#Making these demarcations is doing their work more so by creating division

[letscomply]

Importance and Advantages of having Co-Founder Agreement

Importance and advantages of having co-founder agreement- Before creating an entity, it is essential for a company’s founder to have an agreement among themselves. Co-Founder Agreement is said to be the product of conversations that usually takes place among all the company’s founders at the early stage of formation rather than later in the life of the company.

It is a small yet crucial piece of paper which states about the responsibilities and roles, ownership and initial investments made by each founders of the company.

The motive of creating a Co-founder agreement is to have an open discussion about the fears, aspirations of individuals by assigning each of them specific responsibilities to avoid ambiguity, which may arise in the future that is why it is preferable to create it at the time of incorporation.

Essentials of a Valid Co-Founder Agreement

These are the essential elements that are that must be included in a Co-Founder Agreement:

1.   Allocation of ownership: Co-founder Agreement mentions about the percentage of each founder mentioning monetary investment, experience, network and IPRs. It specifies the number of shares owned by each of the founders, total amount of capital invested by a co-founder and division of profits between them.

2.   Roles and Time Commitments: In order to prevent ambiguity and misunderstandings, it is strongly recommended to clearly define each founder’s role, what are the responsibilities being undertaken by him/her and how many hours they are expected to put in.

3.   Confidentiality and Non-Compete clause: As a founder, it is important to have access to confidential information. The team should trust each other. There should be a clear understanding on the activities which are prohibited and may create conflict with the objectives of the company.

It is to be noted that Section 27 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 provides that every Agreement by which anyone is restraining from exercising a lawful profession, trade or Business of any kind, is to that extent considered void.

4.Restriction on transfer on Shares: Another important aspect to be taken into consideration is the right and restrictions on the founders to transfer their shares in the company. The Agreement shall have a mechanism to deal with the situation where the co-founder wants to exit the company before the expiry of his lock-in period.

5.   Employment: Usually, the co-founders are required to be in the whole-time employment of a company. It should clear stated about the terms like employment, compensation, designation and benefits to be paid to each of them.

6.   Intellectual Property assignment: Intellectual property (IP) is everything that could make a venture unique in its characteristics. So the first thing is to determine what your Intellectual property is. What sets you apart from the competitors? It may contain blog posts, design, application ideas or something very specific to what all you do.

7.   Dispute Resolution: It shall lay down the rights of the company as well as co-founders to terminate the Agreement. The Agreement should specifically provide a clear mechanism for resolution of disputes between the company and co-founders with respect to any matter mentioned in the Agreement that is Arbitration, Mediation and Conciliation.

8.   Legal decision making and approval Rights: It is important to choose that who shall be allowed to vote on company decision. It is on the discretion of that company to give rights on the basis of member’s percentage interest or by giving limited voting rights to specific group of people. It is dependent to company to give veto rights but no voting rights; supermajority votes; or even managerial rights but no voting rights.

ESI Return

Importance and Advantages of Co-founder Agreement

A Co-Founder Agreement is a baseline for how your co-founder relationship will work in the future, how your company is made, and what each owner brings to the Business.

This step is totally on the discretion of the founder that whether they want to create a document of this kind or not. A founder agreement, like all other agreements, is there to help not only to navigate company’s day-to day operations but also to come to aid when things don’t go as planned. So it is highly recommended not to skip this step.

Usually, when we look for a team for start-up, young entrepreneurs generally turned into trusted friends, family members or colleagues. This can be considered as the biggest mistake among the entrepreneurs can commit before starting their business operations. There can be various numbers of situations which can arise like Roles and Responsibilities of the respective founder, equity of the company, financing, whose decision shall prevail in case of any conflict over a major business decision, what happens if any founder leaves. When such misunderstanding arises before founders, you may regret having an agreement.

Few Advantages of having a Co-founder Agreement

The contents of the co-founder agreement are based on the understanding arrived by the founders. However, certain advantages can give the better clarity about forming a Co-founder Agreement. These are as follows:

1.   Defining the Business: it is important to define the vision and mission of the Business so that targets can be achieved over a period of time.

2.   Assigning roles and responsibilities: it can create chaos in the business entity if all the co-founders have the same or overlapping roles in the Business. For example, Roles are divided into marketing, operations, finance, and so on. If each one of them knows what is expected from them then they can be more efficient. Clear demarcation of roles develops a system of accountability.

3.   Protects minority owners.

4.   Provide signals to investors

5.   Provides for the structure in order to resolve disputes among founders

6.   Provides clarity if and when a partner wants to enter or exit the Business

Click here for- Filing A Suit For Recovery Of Money Under The Limitation Act

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[thetumblingstones]

Trickery in Plain Sight

#I I

In the collection of notes that was later collated into the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx points to the inevitable emasculation that the worker is to experience in a capitalistic system due the presence of division of labour. The intense competition between the workers, given their excess supply, leads to a state in which the price of labour is as low as it can get (since if one labourer were to reject the price of his wage another desperate one would be waiting next in line to hop in and accept that price of wage). Now, given how specialised labour is, the worker can only work in this industry or domain. He doesn't have the skills necessary to be accepted some place else, given how divided labour is in various kinds of specialisations.

One can see this having implications in our own world in terms of how varied jobs are in our society and, more importantly, how difficult it is for one to work in another field altogether. That would be "jumping lanes", as they call it. In fact, this is most strikingly seen in cases where a human once valuable becomes suddenly dispensable with the invention of a machine which can do the same job. Even though the man has spent a major part of his life trying to learn the skills required, he is nowhere near as efficient (and thus cost-effective) as a machine. So he loses his job while at the same time not having the required skills to compete against others in a totally new field.

I want to take this one step further. Jobs are not the only feature spelled out under the dictum of division of labour, is it? It's not like men and women pop out of wombs and wander unwittingly into offices, choosing a job position to start their careers, is it? No, it obviously begins much earlier. Maybe it begins with the choice of a course we are compelled to make under the undergraduate system? It's a good indicator but surely not the beginning. Maybe it begins with the "stream" we have got to choose, any one of the strictly demarcated "Science", "Commerce" or "Arts", in 10th grade. Again, that's a good indication but sure as hell not the beginning. What about the the covert nudgings that our "third parents", i.e. our teachers, undertake in "hey daughter, you are good in mathematics. How about you focus on getting into a Science Junior College" one-to-one sitdown while they, in retrospect, suspiciously brush away your seemingly inconsequential poem? That would also explain subtle hierarchy between the so-called streams, wouldn't it? Since by the dictum of division of labour, specialising in a "low demand" artistic field would be a risky venture in comparison to a "high demand" and consequently "well paying" jobs in the sciences, wouldn't it?

So you got to choose, choose before you even get a real sense of what's out there, what's possible. Is then education even anymore a matter of expanding a child's mind to the wonders of this world and the wonders she can unlock with her unbridled spirit of curiosity? No! Seems instead that it's instead about creating the next class of men and women who can take whatever unfair choices that are thrown at their faces while they mould themselves along into the perfect cog for a system to juice it all up for it's own motives, namely creating profits by sapping the spirit out of the very humanity that was born with us. And to the people who talk about the lack of efficiency that would ensue had there not been any division of labour, think of the Leonardo Da Vincis of the world who, through their curiosities in multiple fields, were able to contribute so immensely. Think about Einsteins, who not only proposed the Special Theory of Relativity 1905 but also played violins in his spare time. Think of the Hedy Lamars, who on the one hand played leading roles in Hollywood productions but on the other was pivotal in the invention of the technology of wi-fi. These are the men and women who fell through the cracks of a system that has more and more over the years asked us to make life-altering decisions at an age where one should only be shown all the colors of the rainbow, all the sounds of music, all the true wonders that one can not even dream of.

And to all the people who say yeah you can be who you want to once you are a ragged old disheveled man having lost the game to society's masochistic rituals, I say fuck you. Not everyone's life can be fulfilled by your flaccid Colonel Sanders myth. The least you can do is not feed false hopes as one is about to fall into the valley of modern life.

[queernuck]

What To Do In November: On The Critique of Pornography

Recognition of the origin of a critique, what the genealogical structure of surrounding ideological and epistemic claims imply about it, and how exactly to draw that out and oppose it to the intended reading of a critique is a process which cannot be neglected when discussing contentious issues. it is so often neglected when it should be heavily involved in enacting important acts of critical inquiry, as the content of critique and the arrangement thereof can function as part of a series of binary-machines, a series of machines through which the critique flows such that the enacting or appropriation of potentially fascist or despotic structures of critique will lead to an eventual stoppage of any liberatory potential, a kind of replication of a certain desire. When this is a discussion of doubled-desire, desiring-desire in relation to desiring-repression as a fascist ideological position, the means by which sexual desire is itself restructured into apparently-neutered flows of resignification which in turn become sexual through invocation of a phallic lack, the care with which one’s critique is offered and redoubled, what exactly one discusses regarding it is a highly important matter of contention.

The paradigm of deviancy, degeneracy, the means by which it is named and aestheticized, how that aesthetic function is used to signify a specific sort of unwellness, a certain and rather particular framework for looking at structures of power and flows of desire, makes it such that the implications of one’s desire, decision to apply a certain framework, raises questions about exactly what surrounding suppositions are also implied specifically because of what languages “degeneracy” finds itself most comfortable within. Certainly there is the relatively symbolic, perhaps even masturbatory pride-in-degeneracy most associated with anarchists, and its reactionary mirroring in the National-Anarchist or “Apolitical Anarchist” irony wherein either a black metal Paganism or Satanism is used to describe a hedonistic-but-not-degenerate series of becomings, or the mirroring in various sanctimonious politics of the body and sanctification thereof, anarchist or not, which ascribe these tendencies to authority and sees a control of self-in-self, becoming-unlike-others as the most anarchist of acts. Regardless, there are singularities around behavior and its realization, the intensity of identity and exertion, but “degeneracy” is a term most associated with fascist vocabularies, and for good reason. 

Degeneracy as a paradigm is particularly associated with repression-desiring, with a certain sort of limitation of desire only possible through the desiring, inviting of such a turn, the necessity of mapping that turn onto one’s potential for the body. Thus, one enters into a fetishistic relationship with degeneracy, as seen with the fascist concepts of degenerate art, or degenerate sexuality, or degenerate lack-of-morality. Indeed, the relationship between sexuality and art is one which is found in the sort of ironic return that conspiracy theories regarding the porn industry and antisemitic tropes about porn (and Hollywood) frequently return to: scholarly work has been produced on the way that various figures in the creation of the porn industry as-such were Jewish, and to deny this would be to deny the wrong aspect of the conspiratorial thinking. In large part as an extension and repetition of the influences that lead to Jewish presence in filmmaking in the US at the beginnings of the Hollywood era, the respectability of the industry was low, as were the overheads, leading to decent profit margins and when technical knowledges, techniques and Virtual spaces of creation were carried over in filmmaking, that pornographic films were made with little distance from other movies of the time is hardly surprising. 

However, and this is an incredibly important distinction, the way that even this acknowledgement is resignified as a kind of kernel of truth, as a means of “redpilling” those who will eventually turn toward conspiracy, and an acceptance of the outright conspiracy predicated on this initial rejection. The turn occurs later on, once a kind of barrier has been passed, as with the sort of conspiratorial thinking that leads one to read within Behold A Pale Horse for a sort of foolish socialism which claims that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are in fact a genuine document, simply a misattributed one: this lures in those who have an obvious and meaningful interest in anticapitalist critique due to the means by which the conspiratorial structure is mapped onto ongoing imperialist violence, but from there, one eventually turns and reveals that in fact, the conspiratorial turn that was originally rejected is the more genuine one, that it is in fact the genuinely held belief at the core of the claim. Similarly, discussions of “pedophile rings” that turn to “satanic cults” are ones where the same process endures: once a certain level of commitment is sustained, once one has shown sufficient buy-in to the structure which has been named as such, it is then revealed that this is simply a stand-in for pedophilic blood libel, as seen with much of the discussion surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Without the contextualization of not only the notion that his death is suspicious (and that he very well may not have committed suicide) the notion that, regardless of his suicide there were likely very rich people with some stake in his death is one which on its face is unobjectionable simply because of how rich he was, how his wealth was used to create a terrifying sort of power, and the desire (flowing through fascist machines of resignification) to believe that it is not simply accumulation that allowed him to exert this kind of power, that there must have been some sort of organ through which it was conducted.

This refusal, the refusal to believe that in fact capitalist violence can account for a great deal of the violence raised with any of these critiques, leads to the means by which fascist appropriations of the discourses surrounding sexual expression, “degeneracy”, pornography, trans and LGBT identities, and kink are restructured into a demarcation of a profoundly violently restricted body. To recognize that “kink” is a relative structure, relative subject, one needs only to look at how trans women most generally have sex: that is, pornographically, outside themselves, for the benefit of men, as an extension of pornographic bodies of work and pornographic restructuring of the body such that becoming-woman and becoming-trans is a new sort of transition from one violently marked body into another, both sharing the structural position of “failed masculinity” and the same kinds of spaces as gay and bisexual men in relation to certain kinds of kink, and to submissive or fetishizingly dominant women in others. There are certain acts of humiliation and appropriation of the body for oneself going on in most acts of interaction with trans women that one sees. This is specifically because of how trans women are so rarely depicted outside of the pornographic, and how as a result trans women are drawn in a sense toward embodying the pornographic in order to make themselves intelligible by at least some fashion. If by nothing else, then, the pornographic stands as an example of what one can become. 

This is true as well for many gay men, for lesbians, is true along lines of race and most of all is the sort of critical violence, ideological fetishization that is misunderstood by critical reactions to kink and pornography. Instead, many follow specific genealogies of radical feminist thought which follow from a notion that heterosexual sex is still the only moral sort, but that this too must be excluded, and as a result either only approximations of sex made sexless (the sexless and neutered top and bottom, the sort of ideation of a never-present ever-rigid “butch and femme” scene that some radfems seem to think they fit into) or a genine sexlessness is offered as identity. So often, there is no room for sex to be made meaningful, beautiful, for sex that is not “kink” to be discussed specifically because all gay sex is already a priori a sort of kink, a subgenre on a porn website intended to steer white men away from investment in fascist structures of reproductive labor.

The structuring of a kind of false division between being against fascist ideation of "degeneracy" around masturbation and porn, and supporting businesses like PornHub or xHamster is one that has cropped up in response to the successful liberal signification of “wokeness” by such companies, alongside the revelation of exactly how these sites operate, means that the rift created by reactionary positions is ever deeper, ever more obvious, ever more important. When speaking of these companies, some will mention various marketing gimmicks, such as planting trees or plowing roads, intended to specifically juxtapose the ill repute of the porn industry with the apparent good of the deed. There is an irony there, and it is what is relied upon for the PR stunt to function as such. However, at the same time it has recently been confirmed that both of the aforementioned companies have been involved in specifically coercing nonconsensual performances from women lured in with “modeling” gigs and pushed toward taking part in sex acts, which are then spread with the intent of associating them with them in a fashion that is difficult to break. These women are trafficked, abused, and xHamster, PornHub, along with other popular porn websites profit off of trafficking, and affirming this, affirming that they are not part of a harmless industry but rather that there is a definite, sexualized, violent element is obviously important. 

In an attempt to distract from this, xHamster may discuss the right-wing Manosphere roots of “No Nut November”, both playing on its business model and lessening the seriousness of its own support of sexual violence. In turn, the right pushes back not on its own terms, but rather by couching its response in ambiguity, disguising that this is indeed a right-wing offering. But making it such that the right wing ideology at hand has a monopoly on the ideological framing makes it so that when one begins to critique it, there are continuous implications of antisemitic conspiracies, homophobia, race replacement theories, and other acts supporting an ideology which is not developed from a genuine act of caring about the women harmed by porn and trafficking for it beyond some sort of nebulous invocation of them for white dudes and their virility. The prevalence of “cuck” as an insult is itself tied to this: it is highly racialized, as is most cuckold pornography, and in turn is linked to “breeding” as a fetish, which itself is a kind of libidinal acting-out of the replacement anxiety that fascist desire operates on. It has created a language of its own to speak to itself, to create a representation of the very fantasies it fears. In turn, it then accuses its enemies of creating this in order to act in favor of indoctrination, to act as if the way in which these desires have been cultivated has nothing to do with reactionaries’ own languages of desire.

Reactionaries have been allowed to dominate critique of porn for so long that it seems natural to allow them to continue to dominate it, rather than to question that dominance, to realize that xHamster is happy to support genuinely harmful practices and pretend to make them "woke" with the help of "leftists" who either buy into them outright or let reactionary ideology go unchecked so that the material conditions at hand are not critiqued, just renamed in a fascist vocabulary. Similarly, when offering a critique of the porn industry, sex work, or the means by which criminalization and violence are inextricably tied to these, the way in which the very concept of the carceral is invoked within (and then sexualized by) this discussion contributes to the referencing of certain anxieties as desires: trans women are degenerates, pornsick, cumbrained, are only possible as kinks, in inherently sexual existences. By extension of eliminating these other supposed-pornographic experiences, trans women too much be exterminated, along with gay men, along with lesbians, along with gender nonconformity that does not itself restructure a certain acceptable heterosexuality. 

Effectively, the means by which antisemitic theories on the origins of sexuality and pornography become repeated in mainstream discussions contributes to an eventual willingness to accept fascist demarcations of how “degenerates” are to be marked, to be treated, and most of all to refuse to meaningfully examine why kink may be harmful, but additionally to accept that difference insofar as it is strange rather than based in drawing out and emphasizing a desire for repression, is perhaps not as horrifying as it is made out to be. Being clear, being open, and most of all affirming that the antisemitic, homophobic, racist ideological forebearers of a given insight are condemned, and that one does not link the machines of critique to these bodies, to fascist embodiments of opposition to degeneracy, means a genuine turn toward caring about women, about those harmed by pornography, about how this fits into capitalist accumulation and in turn how sexual lives are one part of the many sorts of lives and acts of living commodified and made into discrete, purchased and resold and resignified sorts of concept-objects, products of experience to be played with.

[creepingsharia]

Minnesota city council votes 5-0 to ditch Pledge of Allegiance (to avoid offending Muslims)

The district is represented by Ilhan Omar, the first Somali American to ever serve in the U.S. House of Representatives - Wikipedia                                

As Jihad Watch notes:

They didn’t mention Muslims, of course, but there is no doubt whatsoever that this was done to placate them. “In order to create a more welcoming environment to a diverse community we are going to forgo saying the pledge of allegiance before every meeting,” said Councilman Tim Brausen. The newcomers who need to be welcomed in this case are overwhelmingly Muslim, so this is clearly an extreme case of Islamopandering. But no one who cannot pledge allegiance to the United States of America should even be here, much less be pandered to. This shouldn’t even be a question.

SAINT LOUIS PARK, Minn. — Saint Louis Park City Council meetings will no longer begin with the Pledge of Allegiance.

The council voted to change meeting protocol on June 17, moving start times up an hour to 6:30 p.m. and dropping the pledge. The resolution was approved by a 5-0 vote with one council member and the mayor absent. 

Anne Mavity, the Ward 2 council member in St. Louis Park, sponsored the change, saying the pledge doesn't reflect the city's diverse values and is not necessary. 

"Not everyone who does business with the city or has a conversation is a citizen," Mavity said. "They certainly don't need to come into city council chambers and pledge their allegiance to our country in order to tell us what their input is about a sidewalk in front of their home."

To be clear, the city council did not vote to ban the pledge. It may still be used during special occasions, such as appearances by the Boy Scouts Color Guard.

"We just decided it was something we didn't need to do as a part of every single meeting," Mavity said. 

The decision drew a response on Twitter from the Minnesota Senate Republicans, who called the move "shocking."

Mike Thingvold, who grew up in St. Louis Park before he was drafted into the Army during Vietnam to serve in Germany, asked: "It's been there forever and ever. Why get rid of it now?"

He added: "I think there's more things to worry about than just the Pledge of Allegiance. You get excited about that, I hate to see what else you get excited about."

Mavity, however, said she encourages the debate. 

"I understand that people think differently and we welcome that," Mavity said. "That is what democracy is all about."

In an email, Mayor Jake Spano did not say he opposed the measure to remove the pledge, but said it was not a "high priority" for him. "First, I think there are more substantive things we should be working on to make our city more open and welcoming and secondly, I’ve always used the last six words, “with liberty and justice for all”, as a reminder to me that not everyone in our community enjoys the benefits of those words and it’s my job to everything I can to fix that," he said.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clearly, the nation is divisible now with a clear demarcation between those who prefer liberty and individual rights and those who prefer plunder, socialism, foreign invasion and and tyranny.

After a fierce backlash, the anti-Pledge council claims they will revisit their decision.

The Pledge:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Ilhan Omar met with the city council as recently as May 30, 2019:

[alistairlane]

On Civil War

          Throughout all of history, people have been made subject to ruling orders by that they have deployed what, in martial terms, is called the “divide and conquer” strategy.  The tactic seeks to create internal schisms within a community in order to atomize its members. Once people have become isolated from each other, they can be integrated into a political body that has rendered their natural antagonism inoperative and can actually enforce the very repression that the ruling order that they necessarily did not want to become subject to sought to carry out.  That sovereignty had been constituted by a process that induced social disintegration had resulted in the absurdity of that the potential crisis of civil war had more or less become a normalized state of affairs within most nation-states. Contrary to popular belief, civil war has not been regarded as a crisis that poses an existential threat to whatever powers there are that may be; it has, rather, provided the various regimes who have sought to deploy the divide and conquer strategy in the formal constitution of a state with the semblance of legitimacy in that their rule of law has appeared to have been justified by that they have actually needed to respond to the very crisis that their attempts to secure power by such measures has inevitably created.  The threat of civil war provides a nation-state with the justification for the suspension of the rule of law and the deployment of the extra-juridical forms of repression that have come to be called “emergency powers”.  Because no person can agree to become subject to a state that seeks to divide and conquer its populace, and, because most nation-states have historically deployed such strategies in their establishment, what we have come to understand as the “rule of law” has not generally been legitimated by the faith that a populace has in a state’s constitution as according to what Jean Jacques Rousseau theorized as the “Social Contract”; it has, rather, been established by what nation-states have enacted during states of emergency. The exception to the rule of law has become the law itself.  In order to prevent the more nefarious parties engaged in the already dubious battle for global dominance from securing power in the absolute, we need to actively disengage from all that is unduly divisive within our respective communities, refuse to be integrated within any social order that seeks to subjugate its prospective constituents by exploiting social disintegration, and present a legal challenge to the dictates that have been enacted by suspending the rule of law during states of emergency.

               All of this is, of course, easier said than done. When a nation-state is no longer capable of maintaining the semblance of legitimacy, which, in most cases, is to say, that when its ruling order is no longer capable of deceiving its populace, those who seek to restore decorum will, in desperation, resort to overtly violent tactics, such as the carrying out of political assassinations or the deployment of the military, or attempt to introduce the threat of violence within communities that they believe have lost their faith in their authority.  As people are naturally inclined to create and participate in communities that are freely associated, the threat of violence undermines their original basis.  Free association is defined by Google Dictionary as “the forming of a group, political alliance, or other organization without any constraint or external restriction”.  As a theoretical concept, it has been explored by both Marxists and Anarchists.  I interpret “free association” as signifying the ideal circumstances of any given social relationship wherein all parties are free from coercion.  I see it as not only being the precept upon which human relations are naturally established and the common inspiration for the participation in what we have come to call “politics”, but, also, the revelatory principle that can make civilization consummate.  To substantiate free association is to take part in a political project that furthers the total liberation of all of humanity.  Because I hold these truths to be self-evident, I have been called an “idealist”.  To this, I respond with that there is no reason to situate social relationships upon anything but ideal grounds.  As no person can agree to become subjugated through coercion, that they are free from it is always necessarily demanded in any given situation.  The freedom from coercion is a natural right that determines the conditions of the democratic project as a whole.  That people should be freely associated is not a mere utopian reverie; it is the requisite condition for democracy to occur.

               As the principle which I have invoked is just simply cogent, it ought to be easy to affirm.  Because most ruling orders have had years to experiment with just how to enact the variegated set of procedures that effectuate subjugation, however, to refuse to participate within a society that renders solidarity inoperative now means to forgo one’s right to exist.  Life must be qualified by its civic merits in order for most ruling orders in most nation-states to consider for it to be of value.  To refuse to become subject to the unsanctioned dominion of the nation-state has become a peril wherein a living person’s status as such is let to be called into question.  To relinquish one’s status as a person who is regarded as a “citizen” now means to let oneself be considered as an “enemy combatant”.  While most nation-states do not have the legal jurisdiction to either deprive political radicals of their citizenship or to banish them from the political sphere, their isolation is still culturally enforced.  Those who are aware of our political situation and willing to change it have become outcasts.  As much as I suspect for moralizing to risk engendering a cult of martyrdom, I must, here, insist that we are compelled to refuse to engage in or sanction either the violence or dissension imposed by most nation-states by both that our freedom is defined by the status of the natural rights of others and that we ought to attempt to create the best of all possible worlds while we are here on Earth.  To express solidarity means to be willing to be regarded as an outcast and to defend the unjustly marginalized.  It is only through its ecstatic disclosure that we will see a world that could, at all, be considered to be utopian.

          In spite of that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the 10th of December in 1948, the attempts to effectively utilize human rights legislation, international law, or to repeal the wanton abuses of jurisprudence that comprise the extra-juridical protocols which apparently legitimate the excessive use of force by most nation-states have done little to either significantly invoke human rights or restrain most nation states from actualizing what are often violent campaigns more or less without the consent of their respective populaces.  The legal theory behind what, in The State of Exception, Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, called the “state of exception” is also fairly obscure. Political theologist and “crown jurist of the Third Reich”, Carl Schmitt, delineated his defense of sovereignty in his seminal thesis on dictatorship, Dictatorship.  While his theory may be difficult to understand because he was a jurist who specialized in legal theory, I would allege that, because almost no person would be likely to agree with him, his work has been intentionally obfuscated. In spite of that I do think that the political works of Giorgio Agamben are a proper antithesis to what Carl Schmitt has postulated, his political philosophy is unfortunately no less arcane. We are in dire need of a practical theory of Law that can substantially situate its constituents within a paradigm that posits both natural and human rights conclusively.  By this, I do not merely mean to suggest that either natural or human rights ought to exist; I am stating that they do in order to make it emphatically evident that they necessarily demarcate just what laws are passed and how.  Human rights transcend the nation-state just as any good ideas ought to transcend any form of botched compliance.  Natural rights exist by that they are always necessarily demanded in every given situation. Liberation is inexpropriable. That we should seek to interpret the Law in our favor is not just radical zeal; it is an honest assessment of our current political situation.

          So, what, then, remains to be said for “civil war”?  While it is clearly the case that attempts at subjugation will necessitate some form of revolt, I do not think that we should agree to their terms. Because, in most nation-states, we have the legal precedents to lay claim to either free association or the freedom from coercion, the attempt to reduce the status of political dissidents to one where their right to life can be called into question, or, to include them in the civic sphere by their very exclusion as what has come to be called “bare life”, can be effectively countered by an appeal to all that is veritable of the democratic project as a whole.  While such a strategy may occasionally have to rely upon the invocation of the rights of citizens, I think that human rights legislation ought to transcend the confines of the nation-state.  While, in order to put such a plan of action into operation, we may have to rely upon the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, I do not think that international law should ideally be conceptualized as it has been enacted by the United Nations.  To state my position as an Anarcho-Pacifist in favor of nonviolent revolution does indicate that I am willing to engage in civil war. It does not, however, as per the terms which have been offered, mean that I am willing forfeit my “unalienable” natural rights.  As the threat of civil war serves as the pretext for martial law, the hysteria which it inspires needs to be allayed.  Because most ruling orders have secured power through their response to the very crises that their projected reign has necessarily incited, almost all of the radical transformation of the nation-state from a sovereignty to a democratic entity has been inspired by some form of civil disobedience or another. Nearly all of the lofty ideals of the Liberal democratic project have been antithetical to the structure of the nation-states in which they were born.  The demand for free association does not produce a political crisis in that it presents the nation-state with a social configuration that can rival that of the established ruling order; it, rather, resolves the political crisis that has been imposed upon the populace by that, in most cases, the ruling order has been established through subjugation.  The substantiation of the freedom from coercion, free association, solidarity, and nonviolent revolution does not imperil negating the democratic process; it can, rather, bring it to its apotheosis.  I do not seek to destroy civilization by participating in a vaguely eschatological project that foretells a common war of all against all; I merely intend to reify what has become sanctimonious of it.  Liberation, the realization of egalitarianism, and world peace are not just possible; they are the only ends that any person who is sincerely engaged in politics should seek to actualize.                      

[aforanio]

Traces

Anio

.

‘‘ML: You do something with architectural means that makes an obsolete reality present again. 

PZ: I think it is more about creating a feeling for the things that are absent than about creating a feeling of presence for things lost. So I try to create a feeling for things that are no longer here or for the lost context of things that are still here.’’ 

 Peter Zumthor and Mari Lending - A Feeling of History 

Allmannajuvet Zinc Mine Museum in Sauda - Peter Zumthor 

 As a child I rarely took the tube. But when I did, I found it a hostile environment; the artificial light, or better said the lack of natural light, the unrealistic fear of falling on the train tracks, the lack of anything to do while waiting. As I grew up I had to start taking the metro in Bucharest. I remember going to drawing lessons from school, and in winter, when I was coming back, it was right at that time of day when the light is dimming. 5 minute wait, 12 minute ride, 4 stations, and when I’m out its pitch dark. I find it the closest mean of transport to teleportation. 

 Imagine yourself in a city where you’ve never been before in an underground station. Remove from your mental image the station sign, the clock (including the line monitor) and the posters. Now you find yourself in any station of that city, at any time of the day, at any time of the year, in any year since the station was build; it’s a feeling of atemporality and a-spatiality. Most underground stations are quite sterile spaces, they are utility constructions that are guided by the laws of efficiency. The materials used are durable and don’t show signs of weathering - glazed tiles, metal or plastic seats, rubbery paint; they are materials that don’t absorb any memories, except of their initial moment(from station to station they vary slightly in fashion according to the time they were built). 

Berlin underground stations closely respects this morphology (I will be referring as underground stations to both U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations that are in the underground). Built at the beginning of the 20th century, with a rapid growth up until the Second World War, and further, after the separation of the city, Berlin underground system(and overground) was and is an ever changing fingerprint of the city. From the lines’ web to the specific sign and lettering it is a system, or better said the circulation of the city’s body particular for Berlin and only for Berlin. Even though it respects the guidelines on which a metro is built, it can only tell the story of Berlin. One distinctive aspect to be noted about German underground stations is that you don’t have any form of physical barriers when accessing the platform; in this way I would argue that the stations become extensions of the streets and the ‘no questions asked’ public space. It acts primarily as part of the transport scheme, but auxiliary it undertakes non-direct characteristics of shelters, meeting spaces and shortcuts in the urban scape. 

As a downfall, Berlin underground stations develop as more than shady places. For instance, the film ‘Christiane F. - Wir kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’ - 1981 (Christiane F. - Us children from Bahnhof Zoo) focuses on a group of West Berlin teenagers who get addicted to heroin. They’re place of hangout is an U-Bahn station around which are depicted scenes of drug dealing, violence and prostitution. Another example, is set in East Berlin in the film ‘Coming out’ focused on the LGBT community in an oppressive regime(the film first airs publicly the night Berlin wall fell). One of the scenes shows a man being beaten up by a group of people in a tube station for looking distinctive. 

From ‘Christiane F. - Wir kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo’

From a historic point of view, Berlin underground bears marks and tears, nowadays mostly concealed or erased, of the city’s life. In WW2 part of the tube stations served as air-raid shelters and  housed military wounded in trains on underground sidings. In the final Battle of Berlin, on 2 May 1945, the Nord-Süd-Bahn tunnel (a major service line) gets flooded, leaving behind an unknown number of casualties, making it paradoxically a safe space and a death trap. 

The night commencing the 13th of August 1961, underground passengers were the first to experience the division of the city. The late-night trains started stopping at the boundary between sectors, travellers were brought to the side they belonged to, and outside there was the wall. In the following years to come, the whole metro system got separated, cut in two, being another form of disruption. Bearing this in mind, it had its blind spots, small inaccuracies given by the complexity of the rail system, both physical and political. 

 Certain lines(U6, U8 and S2), primarily in the West were still running under sections of Eastern ground. This services were not interrupted, but it was decided to continue working without stopping in Eastern stations. They become ‘ghost stations’; on western maps they are crossed out, while on eastern maps they disappear all together, access being sealed and guards permanently surveying them from newly built concrete booths. In 1989, shortly after Berlin wall fell, Max Gold films one of the ghost stations(Potsdamer Platz). In the video you can see the station, in a form of weathering and decay through lack of use, but at the same time it is frozen in time in 1961. There are not many differences to any other station in Berlin, besides the old posters and the guard booth, but it is covered in thick dust and tiles are falling off the wall. In 1992, Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station is the last ghost station to reopen, after the restoration of the Nord-Süd-Bahn tunnel. The station looks awfully a lot as it looks in the 1989 footage, even the white tiles covering the concrete columns are kept the same, making it almost impossible to distinguish if you’re in 1961 or 1992 or 2019. 

Potzdamer Platz S-Bahn Station in 1989

U-Bahn map West Berlin

S-Bahn and U-Bahn map East Berlin

I’ve set as a direction for ‘Traces’ the insertion or change of an element in the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station that gives it a sense of temporality and spatial distinction, while alluding to its memory, without reconstructing it in any forward manner. By decomposing the station into component parts I focused on identifying the bit that interacts with the largest amount of people, that realistically, is touched, directly or indirectly, by anybody who passes through the space; and that would be the pavement/flooring. What I would find as being the three pieces characteristic for a metro station flooring are the general waiting area, the delimitation strip (for example the yellow line in London) and the space between the delimitation line and the track lines, where you are not allowed to step if the train isn’t in the station. This structure triggered my interest, as it creates a visual and tactile language that communicates to you through changes in colour and texture. 

 Materiality, Form and Sizing 

 After watching Adrian Forty’s lecture on his book ‘Concrete and culture’ I have reinforced my idea of concrete as a suited material for my endeavour. He argues for the multiple dualities of concrete; natural-artificial, historic-unhistoric, universal-local, memory-amnesia etc. Moreover, I took as inspiration Rachel Whiteread’s approach on concrete as a material that can embed the memory of an object, while creating an identity of its own. Through experiments, I have tested how different compositions of concrete get set or altered by the use of textiles. The indentations are generally made by using my fingertips not only to show how concrete can be easily manipulated, emphasising the antithesis between solidity and fragility, but also to give a scale for the striations that are meant to be felt while not being dangerous(if you’re not wearing stilettos). The patterns create shadows that give relief to the station, moving it away from a 2D register of materials. 

The pavement is able to store information such as the weather outside, or the time of year, while being quite durable and easy to maintain. It might resemble to the eye the side of a river where there used to be water, suggesting the tunnel’s flooding (Potsdamer Platz was and is part of the  Nord-Süd-Bahn tunnel). The liminal bit is rougher making a visual statement of danger and brittleness, while the demarcation strip is set in wood and stuck in using mortar, talking about an old ‘doorstep’, that was hard to place, but effortlessly removed. The model is 40cm x 64cm so it can be tested. The liminal bit and the strip will rarely be stepped on as they have a width of 24cm while an average step from heel to heel is 76cm, leaving an untouched space.

[circlecast]

The Sinkable Female-Led Relationships

Now there are many different types of relationships around. Many work and more don't. Wanted to examine one relationship "Style" that is being talked about and the Nice guy thinks he will like it, yet the woman will become miserable. That style is the Female Led Relationship

Thanks, to the Woke wave of Feminism you are seeing women we are wanting to change the family dynamic. Why? well, they are entering into relationships with the mindset that men are the scourge of society and that the traditional roles are the root of all suffering. Yet their suffering is created by their own actions and choosing the wrong partner.

So you have a victim who is wanting to have control and thanks to the nice guys in society they are getting it believing they are going to get a free ride. They don't have to make any of the hard decisions. They don't have to worry about the accounting. They can just be comfortable and not have to worry about anybody getting upset because they won't be at fault. Sounds like a man's paradise right? No this is a man's nightmare along with it reinforcing the stereotype that men don't do anything

What is a Woman-Led Relationship

There are levels of the female-led relationship

According to Momjunction.com, there are 4 different levels of Female-led relationships.

Low Leveled Female Control

the woman has low authority, and all the decisions are taken mutually by the man and the woman. The man allows his partner to take the lead in specific scenarios and, sometimes, she needs the permission of the man to make a decision.

Momjunction.com

Moderate Level of Female Control

the female can enjoy being a leader for a while and has a sense of ruling the man. It helps boost her confidence and morale and makes the relationship more positive. The man also often enjoys the dominant attitude of the woman. At this level, the woman usually takes the day-to-day decisions, but she also sets boundaries regarding how far she is willing to go.

MomJunction.com

Defined Control

In this type of female-led relationship, the woman makes most decisions and takes on the male roles too. The areas where she can be dominant are defined to ensure there is a demarcation.

MomJunction.com

Extreme Control

Here there is extreme control by the woman and servitude by the man. This relationship is for women who like to have the ultimate power in the relationship.

MomJunction.com

There are Rules too

The female makes most of the household decisions. The man shares his opinion before a decision is made, and the woman may value it.

The woman can help motivate the man to work on getting rid of any bad habits like excessive smoking or dependence on alcohol by being authoritative.

Although the man and woman distribute household tasks, the man agrees to do chores like cooking, cleaning, etc.

The woman takes most financial decisions, and the man trusts his wife to take care of things.

The woman also takes decisions regarding social events and social gatherings.

Why would anyone like this?

Because according to Liveboldandbloom.com women offer unique qualities

Compassion and empathy

Sensitivity

Resilience in the face of adversity

A nurturing attitude

Intuition

Emotional self-awareness

Persuasiveness

Inclusiveness

Lemetropolelille.com also has some points it would like to add

Women are more likely to communicate, thus creating an atmosphere of openness.

This usually leads to fewer disagreements when the male consciously steps back from the leadership role.

Both partners become more attentive.

Both partners feel freer to express their feelings.

When women are pleased in their relationships, they would be more willing to give in to the man’s requests. This satisfaction often translates to better action in the bedroom.

There is a clear division or even sharing of responsibilities, as women are more likely to acknowledge the need for variations.

The relationship is not tied down solely by children and gender roles. It is carried by mutual respect. It is even initiated by respect, coming from the male who gave up his natural role to humble himself to a woman he loves.

As you read this and other articles stating the benefits of a female-led relationship you will see how they paint the scenario as it becoming a better relationship. The man is happier and things flow so much better. Yet this is far from the case. This is one reason so many women are divorcing. They sense that there is a lack in the relationship and cant explain it. Then they come across a more masculine man and suddenly they are more enamored with him. This leaves the submissive nice guy sitting in the ruins of his relationship wondering why she left. This often causes men to turn to the Red pill movement or MGTOW. VIctim-oriented relationships lead to creating more victims.

The Traditional Relationship

The issue here is that the feminists don't see how the traditional means of relationships are actually allowed for the growth and improvement of both parties involved.

First women do have power.

Now if we rewind back to the 70s and 80s My grandfather was a mountain of a man. I don't remember how tall he was but he was a big man barrel-chested and with a deep growl of a voice. The marriage to my grandmother was one of care and gentleness. He was also viewed by many in town to be a bit of an asshole. So my Grandad was a complex person, just as everybody else is.

The feminists would think that my grandmother didn't have any power. She was a slave to his words and whims. Yet my grandmother had her own set of power over her domain, that house. She ruled that roost with just an iron fist as my grandad had over his domain. Grandad didn't set foot on her floors if she just mopped them. He was respectful to her and she to him. He did the finances and she took care of their 5 kids.

They didn't approach their relationship with a victim mindset. They had a relationship of mutual respect. Did they argue and fit? I don't know I would assume so but I never witnessed it.

Changing the circumstance isn't going to change your thoughts

If you think you have to control another person to be happy then you are going to be in a world of hurt. If you think you are going to be able to just sit back and chill because you have abdicated your responsibilities to the other person? You have another thing coming. When two people are supposed to work together and one person is just loafing around guess what's going to happen. Resentment is going to build.

You have to have good communication skills but you also have to do the thought work. Understand why you think you are not being fulfilled. Why is your spouse not making you happy? because they cant. I have mentioned many times before that you cant make a person feel anything. What you feel is from what you think. So if you think you are a victim in a relationship. Then you are going to find all the reasons why you are a victim. If you see yourself as an equal then you are going to find all the reasons as to why you are an equal.

Newest podcast episode to change your Mindset

[seedfinance]

How CPAs helped save businesses during COVID-19

As the COVID–19th Pandemic changed the business environment, customers turned to their CPAs to keep their businesses alive. CPAs offering Client Advisory Services (CAS) were well positioned to help clients in difficulty stabilize and reposition their business. The term CAS can encompass everything from outsourced accounting to outsourced CFO and controller services to management consulting services. Have CPAs who offer CAS real–Time Knowing about their clients ‘finances, which gives them the opportunity to offer a better strategic perspective on their clients’ business. For example, CPAs working with customers in affected sectors used CAS to enable their customers to re-imagine what is possible.

Let restaurants cook

About 75% of Nick Swedberg’s customers are restaurants and small craft breweries in Minnesota. These types of companies were “some of the hardest hit” during the pandemic shutdown, he said.

To help his customers stay in business, Swedberg, a partner at Boyum Barenscheer in Bloomington, Minnesota, advised them on a variety of solutions, such as: to–walk Sales and deliveries. Since they had planned to start deliveries to replace In–person while eating, they had to deal with questions about the profitability and feasibility of moving, including analysis of employee compensation, auto insurance and handling tips, which are highly regulated in his state. He was able to do this with Excel, “set up some advanced formulas so there are only a few key metrics” that he had to adjust to test possible outcomes for different scenarios, he said.

Swedberg also helped its clients reach out to local government leaders for temporary exemptions from regulations. For example, some of its restaurant owner customers got permission from their cities to expand outdoors when indoor eating was banned. One city had a restaurant take over a city parking lot, while another closed its main street to allow al fresco dining. When a customer of a brewery owner asked the local health authority if beer delivery could be legalized, the board worked with the company to make it happen possible.

Swedberg supported this process by quantifying how the special permits sought by customers could save their restaurants and the jobs of their employees, and help them make convincing arguments on the spot Government.

As customers got more creative, Swedberg helped them implement their ideas. For example, a Mexican restaurant owner turned half of its space into a market where customers could buy salsa, meat, and other ingredients that they could use in preparing meals at home. As Swedberg predicts, the pivot cost has been minimal, the restaurant business has gotten a boost, and the market has done well. “It was fun to see how it comes to fruition,” he said. On the flip side, another client decided not to pursue their plans to convert their space into a home for four types of restaurants when the projected cost was too high.

“My job is to get them to put their thoughts in order and then come up with a real financial forecast,” to see if their plans were viable, Swedberg said. “Do you remember in math when you had to convert a word problem into an equation?

Maintaining the health of service-related practices

Sandy Shecter, CPA, CGMA, is the company-wide director of Rehmann Solutions, a division of 900–person Rehmann with branches in three federal states. Based in Detroit, Shecter has customers of doctors, dentists, and surgical centers that range in size from one provider to 350+. Their opening ability and patient volumes were impacted when many states ordered closures last spring.

Shecter stepped in to help clients apply for the Paycheck Protection Program and other loans or grants. Your company also worked with clients to provide data and forecasting for decision making on management issues such as: B. to provide employee leave; introducing new ways to work with patients, such as B. Telemedicine; and solving critical technology problems, such as cybersecurity or the complete outsourcing of a customer’s IT department.

Your company also assists with a variety of outsourced services, including recruiting to reduce staff costs, technology expertise that enables telemedicine, and outsourced bookkeeping and bookkeeping. “Providing these services on an outsourced basis enables customers to customize their usage as needed,” she said.

At the end of September 2020, most of Shecter’s customers were almost back In front–pandemic Patient level, but predicts permanent change. Your strategic planning with customers includes options such as making greater use of patient portals for communication and switching return–office Employees too the end–Location locations.

She advises CPAs to think beyond compliance and focus on delivering more to clients in terms of business consulting. “The pandemic underscored the value that customers place on us real–Time Information that they can use to manage their business, “she said.” This is really crucial. “For example, your customers often ask her for help with cash flow management, debt aging analysis, and budget recalculation and monitoring.

Finding the key to real estate sustainability

When rental income declined during the pandemic, Brandon Hall, CPA, who served as his clients’ outsourced CFO, conducted real estate portfolio research for clients of real estate investors to see how they could improve rental income performance. He also developed the tax minimization and costs–Demarcation Strategies to help them improve cash flow.

Hall, the CEO of 24–employees The Real Estate CPA firm of Raleigh, NC creates custom dashboards for clients using Google Sheets, spreadsheets that are easy to access and collaborate with for both him and his clients. It is possible to enter the customer’s QuickBooks online accounting data live into this dashboard. “The dashboard keeps track of what’s important to the customer,” said Hall, which usually includes information about utilization. budget–to–costs, Rehab expenses, cash income from a cash investment in real estate, return on equity and internal rate of return.

Hall was initially concerned about the economic uncertainty the pandemic was causing, as he hadn’t seen a similar disruption in his career. His business coach gave advice that he uses with his own customers and recommends other practitioners: Create a financial plan for the next 12 months that will be in one– to two–month Tranches and set the expected financial performance metrics for each tranche. Decide what action to take if you miss your metrics by 10%, 20%, and so on – for example, staff or expense savings. Once you hit your metrics, no changes will be made necessary.

Just having a plan of what to do when outcomes are good and bad can reduce customer stress and improve their response to setbacks, Hall said. “You cannot control the economy, but you can control how you react to it,” he said.

Help construction companies build stronger businesses

In northern Colorado, due to the dynamism of the local economy, the pandemic had minimal economic impact on construction customers, said Ralph Shinn, CPA / PFS, partner at nine–employees ClearPath consultant in Fort Collins. Surprisingly, the real challenge for these customers was to hire enough workers or contractors as some decided to stop working and start receiving unemployment benefits during the pandemic. When this forced clients to postpone some projects, the company helped them use that time as an opportunity to reevaluate their hiring practices.

The company also helped its customers bill and invoice additional expenses related to the pandemic or prepare quotes that include additional expenses related to the pandemic, such as the cost of personal protective equipment required on construction sites, and the additional mileage and vehicle fees that employees incur when carpooling is no longer feasible. “Lots [clients] didn’t take that cost into account, “Shinn said.

Shinn’s practice has too Professional–Services Customers ranging from physical therapists to companies providing hospital administration services. Many of these customers were unfamiliar with remote working, so Shinn’s company, which has been using remote working for more than 20 years, offered them free training on the remote control–work Environment and access to the cloud–based Packages it uses. “We wanted to show them that work in one cloud–based and a paperless environment can make businesses more efficient, effective and profitable, “Shinn said. The company also offered advice on the tax benefits of setting up home offices and training remote workers.

CPAs can step in when customers struggle

In uncertain times, many clients not only seek tax and accounting help, but also business advice. As companies grappled with the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, CPAs stepped in to identify customers’ needs based on their existing knowledge of their companies. Offering CAS services can strengthen the role of CPAs as trusted business advisors who can provide practical and effective solutions to business challenges and valuable advice on how to make the most of opportunities.

source https://seedfinance.net/2021/08/12/how-cpas-helped-save-businesses-during-covid-19/

[irisfilmcollective]

Iris Film Collective in collaboration with Western Front are pleased to present  

An evening of works by  Robert Schaller  for film and music  

with live piano and cello accompaniment  

Tuesday February 13 2018 at 7pm, Western Front Grand Luxe Hall   (this is a free event!) For more than twenty years, Robert Schaller has been making films that are fundamentally concerned with two essential aspects of filmmaking: the materiality of the film medium itself, and the creation of "visual music" through applying the formal structures of music to filmmaking.

Most recently he has been using hand-coated silver emulsion and a homemade pinhole camera to film according to precisely composed camera scores, visually constellating the world around him into elegant and often elusive visual forms, and addressing issues of human nature and our relationship to the natural world both within and around us.

Schaller lives in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado, where he founded and runs the Handmade Film Institute.

THE FILMS:

InVerge Invocation (Live Music for Cello composed by Robert Schaller, 2 mins) Originally composed for a string quartet, presented here to introduce tonight's show.

Snow (2017, 16mm B+W Silent, 5 mins) What is the future, or even the present, of snow? 2016 was officially the Earth's warmest since record-keeping began in the 1880s -- and was the third year in a row to earn that dubious honour. The beginning of 2017 saw abundant snow in the Colorado mountains, but spring has come suddenly, several weeks early, and the snow has melted at an astonishing speed. This film starts calmly, intending to dwell on the austere forms of a cold and silent winterscape, but instead is forced to follow the retreating snow up to higher altitudes, almost frenetically following as it melts and then is gone.

Walk (2003/2010/2017, 16mm x 2 presented digitally, colour with Live Cello, 5 mins) Music composed by Robert Schaller A journey through a never-ending forest, from nothing and into nothing. Without beginning and without end, despite its brevity. Where are we going, anyway?Originally for two interlocked 16mm projectors, it is here presented as a digital transfer.

My Life As A Bee (2002, 16mm Pinhole, Colour, Silent, 5 min) An imagining of a bee’s eye view of a spring day in Golden Gate Park. A primitive, home-made camera reveals a world of vibrant, frenetic color, racing between flowers and losing itself in the revelry of survival and sunshine.

Through (2016, 16mm B+W with Live Cello, 6 min) Music composed by Robert Schaller Fences are borders, edges, gateways: liminal space, demarcations between This and That. But they are inscribed on a landscape which knows nothing of the logic of division. Here, their arbitrariness is doubly swallowed up by not just agnostic fields and forests, but by a primitive homemade emulsion that almost does not "see" them. The boundaries that meant so much to those who built them dissolve into a meditative abstraction of light and sound.

In the Shadow of Marcus Mountain (2011, 16mm B+W Silent, 6 min) The structures of our thought filter what we see, and in fact there is no seeing apart from those structures. This film is part of an ongoing project to show where I am in a (here, natural) landscape in a way that reflects those structures of thought. It is "hypnogogic," not so much perceptually (although to some extent that too) as conceptually. Our eyes see constantly, but what do we actually notice? That vision is excessive, wasteful, even; in paring down, it becomes both more spare and more concentrated. It is also a meditation in process of how my marvelous son Marcus has changed my life and my way of being in the world, recolouring a place where I was already.

To The Beach (1999, 16mm Colour Sound, 10 min) Music by John Drumheller One hears in the call of the sea the feeling of a promise made to us before birth, that we can know the world not merely as an atlas of things seen, but rather as a continuum of felt experience in which it is impossible to distinguish between our selves and the world around us: self and other are melded into one. To the Beach explores this feeling from three vantage points, filmed (respectively) near, in, and under the sea using a variety of techniques, and registers the resulting images onto hand-made film emulsion. I. Approaching the Shore: in which the ocean first offers its irresistible salty scent. II. Swimming: in which we become again what we are. III. Seeing Stars: as above, so below.

Four Delicate Concerns (2015, 16mm B+W Silent, 5 min) Made as a filmic contribution to a show based on a short story at the Chocolate Factory in New York, Four Delicate Concerns synthesizes two distinctly different envisionments of the same ritualized and abstractly sexual actions. With Michelle Ellsworth as Wonder Woman.

If Not One And One (2000, 16mm x 3 digital transfer, Color Sound, 15 min) Music by Michael Theodore The creation of collaborators Robert Schaller, composer Michael Theodore, and performance artist Michelle Ellsworth. Images of Ellsworth create a visual tapestry on a non-silver film, with an evocative score for violin and computer-processed acoustic sounds. Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey and Gertrude Stein's Stanzas in Meditation, If not One and One offers a kinetic and visual exploration of identity in a postmodern world.

Mail (2013, 16mm B+W with Live Cello & processing, 10 min) Music composed by Simon Christiansen A letter from the ephemeral pinhole world, sent, written, and received. Physicality by Michelle Ellsworth and Lauren Beale.

Duet for Film and Piano [working title] (2017 16mm with live piano, 7min) Composed and performed by Robert Schaller

[tapeartblog]

R1.′s Transforming Elements

R1. is a street artist who works in the transit areas of Johannesburg, South Africa. He explores the outside environment and uses found objects, materials and locations.

Artist Name: r1. Where do I live now?  I’m a street artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. I’ve also lived in England, and during those years I did extensive traveling throughout Europe. The European arts and culture made a big impact on me and had a large influence on my creative output. When I returned to South Africa my art transformed into multi-dimensional facets: one of which is tape.

When did you start tape art? In 2013 I started playing around with barrier (hazard) tape. I used the tape to transform my city environment, and by doing so, creating a new meaning for what the tape signifies. The tape opened a whole new dialogue with how I experience the city around me.

Why barrier tape art? South Africa brings together a diversity of cultures and languages as a melting pot of colourful people and lifestyles. But in such rich diverse climate there are still vast differences. Uneven distribution creates divisions and segregated areas between us. Boundaries are shaped between different people occupying different city spaces, and for some of us, particular areas are considered as ‘no-go’ zones. This general outlook creates the idea of ‘danger’ and ‘safety-mania’. We live in a society with high levels security around us, with high walls, electric fences, and security gates so much that we don’t see them anymore. Hence, most city spaces remain ‘unknown’ for many and the streets become remote transit areas with little interaction for people to connect. I believe these features have an enormous psychological effect on how we experience ourselves and others within our external environment.             I am a street artist and I work in these transit areas of a city. I explore my outside environment and I use objects, found materials, site specific locations and combine these elements to transform city spaces. One familiar medium I like to use is barrier tape, also known as hazard, construction, or warning tape. The purpose of barrier tape is to demarcate ‘no-go’ areas. Barrier tapes of different colours are used for specific purposes; for instance when entering a designated dangerous zone. The general response to a barricaded area is to conform without questioning to the boundaries that are closed off. This mind-set resonates in our own cities; and the concept of ‘danger’ represented by barrier tape plays an interesting role in a city that is fenced-in by ‘invisible barriers’ and confines. As a street artist, I transform the conventional use and function of barrier tape in the urban space. The tape-interventions are not used to barricade areas. Instead, the colourful lines and patterns are assembled together becoming singular-formed murals, acquiring a new life of its own. The barrier tape in such form plays joyfully with established perceptions of the city and reveals unfamiliar spaces that are taken for granted.

What inspires you? My city surroundings, music and artist’s I admire. I believe creative thought is never based on a fixed idea, it is fluid, unexpected and one needs to be open to receive new profound ideas that motivate you.

Tell me a synonym for art? Each person goes through his/her own journey and it is important to have an intimate relationship with that journey. Especially in art is about not following somebody else’s handbook. It is about going out there and doing it yourself! Write your own handbook.

How do you make a living? With difficulty. It’s not easy being an artist and specifically doing what I do. But it makes ’making a living’ a whole lot more interesting!

Inspiring quote from you as a street artist? The ‘nature’ of the street is never to retract; the streets only expand.

[propertydevelopment2017blog-blog]

Property Development Ideas

Assess software program product primarily based on acceptance standards test outcome and proper all the defects found throughout the take a look at. Further careful finding out of the property market and the auction scene presents a chance to purchase auctioned property at 20% plus off the conventional market value. One of the simplest ways is to register with every of the regional job placement or search consultants for jobs in your required country. The land division additionally embarked on the development of 1700 housing models in the Sunshine Coast, a project bordering a previously completed and profitable improvement, the Peregian Springs. Have been carried out up already, however property deteriorates on a regular basis, so there are continuous alternatives. For more property development ideas go to Sims Urban Oasis.

We then decided to move on. After assembly and interviewing with a number of property owners in Vermont, Maine and Connecticut, Steve and I settled on a caretaking situation in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Typically, such valuations should only be undertaken when the property has been beforehand inspected and preferably not too lengthy before. Payscale illustrates that jobs in property growth are associated with median salaries of between £18,000 and £22,000. I'm an advocate of the proper regulation of people working inside the property trade notably to protect the inexperienced basic public who sometimes take part. Each Iterating could have a certain quantity of rework of present software program product. When you hire a property upkeep company to keep your online business premises up to standards, then you're investing in its longevity.

These are jobs many people hate to do on their very own, however they are left with no selections. Dubai was the most well-liked and most sought after overseas actual estate jobs in the world. Companies in the present day must be on board with staff building as this is crucial for the development of any firm. You could be contemplating implementing business continuity in your organization technique throughout a financial downturn, or it might be that you have it in thoughts for an financial recovery. As with any investment upon getting purchased a property and spent lots on cash in some circumstances it is rather necessary that you simply handle that investment to achieve your financial objectives. This restructuring also knew as stapling prompted much of the corporate's income to be from recurring earnings and not from development earnings.

The property funding fund acquired three workplace blocks and two retail assets whereas the land division sold prime plots of land in numerous towns within the country. Should you've carried out any type of property caretaking or lengthy-time period housesitting, tell us how it went in the comments part beneath. It's vitally important so that you can understand where the light comes from and what gentle will come into the property you're considering. Many caretaking positions provide a stipend or salary together with the free housing.

PMP certification is without doubt one of the most prestigious and internationally sought-after certification in project management which is offered by the Undertaking Management Institute (PMI®). In case you are educated about these things, you can also recommend further strategies on how finest to property display screen tenants that can be occupying your Tampa house rental. Some positions include plenty of perks, and salaries and advantages too (we received health insurance with one in all our caretaking jobs), while others are merely an exchange of work free of charge housing.

I believe we all realise that the property that overlooks the ocean has a particularly good side. Property caretaking can embody tasks akin to landscaping, gardening, constructing and equipment upkeep and restore, even milking cows. Nevertheless, there are other positions, reminiscent of an actual-property development supervisor, that may earn significantly extra.

Also, the merger would enable the group to earn revenues at different times within the property funding cycle. The growing popularity Pc Aided Facilities Management System is helping industrial and production corporations manage their working processes in a extra environment friendly method. This is exemplified by the company growing considered one of its loans from $55million to $160million, to finance certainly one of its growth projects at Waterloo in 2010.

Here's a additional have a look at the numerous advantages of working with an IT Outsourcing Firm. Gary has been publishing this newsletter dedicated to property caretaking for 3 a long time and counting, so he knows as a lot about this lifestyle and line of labor as anyone. With manufacturing corporations producing tones of merchandise on daily basis, it is difficult to manage and store every little thing on the manufacturing web site. Finally, though, we decided the property was a bit too remote for us, and we ended up transferring back to Flagstaff, Steve's hometown, six months later.

Price-Effectiveness - As previously talked about, assembling and coaching a cellular improvement crew might be expensive. Set a finances for the renovations and, so long as you stick with it, a property revenue is just about assured. The administration also claimed that the web asset value of the company on the then-present market worth was $2.08 per safety while the online tangible property were at $1.70 per safety.

This led to the corporate being positioned into receivership since it might not be capable of maintain itself fully financially with out taking extra loans and credit. Management Coaching is important in each administration consulting because it helps leaders attain significant improvement of their abilities and skills. Let us take someone who makes their residing via automotive wash and property maintenance.

Figuring out that lots of their workers have this purpose in thoughts for 2011, companies are doing their half to advertise workforce health and wellness. The company additionally had several land banks in its possession which might forestall the need for getting land for the event of housing items. Land Surveying: Land & property titles and land surveying works as in the demarcation of property lines for development, land division and titles. In 2004, the corporate was renamed once more to FKP Property Group and in 2013 it was renamed again to the current identify Aveo Group. Firms are still recruiting new staffs, but pays a lower wage and with much less perks, in comparison with its heyday.

A property proprietor is consequently more able to having the ability to deal with the financing of the house care and maintenance prices. Becton Group was based in 1976 by Max Beck and Michael Buxton and has its headquarters in Melbourne Australia. Buying unused land for a potential improvement is typically known as speculative growth. Consequently, Becton Property Group was listed on the Australian Securities Alternate (ASX) on 7th July 2005. All in all, do not forget that though property can be exceedingly profitable, there is a component of threat concerned. In consequence, Aveo Group owns close to 75 villages and four aged care services unfold throughout cities and cities in Australia.

Where any of the property renovation or conversion initiatives may be utilized to holiday kind rental property, then the profits will usually be reasonably increased than for full time residential. The retirement arm (Aveo Retirement Dwelling) of the company offers with the event and operation of retirement villages whereas the non-retirement arm offers with the development and building of residential, business and rental properties. Different palms-on roles, including site supervisor jobs name for a background in management roles and even logistics.

Becton Constructions completed six growth initiatives in Melbourne whereas Becton Living acquired a retirement village bringing the number of villages it owned to three. To resolve the scenario, the management proposed the following programs of motion have been proposed; it would reduce the numbers of development tasks being undertaken and the managed funds. Residential property management firms are additionally capable of visually survey the neighborhood for added competing leases, area residence sale prices and adjustments that may influence the overall value of the house. In the financial yr 2010-2011, Becton Property Group offered the funds administration subsidiary to simplify its operation. In the monetary yr ending 2012, the corporate had a web profit of $6.4million. It additionally started the development of a pre-leased commercial growth, the Energex development.

The corporate also resolved to control totally joint ventures such because the Retirement Villages Group as a result of the retirement portfolio was its most worthwhile entity. Through the years, the now renamed FKP Group's success was constructed on carefully choosing strategic growth websites and committing to creating sturdy and quality integrated communities. As soon as the client or buyer agree on the product, development is done and the software shall be out there to the consumer. Most firms have websites you may go to to take a look at testimonials, property listings and other factors which are related on your own rental property. At one time, commercial property was nowhere close to as profitable as residential property. Property management companies like London Property Management are in a position to this testing for you.

Property house owners are primarily inviting you into their homes and entrusting you, the caretaker/s, with some of their most precious possessions, usually together with pets, in order that they actually want to know who you are. The tragic turnaround of the property group from a as soon as worthwhile firm to one under receivership was a consequence of the worldwide financial crisis. It was a 12 months that noticed the corporate delisted from the S&P ASX All Australian 200.

Due to the nature of the work course of, property development or actual estate builders will probably be working with a number of counterparts, from the conceptual stage proper up to gross sales and property management stage. In the Nineties, the agency diversified into funds administration (beneath Becton Investment Management), Village retirement ownership and management (under Becton Living), and vacation ownership membership. From farms to estates to retreats and inns and even yachts, caretakers and home-sitters live and work on a wide variety of property types all over the world. Property managers like London Property Administration who concentrate on testing electrical gear can take a look at microwaves which might be positioned throughout the family, business or tenancy occupied property.

[queernuck]

The Immigrant Settler

When considering Irish-American identity, as well as white immigrant identity as a whole, so many focus upon the popular narrative regarding American immigration, one that begins at the point of bourgeoisie disidentification between an Anglo-American class which descended ideologically, when not genealogically, from the earliest of settlers, and immigrants of Irish, German, Italian, and other largely Western European descent. Through a process of differentiation and the invocation of processes of Orientalism, antiblackness, Balkanization, and so on, an American ideation of immigration is spread to discourses on both European identity through a sort of reversal, much in the way that Jacksonian ideology and structures of genocidal violence informed the means by which fascism, and specifically fascist acts of genocide, were enacted by the Nazis and more generally are continued through structures of systemic genocide in postmodernity. The transition into the modern, and later the postmodern, through the growth of American hegemony and the hegemonic structures of American cultural identity.

The origins of Irish-American identity lies, first, in an origin that I believe even Sakai would recognize as proletarian. However, the transformative act of immigration, the process that Sakai realizes as “settling” can in turn be described through a metapolitical questioning which asks exactly what lead to the derealization of proletarian origins and the eager acceptance of American hegemony seen in instances such as the heavily Irish character of the early New York police forces, or the reflection of such in the predominance of American colonial subjects within the American military. Specifically joining these apparatuses of colonial expansion, acting as a settler population through American imperial power as a means of expansive division is in fact part of how Irish-American, Italian-American and other national identities were realized: their histories are inextricably linked to antiblackness, to colonialism, in that their realization was in providing what Sakai characterizes as a “thin white line” between slaves and the moneyed white classes. Moreover, that many came over as part of agreements where they worked as “indentured servants” before becoming part of a larger European society within the colonial America, such that they can achieve a status unattainable within the proletarian demarcations given in European life. Effectively, Sakai recognizes a sort of cynical reversal of the American founding mythology: indeed, there is promise, a vital promise of prosperity that is found in the founding of America, but this is only accessible by becoming part of a well-to-do class, by a process of supposedly rightful ascent into a petitie-bourgeoisie. The means by which Sakai describes this are specifically formed such that he reverses the notions of ascendence which describe ideologies of American exceptionalism: it can only be the land it is claimed to be because it rests upon exploitation, that prosperity can only be found through an arbitration of capitalist violence that is specifically settler-colonial in design. The core impetus of Settlers is this very impetus: the means by which settlers conceived of a land they had never seen as rightfully theirs.

The westward growth of a nebulous European character within American immigration lead to a vital conflict between North and South: both maintained a certain acknowledgement of slavery as specifically formed through violence and instability, and that it could only be maintained through the same sorts of forces of destabilization seen in postmodern American operations of power. However, whereas the North saw the solution in the creation of an entirely white continent, one that could be divided internally but unified through whiteness, through opposition to an eventually disappearing population conceived of specifically in opposition to whiteness. When Sakai discusses the means by which Seminole tribes that had taken on escaped slaves were considered unified in their own eyes but as a collection of disparate populations to be separated and controlled by the eyes of the colonizer, one sees the demarcations of national identity that are necessary to colonial power, and how these are developed into neocolonial identities through processes of reversal. Even the formation of national identity through supposed decolonization often retains a national bourgeoisie, a Maoist-ordained class of well-to-do peasants which are vitally realized in their relationship to a process of becoming a landlord, of adopting their aesthetics, their habits, and their ideologies in order to at least gain a resemblance to them. Similarly, the notions of labor aristocracy are formed in this fashion, such that even within structures of apparently laboring classes one can find the means by which a petite-bourgeoisie are formed. Being able to look back upon this, when postmodern notions of “disruption” are so predominant in the realization of schizophrenic patterns of consumption, the process of becoming-petitie-bourgeoisie, of gaining that subjectivity is often obfuscated but vitally reflected within structures of capitalist entry. Rhizomality does not banish arboreal structure, but rather inscribes upon it and acts through it.

The means by which rhizomal structures may be fostered in protracted people’s war, through Maoist means of creating affinity are contrasted with the means in which structures of white supremacy draw a sort of natural affinity, use a fascist development of desire to create ideations of “populist” identity, whether in the name of neoliberal reform or in outright fascist ideology. In discussing the election of Andrew Jackson, Sakai discusses the means by which a supposed “populism” replaced and overinscribed upon any possibility of proletarian consciousness that mirrors the supposed character of American right-wing ideology, the means by which it at once appeals to the frontier and to the city. The ideation, the libidinal conception of Trump creates an American myth of national reclamation that redoubles Sakai’s characterization of Jacksonian identity but transposed within schizophrenic identities of late capital: Trump is self-made, but all the same retains the descent of greatness that defines American ideologies of settling and national creation. The creation of a specific identity of whiteness as a political tactic, the patriotism that is cultivated not merely in action (and in fact, secondary in any sort of action) but moreover through the creation of a certain ideological figure which can then stoke the libidinal flows that are otherwise forbidden, the means by which populism can stand in for love, desire, sexuality, so many various structures of desire that are far beyond the figure in themselves. The means by which Milo Yiannopoulos described Trump as “daddy” is not unusual, is not unprecedented; the very means by which fascism may contain homosexual desire, homosexual transgression, is part of the means by which, like Žižek’s discussion of pedophilia in the Church, the prohibited can not only be realized, but further developed into a means of reinforcing the ideology of belonging, of uniqueness, of a vital similarity and affinity within the group through this transgression. Effectively, the group disidentifies itself in one way in order to strengthen another process of identification. As a result, this creates the structure of an ascendant settler-colonial subject, the petitie-bourgeoisie developing itself into landlords of a new sort. These process are repeated over and over: from westward expansion to white flight to gentrification of cities developed as concentration points for those necessary to maintain a comfortable lifestyle for the petite-bourgeoisie, the shifting of identities is necessary to the continual maintenance of these structures of power.

Sakai also discusses the importance of slavery to the creation of an American antiblackness which is reflected in the very structure of the American city. Cities in the south such as Atlanta, in the west such as Oakland, even in the north such as the New York that Sakai describes, one finds that the structures of maintaining slavery, of creating a structure whereby slave labor could be realized within a larger economic structure that denied its own identity, that rejected its connection to slavery even as it become more and more evident that the displacement of white supremacy as such would eventually occur given the necessity of slavery to American colonial economies. The eventual development of an economy that has superficially moved on from slavery is aesthetic: the specific structures are rejected but moreover their rejection only comes through a reappropriation, an act wherein slavery is restructured and made systemic, is retained through the enacting of a specific Oedipal trauma that originates in the repetition of structures originating in slavery, the ideology of America as a nation for the European even if it is not itself white or European in character and population. The creation of black communities, even thriving ones, within cities such as these is met with a sort of rejection by structures of capitalism: as the ideology of capitalism would have it, that this prosperity is proof of the way in which race has become obsolete, has been disavowed. Instead, by specifically silencing the means through which race is realized and making it such that its articulation is in fact a rearticulation, a rabattement, it becomes so that the realization of race as a structure is in fact understood as its initial evocation, as the means by which it is first realized in the colonial gaze. 

Popular culture has become one of the main structures of spreading notions of American hegemony: even in rejection there is an articulation of it. The continuation of notions around American identity and its formation through structures that are paradigmatically, culturally, linked to a process of settling is itself part of the process of justification which leads to the process of settling as a process of creating the self. Contrasting this with the rejected creations of self, one finds oppositions between Gatsby and Gucci Mane, the way in which the differance of settler identity as linked to continuing a colonial heritage, a colonial identity, is vital to the means by which colonizers are reckoned. Even those outside the structure of American identity as a descendant European identity can occupy, can become colonial, through processes such as joining the American military: the means by which American military bases act as globalizing forces, act to restructure an act of extending the settler beyond even American shores, the creation of a settlement that in turn can structure the hyperreality of American colonialism.

Sakai’s work in Settlers as a history is not to be understood in terms of strict historical materialism as it will eventually be found lacking on these very grounds. Conversely, as a means of reckoning the metahistorical character of American imperialism, of dealing with the metaphysics that are proscribed by colonial arbitration and offering a critique of these structures, it acts phenomenally in that it specifically creates an alternate means of realizing the history of America as an ideological structure, the mythology of America. That Sakai’s historicism is lacking does not take away from his poeticism, and even if that poeticism would be rejected as an assessment by Sakai, it still stands as an important reading of his work. 

[khalilhumam]

COVID-19 in Europe: The price of being rich

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COVID-19 in Europe: The price of being rich

Photo: Public domain from Pikist.

By Ian Inkster In most of the Western media, the focus on the COVID-19 attack has concerned government policies, their character, efficacy, and extent—as well as their economic cost. Debates on lockdown, face masks, social distancing and the tragedies within care homes and among migrant workers have dominated the discussions, and few steady, general conclusions have been drawn—some governments do better than others; Germany appears to be a star in Europe; East Asian nations seem to deviate from most generalisations, and so on. In this piece, I’ll make a brief attempt to unfold an underlying factor generating a neglected trend that seems to offer a far better explanation than observed differences in government policies for the varying experiences of nations. For European nations, our argument measures the price of being rich in a world dominated by COVID-19. The eight richest nations of Europe, each with populations over 10 million, have now in total registered over 1.4 million COVID-19 cases since the European inception of the virus in France on January 24. This total of 363 million people has suffered (as of July 13) an average of 4,442 cases per million and 520 deaths per million. This compares with the world average today of 1,682 cases per million and 73 deaths per million. Rich nations suffer far worse than the rest of the world; for instance, the huge Asian portion of the world, incorporating 2.8 billion in India and China alone, has registered 3 million COVID-19 cases, compared to 2.6 million cases in a European population of some 740 million. This is a huge divergence of experience at the present stage of the pandemic, and it runs counter to the common sense that would presume that the huge resources of rich nations would dampen the effects of COVID-19, particularly its mortality rates, compared to the poorer nations of the global south. The possible explanations are very wide-ranging, but none have the dramatic impact of the demographic effects of varying income levels. The rest of this column demonstrates this through the use of the data from our eight rich nations. It is well known that COVID-19 has a very particular demographic characteristic. The virus generally is harmless to the young, infects the middle age groups, and both infects and frequently kills those of the population over 65. We do not know the exact age demarcations, which will require future post-mortem epidemiology. There is some evidence that those even aged up to 20 or so may generally be immune to the virus, but also that those over 60 may be especially vulnerable, not only to infection—they are by far the ones most likely to die from the vaccine directly or from complications resulting from pre-existing immune deficiency. As wealthy nations with high per capita incomes, the eight nations of our sample have long ago passed a demographic transition in which the number of young people falls as a proportion of the population, just as the proportion of the elderly rises. There are many reasons for this historically, but principal among them is the substitution of high incomes and greater consumption for having children, who in times of poverty would have worked to earn income or act as familial insurance for poor families whose main breadwinner became unable to work. Again, higher incomes, better nourishment and medicines meant that people lived far longer than before. In short, in our world today, rich nations have few children and many old folk, poor nations have many children and few old folks. The extent of this difference is startling. For our eight rich European nations the proportion in their combined populations of those aged 0-14 averages at 16 per cent, the proportion of those 65 and over is 19.9 per cent. We may compare this with two large low-income groups: 16 nations with an average purchasing power parity per capita income of US$ 8,500 defined by the World Bank as “lower-income”, and a group of 29 nations with an average per capita income of US$ 2,500, defined as “low income.” For the first group, the proportion of the aged 0-14 is 32.9 per cent, the proportion of those over 65 years is 6.7 per cent. Today they register COVID-19 statistics since the inception of the disease of only 523 per million, compared to the 4,442 of Europe; and 28 deaths per million compared to Europe's 520. Compared to rich Europe, poorer nations have larger numbers of young people and lower numbers of the old and they have much less severe effects from COVID-19. For the poorest group of 29 nations, the effect of age differences is staggering. With a very large proportion of young people (43.8 per cent of the total population), and a much smaller proportion of aged folk (3.1 per cent), their present cases per million figure stands at only 165, their deaths per million at 3.78. In summary, the 1.2 billion people of the 29 lowest income nations of our world face a present risk of infection that is 165/4,442, that is, around 4 per cent that of our eight European nations. In terms of mortality, with deaths per million averaging at 520 among our rich Europeans, and at 3.78 amongst our poorest 29 nations, the risk of death for the poorest lies at around 1 per cent that of the richest. Even if everyone East of Suez is fudging their figures; even if all governments that are not European liberal democracies are either completely inefficient at data collection or command the absolute obedience of their population in conforming to a package of ideal policies; and even if the present state of things will alter as the virus rages on over our earth, it seems that there is presently a cost to being rich in a COVID world. The cost arises with this virus especially, because higher incomes mean fewer children and more elderly people, and this age distribution runs smack into the face of an overwhelming force of nature. Within an income group such as rich Europe or poor Africa, policy may make some real difference—thus the cases of Germany or East Asia, which seem to be beating the trend. Both have high incomes and the age distributions of rich nations, and both have have better COVID-19 outcomes. But we must also then admit that apart from policy, there are also immutable differences in borders, population density, and air pollution levels, and degrees of connectivity between nations, and these may well create some meaningful variations within income groups of nations. But none of this alters the basic case that rich European nations have the highest incidence and mortality from COVID-19 while having massive social and physical infrastructures. In whatever way they may have used or misused such advantages in their policies, the results cannot presently match those of the poorer part of the world. It seems clear that in a COVID-19 world a global division is occurring that is principally based upon income and age structures. Professor Ian Inkster is a global historian and political economist at SOAS, University of London, who has taught and researched at universities in Britain, Australia, Taiwan and Japan. He is the author of 13 books on Asian and global dynamics with a particular focus on industrial and technological development, and the editor of History of Technology since 2000. Forthcoming books are Distraction Capitalism: The World Since 1971, and Invasive Technology and Indigenous Frontiers. Case Studies of Accelerated Change in History, with David Pretel.

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[atravelingcrescendo]

Psychology and Philosophy - Uneasy Siblings

Training and psychology are connected in more than one of the ways and the psychology of education could possibly be linked to educational axioms in psychology or how education as a control is taught within psychology as an interest and how both of these professions merge. That is primarily the focus of educational psychology which studies how human learning happens, what ways of training are most reliable, what various ways should be properly used to show talented or impaired kids and how maxims of psychology may help in the analysis of schools as cultural Airon Rodrigues Seo Costa .

Emotional knowledge could be entirely focused on understanding strategies as organized or imparted based on psychological and individual needs of the students. Training would vary based on tradition, values, attitudes, social programs, mindset and every one of these factors are essential in the analysis of education in psychology.

Academic psychology is the application form of mental objectives within educational methods and mental education as I distinguish here is application of instructional objectives in emotional processes. The initial concentration of using psychology in education is more common and the second approach of applying knowledge in psychology is more individualistic. However as far as present study of educational method of psychology is concerned, there's number difference between individual educational psychology and basic educational psychology and all interrelationships between psychology and knowledge are thought within the broad discipline of educational psychology.

However a variance involving the more general educational psychology and more specific mental or individualistic knowledge may help in understanding the subtleties of individualistic study and provide a subjective dimension to the analysis of psychology in education. This could also assist in creating understanding programs more scholar centered and based on the needs of lifestyle, society, individual or personal factors. This type of study with an emphasis on personal/psychological areas of learning is not only about social objectives and objectives within educational programs but also about particular objectives and objectives and the emotional processes associated with learning. There has to be a sharper demarcation between knowledge in psychology as an over-all study and individual knowledge in psychology as a far more specific and subjective discipline.

As of this moment instructional psychology encompasses a wide variety of issues and subjects including the use of engineering and its relation to psychology, learning techniques and educational design. It also thinks the social, cognitive, behavioural dimensions of learning but it would be necessary to make knowledge more particular and individualistic via a special branch with a psychological concentrate on training so that specific wants are considered. There may be two methods by which this branch of understanding can evolve - possibly by strengthening mental knowledge or individualistic method of the psychology of training or insurance firms two unique branches of normal educational psychology and individualistic educational psychology.

As in client centered method of psychology, a psychology of knowledge must also include further study that will highlight the requirement for individualistic dimensions in learning. Understanding psychology is the utilization of mental concepts like that of Jean Piaget and Kohler in the research of learning techniques, especially among children. I have discussed Piaget but briefly Piaget's theory higlights various phases of understanding in young ones and Kohler recommended that understanding occurs by unexpected appreciation or knowledge, nevertheless I will not go further into learning theories here. Whereas the focus of educational psychology is on understanding practices by itself and the position of the learner is recognized as just extra, a division of individual psychology in education could help in emphasizing the role of the learner considering not merely their disabilities or giftedness but additionally their personality patterns. This give attention to personality designs brings about the main position of understanding psychology in educational systems.

Educational psychology reports both the non-public methods to education as in giftedness, impairment, understanding theories placed on young ones and people, and the more general aim techniques to learning because the position of colleges as social or cultural systems.

Cognitive Psychology: A variety of various elements which produce the fundament for human behavior are hidden inside such a strange psychology phase as Cognitive Psychology. In their vast feeling, Cognitive psychology is a division of psychology which reports such mental techniques as considering, perceiving, recalling and learning. Being a part of cognitive research, Cognitive Psychology is strongly linked to other professions, like idea, neuroscience, and linguistics. An individual who finishes these psychology programs will obtain a great prospect to develop his / her problem-solving skills, the ability of decision-making as well as verbal thinking and various other reasonable functions inside each individual being.

Abnormal Psychology: Abnormal psychology is a department of psychology which has to do with psychopathology and abnormal individual behavior. Abnormal Psychology classes emphasize the influence of environmental, scientific along with ethnic factors on the behavior of a person, thus, building it. The definition of of Abnormal Psychology involves a great selection of mental disorders, like despair, obsession-compulsion, sexual deviation and several others. After finishing Abnormal Psychology classes graduates have an opportunity to get employment on such work positions as mental Counselors, medical psychologists and psychotherapists.

Personality Psychology: Personality is created from a variety of styles of thoughts, thoughts and manners of conduct which can make an individual really personal and unique. As a rule, character is developed from someone and remains very the exact same throughout the entire lifetime. The field of Character Psychology embraces a great quantity of numerous mental factors start from probably the most hard, but at the same time frame fascinating Freudian idea closing with other simple psychological ideas on personality evaluation and development.

Nowadays, we reside in the age of scientific and technological development. Probably, among the most crucial inventions of the previous century was the private pc and the Internet. Today, huge numbers of people have a chance to receive education from their domiciles and other suited to learning areas with the help of range learning. With the looks of the exact distance learning classes, benefit from academic features is becoming much simpler actually for those job students who reside in the farthest parts of the world. On the web understanding offers a great several benefits to countless people. Therefore, it's possible to combine studying and working, spending more hours with the household and making significantly time to particular interests and needs. The above-mentioned important categories of psychology are just some of the most important ones. Another kinds also include statistics, development psychology, cultural psychology, and numerous others which are significantly substantial fields in the psychological arena.

[whittlebaggett8]

Even as Talks Stall, the Korean DMZ Continues to Rebrand

New peace trails demonstrate little indications of progress in inter-Korean relations.

With miles of barbed fence, vivid indications warning of hidden landmines, and scary guards in whole North Korean navy garb observing at all moments, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) conjures a entire array of frightening illustrations or photos. The DMZ, just 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) extensive, spans the official border separating the two Koreas, and serves as a stark reminder that the two halves of the peninsula have technically been at war for almost 70 years. But with the the latest thaw between the North and South Korean governments, the DMZ is heading via a important rebranding, turning from a symbol of war to a mother nature vacation spot.

Programs to transform the DMZ into some form of peace park have been floating all around for many years, and experts have very long pointed out the lively advancement of flora and fauna in the spot many thanks to its decades-prolonged defense from human interference. But irrespective of some sporadic cooperation, notably among conservationists, these phone calls went largely unheeded more than the yrs as tensions concerning the two Koreas continued to simmer. Now, negotiations concerning North and South Korea as nicely as North Korea and the United States could have mainly stalled, but development is nonetheless remaining created in the DMZ.

In April 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un initially satisfied and agreed to “transform the demilitarized zone into a peace zone in a legitimate sense by ceasing as of May well 1 [2018] all hostile acts and eliminating their usually means, which includes broadcasting by means of loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets, in the locations together the Army Demarcation Line.” Given that then, the two sides have not only stopped propaganda at the border, they have dismantled many guard posts and carried out comprehensive mine-clearing operations to take out some of the believed 2 million landmines that litter the DMZ. In addition, mine clearing missions have led to the discovery of the stays of a number of soldiers who have been killed for the duration of the Korean War but who remained undiscovered for a long time in the border’s hazardous no-go zone.

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The latest indicator of development is the opening of new hiking trails in the location, portion of Moon’s program to demystify the DMZ and transform it into a zone of peace instead of division. The first hikers to examine the new keep track of climbed 2 kilometers on the Goseong DMZ Trail at the conclusion of April, and a second path will open up on June 1. All hikes are accompanied by armed forces guides, and are minimal to small groups leaving 2 times a working day. In accordance to Korea Bizwire, the tours are presently filling up months in advance, specially on weekends and holiday seasons.

Despite the fact that the opening of these new trails is a promising sign of de-escalation, officers have not forgotten the wartime backdrop of this new engagement approach. UN, Korean, and U.S. army forces, which are in cost of keeping stability on the southern side of the DMZ, had to give official approval for the peace path undertaking to shield the two guests and troopers even now stationed in the space.

“United Nations Command (UNC) and the ROK federal government have shown outstanding teamwork, collaboration, and coordination through the entire ‘peace trail’ approach and will proceed to do so,” Basic Robert B. “Abe” Abrams, commander of United Nations Command, Put together Forces Command, and U.S. Forces Korea, reported in a assertion following approving the plan. “The ROK army has worked really lengthy several hours to be certain the good results of this pretty essential initiative, even though assuring website visitors their protection remains paramount.”

Specially after the anti-climactic ending of the Hanoi Summit involving Trump and Kim in February, observers have bemoaned the absence of progress on U.S.-Korea relations. But with the smaller but concrete measures that the two Koreas are making to open up the DMZ and reduce tensions at the place exactly where the two sides right face each other throughout the border, perhaps there is much more development becoming made than it could appear at first glance.

Jenna Gibson is a doctoral scholar in political science at the College of Chicago and a Korea blogger for The Diplomat. You can locate her on Twitter at @jennargibson.

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[battybat-boss]

The Moral World of the Radical Right

To fully understand the rapid growth in the appeal of radical right politics to so many people, we also need to look at their moral and ethical worlds.

Most explanations for the recent growth of the radical right rely upon some combination of structural concerns, ideological positions and emotional desires. No single category works on its own, of course. Structural conditions like unemployment create grievances and emotional backlash, which, in turn, make individuals more vulnerable to ideological rhetoric.

But what if we are missing part of the story? What if structure, ideology and emotions - even in tandem - can't fully explain the current rise of the radical right? To fully understand the rapid growth in the appeal of radical right politics to so many people, we also need to look at their moral and ethical worlds.

Individuals depart from moral and ethical worlds in order to help navigate everyday decisions. Learned through family and peer interactions and in a variety of institutional settings like schools, religious groups and scouting clubs, moral worlds define what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what is wanted and what is worth fighting for. Such worlds shape how people both experience and express empathy and kindness, how willing they are to forgive others and how much gratitude they feel. These worlds, moreover, influence how we view others, structure our interpersonal relationships, shape the kinds of commitments we make and may well condition whether we are willing to help someone in need.

Moral worlds vary both cross-nationally and within nations. But there are also common global trends - most notably, a decline in empathy. The latter is attributed to phenomena like social media, which encourages narcissism and reduces compassion and empathy, but may also lead to growing polarization and media bubbles, leading individuals to interact less with people who are different from them.

A Lack of Meaning

Empathy isn't the only thing missing though. People are also struggling to identify a sense of meaning and purpose. In the United States, nearly a quarter of Yale undergraduates now take a course on how to live a meaningful life, as Washington Post journalist Susan Svrluga reported, explaining that Professor Laurie Santos designed the course to counter what she perceived as students' “crushing and joyless” daily experiences, alongside overwhelming anxiety and hopelessness.

It is impossible to separate the growing polarization, division, alienation and rising extremism from declines in compassion and empathy, or from the increased anxiety and hopelessness described above. These conditions create fertile ground for radical-right rhetoric that offers people clear explanations for their choices and values while offering membership to a group that defines status, prestige and esteem through adherence to those moral ideals, as scholars Corey Abramson and Darren Modzelewski have argued in related work with mixed martial arts cage fighters. For the radical right, however, those ideals build meaning through exclusion, often justify violence for a greater cause, prioritize “native-born” individuals' rights over all others and oftentimes advocate policies that dehumanize migrants.

#PunchANazi Always pic.twitter.com/Qp4fjrEqy9

- MsJoanne (@MsJoanne) August 3, 2018

The radical right's moral framework relies on binary, us/them thinking, viewing European heritage as urgently in need of defense or positioning white workers as victims of a system that prioritizes supposedly “less qualified” minority candidates. Radical-right morality views white supremacy as the “right” approach, typically arguing that re-migration is not only an ethically justifiable choice, but actually a morally preferable one.

Liberal and conservative citizens alike will find these positions morally reprehensible for how they contradict fundamental tenets of democracy, like the protection of minority rights. But that sense of revulsion should not obscure the fact that the radical right's moral worldview draws upon many of the same ideals as those found in the mainstream - tenets like fairness and freedom, self-improvement and accountability, the quest for a sense of meaning and purpose, and a pathway to make a difference.

It is the interpretation of those ideals through a radical right lens that leads the latter to demarcate what is right and wrong through an exclusionary frame rather than a multicultural one, to privilege whiteness and so-called “European heritage” over all other ethnicities and to valorize violence as a legitimate means to achieve desired goals. Such principles are usually interpreted by outsiders as ideological positions. But it is critical to recognize these positions are not only ideological - they are also moral. Until we start to approach them as such, we can't fully understand the appeal of the radical right.

What Can We Do?

These concerns motivated snack bar company KIND's founder, Daniel Lubetsky, to invest $20 million in an educational initiative to teach empathy. Lubetsky isn't alone. A global movement to build socio-emotional learning into educational reforms is underway, in work by American nonprofits like the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, and in global settings by large international agencies like UNESCO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Restoring a sense of empathy and meaning among young people won't only help prevent radicalization from happening - it can also work to deradicalize and disengage individuals from racist and radical-right movements. Restoring empathy is one of the four key pathways out of hate, as Randy Blazek argues persuasively, combined with addressing emotional needs, addressing grievances and addressing social-status issues.

Research that aims to understand the moral worlds of the radical right has to start by viewing them with some empathy on our part - not a simple proposition in an era when social media memes like “Is it ok to punch a Nazi?” are common. We need to acknowledge that the radical right's moral decisions are driven not only by simple emotional desires like anger or resentment, but also by complex yearnings such as feelings of nostalgia or a desire for order, as David Barnes has argued. We ought to therefore locate common ideals - like the desire to make a difference - and find ways to reorient those ideals away from exclusionary solutions.

Deradicalization initiatives that only focus on the triad of structure, ideology and emotion will fail if they do not account for the broader moral worlds in which people's lives are embedded. Restoring empathy, in ourselves as well as the “other,” is surely a necessary place to start.

*[Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right is a partner institution of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer's editorial policy.

Photo Credit:By rudall30 / Shutterstock.com

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