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impressedbymckayla · 4 years

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M*ggie continues to be absolute trash.

If she could travel back in time, before she was suspended from gymnastics after being accused of berating and mistreating her athletes, including an Olympic champion, Maggie Haney says she would change the way she coached.

She wouldn’t push some of her young gymnasts to redo a routine again and again after even the tiniest mistakes. To demand their focus, she wouldn’t yell at them. Instead she would learn to let some imperfections slide.

“I think my mistakes were that I cared too much, and wanted them to be a little too perfect every day, when maybe that’s not possible,” Haney, one of the most prominent coaches in the sport, said this month in an interview with The New York Times, the first time she has spoken publicly in nearly a year. “Maybe what used to be OK is not OK anymore, and maybe it shouldn’t be. I think maybe the culture has shifted.”

Haney has not coached at her gym in central New Jersey or anywhere else since February, she said, when U.S.A. Gymnastics, the sport’s national federation, temporarily suspended her before later barring her from coaching for eight years for what it called her “severe aggressive behavior” toward her athletes. She said she hasn’t even coached her own daughter, who is 11.

The athletes who have trained under Haney include Laurie Hernandez, who won a silver medal on the balance beam at the 2016 Olympics and helped the United States win the team gold medal.

Hernandez’s complaint to the federation was one of nearly a dozen that led to Haney’s ban, which she is appealing to an arbitrator. It was considered the harshest penalty for emotional and verbal abuse in the sport’s recent history.

The suspension was also viewed as a warning that coaches could now face stiff penalties for the mental and nonsexual abuse that was long accepted in the sport before the Lawrence G. Nassar sexual abuse scandal shed light on the toxic culture in gymnastics. Nassar was the longtime United States national team doctor who in 2018 was sentenced to prison for molesting more than 200 girls and women under the guise of medical treatment.

Haney said the accusations against her — particularly those from Hernandez, whom she coached from age 6 — had come out of nowhere, and she vehemently denied them. More than 30 gymnasts at MG Elite, Haney’s gym in Morganville, N.J., and their families continue to support her and are awaiting her return to the sport, she said. Some have voiced their support for Haney in a YouTube video compiled by the public-relations firm she hired to help restore her reputation.

Haney, 42, said she was convinced that U.S.A. Gymnastics had used her as a scapegoat after its missteps in the Nassar case, in which the organization failed to protect its gymnasts from a sexual predator. The federation needed to do “something bold, something dramatic,” she said, to prove to the public that it cares about its athletes.

“I’ve dedicated my whole life to this,” Haney said, her voice beginning to waver. “To be out of the gym has been really hard. I feel like it was unfairly taken away from me.”

Haney’s accusers have not wavered. They say the ban is warranted, and some even wanted a permanent one. They claim that she bullied her gymnasts, publicly shamed them about their weight, encouraged eating disorders and forced them to train with injuries.

Hernandez, who is now training in California for the Tokyo Olympics next summer, told The Times in April that Haney’s treatment of her was “just so twisted that I thought it couldn’t be real.” She said the abuse included Haney calling her weak, lazy and messed up in the head and that the emotional abuse led to a continuing battle with depression.

Riley McCusker, who has a good chance of making the United States team for the Tokyo Games, filed a lawsuit against Haney last month. Among the accusations in the complaint was that Haney had forced McCusker to train through injuries, including while she had a painful, potentially serious medical condition called rhabdomyolysis, which is a breakdown of muscle tissue that can happen from overexertion.

In a separate lawsuit filed last month, another gymnast, Emily Liszewski, a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh, accused Haney and an assistant coach of forcing her to perform an advanced skill on the uneven bars at the Arena Gym, a gym not far from MG Elite, and it led her to fall and hit her head. Liszewski was unconscious for three days, with multiple skull fractures, and had seizures because of the injury, the lawsuit said. The suit also claimed that Haney once picked Liszewski up from the floor by her hair after the gymnast had fallen.

“These situations are not at all the way I recall them,” Haney said, adding that Hernandez’s mother and McCusker’s mother were often in the gym — sometimes on the training floor — but never expressed displeasure over her demanding coaching style. (Neither mother responded to a request made through a representative to comment for this article.)

Haney added: “I just think when money gets involved, people will say and do different things. I think a lot of this is about money.”

The arbitrator’s ruling on Haney’s appeal is expected in the coming days, said one of her lawyers, Steven Altman. He said he hoped that Haney’s suspension would be rescinded because U.S.A. Gymnastics’s hearing for the case had been biased and flawed, and “as a practical matter, a kangaroo court.” Seven of Haney’s accusers were not even coached by her, Altman said, and the gym offered a fun environment amid the intense training that is generally needed to master the sport’s daring moves.

“When they were doing gymnastics, it was serious,” Altman said. “They worked on life-threatening skills for hours a day.”

U.S.A. Gymnastics, in an emailed statement, said on Sunday that Haney’s hearing was “both fair and impartial, and adhered to the requirements” of the organization’s procedures, as well as the law that oversees Olympic sports in the United States.

Haney conceded she could be intense in the gym. But she said that most of the time “everybody is smiling and laughing and music is playing.” She carefully crafted the atmosphere at the gym, she said, knowing that parents had entrusted her with their children, at times from morning until evening. The program, Haney said, included closely monitored online learning, a certified teacher holding classes during the day and an emphasis on safety.

As a young gymnast herself, training in an elite program for a while, Haney worked with harsh coaches who screamed at the girls, she recalled, and had them step onto a scale daily, then listed everyone’s weight on a bulletin board in the gym. To make the girls lose weight, the coaches forced them to wear rubber suits or 20-pound belts and jog around the gym, she said.

“It didn’t faze me and didn’t bother me, but that kid next to me, it could’ve really bothered and scared them,” she said, adding that she never weighed her gymnasts or forced them to lose weight. “I think what I’ve learned over the last year is that so much of this comes down to perspective. Every person. Every athlete. Every coach. They have their own perspective of things.”

Some of the families whose children continue to train at MG Elite were drawn to her gym because of what they described as an exacting nature.

Henry Rivera, an engineer at a software company, moved his 12-year-old daughter to MG Elite last year so she could train with Haney. He said she had left her previous gym because her routines were getting sloppy and the coach there was pushing her to perform skills she didn’t feel prepared to do.

Rivera said he appreciated that Haney had made the gym a safe space for his daughter, yet never babied her.

“If I wanted her to come home happy and smiling every day, I’d send her to clown school; I’m serious,” Rivera said. “If my daughter has goals and her goal is to be an elite athlete, I need a coach to teach her the right things and safely, and to push them.”

Rivera said if Haney ever was abusive to his daughter, he would have noticed because he monitors what she is going through “emotionally, mentally and physically,” considering it his job as a parent.

“As parents, we need to be vigilant,” he said. “And if you don’t like it, get up and leave.”

In a telephone interview with her parents standing by, his daughter, Hezly, said Haney just wanted her gymnasts to be the best and was tough on them, “but not like to the point where it was horrible.” She said that she was sad to see Haney go and that she missed her.

“She never crossed the line,’’ she said.

Another parent at the gym, Charisse Dash, is a sports agent who recruits athletes from the Dominican Republic to play in Major League Baseball. Her 10-year-old daughter has worked with Haney since she was 6.

“You’re not there to play, you’re there to work,” Dash said, describing that type of gymnastics as “a 9-to-5 job.”

She added: “Do I classify the rigor of the training as abuse? I think you really have to see it on a case-by-case basis.”

Dash said she and her husband ran “a very tight ship” at home with their five children, where screaming, not coddling, was common. So, to them, Haney’s demanding style was a great fit.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that Maggie is an abuser, by all means,” Dash said. “It depends on how much any child or any person can tolerate.”

Haney’s U.S.A. Gymnastics hearing in February and March was held by telephone, and Haney listened to weeks of it while huddled in a closet so her two children would not interrupt her. About a half-dozen parents testified in support of her, but not all of the parents who wanted to testify were given the chance to, she said. Even when Haney herself testified, she said, she felt that her side of the story didn’t matter. She was sure the three-person hearing panel had already made up its mind.

Some of the gymnasts who accused her of abuse, she said, had been asked to leave the gym because they could not physically keep up. The part she remembers as the worst, though, was sitting through Hernandez’s live testimony. Haney considered their relationship strong, so it was inconceivable to her that Hernandez felt mistreated.

Hernandez often slept at Haney’s house and was considered a part of the family, Haney said. Haney took Hernandez to the beach, to restaurants, to get her nails done, and gave her a tuition break at the gym. When she and Hernandez returned from the 2016 Olympics, Haney said, she helped organize a parade in her town, in Hernandez’s honor.

When Hernandez was competing on the television show “Dancing With the Stars” soon after the Rio Games, Haney said, she spoke to her one night for three hours. The coach remembered their talking like old friends, about makeup and music and how Haney, with her perfectionist’s eye, noticed that Hernandez’s foot had slipped during an earlier dance, but that she had covered the mistake well. Haney recalled telling Hernandez to enjoy her break from gymnastics.

“You’re a star now,” Haney said she told her.

Within days, Laurie Hernandez’s mother, Wanda, called Haney to say that they were cutting all ties. Though Wanda Hernandez told The Times in April that she had severed the relationship after learning that Haney had mistreated her daughter, Haney said she was blindsided by the move and now thinks it was financially motivated because the Hernandezes first offered her a cut of Laurie’s income after the Olympics, but then did not follow through.

“For me, it was never about the money,” Haney said. “I just remember being so confused and not understanding any of it.”

Neither Wanda nor Laurie Hernandez responded to interview requests made through Laurie’s agent, Sheryl Shade.

The situation left Haney wondering what she had done wrong. She said she had been protective of her gymnasts, even when it came to food, as she watched other coaches at meets hover over the meal table to control their athletes’ consumption.

“My kids were never the ones stuffing bread into their pockets,” she said, describing how some athletes felt compelled to sneak food back to their rooms.

She said she encouraged her gymnasts to make smart choices, though McCusker’s lawsuit said Haney promoted unhealthy eating and weight-loss habits.

Haney acknowledged that there had recently been a change in how some gymnasts expected to be treated by their coaches, especially since this summer, when hundreds of them worldwide began speaking out about the abuse they endured from tyrannical coaches.

Many coaches, Haney said, now don’t know when they might cross the line or upset an especially sensitive child or parent, so they “are just letting the girls do whatever because they don’t want to get in trouble.”

The culture has shifted perhaps too far, she said, and she expects the sport, going forward, to be filled with underachievers. She said she thinks coaches will not push their athletes as hard.

Haney blames parents for that. They have become too invested in their daughters’ success, she said, and now are emboldened to lash out at anyone — and potentially crush anyone — who stands in their daughters’ way.

“I feel that somebody needs to stand up for coaches,” Haney said. “If I don’t stand up and fight for the truth, then other coaches aren’t going to, either. I know if this can happen to me, I think it can happen to anyone.”

Video linked in the article if you’re feeling like extra self-punishing today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&fbclid=IwAR01mlcDzMzw8RlzbRS97gXD5f0vIucwBZEdXuPqZJiMalbLZZI8lj7OCwI&feature=youtu.be&v=5YyrN7nZwx0#menu&ab_channel=GymFacts

#abuse /

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Islamic Group ICNA’s School Project Features Individual Who Joked About Threatening to Blow Up School

Syed Ammar Ahmed wrote, “I hate white people”; he called himself a “terrorist”; and at the suggestion of an acquaintance, he joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.” Prior to ICNA, Ahmed was an Organizing Director for Emgage

ICNA School Project Features Individual Who Joked About Threatening to Blow Up School

By Joe Kaufman

Radical Muslim Syed Ammar Ahmed continues to affiliate with colleges and kids.

Last month, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) announced its sponsorship of a school project that would provide grants to Muslim teachers and schools in need, what might seem to be an innocuous and laudable undertaking. However, the group sponsoring the project, ICNA, has ties to overseas terror, and the face of the project, Syed Ammar Ahmed, is a radical who once joked about threatening to blow up a school. And to provide a further grim irony, Ahmed is currently an adjunct professor affiliated with different colleges. Why are American youth being subjected to such groups and individuals without so much as an internet background check?

ICNA is the American arm of South Asian Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI). JI’s militant apparatuses have caused much murder and mayhem. One former JI death squad leader, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, who was sentenced to death himself, in absentia, for multiple murders in Bangladesh, is currently active in ICNA and has served for years in ICNA’s top leadership. ICNA has used the web to promote terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban, and in December 2017, ICNA organized an event featuring Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), a US-banned front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Syed Ammar Ahmed is the Public Relations and Government Affairs Coordinator of ICNA Relief USA, ICNA’s US-based social service division and the group leading ICNA’s school project. In February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, Ahmed wrote, “I hate white people”; he called himself a “terrorist”; and at the suggestion of an acquaintance, he joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.” Prior to ICNA, Ahmed was an Organizing Director for Emgage, an Islamist group attempting to disguise its agenda as political advocacy, whose founder and co-chair Khurrum Wahid was reportedly placed on a federal terror watch list.

On January 23rd, ICNA Relief announced, on its social media, the establishment of a grant – “EMPOWER Grant” – allowing ICNA the opportunity to assist Muslim schools and teachers. Accompanying the announcement was a video featuring Ahmed and a remote panel of individuals participating in and discussing the project.

One of the panelists was former President of ICNA Naeem Baig. Baig is currently the Outreach Director of Dar Al-Hijrah, a radical mosque located in Falls Church, Virginia that previously had, as its imam, future al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki. Baig was with Dar Al-Hijrah, when its current imam, Shaker Elsayed, in May 2017, advocated for female genital mutilation (FGM). In June 2016, Baig proudly posted on his Facebook page a photo of himself with Mazen Mokhtar, a former admin for the now-defunct al-Qaeda recruitment site, qoqaz.net, who has called Hamas acts “heroic” and suicide bombings “an effective method of attacking the enemy.”

Another panelist was ICNA Spokesperson Saima Azfar. Azfar is a big fan of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood operative who died while in prison on charges of espionage. Azfar called his death a “murder,” and after he died, she used his image as her ‘profile picture’ on Facebook and posted a fiery video of him extolling jihad and death. Azfar mourned JI terrorist Mir Qasem Ali, who was hung in Bangladesh for war crimes he committed in 1971. Azfar has promoted a call for freedom for Kashmiri terrorist leaders, and in August 2019, Azfar was caught posting ‘fake’ anti-Indian propaganda on Facebook about Kashmir.

Another panelist was the General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), Chicago attorney Azam Nizamuddin. NAIT controls the assets of hundreds of radical mosques throughout the US. Among NAIT-owned mosque alumni are: 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Chattanooga, Tennessee military center shooter Muhammad Abdulazeez. NAIT, along with its affiliate ISNA, was named by the US government a co-conspirator for two federal terrorism financing trials dealing with the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a now-defunct US charity that raised millions of dollars for Hamas.

ICNA’s school project, which originally began as a giveaway of what appeared to be cheaply made backpacks and school supplies, may seem like an admirable endeavor, but given the terror-linked organization running it and the radicals involved in it, how can anyone see this as being worthy of praise? Indeed, events such as these are only meant to take the focus off of ICNA’s sinister background and camouflage it with a few select pictures of smiling children.

And on top of all this, ICNA chose, as the face of this school project, someone who joked about threatening to blow up a school! Yet, even more absurd is the fact that this same individual is associated with different colleges. According to Syed Ammar Ahmed’s LinkedIn page, he is presently an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Indian River State College, in Fort Pierce, Florida, and Broward College, in Fort Lauderdale.

ICNA’s terrorism affiliations and its radical operatives are dangers to society and their jihadist activities are threats to our country’s national security. They should not be operating in America, permitted anywhere near an educational institution, nor involved in the lives of children in any way.

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

PS: Emgage is also part of the Biden administration coup. More in these prior posts.

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #religion #mosque #Terror #Immigration #Education

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altrxisme · 3 years

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Timeline: { mcu verse }

1993 - Alva Johanne Fröst is born in Ålesund, Norway

1994 - Jackson Sionnach O’Daly is born in Burgess, Pennsylvania

Johanne’s mother died from being shot at while they were running from an arms deal gone wrong.

1999 - Stian and Johanne move to Burgess, Pennsylvania

2000 - Stian William Fröst and Eva Viktoria O’Daly are married

2002 - Emma Katerina O’Daly- Fröst and Mikael Emmet O’Daly- Fröst are born

2004 - Stian disappears and becomes a cold case.

2009 - Iron Man

Johanne graduates high school and moves to New York for college, works part-time tutoring and teaching dance in community after-school programs.

2010 - Iron Man II, The Incredible Hulk, Thor

Johanne’s Asgardian heritage is revealed by her grandfather and written journals from Stian.

2011 - Captain America: The First Avenger (defrosted)

Johanne realizes her Asgardian attributes after a fight with a group of thugs and starts her vigilante work as Valkyrie. She often acts as a bouncer for the nearby bar, and is also an back-up bass guitarist for the music acts there.

Jackson graduates high school and starts college, works part-time in a book shop/cafe, Schön Book Shop.

2012 - The Avengers

Jackson gains ice manipulation after being “blessed” by a mysterious veiled woman after being possessed by a Viking spirit for a week.

Jackson is hired as a part-time remote data entry clerk by SHIELD and eventually quits his other part-time job.

Johanne assists in the evacuation in the Battle of New York, she is noticed by SHIELD but is left alone for a couple months before approaching her for recruitment which she declines but agrees to keep in touch.

After the clean-up of the Battle of New York, Jackson moves to Manhattan with Johanne for a while until he gets his own place in Brooklyn.

2013 - Iron Man III, Thor: Dark World

Johanne graduates college and lands a job as an assistant dance instructor, she accidentally gets involved in a mercenary operation which reveals mercenary ties to her grandmother, Hanna Fröst, and Stian.

Jackson starts his informant network under the name Silvertongue.

Johanne and Jackson witness Stian die in Ålesund, Norway.

2014 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Jackson graduates college and certifies as a substitute teacher.

Jackson is promoted as an Intelligence Analyst and moves to DC, quits SHIELD after and moves back to Pennsylvania. He returns to working part-time in Schön Book Shop while expanding his informant network.

Johanne tags along with Jackson to help him move his things, uses the chaos to get him out of the Triskelion when HYDRA was taking over. She decides to cut ties completely with SHIELD after.

2015 - Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man

Jackson is briefly hired as an Intelligence Analyst by the government due to his previous employment in SHIELD. He helps in the relief efforts for displaced Sokovian citizens and returns to the States once more support comes in.

Johanne helps with the relief efforts for displaced Sokovian citizens as well but she decides to live there for a while to continue assisting. She starts to travel around, taking on mercenary work using her father’s old ties.

2016 - Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming

Jackson is hired by the government again, and wished he never agreed in the first place.

Johanne settles in Norway for a few months before returning to New York and continues as a vigilante.

2017 - Doctor Strange, Thor: Ragnarok

Johanne and her grandfather, Kristoffer Hugh Fröst, feel the destruction of Asgard.

2018 - Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War

Jackson and the entire side of his family is blipped.

Johanne does her best to manage what’s left of Jackson’s informant network and moonlights as a mercenary (Sigrun) for the next five years to prepare for when they return.

Johanne and Kristoffer visit New Asgard as often as they can.

2023 - Avengers: Endgame, WandaVision

Jackson returns, rebuilds and strengthens his informant network with Johanne, briefly travels internationally for a few months.

Jackson enlists in the GRC as a teacher for displaced children wherever he’s needed.

Johanne gives Jackson full control of the informant network back and operates solely as a mercenary at this point.

2024 - Spider-Man: Far From Home, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Hawkeye

Jackson goes undercover to join the Flag Smashers, feeding intel to the US military as anonymous sources. After the attack on the GRC Conference, he lays low in Pennsylvania and continues his work remotely for a while.

After Jackson’s insistence, Johanne tries to go back into civilian and vigilante life in New York.

2025 - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, Thor: Love and Thunder

Jackson starts having dreams and nightmares of his variants’ lives, often times timelines where he wasn’t blipped. He starts looking into and researching magick literature to explain it. He begins to start fully seeing spirits and sensing supernatural/magical presences more compared to before.

Johanne struggles in her transition back into a normal life, the grief and the trauma since her father’s death and the back to back events since then beginning to catch up with her. She’s constantly working herself into exhaustion.

#mcu verse canons #[ will be edited and added when needed but yep here's the muses' mcu timeline ]#[ GOTG and Captain Marvel weren't added bc 1) the muses are on Earth and 2) the muses were barely toddlers when Captain Marvel came to earth

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youthincare · 5 years

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About 90 additional foreign students of a fake university in metro Detroit created by the Department of Homeland Security have been arrested in recent months.

A total of about 250 students have now been arrested since January on immigration violations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of a sting operation by federal agents who enticed foreign-born students, mostly from India, to attend the school that marketed itself as offering graduate programs in technology and computer studies, according to ICE officials.

Many of those arrested have been deported to India while others are contesting their removals. One has been allowed to stay after being granted lawful permanent resident status by an immigration judge.

This is the building at 30500 Northwestern Hwy. in Farmington Hills south of 13 Mile Rd. that was used as the fake University of Farmington campus created by the Department of Homeland Security as part of a sting operation targeting foreign students, seen on Thursday, February 7, 2019, in Farmington Hills.

The students had arrived legally in the U.S. on student visas, but since the University of Farmington was later revealed to be a creation of federal agents, they lost their immigration status after it was shut down in January. The school was located on Northwestern Highway near 13 Mile Road in Farmington Hills and staffed with undercover agents posing as university officials.

Out of the approximately 250 students arrested on administrative charges, "nearly 80% were granted voluntary departure and departed the United States," the Detroit office of ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) told the Free Press in a statement Tuesday.

Out of the remaining 20%, about half of them have received a final order of removal; some of them were ordered removed by an immigration judge, and others "were given an expedited removal by U.S. Customs and Border Protection," said HSI Detroit.

The remaining 10% "have either filed for some sort of relief or are contesting their removals with Executive Office for Immigration Review," said HSI Detroit.

ICE said in March that 161 students had been arrested, which has now increased to about 250.

Meanwhile, seven of the eight recruiters who were criminally charged for trying to recruit students have pleaded guilty and have been sentenced in Detroit, including Prem Rampeesa, 27, last week. The remaining one is to be sentenced in January.

Attorneys for the students arrested said they were unfairly trapped by the U.S. government since the Department of Homeland Security had said on its website that the university was legitimate. An accreditation agency that was working with the U.S. on its sting operation also listed the university as legitimate.

More: Emails show how fake university in metro Detroit lured students

More: ICE arrests more students at fake university, others being removed from US

More: Attorney: Fake Farmington university sting by ICE was entrapment

There were more than 600 students enrolled at the university, which was created a few years ago by federal law enforcement officials with ICE. Records filed with the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) show that the University of Farmington was incorporated in January 2016.

Many of the students had enrolled with the university through a program known as Curricular Practical Training (CPT), which allows students to work in the U.S through a F-1 visa program for foreign students. Some had transferred to the University of Farmington from other schools that had lost accreditation, which means they would no longer be in immigration status and allowed to remain in the U.S.

Emails obtained by the Free Press earlier this year showed how the fake university attracted students to the university, which cost about $12,000 on average in tuition and fees per year.

The U.S. "trapped the vulnerable people who just wanted to maintain (legal immigration) status," Rahul Reddy, a Texas attorney who represented or advised some of the students arrested, told the Free Press this week. "They preyed upon on them."

The fake university is believed to have collected millions of dollars from the unsuspecting students. An email from the university's president, named Ali Milani, told students that graduate programs' tuition is $2,500 per quarter and the average cost is $1,000 per month.

"They made a lot of money," Reddy said of the U.S. government.

University of Farmington office in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Photo taken in 2017. (Photo: Matt Friedman/Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications)

No one has filed a lawsuit or claim against the U.S. government for collecting the money or for allegedly entrapping the students.

Attorneys for ICE and the Department of Justice maintain that the students should have known it was not a legitimate university because it did not have classes in a physical location. Some CPT programs have classes combined with work programs at companies.

"Their true intent could not be clearer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Helms wrote in a sentencing memo this month for Rampeesa, one of the eight recruiters, of the hundreds of students enrolled. "While 'enrolled' at the University, one hundred percent of the foreign citizen students never spent a single second in a classroom. If it were truly about obtaining an education, the University would not have been able to attract anyone, because it had no teachers, classes, or educational services."

In the memo, federal prosecutor Baker said the case raises questions about the U.S. "foreign-student visa program."

Baker wrote that "immigration and visa programs have been hot-button topics in the United States for years and national scrutiny has only been increasing. Fairly or unfairly, Rampeesa’s conduct casts a shadow on the foreign-student visa program in general, and it raises questions as to whether the potential for abuse threatens to outweigh the benefits."

Reddy said, though, that in some cases, students who transferred out from the University of Farmington after realizing they didn't have classes on-site, were still arrested.

Admissions section of the website of the University of Farmington, a fake university created by ICE and Dept. of Homeland Security. It reads: "We are very excited about welcoming you to the UF community and helping you" (Photo: Department of Homeland Security)

Rampeesa was sentenced Nov, 19 to one year in prison by Judge Gershwin Drain of U.S. District Court in Detroit. With time already served of 295 days, he should be out in about two to three months, and will then be deported to India, said his attorney Wanda Cal. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud and harbor aliens for profit.

Detroit ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls said the other recruiters sentenced so far are Barath Kakireddy, 29, of Lake Mary, Florida, 18 months; Suresh Kandala, 31, of Culpeper, Virginia, 18 months; Santosh Sama, 28, of Fremont, California, 24 months; Avinash Thakkallapally, 28, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 15 months; Aswanth Nune, 26, of Atlanta, Georgia, 12 months; Naveen Prathipati, 26, of Dallas, Texas, 12 months.

Phanideep Karnati, 35, of Louisville, Kentucky, is to be sentenced in January.

In court, Rampeesa's attorney, Cal, said his client had no criminal record and came from a rural background in India.

He was trying to "help his family back home," Cal said before Judge Drain. "My client is very remorseful. He is really a good person caught up in a bad situation."

Rampeesa arrived in the U.S. legally a few years ago on a student visa and earned in 2016 a master's degree in computer science at Northwestern Polytechnic University. But the university later lost its accreditation, which put his immigration status in jeopardy. He had spent $40,000 in tuition and fees for his studies at the university.

"He was desperate to find a way to stay in the United States," Rampeesa's attorney, Cal, wrote in his sentencing memo. He wanted to get a Ph.D. in computer science, she said.

Support quality local journalism like this by becoming a subscriber of the Detroit Free Press.

Rampeesa then met Sama, who recruited him to attend the University of Farmington and told him he could get tuition credits if he recruited other students, Cal said.

Sama and Rampeesa were working with people they thought were university officials, but were actually undercover agents for the Department of Homeland Security.

"My client has no other criminal history, not even a traffic ticket," Cal said in court last week.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Baker said in court that Rampeesa was "aware it was completely fake," that "it was just for maintaining status."

"He chose the University of Farmington for a reason," Baker said of Rampeesa.

In calling for a sentence of 24 to 30 months, Baker said: "It's important to send a message ... this type of crime will not be tolerated."

Accompanying Baker in the court last week was Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet, who helped prosecute the case.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken offline the website of the University of Farmington, which it had created for a sting operation. The website was taken down on Jan. 31, 2019 after a federal indictment was unsealed on Jan. 30. The website for the fake university now contains a logo for the investigative unit of ICE and reads: "The University of Farmington has been closed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement." (Photo: Dept. of Homeland Security)

Judge Drain sentenced him to 1 year, but he will be released in two to three months because of time served, and then deported.

Drain said of Rampeesa: "You don't have any criminal history. ... I don't think you're a danger to the public."

Rampeesa received a shorter sentence than Sama because he was not recruiting other students for cash, but for tuition credits provided by the university, Judge Drain said.

Rampeesa wrote a letter to the court pleading for leniency that was read before the judge. A Telugu-speaking translator was at his side in court, translating the courtroom proceedings. Most of the students were from Telugu-speaking regions of India in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

He said he was trying in the U.S. after his previous university's loss of accreditation made his master's degree "worthless."

"I am ashamed," Rampeesa wrote. "I made a very bad decision" to recruit students that "bought shame to my family name."

Contact Niraj Warikoo: [email protected] or 313-2234792. Twitter @nwarikoo

#ice #immigration #detroit

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audreykims · 4 years

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werixnoraz · 4 years

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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How Turkey Removed Its Intellectuals https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/magazine/the-era-of-people-like-you-is-over-how-turkey-purged-its-intellectuals.html

This is a FASCINATING and FRIGHTENING in-depth look at the purge of intellectuals within Turkish society after the attempted coup of Erdogan's government and as he becomes more authorative.

“The first thing these kinds of ideological movements target are people and institutions that produce knowledge,” Uzgel said. “They have to clear those areas in order to establish their own power. Because they represent the only dissenting forces in a society. The business class does not speak up against the government. Civil society is already weak in Turkey. Universities with strong traditions are critical because they recruit younger generations. You have to break institutions. Authoritarian regimes don’t necessarily send everyone to jail.”

But if the authoritarian regime lasts long enough, it can succeed in suppressing even relatively uncritical voices"

‘The Era of People Like You Is Over’: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

For more than a century, one school of political science dominated the education of Turkey’s governing class — until the Erdogan regime set about destroying it.

By Suzy Hansen | Published July 24, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 28, 2019 |

Above: Former members of the Ankara University faculty of political science, also known as Mulkiye, including Canberk Gurer, Ilhan Uzgel, Elcin Aktoprak and Kerem Altiparmak. Photographs by Emin Ozmen/Magnum, for The New York Times.

Ilhan Uzgel learned he had been fired while driving his Honda Civic from the village of Ayas to Ankara, after a visit to his ailing, elderly father. A little after midnight, one of his former research assistants called his cellphone. “Ilhan hocam,” the student said, using a Turkish honorific (“my teacher”) bestowed on educators. “Your name was on the list.”

When Uzgel returned to his Ankara apartment, his 4-year-old son was sleeping, but his wife, Elcin Aktoprak, was up waiting. She hadn’t wanted to call him herself with the news while he was driving. Now she comforted her husband — and then Uzgel comforted her, because Aktoprak, also a professor, told him that she had lost her job, too. They had been professors at Ankara University, on the faculty of its storied school of political science, widely known as Mulkiye.

Uzgel attended a provincial university in his home city, Bursa, before enrolling in Mulkiye to get a master’s degree and eventually his doctorate — an accomplishment for someone of his modest origins. In Turkey, to be a part of Mulkiye was to have a special status: to be both of the country and, in a way, superior to it. The joke went that for Mulkiyeliler, or Mulkiye alumni, it was “First Mulkiye, then Turkiye.” Uzgel, one of Turkey’s leading specialists in American-Turkish relations and the author or editor of books with grand titles like “National Interest and Foreign Policy,” proudly remained at Mulkiye for 30 years until Feb. 7, 2017, when he was fired. Some 6,000 of Turkey’s 150,000 academics would ultimately share his fate.

Many Turkish academics grew up hoping that they would one day see their country become a democracy. They studied sociology or philosophy; they specialized in conflict resolution, peace building, minority rights, things like the creation of civil society. They received their Ph.D.s in political science or history, expressly to participate in liberal-minded universities that would bring forth generations even more democratic than themselves. They had faith in things like good governance practices, a fair judicial system, a free press, human rights and women’s rights. There was a goal, and an understanding that you were either part of democratization or you weren’t. In Turkey, those who engaged in the creation of a democracy as a painful, step-by-step process constituted a small, passionate group, but they shared this experience with people all across the world, from Poland to Taiwan, with those who also lived in democratizing countries, who felt that their countries were on the upswing, getting better, whatever that meant.

An authoritarian state can do many things to get rid of these democratic types — put them in jail, put them on trial — but ultimately the government must attack the institutions that produce and sustain them. Newspapers can be easy to buy. NGOs are easy to shut down. Universities are much harder to dismantle.

But this is what, through the great purge, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies sought to do. Thousands of academics lost their jobs, and many lost their right to travel, their passports canceled. They would not be able to work at public or private universities again. Legal proceedings would be opened against them — and drag on to this day, leaving the fired in limbo. Many who were abroad would not return. They feared being quoted in the press or even speaking to journalists. Some were sentenced to prison. At least one committed suicide. Around 90 of the purged academics came from Ankara University, and 36 came from Mulkiye alone, raising suspicions that the 160-year-old faculty of political science had become a particular target.

In October 2017, months after the firings began, Mulkiye held a conference called “The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Russian Revolution: The Soviet Union, the Cold War and the International System.” Uzgel was the keynote speaker. In order to attend the conference, he had to be brought discreetly onto campus in a friend’s car.

In his speech, Uzgel, a small, soft-spoken man in his mid-50s with wispy, longish gray hair, spoke about recent events, particularly the failed military coup against Erdogan only 15 months earlier, as well as the previous successful military coups in Turkey’s history. “In 1980, when there was a military coup, the threat was the Soviet Union, and it was academics who paid the price,” he said. “In 2016, when there was a military coup, the threat was the United States, and still it was we who paid the price. The threat changes, but those who are fired stay the same. Academics pay the price.”

Uzgel’s voice began to crack. Almost every day since his 20s, he had taken the bus or driven his car to the university’s stately campus in Ankara’s busy, wide-laned central Cebeci neighborhood; entered through the imposing concrete gates surrounded by lush foliage, then passed through the doors to the early modernist structure that served as Mulkiye’s home; walked across the inner courtyard where young men and women smoked many cigarettes and fought about politics; and climbed the floating staircase, flanked by paintings and photographs of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to arrive at his office. His life’s work, his status in the country, had now been stolen from him.

As Uzgel pointed out in his speech, Turkey’s governments have often purged the country’s intellectuals, only for the nation to stumble slowly back toward some semblance of democracy. As the Turks proved again this past June, when they resoundingly elected an opposition candidate as mayor of Istanbul — after two decades of control by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P. — free elections in Turkey have always defied its authoritarian state system. Yet something about this era under Erdogan has still felt different, more lasting, as if the continuing existence of the A.K.P.’s repressive policies will permanently impair otherwise resilient, historic institutions. Mulkiye, after all, was more than just an academic faculty; it was the academic faculty that provided the Turkish state with its administrators and statesman, its legal experts and political historians. Those associated with Mulkiye not only understood how the Turkish state worked; they were, to some degree, the Turkish state.

Mulkiye was established in what was then called Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire to train civil servants and diplomats. Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, moved the school to the new capital city, Ankara, in the 1930s. This measure was both practical and symbolic: The decaying Ottoman Empire had given way to a rebellious new nation that required statesmen (like himself) who were dedicated to secularism, modernity and nationalism. Over time, Mulkiye would become not only a primary intellectual and political engine of the Turkish republic but also a center of dissent for Turks who wished to both uphold and transform it.

Many of the scholars engaged in creating Turkey’s early constitutions came from Mulkiye. The legislators tasked with building the young republic were able to do so in part because, even if their political backgrounds differed, they shared some of the same republican values. Foreign ministers, governors and ambassadors often came from Mulkiye, much as French politicians commonly come out of Sciences Po. Uzgel told me that it was generally known that you were less likely to attain a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs unless you had a degree from Mulkiye.

It was at Mulkiye, in part, that the foundations of Turkey’s foreign policy were established. In reaction to devastating wartime experiences during the 19th and early 20th centuries, the new Turkish republic’s foreign policy would be one of caution, independence and self-defense, characterized by a reluctance to meddle in foreign wars and a general orientation toward the West but without deep allegiance to a single power. As Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American professor of economics and political science at Duke University, put it to me recently, “The members of Mulkiye helped to restrain the state and helped to prevent politicians in power from using foreign policy for momentary gain.”

This entwining of the government and Mulkiye intellectuals explains why they have so often been persecuted. In 1960, students so vociferously protested the changes being made to the country by Adnan Menderes, Turkey’s leader at the time, that the university was temporarily shut down. Even as Mulkiye continued to serve its function as a feeder department to the Turkish state, university campuses like Mulkiye’s came to be seen as inspiration for greater, nationwide political opposition. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, after two military coups, many leftist Mulkiye professors were purged and even thrown in jail. But even following these dramatic events, the very Mulkiye people who suffered would eventually go back to work for the government or return to teaching jobs. In 1971, for example, a Mulkiye dean named Mumtaz Soysal was accused of making Communist propaganda and sent to jail. “I heard he cleaned toilets in prison,” one former Mulkiye professor told me. Yet 20 years later, Soysal was Turkey’s foreign minister. Over time, several aspects of Mulkiye’s influence in the state bureaucracy were diminished, especially in the realm of local administration and finance. But even after so much trauma, Mulkiye — and particularly its prominence in foreign policy and the Turkish Foreign Ministry — survived.

In the 1980s, students like Ilhan Uzgel entered Mulkiye to work toward advanced degrees and stayed on as professors. By that time, a government-controlled institution called YOK, created to exert more centralized control over the universities, had been given purview over a suite of traditionally independent functions ranging from admissions testing to tenure decisions. The Mulkiye faculty split into right and left. The secularist-nationalists opposed some liberal reforms to the economy; they were critical of the Kurdish struggle and political Islam, and some were against joining the European Union. The leftists and liberals favored human rights (including for Kurds and Islamists), entry into the E.U. and broader democratization. In 1998, the Turkish military shut down the ruling Islamist political party and imposed further restrictions on political Islamists and other religious figures. Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul, was sent to prison. By the 2000s, a more liberal-seeming, post-Islamist party led by Erdogan was ascendant. Many Mulkiye academics were so inclusive in their thinking as to have been sympathetic to Erdogan when he became prime minister in 2003.

Soon after, though, something began happening behind the scenes. “Mulkiye’s ties with Turkish bureaucracy began to be cut off around 2004,” Uzgel told me. “The A.K. Party just cut it off. Their own people began to dominate the bureaucracy system.”

“I grew up at Mulkiye,” Elcin Aktoprak was saying. “Inside the campus, there was a kind of freedom that didn’t exist in the rest of the country.” I met Aktoprak, Canberk Gurer and Kerem Altiparmak, all former Mulkiye academics, at their office at a European Union-funded human rights organization, which sits in a lovely central neighborhood in Ankara. They are in their 30s and 40s. Aktoprak has short, unfussy hair and the easy confidence of many female Turkish intellectuals. (She and Uzgel have divorced in the time since the purge.) She felt more comfortable at Mulkiye as a woman than in other parts of Turkey, as did many self-described feminists, gay students, Kurds and leftists.

But when those at Mulkiye talk about its freedom, they are primarily referring to the liberty to criticize — not only peers but also professors and deans, the people with authority. During Aktoprak’s tenure at Mulkiye, a certain radical spirit had been reignited there, mainly in response to the so-called Kurdish issue. During Turkey’s founding, Kurds had been victims of pogroms and categorized as “mountain Turks,” rather than ethnic Kurds, and were forced to speak Turkish; the Kurdish regions in the southeastern part of the country were neglected economically. In the 1970s, a new separatist-terrorist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.), was founded by Abdullah Ocalan — himself a former student at Mulkiye — to lobby for the right to embrace Kurdishness and also to fight for separation from the Turkish state. A vicious war erupted. Turkish military forces burned down villages and tortured and killed Kurds, and the P.K.K. attacked security forces and terrorized town squares.

There was — and still is — no issue in Turkey that galvanizes Turks and Kurds more than the war with the P.K.K. For many Turks, the idea of Kurdishness invalidates the central idea of the Turkish nation, which is that Turkey is a country for the Turks. In the political rhetoric of the Turkish state, to be pro-Kurdish is almost to be a terrorist yourself.

By the 2000s, the early years of Erdogan’s rule, the government began engaging in a “peace process” with the P.K.K. At the same time, Kurdish students continued to flood the universities, and many were attracted to Ankara University’s legacy as a place of protest. In particular, they entered into certain faculties — communication, education, law and political science (Mulkiye) — located on the same campus. Leftist and Kurdish and pro-Kurdish-rights students enjoyed a kind of freedom there almost singular in Turkish life, which is predominantly conservative, among both the religious and the secular. For conservative students, the Cebeci campus might have seemed like one in which pro-Kurdish students somehow had more power than themselves.

“More than half of the students might be nationalist or conservative,” Aktoprak said, “but the atmosphere was more leftist, giving leftist students the ability to express their views more than at any other universities, without banning other voices.” In this regard, there’s some resemblance to American universities like Berkeley and Columbia in the 1960s, but it’s important to remember that university campuses are some of the only places in Turkey where a young Kurdish leftist would be able to openly declare his politics.

The rector of Ankara University and the dean of Mulkiye also saw Mulkiye’s openness as crucial to the education of its students. An episode in 2009 shows how this commitment could play out. Mulkiye’s Human Rights Center held a conference, what it called “a public civil-society dialogue,” with representatives from the European Union. Cemil Cicek, deputy prime minister of Turkey — that is, deputy to Erdogan — asked to attend.

“We didn’t invite him, but we had to accept his participation,” said Kerem Altiparmak, who was head of the Human Rights Center at the time and is one of Turkey’s leading human rights lawyers. “But the night before the event, one of my students said, ‘Professor, I guess we will be protesting your event tomorrow.’ I said, O.K. I cannot decide on behalf of them. Peaceful protest is the right of students.”

The next day, those students arranged themselves in plush blue seats throughout a large, auditorium-style Mulkiye lecture hall, all of them facing a dais flanked by Mulkiye insignia and photos of Ataturk. Among the attendees were the rector of Ankara University and a Mulkiye dean. Cicek rose to speak behind a wooden lectern.

And then the students, one by one, stood up to interrupt him.

“Can I please ask something?” one young man said, his hand raised. “In this country, people like Engin Ceber” — a human rights activist — “are taken into custody and killed by torture.” He went on: “In this kind of country, as the deputy prime minister, I don’t believe you have much to tell us.”

Everyone clapped.

“With these speeches and this applause, you have used your rights in the name of democracy,” Cicek said over the cries. “If it’s O.K. with you, I will now exercise my right —”

“Dear minister,” another young man broke in, standing up. “This democracy and human rights forum is happening with a police blockade around it. Can you explain why?”

Cicek kept talking. The young man kept talking, too. The applause grew louder.

“It’s true that I came here knowing this may happen —” Cicek said.

“Then how dare you come here!” one man yelled. “If you knew that, why did you come?”

“There is no place for Cemil Cicek in this school!” another young man yelled, and the crowd cheered. “There is no place for people like you in a university! You have no right to speak here! You’re not here to talk about human rights!”

At that point, the minister’s security guards tried to stop this man from speaking.

“Is this democracy? You have 50 men trying to take me out of here!”

Cicek decided to leave. The rector of the university and the Mulkiye dean politely escorted him as he exited the lecture hall.

But that was it. No student was punished. No investigations followed. Academic life in Turkey has long included places like Mulkiye, where teenagers and 20-somethings learned to stand up in a crowded lecture hall and directly challenge one of the most powerful politicians in the country.

Around the early 2000s, Mulkiye professors began noticing unfamiliar and suspicious developments. Government apparatchiks at state agencies started rejecting applications for research projects that would have normally been accepted. For instance, in 2009, Uzgel applied for a grant to do research in Washington on the relationship between Turkey, the United States and northern Iraq. He applied to George Washington University and to Tubitak, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. His application was accepted by George Washington but not by Tubitak, something that rarely happens in Turkish academic life. The attitude at these agencies, the professors said, was that because religious or conservative A.K.P. supporters had felt for decades that they had been shut out of elite academia, now it was their turn to have advantages in academia. They sometimes even said that directly to people, Uzgel heard from other academics. “It’s our turn.”

In 2012, Erkan Ibis became rector of Ankara University. Ibis projected a secular lifestyle, and the professors observed that his wife didn’t wear a head scarf. He didn’t seem like a sycophantic A.K.P. type. But by this point, Turks were beginning to grasp that to remain in powerful state positions, they would have to toe the line. Those who once drank alcohol, for example, might now make a point of drinking water. University rectors who once allowed protests on campus might make a point of banning them.

That fall, Ibis invited an unexpected luminary to speak at the school’s opening-day ceremony: Prime Minister Erdogan. While Erdogan often attended the opening-day ceremonies at universities close to his government, to do so at Ankara University was unusual. A group of professors within Mulkiye decided to conduct a separate opening-day ceremony for their faculty, at exactly the same time as Erdogan’s speech. They called their gathering “Freedom of Expression and the Universities” and invited speakers like Ismail Besikci, a writer and sociologist who had been imprisoned for 17 years on charges of advocating separatism. When the rector learned of the parallel ceremony, he asked a Mulkiye dean at the time, Yalcin Karatepe, to cancel it. Don’t do it on the same day, Ibis suggested; then: Don’t do it at the same hour. (Ibis disputes this claim.)

“But I refused to cancel,” Karatepe told me later. “This faculty has survived six sultans, 11 presidents, countless prime ministers. Erdogan was just another one, and this time will pass. This institution has a tradition of speaking out, and we who are here now must continue the tradition.” Mulkiye’s ceremony was held in the end.

The faculty’s relationship with Ankara University’s rector deteriorated, especially after the events of the following summer, in 2013. That’s when the Gezi Park protests, which began in Istanbul in reaction to the planned destruction of a park, quickly spread to Ankara and across the country, as a rejection of the A.K.P. government. It would be hard to overstate how terrifying the Gezi protests must have seemed for Erdogan. Gezi brought even the most apolitical students out into the streets. Middle-aged people joined them, too. “Normally those families would stop their kids, but they went out together; that was something quite new in Turkey,” Uzgel told me.

Eventually police officers cleared Gezi Park of the protesters. Erdogan was elected president for the first time a year later in 2014. “Erdogan began his ‘one-man-ification’ of the country after Gezi,” Gurer said. “And our rector began his ‘one-man-ification’ of the university as well.”

At the same time, the Gezi Park protests led to the popularity of a new political party, H.D.P., headed by the Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas, who was magnetic, funny and handsome. Demirtas strove to make his party open to all Turks and more independent than its predecessor parties, which had ties to the P.K.K. He urged peace with the Turkish state. His popularity soared. Erdogan seemed to feel threatened by the emergence of a politician more charismatic than he was. Soon after, he did what countless Turkish politicians before him did to win votes: He helped reignite a war in the southeast against the P.K.K., which for its part engaged enthusiastically. Antiwar protests erupted on Mulkiye’s campus throughout 2014 and 2015.

Such demonstrations were to be expected of Mulkiye students — but now Ibis, the new rector, took a very different attitude toward them. According to a report produced by Baris Unlu and Ozlem Albayrak, former Mulkiye professors, 626 Ankara University students in 2015, 758 in 2016 and 815 in 2017 “were given disciplinary action.” The rector opened two investigations into Yalcin Karatepe — the same dean who allowed the alternate opening-day ceremony — including one for leaving his post without permission. (According to Turkish law, a civil servant must notify an employer of travel plans, but this is rarely enforced.)

In an email, Ibis said: “If a crime is committed, you have to follow the essential legal process. Otherwise you would be taking part in a crime or working with the criminal.” He also said that during this period he believed that a “group of students had not been letting those who didn’t share the same background as themselves, or hold the same political views, enter campus and thus go to classes and tests, and that some of the academic staff had supported these activities.”

Pro-government media began signaling to state authorities which political actors in Turkish life should be investigated or condemned for various infractions — a sinister trend that extended to journalists, politicians, academics and students. The newspapers Yeni Akit, Habervaktim and Vahdet hounded Mulkiye, calling the people there “enemies of Islam,” “gay lovers” and “bastards.” When Mulkiye’s Human Rights Center screened Lars von Trier’s film “Nymphomaniac” in the name of freedom of expression — the film had been banned in Turkey — critics referred to both the department and the film as sapkin, or “perverted.” This kind of invective reached a fever pitch when it came time for Mulkiye’s Inek Bayrami, or Cow Festival, a longstanding Mulkiye spring tradition in which for two days students are encouraged to criticize their professors in a public forum. (It’s essentially a roast.) One of the Cow Festival rites is the selection of an “imam” to initiate the proceedings, which include a mock opening prayer. The festival was repeatedly attacked by pro-government trolls online, and the 2017 festival was canceled by the administration. The student who played the imam in 2016 was charged with insulting religion.

“Yeni Akit always said we protected L.G.B.T. students, pro-Kurdish or so-called terrorist students,” Aktoprak said. “But we only defended their rights. We were trying to protect our students from the attacks from security forces. We experienced early what everyone in Turkey is experiencing now — that even if you just support something, they label you a terrorist.”

And once you are labeled a terrorist in Turkey — where the antiterror laws are elastic — your life is more or less over. Mulkiye professors defined this entire period, the Erkan Ibis era, as “mobbing,” or an attempt to force people out of their workplace through intimidation.

In early 2016, some academics circulated a petition supporting a peaceful resolution to the government’s war with the P.K.K. They called themselves Academics for Peace and titled their petition “We Will Not Be Party to This Crime!” In Turkish academia, such petitions were normal, even banal, and when the academics urged their colleagues to sign it, many did so reflexively, more than 2,000 in Turkey.

Professors from Mulkiye signed the petition not only out of solidarity but also because many of them were engaged in exposing the undemocratic lie at the heart of the Turkish republic — the fact that Turkey was founded as a nation of Turks only, when millions of its people were not Turks at all but Kurds.

The language of the petition would someday haunt its signers:

“As academics and researchers of this country, we will not be party to this crime! ... This deliberate and planned massacre is in serious violation of Turkey’s own laws and international treaties to which Turkey is a party. ... We demand the state to abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region. ... For this purpose we demand that independent national and international observers be given access to the region and that they be allowed to monitor and report on the incidents.”

Soon after it was released, Erdogan, himself a rhetorical master of sorts, homed in on the petition’s language, in part because it seemed to suggest that he was guilty of an international crime. He responded by declaring in a speech that the academics were guilty of a national one:

“The old Turkey, run by a handful of lumpen, who call themselves intellectuals and academics, doesn’t exist anymore. These lumpen circles have shown once again their true faces. With this declaration, they have shown the terror propaganda directly, which they have been conducting for years indirectly. ... Do you favor the unity and solidarity of Turkey or not? If you favor the unity of the country, why do you speak in the jargon of the terror organization, which makes our citizens’ lives miserable and attacks our security forces? This is called terror propaganda.”

Across the country, academics were vilified, threatened and even arrested. According to Unlu and Albayrak’s report, Ankara University immediately opened an investigation into the academics who signed the petition. (Ibis said this was done at the request of YOK.) Around the same time, two professors, Unlu and Gokcen Alpkaya, came under attack for questions they included in their exams. Unlu had asked about Abdullah Ocalan; Alpkaya had asked about the Academics for Peace petition. A legal case brought against Unlu accused him of inciting terror. The mobbing had intensified.

Ilhan Uzgel found the atmosphere so stressful and worrisome that he took a sabbatical at SOAS, in London. Before he left, the rector was discussing with professors the option of withdrawing their signature from the petition. “I said, No, I cannot do it,” Uzgel said. Among other reasons: “My assistant signed that petition. I couldn’t do that to him.”

While Uzgel was away in London, there was another attempted military coup in Turkey.

In response to the failed coup in 2016, Erdogan purged the state’s ministries, its police force, the military, the secondary schools, hospitals, unions, newspapers and nonprofit organizations — some 150,000 people in total. Many of the denounced were accused members of the Gulen movement, whom the government associated with the coup plot. But soon Erdogan turned on Kurds and leftists, including, of course, academics.

In September 2016, along with thousands of other Turks, 21 members of the teaching staff were fired from Ankara University, including some half dozen assistants from Mulkiye. The academics at Mulkiye, Aktoprak noted, were very agitated. “Everyone, including the lawyers, started telling us what we should do,” she said. “Like, who will be the contact person for your family if you are taken into custody? What’s in your messages? What’s at your house? We all started wondering what it could be.”

She looked at Gurer, sitting across from her. “Did you throw anything out?”

“Magazines,” he said. “I got rid of my computer, my phone. I erased all of my WhatsApp.”

The next month, in October, some of their colleagues were refused the right to leave the country.

“We realized some of these people who couldn’t go abroad didn’t have a case opened against them,” Aktoprak said. “For example, one of our university colleagues was going to go to Japan, and at the gate at the airport she learned she couldn’t go. We think that the rector had sent a list to the state security forces that said, These people could be connected to terror.” (Ibis denies giving this type of information to state security forces.)

Three months later, on Jan. 6, 2017, the purge struck Mulkiye again. The professors Faruk Alpkaya and Ozlem Albayrak were fired, along with professors from other faculties at the school.

The remaining professors checked Resmi Gazete, the government’s official online bulletin, every day. Will I be fired today? they wondered, or will I be fired tomorrow? For a month, it was all the petition signers talked about. They knew that those already purged had lost access to certain online university systems. They checked obsessively to see if they, too, had lost access, as if this would be the tell of their impending doom. “OSYM, the national testing center that organizes university entrance exams, blocked me on Twitter,” Gurer said. “This was one month before I was fired.”

“It was terrible,” Aktoprak said, laughing a little. “You would say to yourself, If a bird takes off, does it mean I’m being fired?”

For this reason, Aktoprak and Gurer were almost relieved when finally, on Feb. 7, 2017, they, along with 27 other academics, lost their jobs. It was one of the last big spates of firings, and again the campus erupted in protests. The police responded with tear gas. Soon after, fired professors who tried to enter Mulkiye were turned away. “I’m sorry, hocam,” the security guards would say. “You are one of the fired.”

Aktoprak found that experience so painful — to suddenly find yourself barred from a place you had found refuge every day for your entire adult life — that she never returned.

The Mulkiye that remained was no longer recognizable to those who once worked there. The walls, which had always been covered with leftist posters, are now sparsely adorned with Turkish flags. The Human Rights Center was closed. (The rector has since reopened it under his control.) Certain subjects are now rarely taught — Foucault, say, or queer theory. Master’s and doctoral courses have been canceled, leaving graduate students suddenly without an adviser. The film society, where students and professors used to drink wine and watch movies together, has been shut down, and the showing of films, according to academics who have been purged, has been banned entirely.

“Mulkiye always used to mean criticism,” Aktoprak said. “And it can’t mean that anymore.”

The academics left at Mulkiye were shouldering an unimaginable course load, slinging enormous sacks of papers and tests over their backs to grade at night. One of the people who remained was Kerem Altiparmak. He is currently part of a group of lawyers representing about 100 Turks at the European Court of Human Rights and Turkish criminal courts who were targeted by the post-coup purge. He was not fired from Mulkiye, but he resigned last year. He no longer felt that the conditions for conducting an academic life existed there. Altiparmak found himself investigated for holding academic discussions on Turkey’s post-coup state of emergency laws. “The university sent a letter to all academics and forced them to sign it, in which the rector warned not to cross lines in the curriculum,” Altiparmak said. “It said, We receive complaints from our students that teachers are discussing subjects irrelevant to the curriculum, and I am warning you not to do this.”

The universities had also empowered the more conservative students to submit complaints about their professors through something called the Communications Center of the Presidency, or Cimer. “They say things like, ‘You are now telling your Marxist opinions to us,’ ” Altiparmak said. “Some don’t want to hear other perspectives. This will affect all culture of Turkey because these are the people going into the state bureaucracy.”

Similar disruptions have occurred in the Foreign Ministry as well. Selim Sazak, a Turkish Ph.D. candidate at Brown University and writer on foreign affairs, has said that an A.K.P. apparatchik discouraged him from aspiring to a big career in the foreign service, saying, “The era of people like you” — non-A.K.P.-affiliated, prep-school-educated — “is over.” In fact, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the enormous transformations in Turkey’s foreign policy right now — its engagement in the wars in Syria and Iraq, its steep increases in military spending and its distancing from the West — can be connected to the sidelining of some traditional voices, including ones from Mulkiye.

“There was still an expectance of Mulkiye as a fundamental institution of the republic,” Timur Kuran of Duke University says. “Before, no one sought to eliminate it or remove the checks and balances in the political system that came from Mulkiye. In the present case, there is an effort to remove not only Mulkiye’s supervisory role but all checks and balances.”

“Mulkiye-trained people tended to be much more cautious in foreign policy,” Kuran says. “Keeping the country at peace was their fundamental goal. Right now, Erdogan is taking huge risks. All checks and balances in foreign policy are disappearing, and even to raise questions about the adventures that Turkey is now getting into is to risk persecution as a traitor.”

Not surprisingly, this atmosphere has prompted a brain drain — thousands of Turkish academics, in the social sciences as well as the sciences, have left the country. Even the government has acknowledged that the departures represent a full-blown crisis. Recently, the minister of industry and technology, Mustafa Varank, promised academics abroad a monthly salary of 24,000 lira (about $4,200) if they came to Turkey.

Many students told newspapers they would not return to a country where they felt academics were rewarded on ideological grounds or for connections rather than merit, or where they wouldn’t be able to work on any subjects that countered the official state line. As a former professor who has remained put it to me: “There is no point in carrying on as if nothing changed. If there’s no more university life, why should I be in the university anymore?”

Elcin Aktoprak and others did receive a grant from the European Union to do research and build pilot programs for online “human rights ateliers.” Many fired professors established alternative education centers in the wake of the purge, which were called “solidarity academies,” and where you could go to learn about politics in peace.

“The one silver lining to all this,” Aktoprak said, “was that maybe we can sustain an intellectual community on our own this way and return to public life in better days.”

For everyone, though, there is still the prospect of prison. According to Academics for Peace, more than 2,000 hearings have been held for the peace petitioners, and none have resulted in acquittals. In most cases decided so far, academics receive a 15-month suspended jail sentence, but some 30 of them have not been given suspension of judgment, and one professor, Fusun Ustel, is currently in jail. Another signatory, Tuna Altinel, is in prison on charges from a different case.

Ilhan Uzgel spends most of his days working on his laptop at a Starbucks in an Ankara mall. After he was fired, he looked into jobs at private universities — which are not barred from hiring fired professors, technically — but they are all too scared to hire the purged. This was a common claim among purged professors. In at least one way, Uzgel was one of the lucky ones: He was old enough to retire and receive his pension.

The loss of people like Uzgel, and as a result the loss of their analytical expertise, is an enormous loss for Turkish society. The people best able to analyze for me what was happening in Turkey in 2019 — its political scientists — were the ones being erased by what was happening in 2019. With them goes not only history itself but also nuance and complexity and fairness.

As someone who has studied Turkey’s political history, Uzgel acknowledged that his fate was not entirely unusual. The tradition of purging preceded the founding of Turkey, and it continued throughout modern Turkish history. Purging was not an anomaly but rather integral to that history.

But if the authoritarian regime lasts long enough, it can succeed in suppressing even relatively uncritical voices. Most of the Mulkiye professors did not believe that Erdogan wanted an Islamic state or a fascist one. What the A.K.P. seems to propose for Turkey’s future is a country without character — a country that can believe itself to be free as long as it does not adopt an identity that threatens the A.K.P. Institutions like Mulkiye had been one thing above all: independent in spirit and principle. Such institutions cannot exist in Erdogan’s Turkey for many, many reasons, one of which is simply that they are too distinct.

Individuals, too, can become less distinct. They become fuzzy. Their voices fade. They lose their place in society, so much so that when they discover themselves again, the sweetness of it takes them by surprise. One of the many professors I interviewed was Faruk Alpkaya. Alpkaya talked about Turkish history. He was an academic — that was his job. But after 20 years of being a professor, he, like Uzgel and thousands of others, has spent the last two and a half years as a nonentity in official Turkish life. Alpkaya spoke in bursts for 10 minutes at a time, then apologized as if he had surprised himself, using a verb tense in Turkish that can imply the discovery of something previously unknown.

“I’m sorry,” he would say. “I must miss speaking.”

Suzy Hansen is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of “Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World,” which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. She has been living in Istanbul for over 10 years and previously wrote about the Turkish government’s crackdown on journalists, Kurds, leftists, dissidents, activists and academics.

#u.s. news #politics #politics and government #us: news #international news #must reads #world news #democracy #civil-rights #corruption #elections #activism #impeachthemf #political science #humanrights #turkey #education

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ultraversecomics2019-blog · 5 years

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“THE UNSTOPPABLES”

It was a exciting time for everyday people to learn about the existence of real-life Superheroes! The world desperately needed hope and looked for men of valor who could save them from the tyranny of a psychopathic genius and terrorist named Elijah Price (a.k.a. “Mr. Glass”, super intelligent and has bones that break very easily). A known megalomaniac who was the evil mastermind behind the global blackout that put the technology of the nations back into the dark ages! Mr. Glass was beginning to form a legion of super villains to terrorize the world and bring about another New World Order! One man named Mr. David Dunn (a.k.a. “The Overseer”, a hero, and a National Security Officer with super strength and leadership skills) had the courage to fight Mr. Glass and organize a league of Superheroes on his own with the help of his son to combat a demonic group of super powered beings who were determined to use their incredible gifts to help the infamous Mr. Glass become supreme dictator of the world. In his delusional mind, Mr. Glass wanted to use his intellect to fulfill Bible prophecy and become the anti-christ incarnate! Mrs. Glass’s main henchman was called the Beast (a madman who had superhuman strength, 23 personalities, and stronger than the Overseer). The Beast was the main villain that became a serial killer, striking terror in the hearts and minds of everyone around him. Not even the police could stop him! Realizing that Mr. Glass’s agenda was to use the Beast as an enforcer of his New World Order empire and keep America in a state of fear, David Dunn sought to deliver vigilante justice to the Beast and prepare for an epic showdown, and lead him to the criminal mastermind Mr. Glass who holds critical secrets to their true identities and top secret government plans that threatened to destroy the Western World! The Overseer knew that the only way to stop Mr. Glass’s immediate attacks on the civilian population, was to stop the Beast who was recruiting more psychopathic killers like himself to form an army to serve Mr. Glass and take over the country! David knew of a Black Hebrew Israelite school teacher in Atlanta, Georgia named Captain Azariyah Ben Yosef, who also has super strength (a.k.a. “The Powerman”), a Bible Church Pastor and a Firefighter who is way stronger and more powerful spiritually than any hero, very intelligent, and has children with special powers! David also located two other heroes and geniuses that worked in Switzerland for CERN in the technology and reverse engineering departments. One has the ability to travel through time and super strength (Commander Matt Gagston a Puerto Rican Engineer a.k.a. “The Hour Man”, and his best friend Dr. Alex Pope, a Native American Scientist who has the superpowers to run at speed of light and disappear like a shadow (a.k.a. “The Shadow”). The Overseer contacted the heroic men who were also trained in military combat and law enforcement, and asked for their help. With the grave situation of superpowered terrorists gripping the world in fear and trying to take over the country through shear blood-thirsty violence, the heroes had little time to waste! They studied their weaknesses and formed a plan to track down the Beast who had a least three people with special powers assisting him to commit homicides and vicious robberies to supply their criminal enterprise and serial killing spree (their names: Steve Trustrum a homosexual racist pig a.k.a. “The Boar”, had an uncanny super ability for cannibalism, running fast like an animal, and superhuman strength, and Tracey McManus, a slut, and murderous bastard woman with the powers to control people’s thoughts if they gaze into her eyes, and super strength -a.k.a. “The Super Bitch”), and Brad Means a power hungry parasite with the ability to drain people’s strength and will to fight, a degenerate murdering heathen who was far more evil than the rest of the gentiles (a.k.a. “The Parasite”). They were found by the team robbing a nearby bank! The new league of heroes approached the super villains as they were exiting the bank and TV Reporters were also on the scene to record what was about to happen. The Beast, immediately dropped his victims that he had mangled and ordered his team to attack the superheroes! The team separated into action to take each villain down, Matt and Alex took on the Parasite and Super Bitch, because physical contact due to their abilities could hinder their will to win the fight. So the Timewalker, a.k.a. The Hour Man created a portal to walk through and disappear, while the Shadow ran at super speed so the villains couldn’t touch him and he wouldn’t be able to gaze at the Bitch’s eyes. Powerman went to work using his incredible strength to outmatch and beat up the Boar, while the other heroes engaged the vile misfits, David Dunn challenged the Beast and they also became physically locked in mortal combat while being televised by reporters so the whole world could see this battle of biblical proportions! The super powered beings were literally tearing up the city to win the group fight. The Powerman lifted up a truck and smashed the Boar, crushing every bone in his body, while the Shadow running at lightning speed battered the Super Bitch until she was unconscious, and Hour Man used a time portal to transport the Parasite into another dimension, where he sent the White degenerate punk into the outer limits of space! The Overseer was beating up the Beast, however the Beast gained the upper hand over David by knowing of his weakness -his fear of water! The Beast had him in a choke hold and dragged him to a nearby dunk tank so he could drown him to death. While the Shadow subdued the criminals, the Powerman immediately came to his rescue and grabbed hold of the Beast from behind and hoisted him into the air, and threw the psychopath into a building where the Hour Man teleported the building into a time portal and released the building from another portal in the air and crushed the Beast to death! Seeing their leader ultimately defeated, the villains surrendered into police custody. Also watching the epic battle was Mr. Glass from a hidden bunker surrounded by new recruits for his “Legion of Doom”, anticipating that the Beast and his team would fail him, he prepared for another onslaught of maniacs to do his bidding, and began planning for his next attack on American soil in his attempt to take over the world! During the aftermath of the fierce battle, the Overseer -leader of the new team of heroes selected a name to call them, and made a pact with the league and vowed to work together in the interest of crime fighting and seek bring Mr. Glass and his global criminal enterprise to justice! And from day on the League of Superheroes began recruiting more and more members with super powers to their righteous crusade, and world rallied behind the heroes in financial and emotional support and called them “THE UNSTOPPABLES”!!!

THE END

“The Unstoppables”, “The Timewalkers”, and “The Powerman” are a comic books, independent film, and eBook series created by Dr. F. V. Beckles based on the films directed by M. Night Shyamalan: Glass is a 2019 A Superhero thriller film written for Hebrew Israelites, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and F. Victor Beckles. The film is a sequel to Shyamalan's previous films Unbreakable (2000) and Split (2016), serving as the final installment in the Unbreakable trilogy!

“UNSTOPPABLES”

-Also written and created by Rev. Dr. Franklyn Victor Beckles, Jr.

Renowned Christian TV Evangelist, Bible College Professor, Private School Principal, Christian Video Game Designer, Comic Book Writer, Book Author, Civil Rights Pioneer, and Editor-in-Chief of Ultraverse Comics!!!

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phroyd · 6 years

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We Lose A Great Director Today, Sadly! “The Conformist” and “1900″ being two of his best films - Phroyd.

Bernardo Bertolucci, the multi-award-winning Italian director of Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers, has died at the age of 77 after a spell with cancer, his publicist confirmed. He had been confined to a wheelchair for over a decade, after surgery on a herniated disc in 2003 was unsuccessful and rendered him unable to walk.

In a film-making career that stretched back to the early 60s, Bertolucci became a key figure of the extraordinary Italian new wave (alongside, and the equal of, Antonioni, Fellini, and Pasolini) but – uniquely – made a successful transition to large-scale Hollywood film-making with 1987’s The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, including best picture and best director for Bertolucci.

ertolucci was born in Parma in 1941, the son of a poet and teacher, and was raised in a literary and artistic atmosphere. His father Attilio was friends with Pier-Paolo Pasolini, then a novelist and poet, and Pasolini hired the 20-year-old Bertolucci as his assistant on his 1961 debut, Accattone. This proved to be Bertolucci’s big break: Pasolini helped him further by recommending him as the scriptwriter for La Commare Secca (The Skinny Gossip aka The Grim Reaper), which became Bertolucci’s directorial debut in 1962.

Bertolucci continued to contribute as a writer and ideas man, notably on Sergio Leone’s epic spaghetti western Once Upon a Time in the West. But his directorial career took off with Before the Revolution (1964), a Parma-set account of a Marxist student’s affair with his aunt, and the highly influential The Conformist (1970), both of which foregrounded Bertolucci’s commitment to radical leftwing politics. “I lived in a kind of dream of communism,” he later remarked.

The Conformist also marked the beginning of Bertolucci’s collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (who had been a camera operator on Before the Revolution). Together the pair would create a string of visually seductive masterworks, including The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and 1900 (1976). Last Tango, which starred Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, made Bertolucci internationally renowned – and notorious – and allowed him to recruit a high-profile cast, including Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu and Burt Lancaster, for his 300-minute epic 1900.

The Last Emperor, backed by British producer Jeremy Thomas, became Bertolucci’s biggest awards success, with the film-makers having secured unprecedented permission to film inside Beijing’s Forbidden City. Having pulled off a success on such a big scale, Bertolucci remained with Thomas, and the pair went to make The Sheltering Sky, Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers. In the latter film, Bertolucci returned to the heady mixture of radical politics and eroticism with which he had made his mark decades before.

However, in a precursor to the #MeToo campaign, a controversy erupted in 2016 over the extent of actor Maria Schneider’s consent to Last Tango’s infamous “butter” scene, after a three-year-old video resurface in which Bertolucci admitted he and Brando had failed to fully inform her of the details of the proposed scene.

Bertolucci’s final completed feature was Me and You, adapted from a novel by Niccolò Ammaniti. He had been married since 1978 to film-maker Clare Peploe, and had no children.

Phroyd

#bernardo bertolucci #the conformist #world cinema #italy #europe

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journalsmente · 2 years

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Admit cards, list of candidates in Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee’s house: ED to court

These are among the records allegedly recovered from the home of West Bengal Industry and Commerce Minister Partha Chatterjee by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) during searches conducted on July 22 in connection with the state school jobs scam, according to court records obtained by The Indian Express.

A LIST of 48 candidates with roll numbers for posts of primary teacher; documents related to the appointment of Group D staff, including admit cards for recruitment tests; and, a list of candidates under the letterhead of a former TMC MLA.

Chatterjee, who is also secretary general of the ruling TMC, was arrested in the case by the ED on July 23. He was the state’s Education Minister when the alleged scam took place in 2016.

The papers seized are listed in a plea filed by ED in the Calcutta High Court on July 23 seeking quashing or modification of the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s order for Chatterjee to be taken to SSKM hospital for check-up and treatment.

The court records also include an arrest memo filed separately by the ED. It claims in the section, “Name of relative/ friend whom the person taken into custody intends to inform”, that Chatterjee called Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee four times after his arrest at 1.55 am on July 23 but could not reach her.

The memo, filed by Mithilesh Kumar Mishra, Investigating Officer and Assistant Director, Kolkata Zonal Office II, ED, claims that Chatterjee called the Chief Minister at 2.32 am, 2.33 am, 3.37 am and 9.35 am. It also claims that the Minister refused to sign the arrest memo.

On July 24, the High Court directed the ED to take Chatterjee to AIIMS-Bhubaneswar by an air ambulance. On Monday, AIIMS-Bhubaneswar executive director Ashutosh Biswas said Chatterjee “doesn’t require hospitalisation at this time” and that the medical reports have been sent to the High Court.

The records listed in the ED plea also include documents allegedly linked to “immovable properties” and “companies” of Chatterjee’s aide and co-accused in the case, Arpita Mukherjee. According to the ED, Chatterjee was in “regular contact” with Mukherjee through a specific mobile number.

The ED has also alleged in its plea that Chatterjee was involved in the “illegal appointment in lieu of money” of primary teachers, assistant teachers from Class 9–12 and Group D staff.

It states that Rs 20 crore was allegedly recovered from the Tollygunge premises of Arpita Mukherjee, which is described as “nothing but the proceeds of crime generated in relation to the criminal activities for giving illegal appointments…”.

It lists a “total of more than 20 cell phones…recovered from the premises of Ms Arpita Mukherjee, the purpose and use of which is yet to be ascertained.”

The ED plea in the High Court details the documents allegedly seized: “…documents relating to appointment of Group D staff… like admit cards of the candidates, summary of the final results in (a recruitment test of) 2016 for the post of Group D staff, intimation letters for verification of testimonials and personality test…for the post of clerk of Indranil Bhattacharya”. The ED has not detailed the identity of Bhattacharya.

“List of candidates of Group D post at the letterhead of Shri Ananta Deb Adhikari, Admit card of 3rd Regional Level Selection Test for non-teaching staff (Group D) of Samapati Thakur, Application form for recruitment of clerk and Group D staff in respect of Samapati Thakur, a list of 48 candidates for upper primary teacher with roll number etc which indicates that Partha Chatterjee was actively involved in the appointment of Group D staff.”

The ED has not detailed the identity of Thakur. When contacted by The Indian Express, Ananta Deb Adhikari, former TMC MLA of Maynaguri and current chairman of Maynaguri municipality in Jalpaiguri, said: “I do not remember the year when I sent those recommendations. But I did send some names as an MLA. All the MLAs did at that time. Some of the recommendations from other MLAs have been cleared. But my list was not cleared and no one on the list got jobs. I guess that is why it was there at Partha Chatterjee’s house.”

Adhikari said: “My son has passed MSc and BEd and my daughter has passed MA in English and BEd. I tried to get them jobs as teachers in government schools but that, too, did not happen.”

According to the ED’s plea, “a number of other incriminating documents and electronic devices relating to the generation of proceeds of crime have been recovered during the course of search at various premises and which are to be confronted with the accused persons and the trail of money is to be further investigated”.

On the direction of the Calcutta High Court, the CBI is investigating alleged irregularities in the recruitment of Group C & D staff and teachers in government and aided schools on the recommendations of the West Bengal School Service Commission. The ED is investigating the money laundering aspect of the alleged recruitment scam.

#Partha Chatterjee #recruitment scam #ED #Arpita Mukherjee

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businessnewsupdates · 2 years

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Admit cards, list of candidates in Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee’s house: ED to court

Chatterjee, who is also secretary general of the ruling TMC, was arrested in the case by the ED on July 23. He was the state’s Education Minister when the alleged scam took place in 2016.

The ED has also alleged in its plea that Chatterjee was involved in the “illegal appointment in lieu of money” of primary teachers, assistant teachers from Class 9–12 and Group D staff.

It lists a “total of more than 20 cell phones…recovered from the premises of Ms Arpita Mukherjee, the purpose and use of which is yet to be ascertained.”

Adhikari said: “My son has passed MSc and BEd and my daughter has passed MA in English and BEd. I tried to get them jobs as teachers in government schools but that, too, did not happen.”

#Partha Chatterjee #recruitment scam #ED #Arpita Mukherjee

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dd20century · 3 years

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Designer George Nelson: Well Ahead of the Parade

"You don't think your way to creative work. You work your way to creative thinking.” --George Nelson

George Nelson’s Early Years George Nelson was born on May 28, 1908 to Simeon Nelson and Lillian Canterow Nelson in Hartford, Connecticut, where his parents owned and operated a drug store.(1) His early childhood was uneventful. As a young man, Nelson sought “refuge in Yale’s architecture school during a rainstorm, he quickly found himself entranced by the student work on display” Nelson then decided to study architecture at Yale University. He began his studies in 1924 and “graduated with a degree in architecture [in 1928]. In 1929, Nelson was hired as a Teacher's Assistant while pursuing his second bachelor's degree [in Fine Arts] at Yale” (1). He earned that degree in 1931.(2)

George Nelson Goes Abroad The following year, “Nelson competed for and was awarded a Rome Prize, which provided a two-year stipend to study at the American Academy in Rome, where he lived from 1932–34” (3). During his studies in Europe Nelson had the opportunity to interview Europe’s leading architects, including Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius among others. During his interview with Mies van der Rohe, the architect asked Nelson for his thoughts on Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. Nelson was embarrassed to admit that he was not familiar with Wright. (1)

During his stay in Rome, George Nelson married Francis Hollister. The couple returned to the United States in 1935. (1) “By [then] Nelson was an associate editor of the magazines Architecture Forum and Fortune, and the next year he was running his own architectural practice in New York with William Hamby” (3). Nelson and Hamby collaborated on a home for “inventor and industrialist Sherman Fairchild, [which] was one of the first modernist townhouses in New York” (2). The structure is set off from the other brownstones around it by its modernist façade, and it features an innovative floor plan. Nelson and Hamby’s firm closed in 1942 at the start of World War II. For the duration of the War, Nelson continued to write about architecture and design. (1)

Nelson’s writing brought him into contact with the innovative designers Eliot Noyes, Charles Eames, and Walter B. Ford.(1) During the war Nelson taught architecture at Columbia University in New York City. In 1941 he became a “member of the Architecture Committee of the Museum of Modern Art [in] New York” (4). Nelson and architect Henry Wright collaborated on the Storagewall concept and in the same year published the book Tomorrow’s House.(4) In 1942 Nelson originated the concept of “Grass of Main Street” that eventually “evolved into the [open-air] pedestrian mall” (2).

George Nelson Joins Herman Miller Nelson’s articles on design “came to the attention of D.J. De Pree, president of the Michigan-based furniture manufacturer Herman Miller” (3). Nelson designed his first collection for the firm in 1945 and was named their design director in 1947. De Pree referred to Nelson as “as someone ‘thinking well ahead of the parade’” (3). While at Herman Miller Nelson not only was responsible for designing many of the firm’s most popular furniture he, also recruited some of the most outstanding design talents of his time, “including Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, Isamu Noguchi” (2) and Harry Bertoia. (1) Nelson’s most iconic work for Herman Miller was the Platform Bench (1947), the Bubble Lamp (1952), the Marshmallow Sofa (1956), and the Swaged-Leg furniture line (1958). (2)

George Nelson, Platform Bench (1947). Image source.

George Nelson Associates is Established With money earned at Herman Miller, Nelson opened a design studio in New York City in 1947.(1,2) In 1955, Nelson “incorporated it into George Nelson Associates, Inc.” (1), and although Nelson had by this time left Herman Miller, his design firm continued to consult with the company. During this time Nelson was also “regularly [serving] as an editor for Interiors” (2). At his own firm, as he had done at Herman Miller, Nelson continued to employ the top designers of the era, “Irving Harper, George Mulhauser, Don Chadwick, Bill Renwick, and John Pile” (1) among many others. George Nelson Associates took a pioneering holistic approach to design with the “the practice of corporate image management, graphic programs, and signage” (1). An excellent example of this approach is the work the firm did for the pharmaceuticals manufacturer Abbott during the mid-1950s.(2) The company continues to use the original corporate logo today, and it looks as contemporary as ever.

George Nelson, Bubble Lamp (1947). Image source.

Nelson’s Bubble Lamp In 1947 Nelson became obsessed with a spherical Swedish lamp he had seen. He badly wanted one for his design studio, but the $125 price tag was too dear. He set about designing a spherical lamp of this own. He recalled seeing “a newspaper photograph...a fleet of ships being sprayed with a self-webbing plastic for preservation during storage” (5). What if he could design a metal frame onto which this plastic material could be sprayed? By the next day, “he had crafted a spherical metal frame and tracked down the maker of that spiderweb-like plastic” (5). In 1952 Bill Renwick a designer working for George Nelson Associates refined the lamp design which was manufactured by the Howard Miller Clock Company (not to be confused with Herman Miller). In 2016, Herman Miller obtained the rights to sell the Bubble Lamp, and it remains popular as well as affordable. Designer Johnathan Adler said of the Bubble Lamp, “It’s an atomic take on a Japanese paper lantern” (5).

American National Exhibition in Moscow Nelson was commissioned by the United States in 1959 to design a pavilion for the American National Exhibition in Moscow. The pavilion incorporated one of the earliest uses of large multi-screen presentations. The pavilion, however, became historic not so much for Nelson’s forward-thinking designs, but for being the site of Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev’s ''kitchen debate'' (4).

Having divorced Frances Hollister, that same year George Nelson married Jacqueline Griffiths in 1960.(2) Not much is known about the circumstances surrounding the disintegration of the marriage to his first wife, nor are there details regarding his relationship with Ms. Griffiths.

George Nelson and Robert Propst, Action Office 1 Credenza with shelves (1964). Image source.

George Nelson and the Action Office “In 1960 Herman Miller created the Herman Miller Research Corporation under the direction of Robert Propst, and the supervision of George Nelson” (1). The purpose of the research firm was to study changes in the workplace that had taken place in the Twentieth Century and in particular how the use of office furniture evolved with these changes. “After consulting with experts in psychology, anthropology, and various other fields, Propst created the Action Office I line which was executed by” (1) George Nelson Associates. The Action Office I line was introduced in 1964, but was not successful.(6)

Nelson and Propst disagreed on the best environment to “best suit a corporate office worker” (6), so “Nelson was removed from the project” (1). Nelson’s departure allowed Propst to explore his concepts of an office space that could be modified without costly renovations. “Action Office II was based around the mobile wall unit that defines space” (6); it has become commonly known as “the cubicle” (1,6). Unlike Action Office I, the subsequent line was a resounding success. Nelson, however, always renounced the project. In 1970, he sent a letter to Herman Miller's then Vice-President for Corporate Design and Communication, Robert Blaich, deriding the dehumanizing effect of the Action Office II, which allows the office planner to pack the greatest numbers of employees in the smallest amount of space.(5)

A desk inspired by George Nelson and Robert Propst’s Action Office I Collection for Herman Miller (left) used in a set from Stanley Kubrick’s film, “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). Image source.

George Nelson’s Influence and Legacy In addition to George Nelson’s iconic, innovative furniture designs, he had the ability to recognize and nurture great talent in other designers. As mentioned earlier, he collaborated with designers Charles and Ray Eames at Herman Miller, and after Nelson opened his own studio, hired many designers whose work for George Nelson Associates would become iconic. Nelson’s “skill as a writer helped legitimize and stimulate the field of industrial design by contributing to the creation of Industrial Design Magazine in 1953” (1). Nelson also served as editor-in-chief of Design Journal from 1968 to 1973.(2) In 1977, he published the groundbreaking book How to See. Designer “Ralph Caplan, said, ‘He was quickly identified by all industrial designers who could read and write that he was better able than anybody to express what they did for a living and why it was important’”(4).

George Nelson Associates, Inc. for Herman Miller, attributed to Irving Harper, Marshmallow Sofa (1956). Image source.

Accolades for George Nelson George Nelson was “named a fellow of the Industrial Designers Society of America” (2) in 1966 and made a member of the organization’s board in 1969. The following year Nelson became an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Interior Design. He also served as a visiting lecturer at Harvard University in Boston and as a visiting professor at the School of Architecture, at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY.(2)

George Nelson retired and closed George Nelson Associates in 1984. The same year he became a scholar in residence at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.(1,2) He died in New York City in 1986.(4) In 2008, the Vitra Design Museum held a retrospective of George Nelson’s work to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.(2)

References

Wikipedia.com (2 June, 2021). George Nelson (designer). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nelson_(designer)

George Nelson Foundation, (2012). Introduction. http://www.georgenelsonfoundation.org/george-nelson/index.html

George Nelson (1908-1986), USA: Biography and more. http://www.georgenelson.org/biographymore.html

Slesin, S., (6 March, 1986). George H. Nelson, Designer of Modernist Furniture, Dies. https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/06/obituaries/george-h-nelson-designer-of-modernist-furniture-dies.html

Martin, H., (16 November, 2016). The Story Behind George Nelson's Iconic Bubble Lamp. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/the-story-behind-george-nelsons-iconic-bubble-lamp

Wikipedia.com (April 9, 2021). Action Office. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Office

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