. London Mayor Boris Johnson has said King’s speech resonates around the world and continues to inspire people as one of the great pieces of oratory.
Obama considers the 1963 march part of his generation’s “formative memory.” A half-century after the march, he said, is a good time to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go, particularly after the recent acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.
Race isn’t a subject Obama likes to talk about in public, but the Martin case is one time he has done so.In an interview Tuesday on Tom Joyner’s radio show, Obama said he imagines that King “would be amazed in many ways about the progress that we’ve made.” He listed advances such as equal rights before the law, an accessible judicial system, thousands of African-American elected officials, African-American CEOs and the doors that the civil rights movement opened for Latinos, women and gays.
The white minivan packed with armed Syrian fighters hurtled along the narrow winding road and passed old stone houses nestled among lush orchards of apples, pomegranates and figs clinging to dry-stone terraces stepped into the soaring pine-covered mountains and rocky ravines of Jabal al-Akrad in Syria's northwestern Latakia province.
The seven men munched on potato chips as revolutionary songs, mainly Islamist but a few secular, played through the van's speakers: "We are your soldiers, Osama. We seek martyrdom," went one.There was another soundtrack playing outside - the roar of MiG fighter jets and the soft thump-thump of helicopter rotor blades before they opened their doors to drop large improvised explosives packed into barrels. A MiG suddenly swooped directly overhead, prompting the van to screech to a halt. The men clambered out and hid under the sprawling branches of a walnut tree by the side of the road.
A rebel 23-mm anti-aircraft gun nearby chased the jet with several thunderous rounds. It was joined by several other anti-aircraft guns of various calibers. All missed their target. A chicken clucked. An old man in a red and white checkered headscarf, riding an ash-gray donkey a shade darker than the color of his whiskers, slowly continued up the steep path, seemingly oblivious to events around him.
After 10 minutes and several circular passes, the jet again dived in low and unleashed its explosive payload into an adjacent hill, creating plumes of white smoke that obscured the gentle, rounded mountaintop like a vertical cloud.
The men of the Ansar al-Din battalion got back into the van and drove toward the many other plumes of smoke rising from the hills. They were headed to one of the most important front lines in the Syrian civil war: the battle for the mountain heartlands of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, his ancestral homeland and the backbone of his regime.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
National Review's Ugly Civil Rights History
National Review has published numerous articles this week marking the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.'s seminal "I have a dream" speech. Given its ugly history, the long-running conservative magazine is ill-suited for such transparent attempts to re-appropriate the civil rights movement. National Review opposed major civil rights legislation and published appallingly racist commentary during the height of the civil rights movement.
In an editorial published this morning, the editors of National Review invoke the March on Washington in order to attack the "decrepitude of today's civil-rights movement" and label the original civil rights movement "in a crucial sense conservative" because "it did not seek to invent rights, but to secure ones that the government already respected in principle."
In a nod to the magazine's own shameful history, the editors concede that "too many conservatives and real time Location system, including the editors of this magazine" missed what it sees as the centrally conservative and theological arguments underpinning the movement.
It's commendable that the editors are acknowledging the magazine's role in opposing important facets of the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, claiming that National Review "worried about the effects of the civil-rights movement on federalism and limited government" glosses over the odious nature of some of the magazine's writing from the 50s and 60s, when that publication stood athwart history yelling stop as King and his allies fought to end a brutal regime of racial segregation and voter disenfranchisement.
In his 2007 book The Conservative Ascendancy, historian Donald Critchlow documents that from the founding of the magazine in 1955, the editors of National Review "opposed federal involvement in enforcing equal access to public accommodations and protecting black voting rights in the South." Though the National Review "based their opposition on constitutional grounds and conservative resistance to radical social change," Critchlow explains that "their rhetoric overstepped the bounds of civility and was racially offensive."
The central question that emerges - and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
Surely one thing is clear enough at this point in American history, namely, that the Negro problem cannot be solved by even the most artful piece of legislation. This kind of "progress" projected under the proposed civil rights laws is the kind of progress which is based on the assumption that people can be brought under coercive pressure to do things they are disciplined to do.
There are those who sincerely believe progress is not fashioned out of that kind of clay. There actually are true and wise friends of the Negro race who believe that a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races.
Mass demonstrations, in a free society, should be reserved for situations about which there is simply no doubting the correct moral course. If it is true that the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot be trusted to write a law which is manifestly just and imperatively moral, then and only then is the pressure of the mob in order.
The internal order is now in jeopardy; and it is in jeopardy because of the doings of such highminded, self-righteous "children of light" as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership role of the "civil rights" movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of "non-violence."
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the "cake of custom" that holds us together. With their doctrine of "civil disobedience," they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes - particularly the adolescents and the children - that it is perfectly all right to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk.
As explained by FAIR, Buckley did eventually change some of his views on the civil rights movement, telling Time magazine in 2004, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: Federal intervention was necessary."
By 2000, the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance was lamenting "The Decline of National Review" and what it termed their "complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group" after the magazine had spent so many years "heap[ing] criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers" and publishing "articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid."
While National Review has certainly taken strides in distancing itself from its ugly history, it has had to fire two different writers for troubling racial views as recently as last year. It fired writer John Derbyshire after he published a piece in a different magazine advising parents to tell their children to be wary of black people. It also dropped contributor Robert Weissberg in light of reports that he had given a speech at an American Renaissance conference about "A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
In an editorial published this morning, the editors of National Review invoke the March on Washington in order to attack the "decrepitude of today's civil-rights movement" and label the original civil rights movement "in a crucial sense conservative" because "it did not seek to invent rights, but to secure ones that the government already respected in principle."
In a nod to the magazine's own shameful history, the editors concede that "too many conservatives and real time Location system, including the editors of this magazine" missed what it sees as the centrally conservative and theological arguments underpinning the movement.
It's commendable that the editors are acknowledging the magazine's role in opposing important facets of the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, claiming that National Review "worried about the effects of the civil-rights movement on federalism and limited government" glosses over the odious nature of some of the magazine's writing from the 50s and 60s, when that publication stood athwart history yelling stop as King and his allies fought to end a brutal regime of racial segregation and voter disenfranchisement.
In his 2007 book The Conservative Ascendancy, historian Donald Critchlow documents that from the founding of the magazine in 1955, the editors of National Review "opposed federal involvement in enforcing equal access to public accommodations and protecting black voting rights in the South." Though the National Review "based their opposition on constitutional grounds and conservative resistance to radical social change," Critchlow explains that "their rhetoric overstepped the bounds of civility and was racially offensive."
The central question that emerges - and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal - is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes - the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
Surely one thing is clear enough at this point in American history, namely, that the Negro problem cannot be solved by even the most artful piece of legislation. This kind of "progress" projected under the proposed civil rights laws is the kind of progress which is based on the assumption that people can be brought under coercive pressure to do things they are disciplined to do.
There are those who sincerely believe progress is not fashioned out of that kind of clay. There actually are true and wise friends of the Negro race who believe that a federal law, artificially deduced from the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or from the 14th Amendment, whose marginal effect will be to instruct small merchants in the Deep South on how they may conduct their business, is no way at all of promoting the kind of understanding which is the basis of progressive and charitable relationships between the races.
Mass demonstrations, in a free society, should be reserved for situations about which there is simply no doubting the correct moral course. If it is true that the Senate and the House of Representatives cannot be trusted to write a law which is manifestly just and imperatively moral, then and only then is the pressure of the mob in order.
The internal order is now in jeopardy; and it is in jeopardy because of the doings of such highminded, self-righteous "children of light" as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates in the leadership role of the "civil rights" movement. If you are looking for those ultimately responsible for the murder, arson, and looting in Los Angeles, look to them: they are the guilty ones, these apostles of "non-violence."
For years now, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his associates have been deliberately undermining the foundations of internal order in this country. With their rabble-rousing demagoguery, they have been cracking the "cake of custom" that holds us together. With their doctrine of "civil disobedience," they have been teaching hundreds of thousands of Negroes - particularly the adolescents and the children - that it is perfectly all right to break the law and defy constituted authority if you are a Negro-with-a-grievance; in protest against injustice. And they have done more than talk.
As explained by FAIR, Buckley did eventually change some of his views on the civil rights movement, telling Time magazine in 2004, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong: Federal intervention was necessary."
By 2000, the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance was lamenting "The Decline of National Review" and what it termed their "complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group" after the magazine had spent so many years "heap[ing] criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers" and publishing "articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid."
While National Review has certainly taken strides in distancing itself from its ugly history, it has had to fire two different writers for troubling racial views as recently as last year. It fired writer John Derbyshire after he published a piece in a different magazine advising parents to tell their children to be wary of black people. It also dropped contributor Robert Weissberg in light of reports that he had given a speech at an American Renaissance conference about "A Politically Viable Alternative to White Nationalism."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 26, 2013
It's Like Google, But For Search
It is no longer appropriate for search to be under the thumb of private industry. It's a critical part of the national infrastructure. So if I were a real pinko, I'd be advocating for the nationalization of Google, à la Chavez—but I'm not a real pinko. Besides, the American people have already bought and paid for an ideal alternative to Google. That's right: we have the means in hand to create a public, ad-free, totally fair and reasonably transparent search engine with a legal mandate to operate in the public interest, and most of the work is already done. We have also a huge staff of engineers to conclude what little remains on the development and deployment side.
Who are these American heroes, soon to be accepting the thanks of a grateful nation? Why, our fellow citizens, the software engineers and tech gurus and endless numbers of contractors of the NSA! Why don't they make themselves useful and stop spying on everyone and instead, use all that computing power and archived information to make us a fair, fast, ad-free search engine?
Others make their case against Google on antitrust laws. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. According to U.S. courts, it's just not your fault that everybody loves your product! What's illegal is using that power to do bad things, like suppress your own competition. This is why there are ongoing government investigations into Google's anti-competitive business practices in the U.S., in Canada and in Europe.
Probes like these have so far tended to focus on Google's preferential treatment of its own services over those of its competitors in Google search results. Which amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room: Google, with its 67% share of U.S. search traffic (sounds low, tbh), has a potential influence far beyond the industries in which it operates formally. At the moment, Google can legally use its power to make or break any business, or any politician, publication, or public figure it chooses, for any old reason it wants, provided that reason doesn't fall foul of Hands free access.
For instance, let's suppose one of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's friends were to open a new cafe in Mountain View: there is no legal proscription whatsoever against Google's vaulting the Friends o' Brin Cafe to the top of results on searches for "best cafe Mountain View." Or even "best cafe."
A close reading of Google's ten "Core Principles" appears to suggest, but not quite guarantee, that Google won't simply grant preferential treatment at its own discretion. The fact is, however, that it's entirely up to them. Given the understandably secret nature of Google's algorithms and other techniques for determining search results, it would be impossible to say whether or not this is in fact already happening.
Already companies live or die at the hands of Google. Any update to the Google Panda search ranking algorithm has rippling effects through the Internet. One thing that seems to be the case: older sites, with thousands of internal links and a deep history on the Internet, seem to be constantly downgraded. That's bad news for some non-spam media companies that in part live off search traffic. Google results, in general, overweight newness. It is becoming more and more impossible to find relevant results older than three months.
The crisis in Syria has entered a "dangerous new phase," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird warned Monday, as Washington announced it had "undeniable" evidence of a chemical weapons attack.
Baird condemned "in the strongest terms" a sniper attack on a United Nations convoy carrying a team investigating the alleged chemical attack, which Syrian activists claim killed hundreds of civilians.
"The attacks on the United Nations convoy in Damascus are absolutely abhorrent," Baird said."The Syrian regime has the fundamental duty to protect these individuals, these representatives of the indoor Tracking and the international community."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria.
"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," Kerry said.
The Syrian government accused rebel forces of firing at the UN team, while the opposition said a pro-government militia was responsible.Baird declined to call for military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, Western support mounted for an international military response if it is confirmed that President Bashar Assad's troops used chemical weapons.
"I think first we're going to work to get the facts with the UN team on the ground," Baird said."We have been in close contact, both the prime minister and I, with three of our main allies in this regard. We'll work with them and when we have additional things to report we will do so."
Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said he supports first working through international law, and taking it one step at a time, but didn't rule out future military intervention.American officials said President Barack Obama has not decided how to respond to the use of deadly gases, a move the White House said last year would cross a "red line."
France, Britain, Israel and some U.S. congressmen have said a military response against the Syrian regime should be an option. Russia, however, has said that Western nations calling for military action have no proof the Syrian government was behind any chemical attacks.
Baird said Canada will continue working with its international partners to "review a full range of options.""Canada believes the only way to halt the bloodshed in Syria is through a political solution," he said. "However, we understand that this solution is becoming more and more difficult as the crisis enters a very dangerous new phase."He called on Russia to end its "complete obfuscation" and become part of the solution.
The UN inspectors are attempting to examine the site of the Aug. 21 attack in the capital's suburbs.Delay tactics used by the Assad regime in giving UN inspectors access has likely already impaired the UN team's ability to assign responsibility, Baird said. Still, he called on Syrian authorities to allow the team unfettered access.
The U.S. said Syria's delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use.The assessment is based in part on the number of reported victims, the symptoms of those injured or killed and witness accounts. Kerry said the administration also had additional intelligence and would make its findings public soon.
Assad has denied launching a chemical attack and his government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Who are these American heroes, soon to be accepting the thanks of a grateful nation? Why, our fellow citizens, the software engineers and tech gurus and endless numbers of contractors of the NSA! Why don't they make themselves useful and stop spying on everyone and instead, use all that computing power and archived information to make us a fair, fast, ad-free search engine?
Others make their case against Google on antitrust laws. It's not illegal to have a monopoly. According to U.S. courts, it's just not your fault that everybody loves your product! What's illegal is using that power to do bad things, like suppress your own competition. This is why there are ongoing government investigations into Google's anti-competitive business practices in the U.S., in Canada and in Europe.
Probes like these have so far tended to focus on Google's preferential treatment of its own services over those of its competitors in Google search results. Which amounts to ignoring the elephant in the room: Google, with its 67% share of U.S. search traffic (sounds low, tbh), has a potential influence far beyond the industries in which it operates formally. At the moment, Google can legally use its power to make or break any business, or any politician, publication, or public figure it chooses, for any old reason it wants, provided that reason doesn't fall foul of Hands free access.
For instance, let's suppose one of Google co-founder Sergey Brin's friends were to open a new cafe in Mountain View: there is no legal proscription whatsoever against Google's vaulting the Friends o' Brin Cafe to the top of results on searches for "best cafe Mountain View." Or even "best cafe."
A close reading of Google's ten "Core Principles" appears to suggest, but not quite guarantee, that Google won't simply grant preferential treatment at its own discretion. The fact is, however, that it's entirely up to them. Given the understandably secret nature of Google's algorithms and other techniques for determining search results, it would be impossible to say whether or not this is in fact already happening.
Already companies live or die at the hands of Google. Any update to the Google Panda search ranking algorithm has rippling effects through the Internet. One thing that seems to be the case: older sites, with thousands of internal links and a deep history on the Internet, seem to be constantly downgraded. That's bad news for some non-spam media companies that in part live off search traffic. Google results, in general, overweight newness. It is becoming more and more impossible to find relevant results older than three months.
The crisis in Syria has entered a "dangerous new phase," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird warned Monday, as Washington announced it had "undeniable" evidence of a chemical weapons attack.
Baird condemned "in the strongest terms" a sniper attack on a United Nations convoy carrying a team investigating the alleged chemical attack, which Syrian activists claim killed hundreds of civilians.
"The attacks on the United Nations convoy in Damascus are absolutely abhorrent," Baird said."The Syrian regime has the fundamental duty to protect these individuals, these representatives of the indoor Tracking and the international community."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria.
"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity," Kerry said.
The Syrian government accused rebel forces of firing at the UN team, while the opposition said a pro-government militia was responsible.Baird declined to call for military intervention in Syria. Meanwhile, Western support mounted for an international military response if it is confirmed that President Bashar Assad's troops used chemical weapons.
"I think first we're going to work to get the facts with the UN team on the ground," Baird said."We have been in close contact, both the prime minister and I, with three of our main allies in this regard. We'll work with them and when we have additional things to report we will do so."
Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said he supports first working through international law, and taking it one step at a time, but didn't rule out future military intervention.American officials said President Barack Obama has not decided how to respond to the use of deadly gases, a move the White House said last year would cross a "red line."
France, Britain, Israel and some U.S. congressmen have said a military response against the Syrian regime should be an option. Russia, however, has said that Western nations calling for military action have no proof the Syrian government was behind any chemical attacks.
Baird said Canada will continue working with its international partners to "review a full range of options.""Canada believes the only way to halt the bloodshed in Syria is through a political solution," he said. "However, we understand that this solution is becoming more and more difficult as the crisis enters a very dangerous new phase."He called on Russia to end its "complete obfuscation" and become part of the solution.
The UN inspectors are attempting to examine the site of the Aug. 21 attack in the capital's suburbs.Delay tactics used by the Assad regime in giving UN inspectors access has likely already impaired the UN team's ability to assign responsibility, Baird said. Still, he called on Syrian authorities to allow the team unfettered access.
The U.S. said Syria's delay in giving the inspectors access rendered their investigation meaningless and officials said the administration had its own intelligence confirming chemical weapons use.The assessment is based in part on the number of reported victims, the symptoms of those injured or killed and witness accounts. Kerry said the administration also had additional intelligence and would make its findings public soon.
Assad has denied launching a chemical attack and his government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region.
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The change you want to see
Some law schools are taking this even further by requiring students to complete a certain number of public interest hours in order to graduate. Osgoode Hall Law School implemented a 40-hour requirement in 2006 and is the only law school in Canada to require students to do community legal work in order to get their law degrees. Osgoode dean Lorne Sossin says the requirement has been wholly embraced by faculty and students. “It has been a real success story in the sense that because it’s a broad public interest base, students can fulfil it in many different ways,” he says. “It’s growing each year with new placements and new opportunities.”
In the United States, mandatory pro bono programs already exist at more than 20 law schools, including Harvard Law School and Indoor Positioning System. The University of Pennsylvania Law School was considered a trailblazer when it established its 70-hour pro bono requirement in 1989, the first national law school to do so.
Arlene Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, says the requirement was “a way to promote the professional responsibility that all lawyers have to be vehicles for access to justice, in addition to a wonderful platform for students to gain practical skills and to become engaged in their communities.” She admits it was controversial at first, particularly because at the time mandatory pro bono hadn’t really caught on.
Now, almost 25 years later, the wider legal profession is jumping on board. Last year, New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that starting in 2015, admission to the New York State bar will require lawyers to complete 50 hours of pro bono service in order to obtain a licence. “We are facing a crisis in New York and around the country,” Lippman said in an October 2012 report on the new requirement. “At a time when we are still adjusting to the realities of shrinking state coffers and reduced budgets, more and more people find themselves turning to the courts. The courts are the emergency rooms of our society — the most intractable social problems find their way to our doors in great and increasing numbers. And more and more of the people who come into our courts each day are forced to do so without a lawyer.”
Canada is facing the same problem. In her report on self-represented litigants, University of Windsor Faculty of Law professor Julie Macfarlane found that consistently 40 per cent or more of litigants in family courts across the country are not represented by a lawyer and in some civil courts that number is 70 per cent or more.
The legal profession — including law students — is starting to address the crisis. “Unfortunately lawyers charge significant fees for their services, and there are many people in our community who can’t afford to pay those fees but have pressing legal issues that need to be resolved,” says Brendan Stevens, a third-year student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Some argue it is every lawyer’s duty to help address the issue. “As a legal profession, we do have a professional responsibility to mobilize and to provide services on a free or discounted level in order to provide more access to justice,” says Jamie Maclaren, executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia. “In my mind, it truly is a professional responsibility. It stems from the fact that this is a self-regulating profession; we benefit as lawyers from a monopoly on legal services and in return for that we need to ensure that people do have some basic level of access to the justice system.”
By getting students to start pro bono work while they’re in law school, it increases the chance of them continuing to do it into their careers, says Maclaren. “The hope is that we’re developing a new generation of pro bono lawyers that will be really active and helpful in increasing access to justice and keeping the pro bono culture alive and indoor Tracking. The earlier that law students accept and understand that there’s a professional responsibility to provide some level of access to justice for people who can’t generally afford legal counsel or even access the justice system in a meaningful way the better.”
“If we create this climate where public interest and pro bono is seen as being this vital part of your legal education, students will do it,” says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada. The discussion shouldn’t be focused on whether or not to make public interest work mandatory, she says, instead, it should be focused on changing the culture to foster this kind of work in the law school community. “Creating a climate where public interest activities are widely available and considered to be an important part of the law school experience actually bypasses all of the negatives of mandating public service but it achieves all of the same goals,” she says.
Nathalie Des Rosiers, the new common law dean at the University of Ottawa and former general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, agrees it shouldn’t be about making pro bono mandatory. “What is important in the context of this discussion is not to overemphasize whether [pro bono is] mandatory or not, I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re now at the stage of saying — and I would have the same reflections when we’re looking at the profession more generally — certainly I think you aim to have the largest number of people within your profession to do pro bono, the question is what are the best tools to do it to accomplish your goal. We want to move to a position that it’s not only how much pro bono you’re doing, but how well you are doing [it],” she says. “It’s not only about counting hours, but mostly about doing something meaningful that addresses serious problems.”
In Sossin’s view, public interest work is a necessary component of legal education. “If you really see [public interest work] as essential to legal education, how can you say someone could graduate who’s never taken part in this, who’s never been in the community, never given back, never had that experience of seeing law in action in that way?” he asks.
However, he admits there is a downside to making it compulsory. “I think you lose something when you make public interest or pro bono work mandatory. You lose that sense of this is being done out of a value and belief in law as a helping profession in the public interest mandate of lawyers and law schools,” he says. “A perfect system is a system in which it’s optional and 100-per-cent take-up.”
Gershbain also identifies some risks associated with forcing students to do something. “If you make it mandatory, you do run the risk of creating resentment on the part of maybe a small number of students,” she says. Stevens agrees that making it compulsory could backfire. “We’re running the risk of undermining this sense of volunteerism at the heart of public interest work …and if you force someone to do something that they don’t want to do, maybe it’ll actually decrease the likelihood of them doing it down the road.”
However, he also says sometimes you have to be forced into trying something new to realize you’re passionate about it. “Some of my most pleasant experiences have come out of me being placed in a situation that I didn’t really want to be in and then it broadens your horizons and exposes you to something that you didn’t realize you needed exposure to. By exposing people to the public interest and exposing people to how they can use their law degree in a way that helps vulnerable members of our community, the hope is that down the line they’re going to remember that experience and they’re going to remember having an impact on people, and they’ll continue to do it throughout their career.”
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
In the United States, mandatory pro bono programs already exist at more than 20 law schools, including Harvard Law School and Indoor Positioning System. The University of Pennsylvania Law School was considered a trailblazer when it established its 70-hour pro bono requirement in 1989, the first national law school to do so.
Arlene Finkelstein, assistant dean and executive director of the Toll Public Interest Center at Penn Law, says the requirement was “a way to promote the professional responsibility that all lawyers have to be vehicles for access to justice, in addition to a wonderful platform for students to gain practical skills and to become engaged in their communities.” She admits it was controversial at first, particularly because at the time mandatory pro bono hadn’t really caught on.
Now, almost 25 years later, the wider legal profession is jumping on board. Last year, New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced that starting in 2015, admission to the New York State bar will require lawyers to complete 50 hours of pro bono service in order to obtain a licence. “We are facing a crisis in New York and around the country,” Lippman said in an October 2012 report on the new requirement. “At a time when we are still adjusting to the realities of shrinking state coffers and reduced budgets, more and more people find themselves turning to the courts. The courts are the emergency rooms of our society — the most intractable social problems find their way to our doors in great and increasing numbers. And more and more of the people who come into our courts each day are forced to do so without a lawyer.”
Canada is facing the same problem. In her report on self-represented litigants, University of Windsor Faculty of Law professor Julie Macfarlane found that consistently 40 per cent or more of litigants in family courts across the country are not represented by a lawyer and in some civil courts that number is 70 per cent or more.
The legal profession — including law students — is starting to address the crisis. “Unfortunately lawyers charge significant fees for their services, and there are many people in our community who can’t afford to pay those fees but have pressing legal issues that need to be resolved,” says Brendan Stevens, a third-year student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.
Some argue it is every lawyer’s duty to help address the issue. “As a legal profession, we do have a professional responsibility to mobilize and to provide services on a free or discounted level in order to provide more access to justice,” says Jamie Maclaren, executive director of the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia. “In my mind, it truly is a professional responsibility. It stems from the fact that this is a self-regulating profession; we benefit as lawyers from a monopoly on legal services and in return for that we need to ensure that people do have some basic level of access to the justice system.”
By getting students to start pro bono work while they’re in law school, it increases the chance of them continuing to do it into their careers, says Maclaren. “The hope is that we’re developing a new generation of pro bono lawyers that will be really active and helpful in increasing access to justice and keeping the pro bono culture alive and indoor Tracking. The earlier that law students accept and understand that there’s a professional responsibility to provide some level of access to justice for people who can’t generally afford legal counsel or even access the justice system in a meaningful way the better.”
“If we create this climate where public interest and pro bono is seen as being this vital part of your legal education, students will do it,” says Nikki Gershbain, national director of Pro Bono Students Canada. The discussion shouldn’t be focused on whether or not to make public interest work mandatory, she says, instead, it should be focused on changing the culture to foster this kind of work in the law school community. “Creating a climate where public interest activities are widely available and considered to be an important part of the law school experience actually bypasses all of the negatives of mandating public service but it achieves all of the same goals,” she says.
Nathalie Des Rosiers, the new common law dean at the University of Ottawa and former general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, agrees it shouldn’t be about making pro bono mandatory. “What is important in the context of this discussion is not to overemphasize whether [pro bono is] mandatory or not, I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re now at the stage of saying — and I would have the same reflections when we’re looking at the profession more generally — certainly I think you aim to have the largest number of people within your profession to do pro bono, the question is what are the best tools to do it to accomplish your goal. We want to move to a position that it’s not only how much pro bono you’re doing, but how well you are doing [it],” she says. “It’s not only about counting hours, but mostly about doing something meaningful that addresses serious problems.”
In Sossin’s view, public interest work is a necessary component of legal education. “If you really see [public interest work] as essential to legal education, how can you say someone could graduate who’s never taken part in this, who’s never been in the community, never given back, never had that experience of seeing law in action in that way?” he asks.
However, he admits there is a downside to making it compulsory. “I think you lose something when you make public interest or pro bono work mandatory. You lose that sense of this is being done out of a value and belief in law as a helping profession in the public interest mandate of lawyers and law schools,” he says. “A perfect system is a system in which it’s optional and 100-per-cent take-up.”
Gershbain also identifies some risks associated with forcing students to do something. “If you make it mandatory, you do run the risk of creating resentment on the part of maybe a small number of students,” she says. Stevens agrees that making it compulsory could backfire. “We’re running the risk of undermining this sense of volunteerism at the heart of public interest work …and if you force someone to do something that they don’t want to do, maybe it’ll actually decrease the likelihood of them doing it down the road.”
However, he also says sometimes you have to be forced into trying something new to realize you’re passionate about it. “Some of my most pleasant experiences have come out of me being placed in a situation that I didn’t really want to be in and then it broadens your horizons and exposes you to something that you didn’t realize you needed exposure to. By exposing people to the public interest and exposing people to how they can use their law degree in a way that helps vulnerable members of our community, the hope is that down the line they’re going to remember that experience and they’re going to remember having an impact on people, and they’ll continue to do it throughout their career.”
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Monday, August 19, 2013
Is Glenn Greenwald's journalism
The detention at Heathrow on Sunday of the Brazilian David Miranda is the sort of treatment western politicians love to deplore in Putin's Russia or Ahmadinejad's Iran. His "offence" under the 2000 Terrorism Act was apparently to be the partner of a journalist, Glenn Greenwald, who had reported for the Guardian on material released by the American whistleblower, Edward Snowden. We must assume the Americans asked the British government to nab him, shake him down and take his personal effects.
Miranda's phone and laptop were confiscated and he was held incommunicado, without access to friends or lawyer, for the maximum nine hours allowed under law. It is the airport equivalent of smashing into someone's flat, rifling through their drawers and stealing papers and documents. It is simple harassment and intimidation.
Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a "terrorist" occupation in the eyes of British and Hands free access. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.
Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that "the innocent have nothing to fear," the motto of police states down the ages. Hague's apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.
The hysteria of the "war on terror" is now corrupting every area of democratic government. It extends from the arbitrary selection of drone targets to the quasi-torture of suspects, the intrusion on personal data and the harassing of journalists' families. The disregard of statutory oversight – in Britain's case pathetically inadequate – is giving western governments many of the characteristics of the enemies they profess to oppose. How Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.
The innocent have nothing to fear? They do if they embarrass America and happen to visit British soil. The only land of the free today in this matter is Brazil.But those early years living with his family of eight in a 12-foot by 20-foot cabin without indoor plumbing — “Our air-conditioning was our two windows,” he jokes good-naturedly — laid the groundwork for his future career as a successful alfalfa farmer with 250 acres in Queen Creek.
He was part of an SSAR team who in 2009 tracked down two prospectors who were reported missing in Mammoth, Ariz., he said. On the final day of the search, the team found the pair alive after scouring 11 miles of terrain, Mr. Barrientos said.
The searchers were traveling on quad-runners; a cattle pond filled with water prevented the off-road vehicles from traveling farther but the trackers communicated with a helicopter and told the pilot in which direction they suspected the prospectors had traveled, Mr. Barrientos said. Five minutes later, the pilot spotted the missing men.
Three of Avallone and Wargo’s students — they teach the same 90 students — borrowed the new Kindles during summer vacation.The group picked the same title to read, the fantasy-adventure book “Shadow and Bone” by Leigh Bardugo, and then discussed it together on Goodreads, a website where readers can share their opinions.Avallone said she had hoped more students would participate, but it was hard to get many to meet regularly during the real time Location system.
One of the summer participants was 13-year-old Melissa Garcia, who read the most book titles in Avallone’s class last year.Before the summer reading club, Garcia had used a Kindle only once before.“I really like it because I’m not very good at vocabulary,” Garcia said. With the Kindle Fire she could click on words she wasn’t sure of and get a definition immediately.
Garcia also liked that the Kindle Fire allowed her to change the size and color of the font if the text started hurting her eyes.“I could keep reading all day without my eyes getting tired,” Garcia said.
The e-readers also have financial benefits. A new title’s e-edition is often cheaper than a hardcover book, and with e-readers a teacher can purchase one book copy and share it among multiple devices. That makes a big difference for Avallone, who estimates she spent about $1,000 out of pocket buying books for her library last year.
Avallone, who earned her master’s degree as a reading specialist from Aurora University, tries to promote independent reading in her classroom by giving students time to read, stocking popular young adult titles and providing recommendations.Last year she dedicated 25 to 35 minutes every Wednesday to self-selected reading, then upped the amount to 10 minutes a day toward the end of the year. She worried many students wouldn’t read over the summer because they didn’t have library cards or money to buy books.
Avallone is an avid young adult books reader, so she can make targeted recommendations based on her students’ interests and current trends. Right now, dystopian and fantasy books are the most popular.She also suggests young adult books that will turn into movies — like “Divergent,” the “Percy Jackson” series and the “Hunger Games” trilogy — to generate student interest.
To keep track of her inventory, Avallone installed a free web-based program called Classroom Organizer on her computers, so students can check in and out the titles that they borrow. When they return a book, students can offer a star rating and a review, which helps other students decide if they want to read the book.
Each of Avallone’s students also signs up for a Goodreads account, so they can talk about their books together and get recommendations on the site. And when they leave her class, it’s a way for Avallone to keep in touch with her students and keep encouraging them to read.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Miranda's phone and laptop were confiscated and he was held incommunicado, without access to friends or lawyer, for the maximum nine hours allowed under law. It is the airport equivalent of smashing into someone's flat, rifling through their drawers and stealing papers and documents. It is simple harassment and intimidation.
Greenwald himself is not known to have committed any offence, unless journalism is now a "terrorist" occupation in the eyes of British and Hands free access. As for Miranda, his only offence seems to have been to be part of his family. Harassing the family of those who have upset authority is the most obscene form of state terrorism.
Last month, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, airily excused the apparently illegal hoovering of internet traffic by British and American spies on the grounds that "the innocent have nothing to fear," the motto of police states down the ages. Hague's apologists explained that he was a nice chap really, but that relations with America trumped every libertarian card.
The hysteria of the "war on terror" is now corrupting every area of democratic government. It extends from the arbitrary selection of drone targets to the quasi-torture of suspects, the intrusion on personal data and the harassing of journalists' families. The disregard of statutory oversight – in Britain's case pathetically inadequate – is giving western governments many of the characteristics of the enemies they profess to oppose. How Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee.
The innocent have nothing to fear? They do if they embarrass America and happen to visit British soil. The only land of the free today in this matter is Brazil.But those early years living with his family of eight in a 12-foot by 20-foot cabin without indoor plumbing — “Our air-conditioning was our two windows,” he jokes good-naturedly — laid the groundwork for his future career as a successful alfalfa farmer with 250 acres in Queen Creek.
He was part of an SSAR team who in 2009 tracked down two prospectors who were reported missing in Mammoth, Ariz., he said. On the final day of the search, the team found the pair alive after scouring 11 miles of terrain, Mr. Barrientos said.
The searchers were traveling on quad-runners; a cattle pond filled with water prevented the off-road vehicles from traveling farther but the trackers communicated with a helicopter and told the pilot in which direction they suspected the prospectors had traveled, Mr. Barrientos said. Five minutes later, the pilot spotted the missing men.
Three of Avallone and Wargo’s students — they teach the same 90 students — borrowed the new Kindles during summer vacation.The group picked the same title to read, the fantasy-adventure book “Shadow and Bone” by Leigh Bardugo, and then discussed it together on Goodreads, a website where readers can share their opinions.Avallone said she had hoped more students would participate, but it was hard to get many to meet regularly during the real time Location system.
One of the summer participants was 13-year-old Melissa Garcia, who read the most book titles in Avallone’s class last year.Before the summer reading club, Garcia had used a Kindle only once before.“I really like it because I’m not very good at vocabulary,” Garcia said. With the Kindle Fire she could click on words she wasn’t sure of and get a definition immediately.
Garcia also liked that the Kindle Fire allowed her to change the size and color of the font if the text started hurting her eyes.“I could keep reading all day without my eyes getting tired,” Garcia said.
The e-readers also have financial benefits. A new title’s e-edition is often cheaper than a hardcover book, and with e-readers a teacher can purchase one book copy and share it among multiple devices. That makes a big difference for Avallone, who estimates she spent about $1,000 out of pocket buying books for her library last year.
Avallone, who earned her master’s degree as a reading specialist from Aurora University, tries to promote independent reading in her classroom by giving students time to read, stocking popular young adult titles and providing recommendations.Last year she dedicated 25 to 35 minutes every Wednesday to self-selected reading, then upped the amount to 10 minutes a day toward the end of the year. She worried many students wouldn’t read over the summer because they didn’t have library cards or money to buy books.
Avallone is an avid young adult books reader, so she can make targeted recommendations based on her students’ interests and current trends. Right now, dystopian and fantasy books are the most popular.She also suggests young adult books that will turn into movies — like “Divergent,” the “Percy Jackson” series and the “Hunger Games” trilogy — to generate student interest.
To keep track of her inventory, Avallone installed a free web-based program called Classroom Organizer on her computers, so students can check in and out the titles that they borrow. When they return a book, students can offer a star rating and a review, which helps other students decide if they want to read the book.
Each of Avallone’s students also signs up for a Goodreads account, so they can talk about their books together and get recommendations on the site. And when they leave her class, it’s a way for Avallone to keep in touch with her students and keep encouraging them to read.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Metrolinx bureaucrats score premium tickets
Bureaucrats at a provincial agency asking for billions to expand transit in the GTA had exclusive access to premium tickets to the Toronto International Film Festival and a Buffalo Bills game, the Toronto Sun has learned.The sponsorship deals came to light because Metrolinx had trouble managing two agreements in 2011 that yielded premium tickets to the prestigious events.
The agreements forced an internal audit and policy overhaul of its own promotional program, according to documents obtained under provincial freedom of information legislation.The reports show that $27,000 worth of NFL tickets, some of which were intended to raise money for charity, were sold to Metrolinx staff at a steeply discounted rate. The agency also forked over $30,000 of taxpayer cash to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to sponsor the event and in exchange received a bevy of free tickets to red carpet events, film screenings and exclusive parties.
In early 2011, Metrolinx began to ramp up its so-called "promotional partnership" agreements as a way to "enhance brand recognition." But by November the program was in trouble.In a memo dated Nov. 28, 2011, director of strategic communications, Indoor Positioning System, defended the program to Metrolinx President and CEO Bruce McCuaig.
"Partnerships can serve as a vehicle to showcase the value of Metrolinx and its operating division in the community," she wrote. "And also to facilitate the extension of those brands in the non-commuter and leisure travel market by connecting customers to unique cultural exhibitions and events."But Papadopoulos went on to say that there was little oversight over the program, ticket use was inconsistently tracked and she acknowledged Metrolinx's internal audit department was reviewing the program.
In early June, Metrolinx signed on as a promotional partner of TIFF. The agency gave TIFF $30,000 in "seed money" to secure the deal and the 22-page contract outlined a series of items that were to be provided by the sponsor. McCuaig and Metrolinx Chief Financial Officer Robbert Siddall approved the deal, Papadopoulos noted in the memo.
The festival gave Metrolinx promotional placement in a number of its programs, banners and advertisements. Metrolinx did the same for TIFF.Film festival officials also gave Metrolinx 24 tickets to gala screenings, 32 tickets to non-gala screenings, four invitations to the opening night gala film and party, two invitations to the closing night gala party, two invitations to the pre-opening cocktail reception and six more invitations to three exclusive events. Two complimentary festival programs and film schedules were also included in the deal.
No monetary value was estimated for the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx.When contacted by the Toronto Sun, TIFF officials refused to disclose the value of the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx, citing confidentiality rules.
In a note to the Sun, provided in advance of the document disclosure, Metrolinx officials acknowledged they don't know who used the TIFF tickets or for what purpose, but then go on to say tickets were used in promotions for GO customers, some were given to undisclosed charities and that some GO staff attended "certain TIFF events."
But under the terms of the agreement, Metrolinx was barred from using the tickets for fundraising, or promotional contests without express consent of TIFF.Meanwhile, in early September 2011, Metrolinx staff begin working on a promotional partnership with Rogers Centre for the Oct. 14 Buffalo Bills game against the Washington Redskins. The strategic communications department agreed to the deal as a way to reach out to non-commuters and leisure travellers.
The deal was essentially an exchange of promotional materials, with Metrolinx appearing in "Bills in Toronto" advertisements and vice-versa. Papadopoulos wrote in the memo that Metrolinx did not request tickets in the deal, but did receive 100 premium seats to the game.Rogers Centre gave Metrolinx 50 VIP tickets valued at $320 a piece. Their total value came in at $16,000. The agency also received 50 200 Level Club seats worth $225 a piece. Their total value was $11,125.
In the memo, Papadopoulos said the VIP tickets were provided so that senior staff and general staff could attend the game to "evaluate the appropriateness of the partnership and assess its value."
Eighteen Metrolinx staffers attended the game using the $320 VIP tickets, with some working at promotion booths at the event, the memo said. The remaining 38 tickets were unused.Papadopoulo wrote that the 50 tickets, worth $225 each, were to be raffled off to raise money for the United Way. For some reason - not explained in the memo - staff were "confused" by a silent auction held for the tickets and only one bid was received.With less than a week to go before the game, and over $11,000 worth of tickets on their hands, GO Transit President Gary McNeil and Vice-President of Customer Service Mary Proc decided to offer the tickets to staff at a steep discount - selling the $225 stubs for $25 each, the memo said.
The tickets were sold on a first-come, first-serve basis and all 50 were snatched up. The memo provided a detailed list of all employees who took advantage of the deal. The top buyer of indoor Tracking, with five to his name was McNeil, who approved the fire-sale.Metrolinx spokesman Anne Marie Aikins said McNeil bought the tickets to encourage other staff to purchase them, but did not attend the game.
"The Bills game was not as popular as hoped and the Rogers Centre was giving away the tickets," Aikins wrote in an e-mail. "The GO president approved a price of $25 per ticket given the short timelines and the desire to raise for the United Way."The memo acknowledged that strategic communications staff were cooperating with the internal audit department on a review of the promotional partnership program and were to adopt a full set of recommendations from the process. CEO McCuaig's oversight role was also to be beefed up, the memo said.
"Any further promotional partnership opportunities will be reviewed and approved by the CEO," Papadopoulos wrote.Metrolinx has also not provided the results of the internal audit department's review of the promotional program.Neither McCuaig nor McNeil were available for comment, despite repeated requests for interviews.Aikins said as soon as the problems with promotional program came to light, McCuaig took action. That included donating tickets to charities, using tickets for fundraising, or destroying them if they couldn't be returned.
Aikins said since 2011 Metrolinx has continued to accept free tickets in four sponsorship deals including TIFF, the "Bills in Toronto" series, the AGO and the CNE."We are always concerned about protecting our good reputation which is why we took steps to strengthen our rules and processes," she said.Records are now kept of how tickets are used and Metrolinx no longer pays to sponsor programs, Aikins said.Conservative MPP Frank Klees said the promotional partnership problems speaks to larger issues within Metrolinx.
"Why does Metrolinx have to sponsor anything?" he said. "Why does Metrolinx have to be in the public relations business. Their job is to build and manage transit."Klees, who has also been highly critical of Metrolinx's handling of the Presto transit card, said the agency is becoming unaccountable to the government.
"If they're doing this here, in this corner of the organization, it begs the question what are they doing elsewhere?"NDP MPP Rosario Marchese added the idea of provincial employees getting premium tickets to TIFF and an NFL game will grate on taxpayers."Should (Metrolinx) be sponsoring events and should the benefits of those sponsorships be going to staff? If the senior bureaucrats of that organization don't see that as a problem, I'm sorry."
A further note provided prior to document disclosure notes ticket policy has changed as of late 2011. Management directed that going forward, complimentary tickets are to be refused or redistributed in GO customer contests.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
The agreements forced an internal audit and policy overhaul of its own promotional program, according to documents obtained under provincial freedom of information legislation.The reports show that $27,000 worth of NFL tickets, some of which were intended to raise money for charity, were sold to Metrolinx staff at a steeply discounted rate. The agency also forked over $30,000 of taxpayer cash to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) to sponsor the event and in exchange received a bevy of free tickets to red carpet events, film screenings and exclusive parties.
In early 2011, Metrolinx began to ramp up its so-called "promotional partnership" agreements as a way to "enhance brand recognition." But by November the program was in trouble.In a memo dated Nov. 28, 2011, director of strategic communications, Indoor Positioning System, defended the program to Metrolinx President and CEO Bruce McCuaig.
"Partnerships can serve as a vehicle to showcase the value of Metrolinx and its operating division in the community," she wrote. "And also to facilitate the extension of those brands in the non-commuter and leisure travel market by connecting customers to unique cultural exhibitions and events."But Papadopoulos went on to say that there was little oversight over the program, ticket use was inconsistently tracked and she acknowledged Metrolinx's internal audit department was reviewing the program.
In early June, Metrolinx signed on as a promotional partner of TIFF. The agency gave TIFF $30,000 in "seed money" to secure the deal and the 22-page contract outlined a series of items that were to be provided by the sponsor. McCuaig and Metrolinx Chief Financial Officer Robbert Siddall approved the deal, Papadopoulos noted in the memo.
The festival gave Metrolinx promotional placement in a number of its programs, banners and advertisements. Metrolinx did the same for TIFF.Film festival officials also gave Metrolinx 24 tickets to gala screenings, 32 tickets to non-gala screenings, four invitations to the opening night gala film and party, two invitations to the closing night gala party, two invitations to the pre-opening cocktail reception and six more invitations to three exclusive events. Two complimentary festival programs and film schedules were also included in the deal.
No monetary value was estimated for the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx.When contacted by the Toronto Sun, TIFF officials refused to disclose the value of the tickets and merchandise provided to Metrolinx, citing confidentiality rules.
In a note to the Sun, provided in advance of the document disclosure, Metrolinx officials acknowledged they don't know who used the TIFF tickets or for what purpose, but then go on to say tickets were used in promotions for GO customers, some were given to undisclosed charities and that some GO staff attended "certain TIFF events."
But under the terms of the agreement, Metrolinx was barred from using the tickets for fundraising, or promotional contests without express consent of TIFF.Meanwhile, in early September 2011, Metrolinx staff begin working on a promotional partnership with Rogers Centre for the Oct. 14 Buffalo Bills game against the Washington Redskins. The strategic communications department agreed to the deal as a way to reach out to non-commuters and leisure travellers.
The deal was essentially an exchange of promotional materials, with Metrolinx appearing in "Bills in Toronto" advertisements and vice-versa. Papadopoulos wrote in the memo that Metrolinx did not request tickets in the deal, but did receive 100 premium seats to the game.Rogers Centre gave Metrolinx 50 VIP tickets valued at $320 a piece. Their total value came in at $16,000. The agency also received 50 200 Level Club seats worth $225 a piece. Their total value was $11,125.
In the memo, Papadopoulos said the VIP tickets were provided so that senior staff and general staff could attend the game to "evaluate the appropriateness of the partnership and assess its value."
Eighteen Metrolinx staffers attended the game using the $320 VIP tickets, with some working at promotion booths at the event, the memo said. The remaining 38 tickets were unused.Papadopoulo wrote that the 50 tickets, worth $225 each, were to be raffled off to raise money for the United Way. For some reason - not explained in the memo - staff were "confused" by a silent auction held for the tickets and only one bid was received.With less than a week to go before the game, and over $11,000 worth of tickets on their hands, GO Transit President Gary McNeil and Vice-President of Customer Service Mary Proc decided to offer the tickets to staff at a steep discount - selling the $225 stubs for $25 each, the memo said.
The tickets were sold on a first-come, first-serve basis and all 50 were snatched up. The memo provided a detailed list of all employees who took advantage of the deal. The top buyer of indoor Tracking, with five to his name was McNeil, who approved the fire-sale.Metrolinx spokesman Anne Marie Aikins said McNeil bought the tickets to encourage other staff to purchase them, but did not attend the game.
"The Bills game was not as popular as hoped and the Rogers Centre was giving away the tickets," Aikins wrote in an e-mail. "The GO president approved a price of $25 per ticket given the short timelines and the desire to raise for the United Way."The memo acknowledged that strategic communications staff were cooperating with the internal audit department on a review of the promotional partnership program and were to adopt a full set of recommendations from the process. CEO McCuaig's oversight role was also to be beefed up, the memo said.
"Any further promotional partnership opportunities will be reviewed and approved by the CEO," Papadopoulos wrote.Metrolinx has also not provided the results of the internal audit department's review of the promotional program.Neither McCuaig nor McNeil were available for comment, despite repeated requests for interviews.Aikins said as soon as the problems with promotional program came to light, McCuaig took action. That included donating tickets to charities, using tickets for fundraising, or destroying them if they couldn't be returned.
Aikins said since 2011 Metrolinx has continued to accept free tickets in four sponsorship deals including TIFF, the "Bills in Toronto" series, the AGO and the CNE."We are always concerned about protecting our good reputation which is why we took steps to strengthen our rules and processes," she said.Records are now kept of how tickets are used and Metrolinx no longer pays to sponsor programs, Aikins said.Conservative MPP Frank Klees said the promotional partnership problems speaks to larger issues within Metrolinx.
"Why does Metrolinx have to sponsor anything?" he said. "Why does Metrolinx have to be in the public relations business. Their job is to build and manage transit."Klees, who has also been highly critical of Metrolinx's handling of the Presto transit card, said the agency is becoming unaccountable to the government.
"If they're doing this here, in this corner of the organization, it begs the question what are they doing elsewhere?"NDP MPP Rosario Marchese added the idea of provincial employees getting premium tickets to TIFF and an NFL game will grate on taxpayers."Should (Metrolinx) be sponsoring events and should the benefits of those sponsorships be going to staff? If the senior bureaucrats of that organization don't see that as a problem, I'm sorry."
A further note provided prior to document disclosure notes ticket policy has changed as of late 2011. Management directed that going forward, complimentary tickets are to be refused or redistributed in GO customer contests.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Broad changes to the internet now the story
Edward Snowden is safe from American ''justice'' for the moment, and he will certainly go down as the most effective whistle-blower in history.His revelations are going to cause a wholesale restructuring of the world's most important communications system, the internet. And that, rather than his whereabouts and fate, is now the real story.
On August 8, Lavabit, a United States-based email service provider that promised to keep its clients' communications private, closed down.The US National Security Agency approached it about six weeks ago demanding the same access to its customers' emails it has already extorted from big American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft.
The company's owner, Ladar Levison, is under an NSA gag order, but he wrote to his clients: ''I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.''
The mass surveillance being carried out by the NSA not only gives the US Government access to everything Americans say to one another.It also destroys everybody else's privacy, because the standard internet routing protocol sends messages not by the shortest route, but by whichever route is fastest and least congested. That means, rtls, through the United States, and therefore straight into the hands of the NSA.
Snowden's revelations so far have told us about two major NSA surveillance programmes, both probably illegal even under American law. The first collects the cellphone records of more than 200 million Americans.
If one of those thousands of people ever spoke to somebody abroad with a Muslim name (or somebody who works for Siemens, or Samsung, or some other industrial competitor of the United States), they may take an interest in you.If you're an American who has never had direct phone contact with anybody abroad, they may then apply to access the content of your calls and emails under the Prism programme.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews such applications, has refused precisely 10 of them since 2001.Besides, the content of most Americans' messages can probably be examined without recourse to the judges under one of the blanket authorisations issued by the FISC.And if you're not American, or an American resident who once spoke to somebody abroad by phone, then you're in a free-fire zone.
If you are American, you probably don't care about that, because you are mesmerised by the guff about a huge terrorist threat the security barons use to justify the endless expansion of their empire (now almost a million employees).A recent opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62% of Americans think ''fighting terrorism'' is more important than worrying about personal privacy.
But if you belong to the great majority of internet users who are not American, are not in a perpetual sweaty panic about ''terrorism'', and have no protection whatever under American law from the NSA's spying, then you will want ways to avoid it. And the losers? The big US internet providers, who will find that few of their customers want to store their data in American ''cloud'' services.
''If businesses or governments think they might be spied on,'' said Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, ''they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be [American] cloud providers who ultimately miss out.''As Jennifer Granick, director of Indoor Positioning System at the Stanford Law School's Centre for Internet and Society, put it recently: ''America invented the internet, and our internet companies are dominant around the world.
Television identity and President of DockDogs Australia, 'Farmer Dave' Graham, will be bringing his 12m pool up from Sydney to host the first dock diving nationals competition in Australia since the 2009 World Dog Games.
The sport was introduced to Australia from the US during the games in Sydney.Angie Burke, 56, owner of All Paws Paradise in Pimpama, started the first training area in Queensland after building a jetty over her dam so Mudgeeraba resident Karen Moore could train her dog, Zoya, for the world games.The women now organise 'Dash and Splash' Saturdays and 'social splash Sundays' for anyone who wants to try dock diving.Dock diving is the fastest growing dog sport in the world with clubs forming around the country.
"It is as simple as it sounds, with dogs running along a dock and jumping into a pool of water and having an absolute blast," Ms Burke said."Any dog can do it as long as they like water and they can swim and learn to retrieve a toy.
"It's a sport any dogs can do - big dogs, small dogs - it doesn't matter what breed. It's a family sport so everybody's welcome to come and join in and even the kids can handle their dogs.''Depending on their size and experience, some of the bigger dogs can jump from 2m to 9m from the dock, which is about 1m from the water.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
On August 8, Lavabit, a United States-based email service provider that promised to keep its clients' communications private, closed down.The US National Security Agency approached it about six weeks ago demanding the same access to its customers' emails it has already extorted from big American internet companies such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon and Microsoft.
The company's owner, Ladar Levison, is under an NSA gag order, but he wrote to his clients: ''I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.''
The mass surveillance being carried out by the NSA not only gives the US Government access to everything Americans say to one another.It also destroys everybody else's privacy, because the standard internet routing protocol sends messages not by the shortest route, but by whichever route is fastest and least congested. That means, rtls, through the United States, and therefore straight into the hands of the NSA.
Snowden's revelations so far have told us about two major NSA surveillance programmes, both probably illegal even under American law. The first collects the cellphone records of more than 200 million Americans.
If one of those thousands of people ever spoke to somebody abroad with a Muslim name (or somebody who works for Siemens, or Samsung, or some other industrial competitor of the United States), they may take an interest in you.If you're an American who has never had direct phone contact with anybody abroad, they may then apply to access the content of your calls and emails under the Prism programme.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews such applications, has refused precisely 10 of them since 2001.Besides, the content of most Americans' messages can probably be examined without recourse to the judges under one of the blanket authorisations issued by the FISC.And if you're not American, or an American resident who once spoke to somebody abroad by phone, then you're in a free-fire zone.
If you are American, you probably don't care about that, because you are mesmerised by the guff about a huge terrorist threat the security barons use to justify the endless expansion of their empire (now almost a million employees).A recent opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62% of Americans think ''fighting terrorism'' is more important than worrying about personal privacy.
But if you belong to the great majority of internet users who are not American, are not in a perpetual sweaty panic about ''terrorism'', and have no protection whatever under American law from the NSA's spying, then you will want ways to avoid it. And the losers? The big US internet providers, who will find that few of their customers want to store their data in American ''cloud'' services.
''If businesses or governments think they might be spied on,'' said Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, ''they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be [American] cloud providers who ultimately miss out.''As Jennifer Granick, director of Indoor Positioning System at the Stanford Law School's Centre for Internet and Society, put it recently: ''America invented the internet, and our internet companies are dominant around the world.
Television identity and President of DockDogs Australia, 'Farmer Dave' Graham, will be bringing his 12m pool up from Sydney to host the first dock diving nationals competition in Australia since the 2009 World Dog Games.
The sport was introduced to Australia from the US during the games in Sydney.Angie Burke, 56, owner of All Paws Paradise in Pimpama, started the first training area in Queensland after building a jetty over her dam so Mudgeeraba resident Karen Moore could train her dog, Zoya, for the world games.The women now organise 'Dash and Splash' Saturdays and 'social splash Sundays' for anyone who wants to try dock diving.Dock diving is the fastest growing dog sport in the world with clubs forming around the country.
"It is as simple as it sounds, with dogs running along a dock and jumping into a pool of water and having an absolute blast," Ms Burke said."Any dog can do it as long as they like water and they can swim and learn to retrieve a toy.
"It's a sport any dogs can do - big dogs, small dogs - it doesn't matter what breed. It's a family sport so everybody's welcome to come and join in and even the kids can handle their dogs.''Depending on their size and experience, some of the bigger dogs can jump from 2m to 9m from the dock, which is about 1m from the water.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Aymara herder is 123 years old
"I see a bit dimly. I had good vision before. But I saw you coming," he tells a group of journalists who visited after a local TV report about him.Hobbling down a dirt path, Flores greets them with a raised arm, smiles and sits down on a rock to chat. His gums bulge with coca leaf, a mild stimulant that staves off hunger that, like most Bolivian highlands peasants, he has been chewing all his life.
Guinness World Records says the oldest living person verified by original proof of birth is Misao Okawa, a 115-year-old Japanese woman, while the oldest verified age on record was 122 years and 164 days: Jeanne Calment of France. She died in 1997.Flores' 27-year-old grandson Edwin said he was unfamiliar with the Guinness organization and the group's spokeman Jamie Panas said it wasn't aware of any claim being filed with it regarding Flores.
"I should be about 100 years old or more," Flores says.The director of Bolivia's civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed The Associated Press the registry that lists Carmelo Flores' birthdate as July 16, 1890.Condori said there is no birth certificate because they did not exist in Bolivia until 1940. Births previously were registered with Hands free access from the nearest Roman Catholic church, authenticated by two witnesses.
"For the state, the baptism certificate is valid because in those days priests provided them and they were literate," Condori said. He said he could not show Flores' baptism certificate to the AP because it is a private document.The grandson says the family showed the baptism certificate to the government so Flores could qualify for a monthly subsidy for the elderly.
The sight of emaciated horses on New Mexico tribal lands between Albuquerque and Santa Fe has stirred concern among animal advocates, some of whom have taken matters into their own hands.Members of a fledgling equine advocacy group have been feeding the horses hay daily for the last month, after photos of hungry-looking animals sparked a groundswell of Internet outrage and calls to boycott tribally owned casinos.
However, tribal leaders say the issue is more complicated than advocates portray it.Pueblo leaders say outsiders have made the problem worse by feeding the horses over fences that run along Interstate 25 and, in more extreme cases, cutting fences on tribal lands."Some of the people who feel like they're helping are actually exacerbating the situation," said Debra Haaland, a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo.
The pueblo has sought to ensure the horses - roughly 100 animals that it claims are a mix of "wild horses" and those "dumped" on San Felipe tribal land - have access to water, but their efforts are hamstrung by recent federal budget cuts that have hit tribes hard, Haaland said.The situation, which is complicated by the fact that the tribes are sovereign nations generally not subject to state jurisdiction, reached its boiling point in July when tribal authorities say they received dozens of rude and irate phone calls.
Most of those reports focus on San Felipe and Santo Domingo pueblos, both located between Albuquerque and Santa Fe along the highly-traveled I-25 corridor. In some cases, advocates claim the horses appear to be near death.
Barbara Tellier of Albuquerque said she saw four or five rail-thin horses on Santo Domingo Pueblo land on a recent drive with a friend.After a flurry of phone calls to state officials generated little response, Tellier said she became increasingly frustrated.
"I'd bet you anything there are some skeletons out there," said Tellier, who noted she has owned or cared for horses most of her life.Similar experiences have prompted other advocates to discuss options ranging from fundraisers to benefit the horses to boycott casinos.
However, Empey said she's hopeful the recent dialogue between animal advocates and San Felipe tribal leaders might be replicated with other pueblo governments, leading to a less confrontational relationship between the two sides.
As for Santo Domingo Pueblo Governor Felix Tenorio Jr., he told the Journal the tribal government was dealing with real time Location system of at least one starving horse. "We're working on that one," Tenorio Jr. said. "We're trying to contact the owner to see what's going on."
Instead, she produced and narrated an audio tour called "Our Shameless Name Dropping Princeton Cell Phone Tour" for weekday visitors. It's almost as much fun as the two-hour, three-mile "Afternoon Princeton University Campus, Genius Neighborhood & Princeton Tycoon Walking Tour" that she leads on Saturday afternoons.
On that walk you'll see some of the campus and some of the town, including two houses that were literally split apart and reseated after their owners divorced. You'll see where Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer used to take tea while discussing development of the atomic bomb. You'll see where Toni Morrison lived and Thomas Mann wrote.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Guinness World Records says the oldest living person verified by original proof of birth is Misao Okawa, a 115-year-old Japanese woman, while the oldest verified age on record was 122 years and 164 days: Jeanne Calment of France. She died in 1997.Flores' 27-year-old grandson Edwin said he was unfamiliar with the Guinness organization and the group's spokeman Jamie Panas said it wasn't aware of any claim being filed with it regarding Flores.
"I should be about 100 years old or more," Flores says.The director of Bolivia's civil registrar, Eugenio Condori, showed The Associated Press the registry that lists Carmelo Flores' birthdate as July 16, 1890.Condori said there is no birth certificate because they did not exist in Bolivia until 1940. Births previously were registered with Hands free access from the nearest Roman Catholic church, authenticated by two witnesses.
"For the state, the baptism certificate is valid because in those days priests provided them and they were literate," Condori said. He said he could not show Flores' baptism certificate to the AP because it is a private document.The grandson says the family showed the baptism certificate to the government so Flores could qualify for a monthly subsidy for the elderly.
The sight of emaciated horses on New Mexico tribal lands between Albuquerque and Santa Fe has stirred concern among animal advocates, some of whom have taken matters into their own hands.Members of a fledgling equine advocacy group have been feeding the horses hay daily for the last month, after photos of hungry-looking animals sparked a groundswell of Internet outrage and calls to boycott tribally owned casinos.
However, tribal leaders say the issue is more complicated than advocates portray it.Pueblo leaders say outsiders have made the problem worse by feeding the horses over fences that run along Interstate 25 and, in more extreme cases, cutting fences on tribal lands."Some of the people who feel like they're helping are actually exacerbating the situation," said Debra Haaland, a tribal administrator at San Felipe Pueblo.
The pueblo has sought to ensure the horses - roughly 100 animals that it claims are a mix of "wild horses" and those "dumped" on San Felipe tribal land - have access to water, but their efforts are hamstrung by recent federal budget cuts that have hit tribes hard, Haaland said.The situation, which is complicated by the fact that the tribes are sovereign nations generally not subject to state jurisdiction, reached its boiling point in July when tribal authorities say they received dozens of rude and irate phone calls.
Most of those reports focus on San Felipe and Santo Domingo pueblos, both located between Albuquerque and Santa Fe along the highly-traveled I-25 corridor. In some cases, advocates claim the horses appear to be near death.
Barbara Tellier of Albuquerque said she saw four or five rail-thin horses on Santo Domingo Pueblo land on a recent drive with a friend.After a flurry of phone calls to state officials generated little response, Tellier said she became increasingly frustrated.
"I'd bet you anything there are some skeletons out there," said Tellier, who noted she has owned or cared for horses most of her life.Similar experiences have prompted other advocates to discuss options ranging from fundraisers to benefit the horses to boycott casinos.
However, Empey said she's hopeful the recent dialogue between animal advocates and San Felipe tribal leaders might be replicated with other pueblo governments, leading to a less confrontational relationship between the two sides.
As for Santo Domingo Pueblo Governor Felix Tenorio Jr., he told the Journal the tribal government was dealing with real time Location system of at least one starving horse. "We're working on that one," Tenorio Jr. said. "We're trying to contact the owner to see what's going on."
Instead, she produced and narrated an audio tour called "Our Shameless Name Dropping Princeton Cell Phone Tour" for weekday visitors. It's almost as much fun as the two-hour, three-mile "Afternoon Princeton University Campus, Genius Neighborhood & Princeton Tycoon Walking Tour" that she leads on Saturday afternoons.
On that walk you'll see some of the campus and some of the town, including two houses that were literally split apart and reseated after their owners divorced. You'll see where Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer used to take tea while discussing development of the atomic bomb. You'll see where Toni Morrison lived and Thomas Mann wrote.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Benefit set to help child
Despite Atti's positive attitude, there's still a long road to complete recovery, said Crystal Landherr, a relative who is helping organize a benefit for the family with Denise Welte, Atti's aunt, real time Location system, a family friend.
"Obviously, the transition home is a learning process," she said. "There's dressings to be changed, there's therapy, there's him learning how to be a kid with limits. The sunshine, the dirt, the bugs, the things like that are definitely tough for a 3-year-old" to learn to avoid.
Still, Landherr said, "how he's persevered through it all is astonishing. It's remarkable how resilient children are."Atti attends daily physical therapy treatments in Rochester, and is preparing for plastic surgery on his eyes, lips and neck. He'll continue to need skin grafts as he ages, his mother said, because the skin won't grow with him.
Wabasha County Chief Deputy Joe Modjeski said the injuries occurred at about 1:15 p.m. that day when Atti, his three older brothers and other neighborhood children were playing near the front steps of their residence on Railroad Street.The other children said charcoal lighter fluid was sprayed into a tin lunch box and ignited. In an attempt to put out the flames, one of the children stomped on the box, splashing burning fluid onto Atti.
"We want people to know this was an accident," Shumaker said. "The lighter fluid was sitting by our grill; so many people have told us that they do the same thing and never even think about it being dangerous. We now keep it in the shed."It was quick responses by family members that prevented the situation from being even worse, she said.
Atti's oldest brother pushed him to the ground when the fire started; their mother rolled him to put the fire out. She and her mother were soaking him in cool water in the bathtub when first responders arrived."The EMTs told us that by getting him into the bath, it may have prevented further burning, and prevented him from going into shock," Shumaker said. She also suffered burns to her hands.
Atti is moving around much better "and getting back to his normal funny self, mainly because of his brothers," she said. "They play together, they take him for wagon rides and he loves being back with them."
The boys: Kaden, 9, Korbin, 7, and Jackson, 6, had a hard time, Shumaker said."When you ask them now about their brother, they think that he's so brave to go through what he goes through every day," she said. "They were always close, but maybe more so now."
There has been an "amazing outpouring of love and support for him and our family," Shumaker said."Friends were calling and offering to help with food, gas money, babysitting or whatever they needed," she said. "It's really made us appreciate how important our family and rtls, and how very kind strangers have been to Atti. We've had so much donated, it's just incredible."
To continue that momentum, a benefit picnic will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Millville Legion. The family-friendly day will include lunch, games, prizes and a silent auction."If we can help others, we'd like to tell them to put the lighter fluid up and away from children," Shumaker said of their ongoing experience. "Kids see adults use it and don't realize what the consequences could be. Atti has always been strong, and he continues to be strong. We know he has a long journey ahead of him, but with all the love and support he has, we know he will be an inspiration to many."
We tend to use the words cheap and inexpensive interchangeably. Yet, they mean two slightly different things. Cheap has a negative connotation of something that’s less than you expected or paid for. Inexpensive, simply refers to price. Chevy Spark proves inexpensive does not have to mean cheap.
Take for instance our LT-grade car with body color trim on the dash and doors, inside the door pockets, and even under the armrest. It’s the down-market equivalent of finding stitched leather in a Jaguar’s cubbies. Swirl patterns on the molded plastic dash are creative. Motorcycle-inspired gauges—large analog speedometer with LCD for tachometer and trip computer beside—are pretty sporty. Power windows and air-conditioning are standard.
There’s more. Heated leatherette seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel, and blue lighting for the climate controls, door switches, and storage area beneath the dash echo Buick. Smoked faux carbon fiber looks primo around the Chevy MyLink touchscreen that commands mobile devices for access to apps like Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn global radio, and BringGo navigation. Bluetooth enables hands-free calling and streaming audio. Naked, it is not.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
"Obviously, the transition home is a learning process," she said. "There's dressings to be changed, there's therapy, there's him learning how to be a kid with limits. The sunshine, the dirt, the bugs, the things like that are definitely tough for a 3-year-old" to learn to avoid.
Still, Landherr said, "how he's persevered through it all is astonishing. It's remarkable how resilient children are."Atti attends daily physical therapy treatments in Rochester, and is preparing for plastic surgery on his eyes, lips and neck. He'll continue to need skin grafts as he ages, his mother said, because the skin won't grow with him.
Wabasha County Chief Deputy Joe Modjeski said the injuries occurred at about 1:15 p.m. that day when Atti, his three older brothers and other neighborhood children were playing near the front steps of their residence on Railroad Street.The other children said charcoal lighter fluid was sprayed into a tin lunch box and ignited. In an attempt to put out the flames, one of the children stomped on the box, splashing burning fluid onto Atti.
"We want people to know this was an accident," Shumaker said. "The lighter fluid was sitting by our grill; so many people have told us that they do the same thing and never even think about it being dangerous. We now keep it in the shed."It was quick responses by family members that prevented the situation from being even worse, she said.
Atti's oldest brother pushed him to the ground when the fire started; their mother rolled him to put the fire out. She and her mother were soaking him in cool water in the bathtub when first responders arrived."The EMTs told us that by getting him into the bath, it may have prevented further burning, and prevented him from going into shock," Shumaker said. She also suffered burns to her hands.
Atti is moving around much better "and getting back to his normal funny self, mainly because of his brothers," she said. "They play together, they take him for wagon rides and he loves being back with them."
The boys: Kaden, 9, Korbin, 7, and Jackson, 6, had a hard time, Shumaker said."When you ask them now about their brother, they think that he's so brave to go through what he goes through every day," she said. "They were always close, but maybe more so now."
There has been an "amazing outpouring of love and support for him and our family," Shumaker said."Friends were calling and offering to help with food, gas money, babysitting or whatever they needed," she said. "It's really made us appreciate how important our family and rtls, and how very kind strangers have been to Atti. We've had so much donated, it's just incredible."
To continue that momentum, a benefit picnic will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Millville Legion. The family-friendly day will include lunch, games, prizes and a silent auction."If we can help others, we'd like to tell them to put the lighter fluid up and away from children," Shumaker said of their ongoing experience. "Kids see adults use it and don't realize what the consequences could be. Atti has always been strong, and he continues to be strong. We know he has a long journey ahead of him, but with all the love and support he has, we know he will be an inspiration to many."
We tend to use the words cheap and inexpensive interchangeably. Yet, they mean two slightly different things. Cheap has a negative connotation of something that’s less than you expected or paid for. Inexpensive, simply refers to price. Chevy Spark proves inexpensive does not have to mean cheap.
Take for instance our LT-grade car with body color trim on the dash and doors, inside the door pockets, and even under the armrest. It’s the down-market equivalent of finding stitched leather in a Jaguar’s cubbies. Swirl patterns on the molded plastic dash are creative. Motorcycle-inspired gauges—large analog speedometer with LCD for tachometer and trip computer beside—are pretty sporty. Power windows and air-conditioning are standard.
There’s more. Heated leatherette seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel, and blue lighting for the climate controls, door switches, and storage area beneath the dash echo Buick. Smoked faux carbon fiber looks primo around the Chevy MyLink touchscreen that commands mobile devices for access to apps like Pandora, Stitcher, TuneIn global radio, and BringGo navigation. Bluetooth enables hands-free calling and streaming audio. Naked, it is not.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Dufner beats Furyk by one stroke
Dufner played the kind of golf that wins majors Sunday with a steady diet of fairways and greens that made it too tough for Jim Furyk or anyone else to catch him. Even with bogeys on the last two holes at Oak Hill, Dufner closed with a 2-under 68 to capture his first major and atone for a meltdown two years ago in Atlanta.
"It's been a tough day. It was a long day. Tough golf course," Dufner said. "It probably hasn't hit me yet. I can't believe this is happening to me. ... I just decided that I was going to be confident and really put my best foot forward and play aggressive and try to win this thing. I wasn't going to just kind of play scared or soft.
Dufner wasn't sure he would get another chance after the 2011 PGA Championship, at which he blew a four-shot lead with four holes to play and lost in a playoff to Indoor Positioning System. He wasn't about to let this one get away. Dufner won by playing a brand of golf that matches the bland expression on his face.
The turning point at Oak Hill was the final two holes — on the front nine. Dufner made a short birdie on the eighth hole to take a one-shot lead, and Furyk made bogey on the ninth hole to fall two shots behind. Furyk, a 54-hole leader for the second time in as many years in a major, couldn't make up any ground with a procession of pars along the back nine. He finally made a 12-foot birdie putt on the 16th, but only after Dufner spun back a wedge to 18 inches for a sure birdie.
Furyk also made bogey on the last two holes, taking two chips to reach the 17th green and coming up short into mangled rough short of the 18th green, where all he could do was hack it onto the green. Furyk closed with a 71 to finish three shots behind.
"I have a lot of respect for him and the way he played today," Furyk said. "I don't know if it makes anything easy, or less easy. But I don't look at it as I lost the golf tournament. I look at it as I got beat by somebody that played better today."
Dufner finished at 10-under 270, four shots better than the lowest score in the five previous majors at Oak Hill. Jack Nicklaus won the 1980 PGA Championship at 274.
Henrik Stenson, trying to become the first Swede to win a men's major title closed with a 70 to finish alone in third. Jonas Blixt, another Swede, also had a 70 and finished fourth. Masters champion Adam Scott never made a serious move and shot 70 to tie for fifth. Defending champion Rory McIlroy made triple bogey on the fifth hole to lose hope, though he still closed with a 70 and tied for eighth, his first top 10 in a major this year.
Dufner two-putted for bogey on the 18th from about 10 feet and shook hands with Furyk as if he had just completed a business deal. He hugged his wife, Amanda, and gave her a love tap on the tush with the cameras rolling.
But Schwyzer now claims that he was unqualified to teach the class, and manipulated his way into a position of authority on pornography, gender and sex.“I was not qualified to teach any gender studies class,” he said “The fact that I did so well at times is due to diligence and indoor Tracking, not my formal education. Bottom line: I used charm and certainty to get what I wanted.”
Schwyzer admits that the fame went to his head. He started texting sexual messages and pictures of himself in, and beginning in January, engaged in extramarital affairs with several women and one man. Some were in the porn business, and none were students, he said.
Deen’s visit was something of a turning point. The world-famous porn star radiated sexual energy from the moment he set foot in the classroom, and many of the students confessed to having sexual feelings for Deen. So did their professor.
He began sexting with one of his contacts in the porn world, a 27-year-old woman who takes off her clothes for an internet video channel, about the prospect of having a threesome with Deen in front of the entire class. The woman eventually leaked the text messages, which included sexual pictures of Schwyzer, to the media.
Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won Mali's presidency after his opponent conceded defeat late Monday in an election aimed at restoring stability to a country wracked by a rebellion, a coup and an Islamic insurgency.
Soumalia Cisse's concession averts a protracted election fight, allowing Mali to move ahead with establishing a democratically elected government, one of the international community's caveats for unlocking some $4 billion in promised aid.
Keita, 68, had been expected to win the runoff easily, having pulled nearly 40 percent of the vote in the first round. Most of the other candidates from the first round had given their endorsements to Keita, who has had a long career in Malian government.
Cisse paid a visit to Keita's home late Monday along with his wife and family to deliver his concession in person. In an exchange broadcast on the private Malian television station Africable, Cisse told Keita he had come "to congratulate you and wish you all the success you deserve; a success for our country so that you can have the strength to take up the enormous challenges that await you."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
"It's been a tough day. It was a long day. Tough golf course," Dufner said. "It probably hasn't hit me yet. I can't believe this is happening to me. ... I just decided that I was going to be confident and really put my best foot forward and play aggressive and try to win this thing. I wasn't going to just kind of play scared or soft.
Dufner wasn't sure he would get another chance after the 2011 PGA Championship, at which he blew a four-shot lead with four holes to play and lost in a playoff to Indoor Positioning System. He wasn't about to let this one get away. Dufner won by playing a brand of golf that matches the bland expression on his face.
The turning point at Oak Hill was the final two holes — on the front nine. Dufner made a short birdie on the eighth hole to take a one-shot lead, and Furyk made bogey on the ninth hole to fall two shots behind. Furyk, a 54-hole leader for the second time in as many years in a major, couldn't make up any ground with a procession of pars along the back nine. He finally made a 12-foot birdie putt on the 16th, but only after Dufner spun back a wedge to 18 inches for a sure birdie.
Furyk also made bogey on the last two holes, taking two chips to reach the 17th green and coming up short into mangled rough short of the 18th green, where all he could do was hack it onto the green. Furyk closed with a 71 to finish three shots behind.
"I have a lot of respect for him and the way he played today," Furyk said. "I don't know if it makes anything easy, or less easy. But I don't look at it as I lost the golf tournament. I look at it as I got beat by somebody that played better today."
Dufner finished at 10-under 270, four shots better than the lowest score in the five previous majors at Oak Hill. Jack Nicklaus won the 1980 PGA Championship at 274.
Henrik Stenson, trying to become the first Swede to win a men's major title closed with a 70 to finish alone in third. Jonas Blixt, another Swede, also had a 70 and finished fourth. Masters champion Adam Scott never made a serious move and shot 70 to tie for fifth. Defending champion Rory McIlroy made triple bogey on the fifth hole to lose hope, though he still closed with a 70 and tied for eighth, his first top 10 in a major this year.
Dufner two-putted for bogey on the 18th from about 10 feet and shook hands with Furyk as if he had just completed a business deal. He hugged his wife, Amanda, and gave her a love tap on the tush with the cameras rolling.
But Schwyzer now claims that he was unqualified to teach the class, and manipulated his way into a position of authority on pornography, gender and sex.“I was not qualified to teach any gender studies class,” he said “The fact that I did so well at times is due to diligence and indoor Tracking, not my formal education. Bottom line: I used charm and certainty to get what I wanted.”
Schwyzer admits that the fame went to his head. He started texting sexual messages and pictures of himself in, and beginning in January, engaged in extramarital affairs with several women and one man. Some were in the porn business, and none were students, he said.
Deen’s visit was something of a turning point. The world-famous porn star radiated sexual energy from the moment he set foot in the classroom, and many of the students confessed to having sexual feelings for Deen. So did their professor.
He began sexting with one of his contacts in the porn world, a 27-year-old woman who takes off her clothes for an internet video channel, about the prospect of having a threesome with Deen in front of the entire class. The woman eventually leaked the text messages, which included sexual pictures of Schwyzer, to the media.
Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won Mali's presidency after his opponent conceded defeat late Monday in an election aimed at restoring stability to a country wracked by a rebellion, a coup and an Islamic insurgency.
Soumalia Cisse's concession averts a protracted election fight, allowing Mali to move ahead with establishing a democratically elected government, one of the international community's caveats for unlocking some $4 billion in promised aid.
Keita, 68, had been expected to win the runoff easily, having pulled nearly 40 percent of the vote in the first round. Most of the other candidates from the first round had given their endorsements to Keita, who has had a long career in Malian government.
Cisse paid a visit to Keita's home late Monday along with his wife and family to deliver his concession in person. In an exchange broadcast on the private Malian television station Africable, Cisse told Keita he had come "to congratulate you and wish you all the success you deserve; a success for our country so that you can have the strength to take up the enormous challenges that await you."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Cars won't stand still during transit debate
At first blush, having someone who writes about automotive issues take part in a discussion about transit might appear to be at cross purposes. In reality, I was glad they asked, because I think any discussion of transit has to include cars.
It was interesting to hear from a local counselor, as well as a Toronto counselor, those at the helm of the massive revamp of transit in the Greater Toronto Area and those measuring local impact. Elaborate diagrams with proposed routes were coupled with intricate formulas, professing to hold the answers to bringing those programs to life.
Congestion, lost time, carpooling, increasing populations, crumbling infrastructures, built-out cities, commuting, polluting, agreeing and refuting: it’s all there, the debate chasing its tail.I’m fully sold on the need for a massive overhaul of our indoor Tracking; in most places, we have a skeletal joke that gets very few people to even fewer places at an exorbitant cost. What people seem to forget is that car manufacturers are doing everything in their considerable power to keep selling you cars.
How can you uncouple the auto industry from the transit debate? Gas prices skyrocket; cars become incredibly fuel-efficient. The time wasted in a commute becomes costly downtime; your car is now a travelling office. Pollution is destroying our planet; stricter emissions on new cars are light years ahead of those of even a few years ago and, hey, I’ll drive an electric car and take care of those emissions for good.
When Portland, Oregon, made a push to get cars off their roads, the mayor of that city made a simple, yet elegant point: everyone should be on board with the plan, because fewer cars means those still driving will have less congestion. The problem, of course, in places with such lethal gridlock as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal is that I want you to take transit so I can keep driving.I remember when transit was touted as a time to rest up and provide you with needed downtime. Now the argument is that it will furnish you with the ability to have no downtime at all – keep working!
You can use all your devices on a bus or a train; but you can also use most of them in a car now, too. Car sellers want you in that car, not on that bus. The law says you can’t text or e-mail and drive. No problem; build a system that will read such missives out loud, and they will come. Laws are made by politicians whose jobs are dependent on annoying the smallest number of people. People hate laws. Car manufacturers don’t have to do much to stay ahead of the politicians.
It matters little how many studies are published explaining that distracted drivers are worse than drunks. Canada and the United Kingdom ban handheld phones, but only 11 U.S. states have followed suit. Hands-free phones are just as distracting, but show me a single manufacturer who will abandon this technology. And as a consumer, I don’t use it, but I’m not going to buy a new car without if for the simple reason that if I want to resell my car, the next purchaser is going to demand it. Manufacturers make essentially the same argument: they are creating technological marvels because that is their business; how you choose to use that technology is yours.
We have a hodgepodge approach to in-car tricks. Some cars shut down some operations so you can’t fiddle with them while the car is in motion. This is a good, safe thing to do, unless you are a passenger and then it’s just annoying.
Because they couldn’t possibly put in all the knobs you might need to access the many howdy-doody acrobatics your car is capable of doing, many manufacturers are turning to touchscreens. Touchscreens are terrible as you are forced to concentrate on a screen, usually covered in fingerprints and often obscured by the sun. Ford, long a leader in pushing touchscreens, recently announced it would go back to knobs on many of its functions. Thank you, Ford.
The transit debate should be framed around two distinct groups: those who don’t drive, and those who always have. With the former, you’re preaching to the choir. With the latter, you’ll be climbing a mountain to make the alternative alluring.
One overpriced airport burger and an hour delay later, I was on my way back to Albuquerque in the rain, which had mercifully kept Manhattan cool most of the day. I landed back in the Land of Enchantment at 11:40 p.m. local time, 23 hours and 50 minutes after I left the same gate the real time Location system. I had accomplished the impossible and defeated geography itself.
So yes, technically this is all part of my job as a freelance tech journalist and it's a pretty sweet gig, so I'm not complaining. Besides, you might say, people spend nights camping out on the hard pavement just to get their hands on the latest iGadget, who cares if some hack had to take a couple of plane rides and sleep on a bench to get hold of a cool new phone?
A valid point, to be sure. I just wonder how many people would still camp out or make my 24-hour journey for a phone knowing that they had to send it back in a few weeks? I know I would do it again. Given my obsession with bleeding-edge mobile devices, I can't resist a whirlwind adventure with gadget gold at the end of the trail, even if it's a loaner.
It was interesting to hear from a local counselor, as well as a Toronto counselor, those at the helm of the massive revamp of transit in the Greater Toronto Area and those measuring local impact. Elaborate diagrams with proposed routes were coupled with intricate formulas, professing to hold the answers to bringing those programs to life.
Congestion, lost time, carpooling, increasing populations, crumbling infrastructures, built-out cities, commuting, polluting, agreeing and refuting: it’s all there, the debate chasing its tail.I’m fully sold on the need for a massive overhaul of our indoor Tracking; in most places, we have a skeletal joke that gets very few people to even fewer places at an exorbitant cost. What people seem to forget is that car manufacturers are doing everything in their considerable power to keep selling you cars.
How can you uncouple the auto industry from the transit debate? Gas prices skyrocket; cars become incredibly fuel-efficient. The time wasted in a commute becomes costly downtime; your car is now a travelling office. Pollution is destroying our planet; stricter emissions on new cars are light years ahead of those of even a few years ago and, hey, I’ll drive an electric car and take care of those emissions for good.
When Portland, Oregon, made a push to get cars off their roads, the mayor of that city made a simple, yet elegant point: everyone should be on board with the plan, because fewer cars means those still driving will have less congestion. The problem, of course, in places with such lethal gridlock as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal is that I want you to take transit so I can keep driving.I remember when transit was touted as a time to rest up and provide you with needed downtime. Now the argument is that it will furnish you with the ability to have no downtime at all – keep working!
You can use all your devices on a bus or a train; but you can also use most of them in a car now, too. Car sellers want you in that car, not on that bus. The law says you can’t text or e-mail and drive. No problem; build a system that will read such missives out loud, and they will come. Laws are made by politicians whose jobs are dependent on annoying the smallest number of people. People hate laws. Car manufacturers don’t have to do much to stay ahead of the politicians.
It matters little how many studies are published explaining that distracted drivers are worse than drunks. Canada and the United Kingdom ban handheld phones, but only 11 U.S. states have followed suit. Hands-free phones are just as distracting, but show me a single manufacturer who will abandon this technology. And as a consumer, I don’t use it, but I’m not going to buy a new car without if for the simple reason that if I want to resell my car, the next purchaser is going to demand it. Manufacturers make essentially the same argument: they are creating technological marvels because that is their business; how you choose to use that technology is yours.
We have a hodgepodge approach to in-car tricks. Some cars shut down some operations so you can’t fiddle with them while the car is in motion. This is a good, safe thing to do, unless you are a passenger and then it’s just annoying.
Because they couldn’t possibly put in all the knobs you might need to access the many howdy-doody acrobatics your car is capable of doing, many manufacturers are turning to touchscreens. Touchscreens are terrible as you are forced to concentrate on a screen, usually covered in fingerprints and often obscured by the sun. Ford, long a leader in pushing touchscreens, recently announced it would go back to knobs on many of its functions. Thank you, Ford.
The transit debate should be framed around two distinct groups: those who don’t drive, and those who always have. With the former, you’re preaching to the choir. With the latter, you’ll be climbing a mountain to make the alternative alluring.
One overpriced airport burger and an hour delay later, I was on my way back to Albuquerque in the rain, which had mercifully kept Manhattan cool most of the day. I landed back in the Land of Enchantment at 11:40 p.m. local time, 23 hours and 50 minutes after I left the same gate the real time Location system. I had accomplished the impossible and defeated geography itself.
So yes, technically this is all part of my job as a freelance tech journalist and it's a pretty sweet gig, so I'm not complaining. Besides, you might say, people spend nights camping out on the hard pavement just to get their hands on the latest iGadget, who cares if some hack had to take a couple of plane rides and sleep on a bench to get hold of a cool new phone?
A valid point, to be sure. I just wonder how many people would still camp out or make my 24-hour journey for a phone knowing that they had to send it back in a few weeks? I know I would do it again. Given my obsession with bleeding-edge mobile devices, I can't resist a whirlwind adventure with gadget gold at the end of the trail, even if it's a loaner.
Land Reform in Brazil
As a key determinant of who has power and who doesn't, battles over land have been fought from time immemorial. One of the earliest may have been led by Adam and Eve as they attempted to reclaim their garden after having been evicted. Even before the Crusades, through centuries of colonization, to the oil- and water-motivated wars of the present day, land has long been the currency of religious, national, and imperial power.
In the 1950s and 1960s, struggles for land reform throughout the global South had some success. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, economic policies, development ideology, and military crackdowns quashed government-reform advances and the social movements that drove them.
In recent years, the voice and visibility of movements opposing land grabs and displacement, and demanding land reform, are increasing. Though relatively little land has been redistributed, organized movements of indoor Tracking, indigenous peoples, and landless people are developing in size, strength, and organization. They are uniting across borders to break the nexus between land, agriculture, power, and profit.
Brazil is home to one of the most powerful land reform movements in the world. Its work has both changed the lives and fates of millions of people within the country, and inspired land and housing struggles everywhere, including here in the US.
Brazil's land reform has roots in the 1800s, as a response to unequal land distribution that began with the arrival of European colonists more than 500 years ago. Brazil has one of the world's highest levels of unequal land distribution. Vast properties over 1,000 hectares (2,472 acres) - many of them owned by multinational corporations - have taken over 46% of all farmland. Small and family farms are still producing much of the country's food needs, only on less land and with more labor. Unable to compete with agribusiness, an estimated 90,000 of them disappear each year.
The 1988 constitution gave Brazilians the right to challenge ownership of tracts over a certain size in two ways: by going after the title's authenticity or by claiming that the land is not fulfilling its "social function." Social function means that at least 80% of the land is used effectively, environmental and labor standards are respected, and both owners and workers benefit.
Many rural organizations form the land reform movement, with the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST by its Portuguese acronym) leading the way. The MST's solution to ending the country's poverty and hunger is to put agriculturally rich land back into the hands of small farmers. Since the mid-1980s, the MST has won title to 7.5 million hectares of land, on which 370,000 families now live. An additional 150,000 families live in approximately 900 squatter communities on land that is being contested.
Jo?o Pedro Stédile, MST co-founder and co-coordinator, said, "Before, the line had been: 'No need to worry, you'll have your land in heaven.' Now it was: 'Since you've already got your land in heaven, let's struggle for it here as well.'"
Redistribution of land works this way: The organization researches large holdings that meet the legal criteria for redistribution. When they find one, word goes out and interested families - often totaling up to 100, both landless people and unemployed city-dwellers - take up residence there. They wait it out in tents, on average for two to five years. Meanwhile, MST lawyers battle with the courts to gain collective title to the Hands free access. If the MST loses, those in the camp move to another plot of land and, together with the lawyers, start over. If the court orders the tract redistributed, settlers begin creating their collectively owned communities.
In the communities, MST members engage in collective agro-ecological farming and other cooperative ventures, like a honey business or a tractor repair shop. They run their own education systems, resolve conflicts using restorative justice, and develop their own media and cultural empowerment programs. They also run experiments in participatory democracy, equitable social relations, and self-governance.
Brazil's land reform movement is united with other social movements in challenging the root cause of the problem, which resides in unequal distribution of power and resources. Without deep structural change and the creation of a more just and equitable nation, land distribution will simply revert to the status quo, as struggling farmers lose their land again.
Of course, much work remains, yet the MST shows that solutions to landlessness, homelessness, and social exclusion are available, even without an overhaul of the Brazilian state or political economy. The MST has created living, breathing examples of these solutions thousands of times over.
"Back in the early days, most women on land reform settlements didn't have a vote. It wasn't until after you'd been part of the movement that you realized you'd had an invisible role." said Neneide Eliane, an organizer with Deciding to Win, one of many organizations dedicated to obtaining rights, benefits, and power for rural and landless women. In those days, some women were handed the age-old line that their problems would be resolved when rural workers as a whole won justice. Women in the MST reported that for a long time, the group was so focused on unity among its members that it ploughed under the need to specifically address gender.
An organized women's movement evolved in Brazil in the 1970s, aiming not only for women's rights but also for an end to the dictatorship. A decade later, a rural women's movement was born to address gender inequity. In the MST, women formed a national women's collective in 1995. They have pushed the organization to prioritize gender equality. "Gender" is now an official department of the MST, with a range of programs and policies. Of the leaders that are elected to coordinate each local, regional, and national committee, at least half must be women. Other goals include an end to gender-based violence, access to free birth control, promotion of women's micro-enterprises and cooperatives, the establishment of childcare centers, and help for women in getting the social benefits they deserve from the state. Gender analysis is a formal part of the MST's training.
In addition to their ascending integration and leadership into landless organizations, rural women have won legal right to land and social protections - on paper, at least. The 1988 constitution enshrined women's ability to gain land rights and benefit from land reform directly, not as dependents of their husbands. The constitution also accorded women new labor rights, including unemployment and disability insurance, retirement benefits, and maternity leave.
In practice, today women still account for only a small percentage of all beneficiaries of land redistribution, and overall receive far less revenue than their male counterparts. Many women farmers receive no salary at all, or only a symbolic income.
In the 1950s and 1960s, struggles for land reform throughout the global South had some success. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, economic policies, development ideology, and military crackdowns quashed government-reform advances and the social movements that drove them.
In recent years, the voice and visibility of movements opposing land grabs and displacement, and demanding land reform, are increasing. Though relatively little land has been redistributed, organized movements of indoor Tracking, indigenous peoples, and landless people are developing in size, strength, and organization. They are uniting across borders to break the nexus between land, agriculture, power, and profit.
Brazil is home to one of the most powerful land reform movements in the world. Its work has both changed the lives and fates of millions of people within the country, and inspired land and housing struggles everywhere, including here in the US.
Brazil's land reform has roots in the 1800s, as a response to unequal land distribution that began with the arrival of European colonists more than 500 years ago. Brazil has one of the world's highest levels of unequal land distribution. Vast properties over 1,000 hectares (2,472 acres) - many of them owned by multinational corporations - have taken over 46% of all farmland. Small and family farms are still producing much of the country's food needs, only on less land and with more labor. Unable to compete with agribusiness, an estimated 90,000 of them disappear each year.
The 1988 constitution gave Brazilians the right to challenge ownership of tracts over a certain size in two ways: by going after the title's authenticity or by claiming that the land is not fulfilling its "social function." Social function means that at least 80% of the land is used effectively, environmental and labor standards are respected, and both owners and workers benefit.
Many rural organizations form the land reform movement, with the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST by its Portuguese acronym) leading the way. The MST's solution to ending the country's poverty and hunger is to put agriculturally rich land back into the hands of small farmers. Since the mid-1980s, the MST has won title to 7.5 million hectares of land, on which 370,000 families now live. An additional 150,000 families live in approximately 900 squatter communities on land that is being contested.
Jo?o Pedro Stédile, MST co-founder and co-coordinator, said, "Before, the line had been: 'No need to worry, you'll have your land in heaven.' Now it was: 'Since you've already got your land in heaven, let's struggle for it here as well.'"
Redistribution of land works this way: The organization researches large holdings that meet the legal criteria for redistribution. When they find one, word goes out and interested families - often totaling up to 100, both landless people and unemployed city-dwellers - take up residence there. They wait it out in tents, on average for two to five years. Meanwhile, MST lawyers battle with the courts to gain collective title to the Hands free access. If the MST loses, those in the camp move to another plot of land and, together with the lawyers, start over. If the court orders the tract redistributed, settlers begin creating their collectively owned communities.
In the communities, MST members engage in collective agro-ecological farming and other cooperative ventures, like a honey business or a tractor repair shop. They run their own education systems, resolve conflicts using restorative justice, and develop their own media and cultural empowerment programs. They also run experiments in participatory democracy, equitable social relations, and self-governance.
Brazil's land reform movement is united with other social movements in challenging the root cause of the problem, which resides in unequal distribution of power and resources. Without deep structural change and the creation of a more just and equitable nation, land distribution will simply revert to the status quo, as struggling farmers lose their land again.
Of course, much work remains, yet the MST shows that solutions to landlessness, homelessness, and social exclusion are available, even without an overhaul of the Brazilian state or political economy. The MST has created living, breathing examples of these solutions thousands of times over.
"Back in the early days, most women on land reform settlements didn't have a vote. It wasn't until after you'd been part of the movement that you realized you'd had an invisible role." said Neneide Eliane, an organizer with Deciding to Win, one of many organizations dedicated to obtaining rights, benefits, and power for rural and landless women. In those days, some women were handed the age-old line that their problems would be resolved when rural workers as a whole won justice. Women in the MST reported that for a long time, the group was so focused on unity among its members that it ploughed under the need to specifically address gender.
An organized women's movement evolved in Brazil in the 1970s, aiming not only for women's rights but also for an end to the dictatorship. A decade later, a rural women's movement was born to address gender inequity. In the MST, women formed a national women's collective in 1995. They have pushed the organization to prioritize gender equality. "Gender" is now an official department of the MST, with a range of programs and policies. Of the leaders that are elected to coordinate each local, regional, and national committee, at least half must be women. Other goals include an end to gender-based violence, access to free birth control, promotion of women's micro-enterprises and cooperatives, the establishment of childcare centers, and help for women in getting the social benefits they deserve from the state. Gender analysis is a formal part of the MST's training.
In addition to their ascending integration and leadership into landless organizations, rural women have won legal right to land and social protections - on paper, at least. The 1988 constitution enshrined women's ability to gain land rights and benefit from land reform directly, not as dependents of their husbands. The constitution also accorded women new labor rights, including unemployment and disability insurance, retirement benefits, and maternity leave.
In practice, today women still account for only a small percentage of all beneficiaries of land redistribution, and overall receive far less revenue than their male counterparts. Many women farmers receive no salary at all, or only a symbolic income.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Remote Support Market for Fifth Consecutive Year
Citrix today announced that Citrix GoToAssist has once again been ranked as the global market share leader among remote support solutions, for the fifth year in a row, by leading analyst firm IDC. The firm’s report “Worldwide Clientless Remote Support Software 2012 Vendor Shares: Top 6 Market Share Leaders” presented top revenue leaders in the market and examined current trends and challenges, including the need for remote support tools for anytime anywhere support, new connection demands, and robust market growth for remote support.
The IDC report states the remote support market grew by 16%, with GoToAssist gaining market share over other leading vendors. The IDC report also advises vendors to extend the capabilities of their support solutions with new features that specifically address mobility, chat, web browser accessibility, integration with other tools, knowledge base/self-help and further advancements in overall user experience.
As a pioneer in the industry, Citrix has clearly addressed these emerging trends and is one of the first vendors to introduce an integrated IT toolset that encompasses the full spectrum of remote support, incident logging and tracking, and infrastructure monitoring late last year. The GoToAssist integrated toolset offers a “triple play” combination of three modules, including GoToAssist Remote Support, GoToAssist Service Desk, and GoToAssist Monitoring. By delivering easy access to key support functions from one interface, Citrix is providing support teams the functionality to maintain uptimes and deliver superior service experiences to both internal staff and rtls.
Since its global debut in October 2012, more than 600 customers have purchased the new GoToAssist Service Desk module – either as a standalone product or to complement their existing GoToAssist Remote Support and Monitoring capabilities. The GoToAssist integrated toolset is available for purchase and free trial directly from the Citrix website.
To support mobile business, Citrix also provides comprehensive GoToAssist mobile support to and from devices at no additional cost. The company recently expanded this portfolio to include complete, integrated mobile device support for Citrix XenMobile Enterprise users. The Citrix XenMobile Enterprise edition combines mobile device; app and data management; a unified corporate app store; mobile productivity apps; document sharing, syncing and editing; and now “one-touch” live GoToAssist support in an inclusive solution for mobile business.
The “Worldwide Clientless Remote Support Software 2012 Vendor Shares: Top 6 Market Share Leaders” report is available to subscribing customers on the IDC website. Citrix has also published a blog article noting additional GoToAssist growth highlights.
"With the increasing mobility of today’s workforce, remote support tools have become a necessity for enterprise and small to medium-sized businesses as the IT consumerization momentum demands anytime, anywhere support. Citrix has maintained remote support market leadership by responding to these IT challenges with high-value solutions that simplify IT and bring fast support resolution. Its portfolio of cloud-based, on-demand tools reflect this strategic market approach with expanded solution capabilities such as in-session chat, support to and from mobile devices and access to an integrated support toolset to support both people and technology.”
“The mobile workforce and the explosion of apps and devices have put increased importance on ensuring that people are continually productive with their technology. Consequently, the role of IT support has become more critical than ever. Our Citrix GoToAssist products put essential, efficient tools into the hands of IT support agents, allowing them to step-up to this challenge. Our growth is a result of combining market-leading remote support with next generation service desk and monitoring capabilities for a strategic, cost-effective service that delivers great user experiences. We’re proud to share IDC’s recognition with our customers, partners and employees.”
On the other hand, you may also have heard that US coal exports have increased as its domestic emissions have fallen. America currently has little in the way of gas export facilities but plenty of capacity for shipping coal to Asia, Europe and elsewhere. Those ports have been busy of late and the ripple effects are being felt far and wide. For instance, UK emissions shot up 4.5% last year, partly due to low coal prices made possible by surging US exports. So could it be that rising US gas production has increased the human contribution to global warming, even as American's own emissions have fallen?
This is an important question. There are legitimate and complex debates to be had about potential of natural gas as a 'transition fuel'; and about how gas's huge benefits over coal in terms of carbon emissions and air pollution should be weighed against the methane leaks and water pollution linked to fracking. But in the absence of a global emissions deal, those debates are largely academic unless producing more gas does actually lead to less coal use. So does it?
To explore this issue I propose considering an unfamiliar metric: not carbon emissions but carbon extraction. After all, the climate doesn't care where a unit of carbon is burned; just whether it comes out of the ground and enters the atmosphere. It makes sense to ask, therefore, whether the US is now extracting more or less carbon than it was before the shale gas boom. Has coal production fallen enough to offset rising gas production?
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
The IDC report states the remote support market grew by 16%, with GoToAssist gaining market share over other leading vendors. The IDC report also advises vendors to extend the capabilities of their support solutions with new features that specifically address mobility, chat, web browser accessibility, integration with other tools, knowledge base/self-help and further advancements in overall user experience.
As a pioneer in the industry, Citrix has clearly addressed these emerging trends and is one of the first vendors to introduce an integrated IT toolset that encompasses the full spectrum of remote support, incident logging and tracking, and infrastructure monitoring late last year. The GoToAssist integrated toolset offers a “triple play” combination of three modules, including GoToAssist Remote Support, GoToAssist Service Desk, and GoToAssist Monitoring. By delivering easy access to key support functions from one interface, Citrix is providing support teams the functionality to maintain uptimes and deliver superior service experiences to both internal staff and rtls.
Since its global debut in October 2012, more than 600 customers have purchased the new GoToAssist Service Desk module – either as a standalone product or to complement their existing GoToAssist Remote Support and Monitoring capabilities. The GoToAssist integrated toolset is available for purchase and free trial directly from the Citrix website.
To support mobile business, Citrix also provides comprehensive GoToAssist mobile support to and from devices at no additional cost. The company recently expanded this portfolio to include complete, integrated mobile device support for Citrix XenMobile Enterprise users. The Citrix XenMobile Enterprise edition combines mobile device; app and data management; a unified corporate app store; mobile productivity apps; document sharing, syncing and editing; and now “one-touch” live GoToAssist support in an inclusive solution for mobile business.
The “Worldwide Clientless Remote Support Software 2012 Vendor Shares: Top 6 Market Share Leaders” report is available to subscribing customers on the IDC website. Citrix has also published a blog article noting additional GoToAssist growth highlights.
"With the increasing mobility of today’s workforce, remote support tools have become a necessity for enterprise and small to medium-sized businesses as the IT consumerization momentum demands anytime, anywhere support. Citrix has maintained remote support market leadership by responding to these IT challenges with high-value solutions that simplify IT and bring fast support resolution. Its portfolio of cloud-based, on-demand tools reflect this strategic market approach with expanded solution capabilities such as in-session chat, support to and from mobile devices and access to an integrated support toolset to support both people and technology.”
“The mobile workforce and the explosion of apps and devices have put increased importance on ensuring that people are continually productive with their technology. Consequently, the role of IT support has become more critical than ever. Our Citrix GoToAssist products put essential, efficient tools into the hands of IT support agents, allowing them to step-up to this challenge. Our growth is a result of combining market-leading remote support with next generation service desk and monitoring capabilities for a strategic, cost-effective service that delivers great user experiences. We’re proud to share IDC’s recognition with our customers, partners and employees.”
On the other hand, you may also have heard that US coal exports have increased as its domestic emissions have fallen. America currently has little in the way of gas export facilities but plenty of capacity for shipping coal to Asia, Europe and elsewhere. Those ports have been busy of late and the ripple effects are being felt far and wide. For instance, UK emissions shot up 4.5% last year, partly due to low coal prices made possible by surging US exports. So could it be that rising US gas production has increased the human contribution to global warming, even as American's own emissions have fallen?
This is an important question. There are legitimate and complex debates to be had about potential of natural gas as a 'transition fuel'; and about how gas's huge benefits over coal in terms of carbon emissions and air pollution should be weighed against the methane leaks and water pollution linked to fracking. But in the absence of a global emissions deal, those debates are largely academic unless producing more gas does actually lead to less coal use. So does it?
To explore this issue I propose considering an unfamiliar metric: not carbon emissions but carbon extraction. After all, the climate doesn't care where a unit of carbon is burned; just whether it comes out of the ground and enters the atmosphere. It makes sense to ask, therefore, whether the US is now extracting more or less carbon than it was before the shale gas boom. Has coal production fallen enough to offset rising gas production?
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Park Slope student becomes a ‘Green Girl’
Park Sloper Angelica Chery is a “Green Girl.” Even though the title sounds like she's the heroine in a comic strip, she's not. But she is a heroine of another sort.Angelica, a budding environmentalist, recently took part in the “Green Girls Summer” program sponsored by the City Parks Foundation. It marked the second time she has spent a good portion of her summer vacation learning how to protect the environment. She first joined the program in 2011.
As a result of her most recent foray into environmentalism, Angelica has decided to devote her studies, and eventually her career, to protecting the environment. “Green Girls opened my eyes to look at the world with a different point of view and try my best to be a part of taking care of it,” she said.This summer, Angelica helped other Hands free access their budding interests in the environment when she took part in the Green Girls Summer Institute. “I wanted to help these girls realize that they can’t take the environment for granted. I wanted them to hear about the program and gain a sense of comfort from someone who was in their shoes at the same age,” she said.
The institute focuses on science studies that address environmental justice issues through field trips, community service projects in parks, and citywide exploration.Green Girls enjoy intensive summer experiences in a three-week institute to educate them about New York City’s vast natural and cultural resources. The program also promotes leadership skills.
The curriculum addresses a variety of science subjects, including environmental education, ecology, biology, botany and zoology. Students explore their personal potential and learn about the career opportunities that are available in the sciences.Angelica said she never realized she was an environmentalist until she became a “Green Girl.” As a youngster, she never spent much time outdoors.
But the hands-on activities and trips to natural environments, parks, wildlife refuges and cultural institutions that Green Girls sponsored provided her with new insight into her city and global environment, Angelica said. “Green Girls gave me the chance to experience nature and access to places I didn’t know about. It helped me challenge myself and be a part of something I never thought I would do,” she said.
After her Green Girls experience, Angelica has applied to Urban Assembly New York Harbor School on Governor’s Island to take part in a program focusing on environmental stewardship. She is currently participating in the school’s Oyster Restoration project. “This project gives us a chance to get our harbor back in shape naturally, using oysters as natural bio-filters to restore it. Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? So it’s amazing to go to school and say that I am helping make a change slowly,” Angelica said.
Angelica plans to further develop her experience in Environmental Science and get a Master's degree in the field. The City Parks Foundation introduced the Green Girls internship program in 2012. Angelica said she’s happy she took advantage of the opportunity.
The City Parks Foundation, an independent, nonprofit organization that offers park programs throughout the five boroughs, was founded in 1989. The foundation sponsors programs in over 750 parks, presenting a broad range of free arts, sports, and real time Location system. The foundation also encourages resident s to support their parks on a local level. For more information on the foundation, visit its website.
AVAD’s addition of Klein Tools products, which the distributor will offer at a 10 percent discount in August, enhances the growing lineup of practical tools, connectors and other accessories that are specifically developed for integrators’ use.
Extending the company’s diverse catalog of installation solutions, Klein Tools recently introduced Splinter Guard Fish and Glow Rods, a line of extenders with a proprietary protective coating to keep hands free of fiberglass splinters and other harmful edges while also illuminating the area when pulling wire in walls and other tight spaces.
Klein Tools also won Electrical, Construction & Maintenance‘s 2013 Product of the Year award for the Illuminated Fish Rod Tip, an omni-directional light that illuminates precise work in ceilings and crawl spaces.
“Klein Tools carries a reputation for both reliability and their dedication to making exceptional tools to aid hard working trade professionals,” says Jim Annes, vice president and general manager of AVAD. “A/V integrators are famously versatile in the types of install settings they manage, and Klein Tools are a top choice among the instruments and accessories that professional installers prefer for day to day operations as well as high level electronics, mission critical systems and environments requiring 24/7/365 uptime. They have stood the test of time since their founding in 1857 and continue to evolve product standards.”
An Essex County jury convicted 18-year-old Aaron Deveau, of Haverhill, in June 2012 of motor-vehicle homicide and negligent operation of a motor vehicle while texting in the Feb. 2011 head-on collision that killed one and seriously injured another. A judge sentenced Deveau to 2 ? years in jail, the maximum sentence under the statute, with one year to be served.
It was the first case in the country where a teen was convicted and sentenced to jail time for motor-vehicle homicide and personal injury due to negligent operation as a result of texting, Blodgett said.
More locally, Steffany Barbanti, 25, of Saugus, allegedly told a friend she was texting when she hit an 81-year-old man on Central Street in Saugus and killed him. She then allegedly fled the scene. Police have charged her with leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury or death. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Angela Okonkwo, 37, of Lynn, was charged with motor-vehicle homicide by negligent operation; and failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk; in a Sept. 2012 accident that killed Dillon McManus and seriously injured Riley McManus, both 20. Police reviewed Okonkwo’s cell phone records and found in the 24-hours preceding the accident “only short periods of time where there was no activity.” They cited driver fatigue in charging Okonkwo. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled for trial on Oct. 7.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
As a result of her most recent foray into environmentalism, Angelica has decided to devote her studies, and eventually her career, to protecting the environment. “Green Girls opened my eyes to look at the world with a different point of view and try my best to be a part of taking care of it,” she said.This summer, Angelica helped other Hands free access their budding interests in the environment when she took part in the Green Girls Summer Institute. “I wanted to help these girls realize that they can’t take the environment for granted. I wanted them to hear about the program and gain a sense of comfort from someone who was in their shoes at the same age,” she said.
The institute focuses on science studies that address environmental justice issues through field trips, community service projects in parks, and citywide exploration.Green Girls enjoy intensive summer experiences in a three-week institute to educate them about New York City’s vast natural and cultural resources. The program also promotes leadership skills.
The curriculum addresses a variety of science subjects, including environmental education, ecology, biology, botany and zoology. Students explore their personal potential and learn about the career opportunities that are available in the sciences.Angelica said she never realized she was an environmentalist until she became a “Green Girl.” As a youngster, she never spent much time outdoors.
But the hands-on activities and trips to natural environments, parks, wildlife refuges and cultural institutions that Green Girls sponsored provided her with new insight into her city and global environment, Angelica said. “Green Girls gave me the chance to experience nature and access to places I didn’t know about. It helped me challenge myself and be a part of something I never thought I would do,” she said.
After her Green Girls experience, Angelica has applied to Urban Assembly New York Harbor School on Governor’s Island to take part in a program focusing on environmental stewardship. She is currently participating in the school’s Oyster Restoration project. “This project gives us a chance to get our harbor back in shape naturally, using oysters as natural bio-filters to restore it. Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? So it’s amazing to go to school and say that I am helping make a change slowly,” Angelica said.
Angelica plans to further develop her experience in Environmental Science and get a Master's degree in the field. The City Parks Foundation introduced the Green Girls internship program in 2012. Angelica said she’s happy she took advantage of the opportunity.
The City Parks Foundation, an independent, nonprofit organization that offers park programs throughout the five boroughs, was founded in 1989. The foundation sponsors programs in over 750 parks, presenting a broad range of free arts, sports, and real time Location system. The foundation also encourages resident s to support their parks on a local level. For more information on the foundation, visit its website.
AVAD’s addition of Klein Tools products, which the distributor will offer at a 10 percent discount in August, enhances the growing lineup of practical tools, connectors and other accessories that are specifically developed for integrators’ use.
Extending the company’s diverse catalog of installation solutions, Klein Tools recently introduced Splinter Guard Fish and Glow Rods, a line of extenders with a proprietary protective coating to keep hands free of fiberglass splinters and other harmful edges while also illuminating the area when pulling wire in walls and other tight spaces.
Klein Tools also won Electrical, Construction & Maintenance‘s 2013 Product of the Year award for the Illuminated Fish Rod Tip, an omni-directional light that illuminates precise work in ceilings and crawl spaces.
“Klein Tools carries a reputation for both reliability and their dedication to making exceptional tools to aid hard working trade professionals,” says Jim Annes, vice president and general manager of AVAD. “A/V integrators are famously versatile in the types of install settings they manage, and Klein Tools are a top choice among the instruments and accessories that professional installers prefer for day to day operations as well as high level electronics, mission critical systems and environments requiring 24/7/365 uptime. They have stood the test of time since their founding in 1857 and continue to evolve product standards.”
An Essex County jury convicted 18-year-old Aaron Deveau, of Haverhill, in June 2012 of motor-vehicle homicide and negligent operation of a motor vehicle while texting in the Feb. 2011 head-on collision that killed one and seriously injured another. A judge sentenced Deveau to 2 ? years in jail, the maximum sentence under the statute, with one year to be served.
It was the first case in the country where a teen was convicted and sentenced to jail time for motor-vehicle homicide and personal injury due to negligent operation as a result of texting, Blodgett said.
More locally, Steffany Barbanti, 25, of Saugus, allegedly told a friend she was texting when she hit an 81-year-old man on Central Street in Saugus and killed him. She then allegedly fled the scene. Police have charged her with leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury or death. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Angela Okonkwo, 37, of Lynn, was charged with motor-vehicle homicide by negligent operation; and failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk; in a Sept. 2012 accident that killed Dillon McManus and seriously injured Riley McManus, both 20. Police reviewed Okonkwo’s cell phone records and found in the 24-hours preceding the accident “only short periods of time where there was no activity.” They cited driver fatigue in charging Okonkwo. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled for trial on Oct. 7.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
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