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junker-town · 3 years

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Josh Giddey is the NBA draft pick who almost slipped through the cracks

How Josh Giddey went from being cut by his Australian state team to a potential NBA draft lottery pick.

Josh Giddey knew he was down to his last chance. As he arrived at a multi-day basketball jamboree known as the East Coast Challenge, Giddey was one of 60 youth players competing from the Australian states of Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia hoping to be selected for the prestigious state team.

State basketball is the pathway to a brighter future in the game in Australia, but it had alluded Giddey to this point. Three times he had tried out for state-level basketball, and three times he had received an email at the end of the event telling him he’d been cut. Only 16 years old and already realizing he was at a crossroads in his career, Giddey was determined not to let it happen again.

He had the benefit of a recent growth spurt this time around that taken him up to 6’8 as a point guard. The added height only accentuated the gifts that always made him stand out: his passing and playmaking, and perhaps more importantly his ability to think one step ahead of the next defensive adjustment. After shining at the camp, the anxious hours waiting to hear if he was selected turned into a quiet confidence.

“I kept promising myself I wouldn’t get cut, I wouldn’t get cut, and the last opportunity I had to make the state team I didn’t get cut,” Giddey told SB Nation. “I finally got that one email I was waiting for.”

Giddey’s life has been in overdrive ever since. After shining at a subsequent national event, he was offered a scholarship by the NBA Global Academy at the Australian Institute of Sport. Giddey moved across the country to Canberra, where he would spend the next 18 months developing his game and his body while competing against peer-aged competition around the world. The accolades he earned at the academy eventually led Giddey to become the first Australian player to be tabbed for the Next Stars program in the country’s domestic professional league, the NBL.

After one season with the Adelaide 36ers, Giddey is now on his way to the 2021 NBA Draft. The same player who couldn’t separate himself from his peers in Victoria only two years ago is now projected as a likely lottery pick.

Giddey is at once on a meteoric rise and still just scratching the surface. He’s one of the youngest players in the draft and has a case as one of the most accomplished given his production in a pro league against seasoned adults. He is still growing into his body and refining his jump shot while already possessing the type of mental processing gifts that can’t be taught. It has been a wild ride to bring him to the precipice of his NBA dreams, but Giddey isn’t the type to get overwhelmed by the moment.

“It’s just good to see the work paying off,” he said.

Photo by Kelly Barnes/Getty Images

Marty Clarke remembers the first time he identified Giddey as a future prospect to watch during his days as a college assistant coach at WCC power Saint Mary’s. A fellow Australian, Clarke was a former teammate of Josh’s dad, Warrick, who enjoyed a long professional career with the NBL’s Melbourne Tigers and had his No. 6 retired by the club. He saw the traits that could eventually make the young guard the type of player Saint Mary’s would one day want to target, but he knew it was going to be a while before they could do so. Giddey was only 12 years old.

“When I first went to St. Mary’s in 2013, I said coach (Randy) Bennett, there’s a kid I want to put on the board but it will be like seven years before we can get him,” Clarke recalls. “He can really pass with his weak hand. He can pass full court, off the dribble, or from penetration. He was kind of doing a lot of that stuff as a 12-14 year old. Now he’s a 6’8 person who can do that.”

Clarke would eventually get his chance to help develop Giddey in a way neither could have anticipated. When the NBA partnered with the Australian Institute of Sport and Basketball Australia’s Centre of Excellence in 2017 to launch the NBA Global Academy, Clarke left Saint Mary’s to take a job as its technical director. Clarke was the perfect candidate as someone who previously had experience as a coach at the Australian Institute of Sport, and now had familiarity with American college basketball.

The same place that had produced almost every Australian player to reach the NBA — Andrew Bogut, Matthew Dellavedova, Dante Exum, Joe Ingles, Luc Longley, Aron Baynes, and Patty Mills among them — was now further investing in its connection to the league. Clarke would oversee all aspects of player development and coaching for the 12 high school-aged players who were offered a scholarship to the academy.

“We have a really good blue print,” Clarke said. “The Australian academy has been here for 40 years. This is what this place has always been doing, producing Olympians and future NBA players.”

The NBA launched academies in India, Senegal, Mexico, China over the last 10 years as a year-round development initiative for elite youth prospects. Australia’s Global Academy takes teenagers from around the world. In its partnership with the AIS, players with the Global Academy live in dorms and attend classes while preparing them for life as a professional athlete. Instead of trying to win as many games as possible and compete for championships like a college team, the main goal of the academy is individual development.

The players at the Global Academy go to school and training six days per week with only Sundays off. In a typical week, players will be put through regular full team practices, as well as smaller group sessions that focus on things like connecting the bigs to the smalls by drilling pick-and-rolls and post entries. There’s shooting and skill training every morning before school, as well as weight lifting three times per week, and mindfulness training. Spliced in with all of that is education on nutrition, physiology, and personal learning like financial literacy and social media courses.

“Our goal here is when they leave here, they have lots of options,” Clarke said. “We make sure they’re eligible for universities. We want to make sure every door is open when they leave.”

The Global Academy also plays games against peer-aged teams, and that’s where Giddey continued to raise his profile. Giddey would lead the academy to the championship at the prestigious Torneo Junior Ciutat de L’Hospitalet tournament in Spain and was named MVP of the event. He followed it up with a strong showing at Basketball Without Borders during All-Star Weekend last year in Chicago.

“His development since he got here has been off the charts,” Clarke said. “Because he missed that state-level development, he skipped up to another level and had a lot to learn. He jumped a stage, really.”

Giddey’s time at the academy had given him multiple avenues to explore on what he should do next. That’s when he faced the next flashpoint decision in his burgeoning young career: Was he better off going to college in America or staying home to play in Australia?

Photo by Kelly Defina/Getty Images

Giddey had a long list of American college basketball programs who wanted him. He had standing scholarship offers from Arizona, Colorado, Rutgers, St. John’s, and more. After one college visit in particular, Giddey felt like he was ready to commit.

“I was 99 percent set on college,” Giddey said. “I took a visit to Colorado sometime in 2020, when I left there after my two-day visit, I was ready to commit there. I was about to commit there but my parents said just wait to we get home and we’ll talk about it.

“So I went home and we started talking to some people and they started talking about the NBL Next Star pathway. I met with Jeremy Loeliger, who is the CEO of the NBL, and they really sold it to me. The way they take care of their kids, the opportunity you’ll get to play against grown men at such a young age, I thought that was better for me personally than going to college to play against other kids.”

On April 16, 2020, at just 17 years old, Giddey signed with the Adelaide 36ers of the NBL. He had become the first Australian to take advantage of the league’s ‘Next Stars’ program, which was originally intended to lure top American prospects who didn’t want to play college basketball. Former McDonald’s All-Americans Terrance Ferguson and Brian Bowen were two of the first signees of the program, but it was a decision by LaMelo Ball and R.J. Hampton to sign in Australia that helped convince Giddey it was the best path for him.

“They surprised everyone with how good they were, especially LaMelo,” said Giddey. “It was good to see because it was something I wanted to do. I wanted to be an NBL player and eventually an NBA player. To see those guys come through gave me the confidence to think I could hopefully do something similar.”

Going from youth tournaments against peer-aged competition to playing against grown men was an enormous adjustment. Giddey struggled with it at first. The ambitious passes that defined his time at the youth level were often becoming turnovers in more meaningful games. He was ice cold as a shooter to start the year, hitting just 2-of-20 shots from three-point range over his first seven games. The biggest issue was playing through contact on both ends of the floor.

“I was struggling with the physicality of the league,” Giddey said of the start to his time in the NBL. “You don’t realize how physical the league is until you actually play against guys that are 35 years old and strong, athletic, and quick. It was just a completely different level to junior basketball. I was playing at a fast pace the whole time. I was rushed, I was nervous.”

He points to his second game as his initial breakthrough, when he finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists against South East Melbourne, and was trusted to take the final shot in regulation. Even though he missed, the 36ers would win in overtime, and Giddey started every game the rest of the season.

Giddey was masterful at times as a facilitator, firing passes to open shooters in the corner with either hand and finding unique angles to get the ball to the big man near the basket. Starting center Daniel Johnson had one of the best seasons of his career at age-33 with Giddey at the controls, and fellow teammate (and former Kentucky big man) Isaac Humphries turned into a dependable scorer, as well. Giddey’s three-point shot also started to come around eventually, hitting 36.7 percent of his shots from deep those first 20 attempts.

“The big thing for me early in the year was I was so down on confidence,” Giddey said. “I was so worried if I missed what people were going to say, what scouts were going to think. There was a point where I spoke to one of my teammates and he told me all of this doesn’t matter. Just shoot every shot like you think you’re going to make it. That was when it switched for me.”

Before season’s end, Giddey had run off three triple-doubles over a four-game stretch and had firmly established himself as a first round NBA draft pick. Given his age and the level of competition, Giddey was remarkably productive: he averaged 10.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, and a league-leading 7.5 assists per game on 51 percent true shooting.

Those numbers stack up reasonably well to what Ball did in the same league a year earlier as 6’8 playmaking guard at 18 years old. Ball scored more, but slightly less efficiently (47.9 true shooting) while their rebound, assist, and steal numbers were similar. It is worth noting that while Ball was often deemed reckless as a lead decision-maker, Giddey’s turnover rate was significantly highly at 23.7 vs. Ball’s 12.4.

Giddey isn’t as flexible and shifty as a ball handler as LaMelo, but the baseline similarities and statistical profiles in the same league, at the same age will be tempting for teams, especially following Ball’s run to Rookie of the Year after being the No. 3 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft.

“To see how (Ball’s) game translated to the NBA, it’s made me feel even better about my decision,” Giddey said.

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The appeal of Giddey for NBA teams starts with his intersection of size and passing. Giddey is an impressive facilitator off a live dribble who will fire passes with either hand while on the move. Against a set defense, Giddey is able to make quick decisions with the ball, and loves to zip a two-handed, overhead pass to his big man in the paint. His interior passing is particularly impressive thanks in part to his ability to leverage his length to find creative angles in tight spaces. The big question for his offensive game will be if he can make opposing defenses respect him enough as a scoring threat to fully unlock his playmaking gifts.

There will be serious questions about Giddey’s athleticism and strength, particularly if he has enough standstill burst to beat his man and force the opposing defense into rotation. Even if Giddey can’t put enough pressure on the rim to be a primary creator, he should be custom-made as a ‘connecting’ piece who can be a secondary facilitator and floor spacer as his jump shot comes around. In Clarke’s eyes, it’s Giddey’s overarching feel for the game that will help him overcome the challenges he sees at the next level.

“He’ll often have quiet first quarters or first halves, and then he’ll have monster second halves,” Clarke said. “He can figure things out on the run, and that’s a skill a lot of players don’t have. He can fix things in game.

“It’s not just feel for the game, it’s feel for the opposition and what they’re trying to do to you. A lot of people have feel for the game when the game is mundane and vanilla. He has feel for the game when it’s chaos going on. He can figure things really quickly.”

As the NBA moves into the pre-draft process, Giddey is widely projected to be taken in the lottery. We had Giddey going No. 14 overall to the Golden State Warriors in our mock draft, while ESPN has him going No. 10 overall to the New Orleans Pelicans.

Giddey’s entrance into the league is also an achievement for the academies the NBA invested in around the world. He’ll be the first male athlete to be drafted into the league after being a full-time academy student. Clarke sees Giddey as the type of player the Australian Institute always dreamed about developing.

“He’s kind of the guy we thought of 30 years ago when we started the program,” said Clarke. “Imagine if we had a whole team of 6’8 guys who are multi-dimensional and can pass, dribble, and shoot, defend multiple positions. We’ll stick one big guy in the middle with four guys like that. Josh is kind of exactly that.

“Coaches always ponder what the future is going to be. I think Josh is what we thought about when I first came here 25 years ago.”

If Giddey embodies the dream of what the AIS always hoped to produce, he also came dangerously close to slipping through the cracks. In the course of just over two years, he has gone from a player who couldn’t make it out of his home state to a possible top-10 NBA draft pick. For a player on such a rapid rise, the next question is the most exciting: how much room to Giddey have to grow from here?

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myf4shionfolder · 4 years

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Walter Van Beirendonck SS1990 "Fashion is Dead" Denim

The Western world was brought to a crossroads in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The fall of the Berlin Wall, Reaganomics, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and other nation altering events had exsaserbated the schism between the working class and the elite, a divide mirrored in fashion through the emergence of “anti-fashion” designers like Martin Margiela, who rejected the haughty conventions of runway presentations in lieu of his own DIY shows. Economies slumped across the world, and Walter felt himself lost and frustrated, believing he had a foot in each camp but was neither wholly of the fashion elite or the streets. He expressed this with a magazine he created alongside his assistants, which declared “Fuck Fashion,” and “Fashion is Dead.” The exact phrasing can be connected to the existentialist declaration, “God is Dead,” first spoken by Nietzsche and later repeated by Sartre and others. In their use of the phrase, it was not literal but rather an expression of man’s freedom to choose their own essence. Walter was likely applying it in the same sense. The magazine presented Walter as an alien, wearing a mask designed by a young Raf Simons, who was interning for him at the time. Other assistants illustrated games, and shared their predictions for the future of fashion. Fake advertisements even appeared, including one for a ficticious perfume, with Walter’s dog Sado perched atop it.

These pants bare the same “Fashion is Dead” declaration, in an unrefined sketch style which further lends to his rejection of mainstream fashion.

#Walter Van Beirendonck

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panatmansam · 4 years

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When did white America become so immoral?

White America is not immoral individually. Most white Americans were oppressed almost as much as other poor people. It is the elites which were and are corrupt. What is happening now is that the corruption is getting harder to hide.

White supremacy is not an American phenomenon. Europeans have been riding a crest of power for a few thousand years. Mostly is has to do with our ability to fight. We are ruthless in war. In prison gangs the Aryan Nation is small gang but accounts for a majority of the murders in the US prison system. The Nazis and their concentration camps. Americans and the atomic bombs. The British and their colonial conquests of more primitive people.

Other peoples are also brutal. The Mongols. The Japanese. The Arabs. The Turks. All of these non-white people have committed great atrocities but the white peoples have been consistent. We added science to the killing but also to medicine. There was also commerce and trade to raise the standard of living.

So, now the world has come to a new crossroads. White supremacy is ending. This means, not the end for white people, just equality for others and this is a good thing. Justice is always a good thing.

#Anonymous #text

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kiwigreenflame · 5 years

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It’s been a while since the Top 10 religion and comics installments, and I’ve been meaning to post a number of other comics that didn’t make it into that list but are still worth mentioning in passing. No commentary on these apart from the official blurbs. As always, YMMV reading these.

Testament

Creators: Douglas Rushkoff & Liam Sharp Publisher: Vertigo (DC Comics) Date: 2006-2008

From the imagination of best-selling author Douglas Rushkoff, one of the most iconoclastic and acclaimed minds of our era, comes a graphic novel series that exposes the “real” Bible as it was actually written, and reveals how its mythic tales are repeated today. Grad student Jake Stern leads an underground band of renegades that uses any means necessary to combat the frightening threats to freedom that permeate the world. They employ technology, alchemy, media hacking and mysticism to fight a modern threat that has its roots in ancient stories destined to recur in the modern age.

Chosen (American Jesus)

Creators: Mark Millar & Peter Gross Publisher: Image Comics Date: 2009

From the writer of the Universal hit, Wanted, comes his next graphic novel on the way to becoming a feature film! American Jesus Volume 1: Chosen follows a twelve-year-old boy who suddenly discovers he’s returned as Jesus Christ. He can turn water into wine, make the crippled walk, and, perhaps, even raise the dead! How will he deal with the destiny to lead the world in a conflict thousands of years in the making?

The 99

Creators: Naif Al-Mutawa Publisher: Teshkeel Comics Date: 2007-2014

Young heroes gain superhuman abilities when they bond with 99 powerful gemstones. These Noor Stones were forged from the destruction of ancient Baghdad to preserve the wisdom of the ages, and were lost for centuries, but they are being found, one-by-one…

Vampirella Strikes

Creators: Tom Sniegoski & Johnny D. Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment Date: 2013

For years, the raven-haired heroine Vampirella has hunted the world’s supernatural threats, all the while fighting back her own bloodthirsty nature. After a night out in Boston leads to particularly brutal violence, she seeks comfort in her Brownstone home… but discovers the most unexpected surprise of all. Angels have been sent to her by God — and they come asking for help! Enter Janus, a former soldier in the legion of Heaven, who skirts the line between the damned and divine. Only a fallen angel can navigate Vampirella through the seedy, demon-run underworld, where she hopes to find the source of an addictive, body-altering drug derived from archangel blood. Will Vampirella’s mission redeem her… or will she uncover secrets so shocking that their discovery will damn her forever?

Loaded Bible: Jesus vs. Vampires

Creators: Tim Seeley, Nate Bellegarde & Mark Englert Publisher: Image Comics Date: 2006-2008

In the near future, nuclear Holy War has decimated North America and humanity’s last stronghold is the dome metropolis of New Vatican City. When vampires attack, the Church turns to a clone of Jesus Christ Himself to protect them! But all is not as it seems for the Test Tube Messiah, as he’s drawn into a web of betrayal, bloodshed, and seduction!

The Sisterhood

Creators: Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski, Wellinton Alves, & Andrew Dalhouse. Publisher: Archaia (BOOM! Studies imprint) Date: 2008

The Order of the Holy Sepulchre is an elite group of specially trained nuns, the world’s most powerful exorcists. But they don’t just get rid of the demons they exorcise…the Sisters draw the demons into themselves, using their own bodies as cages of flesh. If they die a natural death, the demons die with them, small pieces of the world’s evil gone forever. But if the Sisters should dies violently…the demons are released into the world again!

Now someone has sent assassins to kill the oldest of the sisters, releasing the captive demons out into the world. Eden Parish is assigned the task of discovering who is behind this massacre, and why. In her journey she will uncover dark secrets about the Order, and about their enemies. And the real reason behind all this murder.

Blankets

Creators: Craig Thompson Publisher: Top Shelf Productions Date: 2003

Blankets is the story of a young man coming of age and finding the confidence to express his creative voice. Craig Thompson’s poignant graphic memoir plays out against the backdrop of a Midwestern winterscape: finely-hewn linework draws together a portrait of small town life, a rigorously fundamentalist Christian childhood, and a lonely, emotionally mixed-up adolescence.

Under an engulfing blanket of snow, Craig and Raina fall in love at winter church camp, revealing to one another their struggles with faith and their dreams of escape. Over time though, their personal demons resurface and their relationship falls apart. It’s a universal story, and Thompson’s vibrant brushstrokes and unique page designs make the familiar heartbreaking all over again.

This groundbreaking graphic novel, winner of two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, is an eloquent portrait of adolescent yearning; first love (and first heartache); faith in crisis; and the process of moving beyond all of that. Beautifully rendered in pen and ink, Thompson has created a love story that lasts.

A Contract with God and other Tenement Stories

Creator: Will Eisner Date: 1978

This semi-autobiographical work captures with pen and ink the drama of the city and its all-too-human inhabitants. Set in the same Bronx neighborhood as later works Dropsie Avenue and A Life Force, the four stories that comprise the book – “A Contract With God”,”The Street Singer”, “The Super” and “Cookalein” – examine the world of immigrant life in New York City in the 1930s with a unique look at the emotion and character of its denizens.

Warrior Nun Areala

Creator: Ben Dunn Publisher: Antarctic Press Date: 1994-2002

Follows the exploits of Sister Shannon Masters who is part of a militant Catholic organisation, the Order of the Cruciform Sword, who protect Church and world from supernatural threats. Plays fast and loose with things Catholic the series still manages to portray characters with genuine faith, humility and the odd bit of theology.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Creator: Michael Mendheim; Mike Kennedy; Sean Jaffe; & Simon Bisley Publisher: Titan Comics Date: 2014

Raised by the ancient Order of Solomon, Adam Cahill is one of a rare handful of highly trained warriors bound by bloodline to guard the Seven Holy Seals that contain the End of Days.

But ageless forces have conspired towards a prophetic event foretold by numerous cultures and multiple religions… and when that cryptic date arrives, they strike against the order without mercy!

The Lone and Level Sands

Creator: A. David Lewis and mpMann Publisher: Archaia (Imprint of BOOM! Studios) Date: 2005

Pharaoh Ramses II hasn’t seen his long-lost cousin Moses in nearly forty years. Yet while pressed by the Hittites to the North and construction delays in the South, Ramses must make time for this ancient desert rascal, the long-ago mystery he represents, and the impossible demands of an alien deity. Drawing on the Bible, the Qur’an, and historical sources, writer A. David Lewis (Mortal Coils) and artist Marvin Perry Mann (Arcana Jayne) present a retelling of the Book of Exodus through the eyes of the man who is either its greatest leader or its worst villain: a man trying to rule wisely, love his family well, and deal justly in the face of a divine wrath.

Some New Kind of Slaughter, or Lost in the Flood (and How We Found Home Again)

Creator: mpMann & A. David Lewis Publisher: Archaia (Imprint of BOOM! Studios) Date: 2009

If there is one constant throughout most of Earth’s historical nations, cultures, and religions, it is the threat and the destruction of the Great Flood. In the wake of the recent Indian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and alarm over global warming, the award-winning creators of The Lone and Level Sands return to plumb the depths of the world’s great myths with this graphic novel exploring how this legendary fear may be more relevant now than ever before. Like Noah, sea-bound Ziusudra and other heroes across time must strive against the coming Floods and the baffling will of the gods.

Judas

Creator: Jeff Loveness & Jakub Rebelka Publisher: BOOM! Studios Date: 2009

Judas Iscariot journeys through life and death, grappling with his place in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” and how much of his part was preordained. In a religion built on redemption and forgiveness, one man had to sacrifice himself for everyone…and it wasn’t Jesus.

Kismet: Man of Faith

Creator: A. David Lewis; Noel Tuazon; Rob Croonenborghs; Taylor Esposito; & Tyler Chin-Tanner Publisher: A Wave Blue World Date: 2018

Punching Nazis used to be more than a meme. In 1944, it was a vocation. And no one put his gloved fist in the faces of more fascists than the Man of Fate, the Algerian Operative, our man in Occupied France — Kismet.

Then, he disappeared. Gone without a trace…until now.

Back from beyond, Kismet finds a new world of gay rights, quantum physics, and computer technology along with the old evils of bigotry, greed, and ignorance at a crossroads. Twenty-first-century America needs more than a superhero. It needs an ally.

Religion and Comics – Wrap Up It's been a while since the Top 10 religion and comics installments, and I've been meaning to post a number of other comics that didn't make it into that list but are still worth mentioning in passing.

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argunners · 5 years

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TITLE: Band of Brothers

This landmark miniseries based on Stephen E. Ambrose’s best-seller, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, recounts the remarkable achievements of an elite team of U.S. paratroopers during World War II. This series tells the story of Easy Company of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division, 506th Regiment, and their mission in World War II Europe, from Operation Overlord, through V-J Day.

EPISODES: Band of Brothers

[junkie-toggle title=”Season 1″ state=”closed”]Episode 1: Currahee

In Toccoa, Ga., 1942, a disparate group of young men begins voluntary training to become members of one of America’s newest military regiments – the paratroopers. Under the harsh leadership of Lt. Sobel (David Schwimmer), members of the newly formed Easy Co. go from green civilians to some of the Army’s most elite soldiers. As training progresses, a rivalry flares between Sobel, whom the men despise, and Lt. Winters (Damian Lewis), a junior officer who’s earned the respect and admiration of the company.

Episode 2: Day of Days

On June 6, 1944, D-Day, planes with thousands of paratroopers cross the English Channel to France, where they come under heavy fire. None of the men land where they expected to, and many lose their weapons and supplies in the drop. Winters links up with solitary soldiers, and they set off to find their units. Winters (Damian Lewis) is later chosen to lead an attack on a fortified German artillery position; the mission is successful, but Winters, now acting company commander, loses his first man.

Episode 3: Carentan

Two days after D-Day, Easy Co. is sent to take the town of Carentan, engaging in a successful battle that results in several casualties. Some soldiers, including Pvt. Blithe (Marc Warren), have a difficult time adjusting to combat. After 36 days in Normandy and several fierce battles, Easy returns to England, but their celebrations are short-lived, as news comes that they’re moving out again.

Episode 4: Replacements

Due to heavy casualties, a group of fresh paratrooper replacements joins Easy Co. in time for a massive drop into German-occupied Holland for Operation Market-Garden. While met with no resistance in Eindhoven, Easy and a cluster of British tanks are repelled from a nearby town by a superior German force, sustaining many casualties as they retreat. The Allied plan to enter Germany through Holland and end the war before Christmas fails.

Episode 5: Crossroads

Winters (Damian Lewis) leads a risky mission on a Dutch dike, resulting in a resounding victory, for which he is promoted to Battalion Executive Officer. Dissatisfied with his new, largely administrative job, Winters is concerned about the leadership of the three companies he now commands. After a weekend pass to Paris, news arrives of a massive Axis effort in the Ardennes Forest, threatening to break the Allied lines. Easy Co. races in to hold the line, ill-equipped for the bitterly cold weather and the entrenched battle ahead.

Episode 6: Bastogne

In the dead of winter, in the forest outside of Bastogne, Belgium, the men of Easy Company struggle to hold the line alone while fending off frostbite and hunger, having arrived with no winter clothes and little supplies and ammunition. Medic Eugene Roe (Shane Taylor) is overwhelmed, on edge and close to combat exhaustion when he finds friendship with a Belgian nurse. Easy Co. spends a miserable Christmas in the trenches, and receives the news that the German army’s demand for surrender was met with Gen. McAuliffe’s defiant answer: “Nuts!”

Episode 7: The Breaking Point

Having thwarted the Germans at Bastogne, the exhausted Easy Co. must now take the nearby town of Foy from the enemy. Several are killed and wounded in fierce shelling, compounded by the incompetence of their commander, Lt. Dike (Peter O’Meara), about whom Winters (Damian Lewis) can do nothing. Easy takes Foy, but at an enormous cost.

Episode 8: The Last Patrol

Easy Co. arrives in the Alsacian town of Haguenau near the German border, and are ordered to send a patrol across the river to take enemy prisoners. Lt. Jones (Colin Hanks), fresh from West Point and eager for combat experience, volunteers to lead. While successful, the mission costs another paratrooper’s life, prompting Winters (Damian Lewis) to ignore the order to send a second patrol the next night.

Episode 9: Why We Fight

Easy Co. finally enters Germany, to surprisingly little resistance, and has a chance to relax for the first time in a long time. A patrol in a nearby forest discovers an abandoned Nazi concentration camp, still filled with emaciated prisoners. The local citizenry, unbelievably disavowing knowledge of its existence, is made to clean it up, as the news arrives that Hitler is dead.

Episode 10: Points

Once home to the top officers of the Third Reich, Easy Co. enters the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, and captures “Eagle’s Nest,” Hitler’s mountaintop fortress. Facing imminent deployment to the Pacific Theater, the men compare their “points” to see who has earned enough to go home. However, the Japanese surrender ends the war. A closing vignette tells what happened to the men of Easy Company after they returned home.

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IMAGES: Band of Brothers

DETAILS: Band of Brothers

Title Band of Brothers Country US Created by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg Cast Scott Grimes, Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston Language English, German, Dutch, French English Subtitles Yes

CAST:

Damian Lewis as Major Richard “Dick” Winters

Scott Grimes as Technical Sergeant Donald Malarkey

Ron Livingston as Captain Lewis Nixon

Donnie Wahlberg as Second Lieutenant Carwood Lipton

Shane Taylor as Technician Fourth Grade Eugene “Doc” Roe.

Frank John Hughes as Staff Sergeant William “Wild Bill” Guarnere

Michael Cudlitz as Staff Sergeant Denver “Bull” Randleman

Neal McDonough as First Lieutenant Lynn “Buck” Compton

David Schwimmer as Captain Herbert Sobel

Dexter Fletcher as Staff Sergeant John “Johnny” Martin

Kirk Acevedo as Staff Sergeant Joe Toye

Matthew Settle as Captain Ronald Speirs

Eion Bailey as Private First Class David Kenyon Webster

James Madio as Technician Fourth Grade Frank Perconte

Colin Hanks as First Lieutenant Henry S. Jones

Rick Gomez as Technician Fourth Grade George Luz

Rick Warden as First Lieutenant Harry Welsh

Douglas Spain as Technician Fifth Grade Antonio C. Garcia

Ross McCall as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Liebgott

Richard Speight, Jr. as Sergeant Warren “Skip” Muck

Rene L. Moreno as Technician Fifth Grade Joseph Ramirez

Marc Warren as Private Albert Blithe

Dale Dye as Colonel Robert Sink

REVIEW: Band of Brothers

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Band of Brothers (2001) TITLE: Band of Brothers This landmark miniseries based on Stephen E. Ambrose's best-seller, and executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, recounts the remarkable achievements of an elite team of U.S.

#Band of Brothers #Movie #Series

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bookwriting · 2 years

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Learning To Reframe Your Thoughts with Johnny Sirpilla

Jenn Foster and Melanie Johnson co-owners of Elite Online Publishing, interview Johnny Sirpilla about his new book, Life Is Hard but I'll Be Ok. With refreshing honesty, candor, grace, and ease, Johnny Sirpilla -–a master storyteller-- serves as our guide through a life story that seems too traumatic to be true, yet true it is.

Johnny Sirpilla is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker. He speaks professionally to businesses, communities, and universities on the importance of managing thoughts, internal honest reflection to develop meaningful professional and personal relationships and re-framing each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-development and growth. Addressing college students, young professionals, and emerging leaders to discover the power they must develop for their personal brand is one of his passions.

Johnny is the owner of Encourage, LLC. and the retired President and Chief Business Development Officer of Camping World and Good Sam. He graduated Miami University in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, a minor in Finance and a special interest in psychology and received his master’s in Organizational Behavioral Management in 2000 from University of Phoenix. In 2022, he received certification from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School in Executive Presence and Influence & Persuasive Leadership Development.

Learn More Here

Johnny and Susan Sirpilla were a happily married couple. Like so many couples, they wanted to be parents. This is their astonishing story that included thirteen different scenarios to build a family.

From infertility to unexpected dangerous pregnancies, adoptions, international adoptions, twins, triplets, life-threatening medical concerns, moral and faith crossroads, their story never ceases to fascinate. Through their journey, you’ll discover the mindset that will set you on a course of positivity and resilience to navigate any of your own difficult times in life.

Learn More Here

Check out this episode!

#business #entrepreneur #elite #publishing #book #expert #small business

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memo2dirtyfood · 3 years

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Vatel’s critique

The time setting of this costume drama is 1671 when the Sun King Louis XIV is the ruler of France. He intends to visit Prince de Conde’s country chateau. Prince de Conde is a warrior and suffering from gout and is hoping to be the leader of the French army in the upcoming war against Holland. He assigns François Vatel the responsibility of organizing everything for the king’s visit in the hope of being rewarded and being able to pay his debt.

This costume drama is directed by Rolland Joffe. Tom Stoppard adapts the screenplay which was originally written in French. From an artistic critical perspective, the movie manages to depict how the majority of the population work for the comfort of the elite. Through good visual effects, the movie demonstrates that the former is ironically willing to do so and suffer a great deal while the latter gratify their desire for overcompensation.

The character of Vatel is core to the impact the movie aims to have on the viewers. Being aware of the fact that the lives of so many people are contingent upon his performance, he relentlessly tries to prepare everything impeccably. One can easily be influenced by Vatel’s efforts. For instance, he manages to rescue a boy from the evil intentions of the king’s brother. Another example of his great actions is when he comes up with the idea to make lanterns out of melons when he finds out all the glass camps are broken.

This drama is also successful in creating a melancholy situation at the end when it is shown some people are reluctant to be merely the pawns and they dislike being played. As such, these people find themselves at crossroads where they have to make tough calls. Overall, the movie manages to communicate well with the viewer through good visual effects, characterization, and an intriguing storyline.

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relicd · 4 years

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I think it is finally time we addressed the considered “canon” ending that will be on this blog. Under the cut will be the in depth analysis of the ending that is going to be considered canon for my V. This post will contain HEAVY spoilers for two different endings. The Nomad ending also known as THE STAR ENDING as well as the legend ending also known as THE WORLD ENDING so please read at your own risk for heavy spoilers for both of those. As an additional preface I would like to state I AM AND WOULD LOVE TO ALTER THIS TO FIT DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIPS AND ROMANCES THAT WILL BE PRESENT ON THIS BLOG SO FEEL FREE TO APPROACH ME AND ASK SHOULD WE HAVE A SHIP OR SOMETHING. A final note, this is just going to be really sad so please be ready for that as well, without further ado what I am going to call THE CHARIOT ENDING.

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐬 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐲 𝐄𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬

No amount of planning, or preparations can create one for the things V has endured. Such is the life of being someone like her in a place like Night City. But, there is trust and closeness that comes between friends and people that is trusted. Options are always on the table and V, well she is lucky enough to have the trust from those close to Johnny and those she managed to not fit in with but also feel like home with. There was always something right about spending her time with the Aldecaldos. So, Johnny dragging her ass to Vik’s clinic scaring the hell out of all of them put into perspective how much all of it meant. As hard as she tried, and as much as she didn’t want to be close to people especially knowing when it came down to it she would die, V did. And she felt like she finally had a life worth living, finally had a place where she belonged.

The conversation on the roof wasn’t a short one. Trust issues, the abandonment issues all of the things V has struggled with in her life come back to the surface and they fight and argue. But, as scare as it is, as much as she tries to argue and fight him on it she finally agrees. She finally says she completely trusts him and it is honest and true. He has been with her for so long and understands her that she knows that the only person she can and ever will trust more than anything, and trust with her life completely is Johnny fuckin Silverhand. And she hates to think it but, she cares about him even it came down to herself and what she wanted he had a factor in her moves now her thought process of her next steps. Hell, always did once they got to terms with the situation. But, time was running out and at this rate they had to be calculated, they had to take the time to acknowledge each and every possibility and causality that would come with it. They couldn’t agree. They hardly did but that didn’t mean V thought his idea was a bad one, but hers wasn’t either. So, they did what was normal, the smart move anyone in their situation would do. Compromised, came up with a plan of their own. But it wasn’t just a one group plan or pack, it was going to take the people V trusted more than anything and the ones Johnny trusted more than anything.

The first call that was made was to Panam. In the time that V managed to connect with Panam she found herself in the same shoes as her, at a crossroads deciding what was the most important for herself but carrying the weight of others on their shoulders. Not to mention the similar energy and vibe they both had. V found family in Panam, as much as she hated to think that, knowing the pain it would lead to by the end of this mission she did. But, Panny had come up with a plan and V wanted to hear it out. Make it work with what her and Johnny had planned and Panny, she seemed fine with that.

She waits for Panam to come and get her with Misty, she gets a reading that is something ending in a complete mystery, not just Johnny’s future but hers as well. It makes her afraid, but she already knows how this is all going to play out. It is a simple request, but she asks for one more of each of the pills. You see, V and Johnny, they worked out a deal. V was to meet with the Aldecaldos, set up the plan to work with what Johnny knew he was going to propose to Rogue. If this was going to work and they were going to buy V more time, then these two pieces of the puzzle while on complete separate ends of the spectrum would need to come together. But that was easier when you had two puzzle pieces like Johnny and V right?

V explains that she can’t spend all of her time with the Aldecaldos on the drive but ends up passing out before being able to full dive into what her and Johnny laid out. Once she is awake Panam and Saul workout the details of the plan. This is where V interjects, in her backpocket sat Rogue, sending herself or rather Johnny in with Rogue while the Aldecaldos drew fire from both Arasaka and Militech by tunneling into Mikoshi. Johnny would be in full control of V until they plugged Alt in. Once they were stable, and Rogue and Johnny managed to find the outlet for Alt, Johnny would take the pill allowing V to take back over and switch and be the one to plug in Alt. After this they would meet up with the Aldecaldos in a secure location to all move forward to Mikoshi having triggered an Arasaka elite force. With the backing of Rogue, Panam, Saul and whomever Rogue decided would be her second they would be fine. It was hesitant at first but Panam stepped up, she agreed and with that Saul took a moment before nodding. If things worked out this would help put the Aldecaldos on the track to rise from the ashes as Bobby would put it. And V, well that was all she wanted. To set up a group of good genuinely good people up whoever she could.

Once agreed upon V met with Alt at the Aldecaldo’s camp with the help of Dakota. In her conversation with Alt it was clear that while Alt, may not be Alt Cunningham it was clear what Alt was doing was for Johnny, it would always be for Johnny. V was defensive in speaking with her, hurt. Without V, Johnny wouldn’t have seen her again, wouldn’t even fucking have existed and she was treated like nothing but a conduit. It hurt her, but she was used to it, thick skin from a life of nothing but hurt and pain. She shoved it down and when Alt begins to explain more there is worry that comes from V about what will become of Johnny after this deal. If there was any other way to bring him back. But she knows the answer, Alt and Johnny do too and she isn’t so upset but it is still a pain that lives in her chest. After frying their tech and getting the shard she makes the choice, with Johnny’s agreement to make sure the Aldecaldo’s had everything ready. Returning Panam’s gun to her and bestowing several she had managed to collect that were heavier duty since this all started. What is unexpected is being told Saul wanted to see her. Being pulled onto a truck and suddenly V was part of the family. She got a jacket. V was an Aldecaldo. And she knew it was for show, to gain everyone’s support but it still made her smile. It still made her weep because for the first time, even if it was a lie, or for show she got to be part of a family. AND IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. She manages to save face while it is presented, but the moment she steps off the truck she excuses herself, only to be followed by both Panam and Saul while she breaks down. For the first time since this all began V weeps. This is the first time, this is the only time since getting Johnny’s jacket that she takes it off. Looking between both of them she holds it out.

𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐂𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐈𝐭 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐌𝐞 '𝐊𝐚𝐲 ?

A simple nod from them both, taking the jacket from her. She doesn’t ask what they do with it, nor does she want to know but it will be looked after. It won’t be pawned here someone will always wear and cherish Johnny’s jacket and that is what’s important to her. The rest is quick drinks and catching up with everyone ensuring they are prepared and when Johnny pops himself in to let V know it’s time she stops. V meets with Panam and they exchanged some parting words until tomorrow. That’s when it comes up, the question of death and fear. She doesn’t hide it, she knows her time is limited and the best way to end things should they go south is with honest. V TELLS PANAM SHE IS TERRIFIED EVERY SINGLE DAY TO DIE. She explains how she has been this whole time and they have a good laugh about how well they hide it. With a thank you, and an understanding V quietly sneaks away from the Aldecaldo’s camp and enters the city. Standing outside of the Afterlife is where the switch happens, she takes the pill and well, the rest is a blur.

It comes to her in waves, and in moments. Sometimes the layer is lighter, other times it isn’t. V doesn’t know a lot of what happens back and forth between Johnny, and Ro. Faint things are made out, small details of their plan and how it is going to end with them meeting with Panam and Saul. The conversation Rogue has with her son. The moment where they almost switch as they take off for Arasaka tower, that was an accident but they were slipping and fading between one another so much easier now. The rest is a blur, bits and pieces of the fight, of seeing Weyland. But it isn’t until Johnny lets go, takes the final pill and allows V to return that she knows they trust one another fully. This is where she connects Alt. Taking this time to lean on Panam and give herself a boost to maintain it until the got into Mikoshi.

From here they wait, until Alt gives them the all clear about the path, following this V manages to make it to where they need to go. But things were going too easy, she heard about what the Aldecaldo’s had risked while waiting and it was a guilt that was heavier than the weight she felt in the moments of dying, responsibility for Bobby and Teddy’s deaths were not carried lightly. Already making plans for what to do and what to say when the time was right, if the time was right and her stupid fucking plan with Johnny even worked. As the make it to the last few hallways she feels it, the gut feeling something is wrong. And then it happens. Ears ringing and body hurt, Saul is the first to see the pains of crossing Adam Smasher, Rogue just past the sightline. But not enough he doesn’t register her and pick her up next. The blood of both feel heavy, feel like they have a magnetic pull to the center of the world. But, the rage that is now inside of not only V but Johnny it burns and festers so much stronger. Adam Smasher never stood a chance against the rage of them combine in one body. The bullet right in his head, it is the only thing that felt right about the whole mission. It is the only thing that is right. Nothing will ever compared, in all of whatever remains of her life to the guilt and hate she has for herself being responsible for not only the death of Teddy and Bobby but Rogue, the best of the best, the queen and Saul. Their blood, it was on V’s hands and V’s hands alone. She had to bear that weight and she would never ever forgive herself for that. But, they have done it and she drags her sorry excuse for a body to Mikoshi. She jacks in and she finds Alt, she follows the words and poetry of the other woman and she sees Johnny. They did this together and instead of tapping his shoulder she hugs him. A full embrace, one of the only issues of human contact she has allowed herself to really feel in her heart.

𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐘𝐨𝐮, 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲, 𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈'𝐦 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐲

It’s the simple words they need to have. Standing together as he explains that Soul Killer is tearing them apart. V laughs, makes a joke about still having one and he laughs too. They talk like a pair of old friends and V cries. Silent tears roll down her features and then they finally bring it back around to Alt. To leaving it up to her and the bombshell hits. V’s body, it’s going to reject her, her engram all of it. The body that is hers no longer belongs to her it belongs to Johnny. She isn’t mad, she isn’t even angry, she is sad, defeated. This time Johnny does the talking and she is at a loss for words for the first time ever. Tears decorate her features as if it were a christmas tree and she feels sick. Alt and Johnny argue, much like a lovers quarrel and finally she breaks through it asking for her and Johnny to have a moment. If she goes back she is still going to die but if he does, then he will live and V, well she just becomes another part of Alt fucking Cunningham. Or whatever the fuck she was now.

It is here where V tells Johnny about Ro, about what happened with her and the Aldecaldo’s. She tells him in such graphic vivid detail it drains her face of any color, some parts of the cyberspace even recreating it. And it hurts, it beats against her rib cage and her heart and chest as she relives it. And they cry, and they hug. It was all for nothing she says. And Johnny just shakes his head, if she didn’t want say goodbye, if she still had a life to live it was hers. V apologizes, for all the times they were a pain in each others asses, for all the things she had said and done that cut deep before she understood him. But, she also explains what led her to be like that. V tells him about her past, about Atlanta and Jackie, she tells him about her issues with family and that she wants to go back because she has that. She has the one thing she wanted in life more than anything with the Aldecaldo’s. People who love and care for her because of being her. He understands, and they say goodbye. A promise to never forget Johnny as they part and V enters the well.

She doesn’t remember a lot after that. The couple of weeks that follow had a lot of medication and sleeping. She is in charge of the Afterlife but hands it over to the son of Rogue and Blue Eyes to look after it while she lives with her family. And they. do, of course reminding V should she ever come back it was hers. But other than that most of those days and weeks are filled with jumbles and fragments of memories. But one thing is for sure, she wears his shoes and aviators every day and she spends each day with the Aldecaldo’s. Saying goodbye to Night City to go to the badlands and she feels fine, in fact she feels fantastic. Maybe Alt was wrong, having not seen or been able to process something like what had happened to V before in any data stream it was possible. And for the next six months V was happy. She was alive and well, she was in the Badlands with money and family. V was happy. But, they said it to one another before her and Johnny. There were no happy endings. She is fixing something and it bubbles up, the coughing. A look at her hand and it’s there. The blood. Taking a breath she lets herself stay with the Aldecaldo’s another few months, Panam trying people who have gotten some of the Aldecaldo’s out of some bad places but nothing is helping nothing is working.

𝐆𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐚 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐤

It is settled, one night when they are alone talking about her state, about the fact V was dying still. She leaves in the middle of the night. She leaves letters and is gone. Good Morning Night City is whispered under her breathe as she is welcomed back with the warm arms of Misty, Mama Welles and Vik. But, it isn’t happy. She tells them and the work begins. Time goes on, things seem to look better if not delayed. They are trying their best and with what she pulled with Mikoshi, well V has enough money to have her own place. Although she misses the sun, the love and feeling of belonging in the Aldecaldo’s she manages just fine back into old habits and places of Night City. But, her dreams are plagued with vivid nightmares of not just Rogue’s death but Saul’s. V doesn’t sleep anymore. V doesn’t look or seem like V anymore. She is tired and trying but she is dying and it hurts and it sucks. So she loses herself again, she becomes who she was in the time she was in Atlanta. It isn’t until she gets a voicemail of concern from Panam and Mitch she snaps out of it. It’s been a year since Mikoshi and things aren’t as good as they thought. Vik asked to stop seeing for three months before the year anniversary as everything appeared to be looking up but in that time, things got worse.

Her body, the pain she felt and the small moments of completely not being inside her head they grew. It was a constant pain now, like a tinnitus but for the body. So, she took medications, a lot of them and hid what was happening to everyone that she worked for or with at the Afterlife. She buried the pain, she buried herself and let her name rise up. Working on that new project and working out how to save her own life. The year that follows this is one that holds nothing but loss and pain for V. Constant updates to cyberwear to try and keep her together but, nothing works. She has to stop the merc work. Shorting out in missions, almost dying because of bullet holes. She may have her name next to Rogue and Jackie on the Afterlife menu but this wasn’t the life of a legend she wanted. She lives in a castle, alone with the money she got from Mikoshi for destroying Arasaka during the last two years. The total isolation, it takes time, slowly pulling herself away and losing everything and everyone she loves. She stops answering the phone. She gets a new place, a small one under a fake name out in Pacifica. She lives there for the next year. And the last month, that single month that she is away from hitting that third official year of being free. She is off the grid. V no longer exists. Stacks and stacks of voicemails, Vik, Misty, Panam, Mitch, Kerry, River, hell some people she only worked with once. She finally listens, because she knows its coming, it is like every single one of the relic malfunctions is hitting her at once the last few days and she wants to hear what they all have to say about her, to her. V dies, in a house under a fake name listening to endless voicemails. It happens at exactly midnight on the third year of being the anniversary of what happened at Mikoshi. She impacted so many people and had friends, family but to spare them, to hopefully avoid all the pain V died how she lived.

𝐀 𝐋𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐑𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫

#｡･*･ﾟ🗡️ ── ɪ ᴜꜱᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴀ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴀᴍ ɪ ɴᴏᴡ? █ ╳ headcanons

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bigyack-com · 5 years

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David Boies, a Star Lawyer, Faces Fresh Questions Over Ethics

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David Boies is under an ethical cloud. Again.

The prominent lawyer David Boies is facing new questions about his role working for several accusers of Jeffrey Epstein.A shadowy hacker promised evidence to Mr. Boies and a colleague, John Stanley Pottinger, that would have implicated some of the world’s most powerful men, according to an NYT report over the weekend from Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Emily Steel, Jacob Bernstein and David Enrich.The two lawyers reportedly discussed a plan to use the videos, allegedly of the rich and famous having sex with girls in Mr. Epstein’s residences, to extract money from the men. But there were no damning videos.The story reveals the extraordinary measures that elite lawyers use to get evidence that could be used to win lucrative settlements — and keep misconduct hidden, allowing perpetrators to abuse again.Mr. Boies denied being involved in the hypothetical plans. Shown text exchanges between Mr. Pottinger and the hacker, he acknowledged that the messages were ill advised and contained “loose language.”Still, Mr. Boies declined to outright condemn Mr. Pottinger. That refusal prompted this reaction, the reporters noted: “His longtime P.R. adviser, Dawn Schneider, who had been pushing for a more forceful denunciation, dropped her pen, threw up her arms and buried her head in her hands.”Bottom line: This is the latest embarrassing episode for Mr. Boies, who was previously perhaps best known for prosecuting a landmark antitrust case against Microsoft and for obtaining the right for gays and lesbians to get married in California. In recent years, he has defended Theranos and Harvey Weinstein, and ethical questions were raised about his actions in both cases. John Carreyrou, the author of “Bad Blood,” an examination of Theranos, took to Twitter: “NY Bar: You paying attention?”More: “The Weekly” tells the wild story of four reporters chasing one of the biggest stories of the year — if only it were true.

Trump’s trade deal has a chance of passing Congress

House Democrats face a difficult choice this week: Either hand President Trump a victory in the middle of a heated impeachment battle or walk away from one of the most progressive trade pacts negotiated by either party, write Ana Swanson and Emily Cochrane of the NYT.The trade deal with Canada and Mexico awaits the approval of Congress, even though the White House agreed with the two countries on revisions a year ago. After months of talks, including through the Thanksgiving break, both sides say they are in the final phase of negotiations.The revised pact reflects Mr. Trump’s populist trade approach — one that has blurred party lines and appealed to many of the blue-collar workers that Democrats once counted among their base.• “Taken as a whole, it looks more like an agreement that would’ve been negotiated under the Obama administration,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.An agreement with the Trump administration would give Democrats a chance to lock in long-sought changes to a pact that they have criticized as prioritizing corporations over workers, and it could lay the groundwork for future trade agreements.More trade news: After years of rivalry and mutual suspicion, Beijing and Moscow are expanding an economic and strategic partnership influencing global politics, trade and energy markets.

Saudi Arabia seeks longer OPEC cuts ahead of Aramco I.P.O.

Hoping to prop up Saudi Aramco’s I.P.O., Saudi Arabia will push for an extension of cuts in oil production through mid-2020 at a meeting of oil producers this week, the WSJ reports.But the talks are being overshadowed by growing unrest in the Middle East. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is set to meet with a 10-nation coalition led by Russia on Thursday and Friday to discuss extending an agreement to curb production by 1.2 million barrels a day beyond March 2020.The debate is likely to be heavily influenced by the market debut of Aramco, which is set to announce the pricing of its shares on Thursday ahead of its roughly $25 billion listing.“Fearing that uncertainty could lead to a sharp drop in oil prices, the kingdom wants an agreement to extend production cuts to at least June 2020,” the WSJ reports.More: Saudi Arabia is accelerating efforts to diversify its economy and polish its global image by broadening cultural offerings centered on Western sports and entertainment.

How Amazon wove itself into the lives of Americans

Amazon offered consumers convenience, and became a juggernaut. A look at the city of Baltimore shows how it reaches into Americans’ daily lives perhaps more than any company in history, writes the NYT’s Scott Shane.The city offers a microcosm of the contentious issues that the company’s conduct has raised nationally, including:• The end of brick-and-mortar stores;• Modestly paid warehouse work with the threat of job automation;• An aggressive foray into government procurement;• Neighborhood surveillance.Amazon says that its market power is not as large as people imagine. It accounts for 40 to 50 percent of online retail in the United States, but that is only 4 to 5 percent of total retail.But Amazon’s retail platform is only the beginning. “It’s the invisible infrastructure that powers our everyday lives,” one expert told Mr. Shane.More retail news: A former employee tells the NY Post that Amazon warehouses are “cult-like” sweatshops run by robots. Amazon removes from its marketplace holiday ornaments displaying images of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz. And Black Friday hit a record $7.4 billion in U.S. online sales, forcing retailers to rethink their staffing levels.

Revolving door

Silver Lake has named Egon Durban and Greg Mondre to the newly created roles of co-C.E.O. Ken Hao, the managing partner, will become the firm’s chairman.

The speed read

Deals• How a former Credit Suisse banker allegedly conspired to defraud investors in Mozambique debt deals. (WSJ)• Apollo Global outbid Berkshire Hathaway for Tech Data, again raising questions about the stock market’s valuation. (CNBC)• A surge of global deals in the past week has helped put mergers and acquisitions on track to approach and perhaps even top last year’s totals. (Bloomberg)• TCI, an activist hedge fund, plans to punish directors of companies that fail to disclose their carbon dioxide emissions. (FT)• Goldman Sachs will avoid setting strict profitability targets at its coming investor day. (FT)• Acosta, a marketing firm owned by the Carlyle Group, has filed for bankruptcy protection. (Bloomberg)Trump impeachment inquiry • President Trump’s lawyers said yesterday that they would not participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s first public impeachment hearing, set for Wednesday. (NYT)• The judiciary panel had been leading the debate over whether to impeach Mr. Trump long before the Ukraine affair. This week, it returns to the center of the action. (NYT)• Jay Sekulow, who is coordinating Mr. Trump’s personal legal team, doesn’t have a White House office and is not close to Rudy Giuliani. But he’s one of the president’s most trusted advisers and loyal defenders in the news media. (NYT)Politics and policy• Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. has wide support, except with one group: Republican men with college degrees. (NYT)• Medicare for All as proposed by Ms. Warren would be a boon to all businesses, especially to entrepreneurs. (WSJ Opinion)• While on a surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, President Trump created confusion over U.S. policy, particularly when he said stalled talks with the Taliban were back on. (NYT)• It’s not just Mr. Trump who has caused headaches at NATO: Emmanuel Macron of France and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey have also posed questions of the alliance. (NYT)• Legislation to curb drug prices in the U.S. has stalled amid partisan gridlock. (Politico)• Why deficits are dead as a political issue. (The Hill)Tech• Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive, ended a tour of Africa by pledging to move to the continent for several months in 2020. (CNN)• How the U.N.’s new facial recognition and surveillance standards are being shaped by Chinese technology companies. (FT)• American tech companies can resume business with Huawei, but it may be too late: The company is now building smartphones without U.S. chips. (WSJ)• Efforts by Big Tech to keep trolls, bots and online fakery from affecting another presidential election is a never-ending game of Whac-a-Mole. (Politico)Best of the rest• A decade of historically low interest rates has helped push total U.S. corporate debt to nearly $10 trillion. (WaPo)• The plunge in three Hong Kong stocks raises fresh questions about corporate governance and regulatory oversight at a crossroads for global finance. (NYT)• Hong Kong is expected to post its first budget deficit since the early 2000s as the economic cost of almost six months of political unrest mounts. (Bloomberg)• Why shade is a sign of privilege in Los Angeles. (NYT)• As scandal engulfs Prince Andrew, Prince Charles has emerged as a monarch-in-waiting in Britain. (NYT)• The cure for an economy hooked on debt may be more debt. (Bloomberg)• Support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan is sliding amid questions about whether he rewarded supporters with invitations to a publicly funded cherry blossom viewing party. (Bloomberg)Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Read the full article

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blackhoof-kra · 5 years

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The New Abolitionism: Capitalism, Slavery and Animal Liberation Capitalism originated in, and would have been impossible without, imperialism, colonization, the international slave trade, genocide, and large-scale environmental destruction. Organized around profit and power imperatives, capitalism is a system of slavery, exploitation, class hierarchy and inequality, violence, and forced labor. The Global Capitalist Gulag was fuelled, first, by the labor power of millions of slaves from Africa and other nations, and, second, by massive armies of immigrant and domestic workers who comprised an utterly new social class, the industrialized proletariat.

As Marx observed, the accumulation of wealth and the production of poverty, the aggrandizement of the ruling class and the immiseration of the ruled, the development of the European world and the underdevelopment of its colonies, are inseparably interrelated. These apparent antipodes are inevitable consequences of a grow-or-die, profit-seeking system of exploitation whose ceaseless expansion requires a slave class and inordinate amounts of cheap labor power.

The transatlantic slave trade began in 1444 when Henry the Navigator began taking Africans back to Portugal to serve as slaves. Africans already were enslaving each other, but their labor market was more akin to indentured servitude and nothing like the horrors they would later face in British America. Prior to trafficking in African slaves, European nations enjoyed positive relationships with Africa based on friendship and trade. This ended in the mid-fifteenth century when they were overtaken by insatiable demands for gold, profits, and slave labor. As evident in the brutal exploits of Columbus and Spain, many European states waged genocidal war against dark-skinned peoples in order to appropriate their land, resources, riches, and labor power.

Over the next few centuries European forces of “civilization,” “progress,” and Christianity kidnapped twenty million Africans from their homes and villages. They forced inland captives to march 500 grueling miles to the coast while barefoot and in leg irons. Half died before they reached the ships and more expired during the torturous six to ten week journey across the Atlantic to North America. The slave traders confined their human cargo to the suffocating hell beneath the deck. Blacks were packed into tight spaces, chained together, and delirious from heat, stench, and disease. They were beaten, force-fed, and thrown overboard in droves.

Marx rightly saw European colonialism as the “primitive stage of capital development” before the emergence of industrial society. From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, profits from the slave trade built European economies, bankrolled the Industrial Revolution, and powered America before and after the Revolutionary War. The glorious cities and refined cultures of modern Europe were erected on the backs of millions of slaves, its “civilization” the product of barbarism. The horrors of slavery were the burning ethical and political issues of modern capitalism. Over a century after the liberation of blacks in the 1880s, however, slavery has again emerged as a focal point of debate and struggle, as society shifts from considering human to animal slaves and a new abolitionist movement seeking animal liberation emerges as a flashpoint for moral evolution and social transformation

Strange Fruit of American Democracy

Both before and after the Revolutionary War, America was a slave-hungry system. In its European form, the nation emerged from scratch, with no prior feudal history or communal traditions, a product of British capital ventures. As British colonists found no gold like the Spaniards did in the Americas, they turned to agriculture. From the Indians they learned to grow tobacco as a profitable crop, but planting and harvesting required intense physical labor. For their sturdiness, vulnerability, and cheap price, the colonists favored Africans over Native American Indians and English laborers for the task.

The first Africans arrived on the North American continent in August 1619, a year before Pilgrims landed the Mayflower on the shores of Massachusetts and decades before the British slave trade began in New England. Exchanged for food, twenty blacks stepped off a Dutch slavery ship to become the first generation of African-Americans. Joining a society not yet lacerated by slavery and racism, they worked as indentured servants to British elites. As such, their status was equal to poor white servants, and servants of either race could gain freedom after their tenure. Like whites, blacks owned property, married, and voted in an integrated society.

This benign situation changed dramatically in the 1660s as ever-more Africans were brought to the colonies to meet the growing need for plantation labor. As slavery became crucial to capitalist expansion and plantation economies organized around tobacco, sugar, and cotton, British colonists constructed racist ideologies to legitimate the violent subjugation of those equal to them in the eyes of God and the principles of natural law. Having survived the shock of capture and wretchedness of their journey, African men, women, and children were auctioned, branded, and sold to white slave owners who grew rich from trading, breeding, and exploiting their bodies. With no consideration of blood ties or emotional bonds, black families were broken apart. Stripped of rights, dignity, and human status, these African citizens and their millions of American descendents were brutalized in the most vicious slavery system on the planet, one whose ugly legacy continues to dominate and poison the US.

As colonists became increasingly autonomous from the monarchy abroad, and British military occupation and oppression subsequently increased, the conflict between Empire and its unruly subjects – dramatized in events such as the Boston Tea Party in 1773 -- inexorably led to war. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence which asserted the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Along with progressive whites such as Thomas Paine and Abigail Adams, slaves were quick to denounce the hypocrisy whereby colonists such as Thomas Jefferson railed against British tyranny while owning slaves drawn from a system far more repressive than English monarchy.

Whereas many blacks fought for the British who promised them freedom, others fought courageously for the patriot cause and were crucial to its victory. When the war ended in 1783, social relations and racial views were in great flux. Tens of thousands of slaves fled to England, Canada, Spanish Florida, or Indian camps. Many Northern slaveholders who embraced the nation’s egalitarian values without regard to race freed their captives. In 1783, Massachusetts became the first state to abolish slavery and from 1789 to 1830 all states north of Maryland gradually followed suit. At the same time, however, slavery grew stronger roots in Southern states that were becoming increasingly influential economically and politically.

The new nation stood at a crucial moral crossroads regarding the slavery question and the true meaning of its professed democratic and Christian values. It could end slavery and adhere to its noble ideals, or it could perpetuate a vicious system of bondage to be an American hypocrisy not democracy. Tragically, the profit imperative triumphed over the moral imperative. Although the North continuously pandered to Southern slavery interests, the two cultures drifted apart irreconcilably like shifting tectonic plates. Rather than pulling together as one nation honoring the progressive values that led them to war, the US imploded through internal contradictions and in 1861 embarked on a bloody war with itself.

The Roar of Abolitionism

With freedom denied and justice betrayed, both free and enslaved blacks intensified their resistance to white oppression. Increasingly, opponents of slavery turned from tactics of reform and moderation to demands for the total and immediate dismantling of the slavery system, and thus, in the 1830s, the abolitionist movement was born.

Abolitionism is rooted in a searing critique of racism and its dehumanizing effects on black people. In the US slavery market, a human being, on the basis of skin color alone, was declared biologically and naturally inferior to whites and thereby stripped of all rights. In such a system, the slave is transmogrified from a human subject into a physical object, from a person into a commodity, and thereby reduced to a moveable form of property known as “chattel.” Abolitionists viewed the institution of slavery as inherently evil, corrupt, and dehumanizing, such that no black person in bondage – however well-treated by their “masters” – could ever attain the full dignity, intelligence, and creativity of their humanity. Abolitionists renounced all reformist approaches that sought better or more “humane treatment” of slaves, in order to insist on the total emancipation of blacks from the chains, masters, laws, courts, and ideologies that corrupted, stunted, and profaned their humanity.

The most militant abolitionist voices advocated the use of violence as a necessary or legitimate tactic of struggle and self-defense. In 1829, David Walker published his “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” a fiery eighty page pamphlet excoriating slavery and calling blacks to violent rebellion. Similarly, in his 1843 keynote address to the National Convention of Colored Citizens, Presbyterian minister Henry Highland Garnet enjoined the nation’s three million blacks to demand freedom and strike their oppressors down if necessary, for “there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood.”

Along with the Haitian Revolution of August 22 1791, whereby black slaves violently overthrew Spanish and British occupiers to establish Haiti as a free black republic, such views panicked US slave owners over the possibility of slave revolts and violence. Their fears were justified, as blacks throughout the country were plotting and carrying out rebellions, achieving with bullets, machetes, or fire the justice denied to them in the courts. Whereas rebels such as Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey were betrayed and executed before they could ignite large-scale insurrections, others like Nat Turner and John Brown (a white Christian) spilled the blood of many slave owners before being captured and executed by the state, and resurrected as folk heroes by the enemies of slavery.

Other influential voices urged militancy and direct action without violence. William Lloyd Garrison, a former indentured white servant, started a prominent abolitionist newsletter, the Liberator, on January 1, 1831, which he published for thirty five years. Against those urging slow, gradual, and moderate change, Garrison objected: “I do not wish to think, to speak, or write, with moderation … Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present!’’

Garrison also brought Frederick Douglass into the abolitionist movement. Douglass was born into slavery, became self-educated, and fled from bondage. With Garrison’s initial assistance, he became a star on the lecture circuit and in 1848 began publishing his own abolitionist newspaper, the North Star. In his electrifying speeches, Douglass preached a potent “gospel of struggle,” most eloquently expressed in an 1857 speech that exposed the Machiavellian essence of politics: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will … The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle … If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.”

A vital part of the abolitionist movement was the Underground Railroad, a furtive, illegal network of volunteers – white and black, male and female, free person and slave – who violated pro-slavery laws in order to smuggle thousands of slaves into northern Free states and Canada. Harriet Tubman not only was a “passenger” on the railroad, using it to escape slavery in 1849 at age 25, she also became its celebrated “Conductor.” Risking jail or death, dodging slave hunters out for the $40,000 bounty on her head, Tubman returned to Maryland numerous times to free family members and seventy other slaves. She epitomizes the courage, passion for freedom, and acute sense of justice driving the abolitionist movement.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, Congress passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, thereby banning slavery and mandating equal treatment for blacks and whites. By the late 1880s, blacks throughout the nation were formally “free,” but in reality they remained trapped in racist systems of violence, exploitation, and poverty. Despite advances during the brief Reconstruction Period, America reconstituted racist discrimination in frightful new ways. As the US became an apartheid system organized around Jim Crow segregation laws, violence against blacks increased dramatically through lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan. Not until the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did brutality diminish, the walls of apartheid come down, and significant social progress become possible.

The New Abolitionism

As black Americans and anti-racists continue to struggle for justice and equality, the moral and political spotlight is shifting to a far more ancient, pervasive, intensive, and violent form of slavery that confines, tortures, and kills animals by the billions in an ongoing global holocaust.

We speak of animal liberation no differently than human liberation. One cannot “enslave,” “dominate,” or “exploit” physical objects, nor can they be “freed,” “liberated,” or “emancipated.” These terms apply only to organic life forms that are sentient – to beings who can experience pleasure and pain, happiness or suffering. Quite apart from species differences and arbitrary attempts to privilege human powers of reason and language over the unique qualities of animal life, human and nonhuman animals share the same evolutionary capacities for joy or suffering, and in this respect they are essentially the same or equal.

Fundamentally, ethics demands that one not cause suffering to another being or impede another’s freedom and quality of life, unless there is some valid, compelling reason to do so (e.g., self-defense). For all the voluminous scientific literature on the complexity of animal emotions, intelligence, and social life, a being’s capacity for sentience is a necessary and sufficient condition for having basic rights.

Thus, just as animals can be enslaved, so too can they be liberated; indeed, where animals are enslaved, humans arguably have a duty to liberate them. Answering this call of conscience and duty, animal liberation groups have sprouted throughout the world with the objectives of freeing captive animals from systems of exploitation, attacking and dismantling the economic and material basis of oppression, and challenging the ancient mentality that animals exist as human resources, property, or and chattel.

Stealing blacks from their native environment and homeland, wrapping chains around their bodies, shipping them in cramped quarters across continents for weeks or months with no regard for their suffering, branding their skin with a hot iron to mark them as property, auctioning them as servants, separating family members who scream in anguish, breeding them for service and labor, exploiting them for profit, beating them in rages of hatred and anger, and killing them in huge numbers – all these horrors and countless others inflicted on black slaves began with the exploitation of animals. Advanced by technology and propelled by capitalist profit imperatives, the unspeakably violent violation of animals’ emotions, minds, and bodies continues today with the torture and killing of billions of individuals in fur farms, factory farms, slaughterhouses, research laboratories, and other nightmarish settings.

It is time no longer just to question the crime of treating a black person, Jew, or any other human victim of violence “like an animal”; rather, we must also scrutinize the unquestioned assumption that it is acceptable to exploit and terrorize animals.

Whereas the racist mindset creates a hierarchy of superior/inferior on the basis of skin color, the speciesist mindset demeans and objectifies animals by dichotomizing the evolutionary continuum into human and nonhuman life. As racism stems from a hateful white supremacism, so speciesism draws from a violent human supremacism, namely, the arrogant belief that humans have a natural or God-given right to use animals for any purpose they devise.

Both racism and speciesism serve as legitimating ideologies for slavery economies. After the civil war, the Cotton Economy became the Cattle Economy as the nation moved westward, slaughtered millions of Indians and sixty million buffalo, and began intensive operations to raise and slaughter cattle for food. Throughout the twentieth century, as the US shifted from a plant-based to a meat-based diet, meat and dairy industries became giant economic forces. In the last few decades, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have become major components of global capitalist networks, and their research and testing operations are rooted in the breeding, exploitation, and killing of millions of laboratory animals each year

Of course, as soon as Homo erectus began making tools nearly three million years ago, hominids have killed and appropriated animals for labor power, food, clothing, and innumerable other resources, and animal exploitation has been crucial to human economies. But whatever legitimate reasons humans had for using animals to survive in past hunting and gathering societies, subsistence economies, and other low-tech cultures, these rationales are now obsolete in a modern world rife with alternatives to using animals for food, clothing, and medical research. Furthermore, however important the exploitation of animals might be to modern economies, utilitarian apologies for enslaving animals are as invalid as arguments used to justify human slavery or experimentation on human beings at Auschwitz or Tuskegee. Rights trump utilitarian appeals; their very function is to protect individuals from being appropriated for someone else’s or a “greater good.”

The Subterfuge of Welfarism

It was not uncommon for a racist to argue that slavery was beneficial for blacks or that they were biologically unfit for freedom. Similarly, factory farm managers claim that pigs, calves, and chickens are better off in conditions of intense confinement rather than in their natural habitat as their “needs are met” in “managed environments.” Zookeepers and circus operators assert that their animals live better in confinement that in the wild where they are subject to poachers and other dangers.

Abolitionists attack welfarism as a dangerous ruse and roadblock to moral progress, and ground their position in the logic of rights. 19th century abolitionists were not addressing the slave master’s “obligation” to be kind to the slaves, to feed and clothe them well, or to work them with adequate rest. Rather, they demanded the total and unqualified eradication of the master-slave relation, the freeing of the slave from all forms of bondage.

Similarly, the new abolitionists reject reforms of the institutions and practices of animal slavery as grossly inadequate and they pursue the complete emancipation of animals from all forms of human exploitation, subjugation, and domination. They seek not bigger cages, but rather empty cages.

To treat black slaves humanely is a contradiction in terms because the institution of slavery inherently is anti-human and dehumanizing. Similarly, one cannot logically be “kind” to animals kept in debilitating confinement against their will. To “act responsibly” to animals in such a situation requires one liberate them from it. Talk of “humane killing” of animals is especially absurd as there is no “humane” way to steal and violate an animal’s life, and subject it to continual pain and suffering. No accurately aimed bolt shot through the head of an animal warrants pretense to any kind of moral dignity, however superior the killing method is to dismemberment of an animal in a conscious state. Killing itself – unnecessary and unjustified – is inhumane and wrong.

While thousands of national and grass-roots animal welfare organizations help animals in countless ways and reduce their suffering, they cannot free them from exploitation. Welfarists never challenge the legitimacy of institutions of oppression and they share with animal exploiters the speciesist belief that humans have a right to use animals as resources as long as they act “responsibly.” Moral progress and animal liberation is premised on making the profound shift from human responsibility to animals to the rights of animals.

The true obstacles to moral progress are not the sociopaths who burn cats alive, for they are an extreme minority whose actions are almost universally condemned as barbaric. The real barrier to animal liberation is the welfarist orientation and its language of “humane care,” “responsible treatment,” and “kindness and respect.” Every institution of animal exploitation – including the fur farm and slaughterhouse industries -- speaks this language, and animals in their “care” are routinely tortured in horrific ways, Animal welfarism is insidious. It lulls people into thinking that animals in captivity are healthy and content. It promotes human supremacy and tries to dress up the fundamental wrong of exploiting animals in the illusory language of “kind,” “respectful,” and “humane treatment.” Attempting to mask and sanitize the evil of oppression, animal welfarism perverts language, corrupts meaning, and is fundamentally Orwellian and deceptive.

Furthermore, by trying to hijack and monopolize the discourse of moral responsibility solely for its own purposes as it feigns ethical behavior, animal welfarism strategically positions animal rights discourse of any kind – because of the premise that animals are not our resources to use – as extreme. And if an animal rights advocate or organization transgresses conservative decorum or legal boundaries in any way, welfarists denounce the tactics as “violent” and “terrorist,” as measures that “discredit” an otherwise respectable concern for animal welfare.

In Defense of Direct Action

Although abolitionism is rooted in the logic of rights, not welfarism, there are problems with some animal rights positions that also must be overcome. First, as emphasized by Gary Francione, many individuals and organizations that champion animal rights in fact are “new welfarists” who speak in terms of rights but in practice seek welfare reforms and thereby seek to ameliorate, not abolish, oppression. While Francione underplays the complex relationship between welfare and rights, reform and abolition, he illuminates the problem of obscuring fundamental differences between welfare and rights approaches and he correctly insists on the need for uncompromising abolitionist campaigns.

Francione, however, is symptomatic of a second problem with animal rights “legalists” who buy into the status quo’s self-serving argument that the only viable and ethically acceptable tactics for a moral or political cause are those the state pre-approves and sanctions. In rejecting the militant direct action tactics that played crucial roles throughout the struggles to end both human and animal slavery, Francione and others use the same rationale animal welfarists employ against them. Mirroring welfare critiques of rights, and serving as a mouthpiece for the state and animal exploitation industries, Francione criticizes direct activists as radical, extreme, and damaging to the moral credibility and advancement of the cause.

Like its predecessor, the new abolitionist movement is diverse in its philosophy and tactics, ranging from legal to illegal approaches and pacifist to violent orientations. A paradigmatic example of the new abolitionism is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). ALF activists pursue two different types of tactics against animal exploiters. First, they use sabotage or property destruction to strike at their economic heart and make it less profitable or impossible to use animals. The ALF insists that its methods are non-violent because they only attack the property of animal exploiters, and never the exploiters themselves. They thereby eschew the violence espoused by Walker and Garnet. The ALF argues that the real violence is what is done to animals in the name of research or profit. Second, in direct and immediate acts of liberation, the ALF breaks into prison compounds to release or rescue animals from their cages. They are not “stealing” animals, because they are not property and anyone’s to own in the first place; rather, they are liberating them. By providing veterinary treatment and homes for many of the animals they liberate, using an extensive underground network of care and home providers, the ALF is a superb contemporary example of the Underground Railroad that funneled black slaves to freedom.

The new abolitionism also is evident in the work of “open rescue” groups like Compassion Over Killing who liberate animals from factory farms without causing property destruction or hiding behind masks of anonymity. Moreover, ethical vegans who boycott all animal products for the principle reason that it is wrong to use or kill animals as food resources, however “free-range” or “humanely” produced or killed, abolish cruelty from their lives and contribute toward eliminating animal exploitation altogether.

As of yet, there are no active Nat Turners and John Browns in the animal liberation movement, but they may be forthcoming and would not be without just cause for their actions. Nor would they be without precedent. According to the gospel of struggle: No justice, no peace.

The Meaning of Moral Progress

Just as nineteenth century abolitionists sought to awaken people to the greatest moral issue of the day, so the new abolitionists of the 21st century endeavor to enlighten people about the enormity and importance of animal suffering and oppression. As black slavery earlier raised fundamental questions about the meaning of American “democracy” and modern values, so current discussion regarding animal slavery provokes critical examination into a human psyche damaged by violence, arrogance, and alienation, and the urgent need for a new ethics and sensibility rooted in respect for all life.

Animal liberation is not an alien concept to modern culture; rather it builds on the most progressive ethical and political values Westerners have devised in the last two hundred years --those of equality, democracy, and rights – as it carries them to their logical conclusion. Whereas ethicists such as Arthur Kaplan argue that rights are cheapened when extended to animals, it is far more accurate to see this move as the redemption of rights from an arbitrary and prejudicial limitation of their true meaning.

The next great step in moral evolution is to abolish the last acceptable form of slavery that subjugates the vast majority of species on this planet to the violent whim of one. Moral advance today involves sending human supremacy to the same refuse bin that society earlier discarded much male supremacy and white supremacy. Animal liberation requires that people transcend the complacent boundaries of humanism in order to make a qualitative leap in ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity.

Animal liberation is the culmination of a vast historical learning process whereby human beings gradually realize that arguments justifying hierarchy, inequality, and discrimination of any kind are arbitrary, baseless, and fallacious. Moral progress occurs in the process of demystifying and deconstructing all myths -- from ancient patriarchy and the divine right of kings to Social Darwinism and speciesism -- that attempt to legitimate the domination of one group over another. Moral progress advances through the dynamic of replacing hierarchical visions with egalitarian visions and developing a broader and more inclusive ethical community. Having recognized the illogical and unjustifiable rationales used to oppress blacks, women, and other disadvantaged groups, society is beginning to grasp that speciesism is another unsubstantiated form of oppression and discrimination.

Building on the momentum, consciousness, and achievements of past abolitionists and suffragettes, the struggle of the new abolitionists might conceivably culminate in a Bill of (Animal) Rights. This would involve a constitutional amendment that bans exploitation of animals and discrimination based on species, recognizes animals as “persons in a substantive sense, and grants them the rights relevant and necessary to their existence – the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In 2002, Germany took the crucial first step in this direction by adding the words “and animals” to a clause in its constitution obliging the state to protect the dignity of humans.

If capitalism is a grow-or-die system based on slavery and exploitation – be it imperialism and colonialism, exploitation of workers, unequal pay based on gender, or the oppression of animals – then it is a system a movement for radical democracy must transcend, not amend. But just as black slaves condemned the hypocrisy of colonists decrying British tyranny, and suffragettes exposed the contradiction of the US fighting for democracy abroad during World War I while denying it to half of their citizenry at home, so any future movement for peace, justice, democracy, and rights that fails to militate for the liberation of animals is as inconsistent as it is incomplete,

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junker-town · 6 years

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The Buccaneers are dragging Bruce Arians out of retirement to unscramble their weird roster

His first task: figuring out what to do with Jameis Winston.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have had no shortage of problems in recent seasons. Dirk Koetter’s high-powered offense couldn’t overcome the league’s worst defense, leading to his ouster after three seasons and back-to-back five-win campaigns.

So to untie the knot Koetter couldn’t loosen, the franchise would like to turn to an old pro. The Bucs and Bruce Arians, former Cardinals and Colts head coach, are in the throws of negotiating his return to the NFL, after a brief retirement, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported on Tuesday, Jan. 8.

The two-time NFL head coach of the year left his post in Arizona on New Year’s Day last year, sending the Cardinals into a tailspin that guaranteed them the top pick in the 2019 NFL Draft. He can boost his stock even further by leading the Buccaneers back from the dead.

Arians will have to solve Tampa Bay’s Jameis Winston problem

The Buccaneers are approaching a crossroads with the quarterback they selected with the first overall pick in 2015. Jameis Winston has been an enigma on the field and a headache off it. He was suspended for the first three games of the 2018 season for allegedly groping a female Uber driver, and while his other character concerns are an issue for a different story, the “Controversies” subheading on his Wikipedia page clocks in at 979 words.

That could leave Arians to oversee a decision on whether or not the franchise will commit to the quarterback it hoped would lead the club to a new era of prosperity. The Buccaneers exercised the $20.9 million option for 2019 at the tail end of his rookie contract last April, but that expensive deal is only guaranteed in case of injury, and Winston can be released without leaving any dead money behind on the club’s salary cap.

Would Arians move on from its embattled starter? Or is he taking this job in order to take on the challenge of rehabilitating Winston? Considering his past — both on the sideline and as someone who coached Winston through football camps during the young quarterback’s formative years — Tampa Bay’s hiring points to the latter.

General manager Jason Licht has said as much in the past.

“(Winston) has accomplished more than most of the elite quarterbacks have at his age through that time span (in their careers). There’s a lot to like about Jameis. Jameis will be here next year.’’

Arians has worked with both young, rising quarterbacks and established veterans in the past. His guidance as offensive coordinator and interim head coach for the 2012 Colts turned another former No. 1 overall pick — Andrew Luck — into a playoff starter as a rookie. He also called plays for Ben Roethlisberger during the two-time NFL champion’s age 25 to age 29 seasons.

Those are all points in Winston’s favor, but “here” doesn’t necessarily mean starting, as 2018 proved. Arians’ biggest success as a head coach came with a transplanted veteran quarterback when he guided Carson Palmer and the Cardinals to a 49-30-1 record and a pair of postseason berths over a five-year span. Ryan Fitzpatrick may not be an option since he’s facing free agency in 2019, but that doesn’t mean Arians won’t be able to find a veteran QB to challenge for a starting role without him.

There will be a robust market for flawed older passers this spring, which may include players like Tyrod Taylor, Joe Flacco, Teddy Bridgewater, and maybe even Super Bowl 52 MVP Nick Foles. If Arians wants to tear down the Bucs offense and rebuild in his own image, he’ll have some options.

The good news is Winston is only 25 years old, and he showed signs of improvement as his fourth season as a pro wore on. He finished 2018 with 13 touchdowns, four interceptions, and a solid 100.1 passer rating after regaining his starting role from Fitzpatrick over the Bucs’ final seven games. Moving on from Winston, at least from an on-field standpoint, probably isn’t the right move. But his off-field exploits will give Arians something to consider when it comes to shaping his 2019 roster.

Arians he can’t rely on the Buccaneers’ defense to bail him out

Tampa Bay’s defense was very, very bad under Dirk Koetter. The Buccaneers ranked 27th in the league in yards allowed and 31st in points given up. Their advanced statistical profile isn’t much better.

There’s some talent along that hollowed-out lineup thanks to the presence of Jason Pierre-Paul and Lavonte David, but Arians is going to have to oversee a mass acquisition of talent to shore up that unit. He’ll also have to build up young prospects like Vita Vea, Carlton Davis, and Justin Evans.

The easiest way to do that will be to find a budding defensive mind to take the reins and balance out his offensively-inclined management. The good news for Tampa is that 2019’s sudden swing toward promoting young offensive coordinators and QB coaches to head coaching roles has left plenty of defensive coaching talent available.

If negotiations are fruitful, the Buccaneers will be getting an experienced head coach with a proven track record, whose consistent success in Arizona only looks more impressive after 2018. But he’s also 66 years old and will have significantly less veteran talent than he ever had with the Cardinals. Resurrecting Tampa Bay will be a challenge — but Arians’ resume suggests he’s the right guy for the job, even if he’s not the trendy one.

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architectnews · 4 years

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6 UNESCO Cultural sites virtually rebuilt

6 UNESCO Cultural sites virtually rebuilt, Buildings, Architecture Design

6 UNESCO Cultural sites virtually rebuilt

14 Aug, 2020

Reconstructing 6 UNESCO cultural sites in danger of disappearing forever

See ruined endangered UNESCO sites virtually rebuilt before your very eyes

World heritage sites exist in constant danger of degradation or destruction. From militants to motorists, earthquakes to urbanization, these meaningful landmarks face both human-made and natural threats. UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger draws attention to sites at risk of losing the characteristics that make them special.

By definition, these structures are significant to “all the peoples of the world” – but most of us won’t get to see them in person. The team at Budget Direct decided to bring them to your home instead. These six ruined sites were digitally restored to their former glory:

UNESCO World Heritage Site – Location

1) Hatra Al-Jazīrah – Iraq 2) Leptis Magna District of Khoms – Libya 3) Palmyra Tadmur, Homs Governorate, Syria 4) Portobelo-San Lorenzo Fortifications Province of Colon, District of Cristobal, Panama 5) Nan Madol Temwen Island, Federated States of Micronesia 6) Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls Jerusalem, Israel

Here’s a before and after preview of Iraq’s Hatra (also available in GIF and video format):

Before (now) After (digital reconstruction)

This project is part of a series of campaigns released by the Budget Direct Travel Insurance team exploring how ruined structures would look like had they been preserved. The team decided to bring to life a series of cultural heritage sites that UNESCO has categorised as ‘in danger’ – from the fortified city of Hatra in Iraq to the recently destroyed ruins of Palmyra in Syria.

Methodology Budget Direct started by researching sites on the World Heritage in Danger list, which includes the 53 properties that the World Heritage Committee has deemed “in danger.” They selected sites that were man-made and had some elements remaining. They decided not to include natural sites, or sites for which accurate historical and design information was unavailable. The team worked with architects Jelena Popovic and Keremcan Kirilmaz, and industrial designer Erdem Batirbek to research and illustrate these intricate reconstructions.

Research Notes

1. Hatra

Location: Al-Jazīrah – Iraq (Google maps) Year built: 3rd or 2nd century BC

History: A large fortified city under the influence of the Parthian Empire and capital of the first Arab Kingdom, Hatra withstood invasions by the Romans in A.D. 116 and 198 thanks to its high, thick walls reinforced by towers. Hatra was probably founded in the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, under the Seleucid kingdom. It rose to prominence as the capital of Araba, a small semi autonomous state under Parthian influence. Because of its strategic position along caravan trade routes, the town prospered and became an important religious centre.

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Architectural features:

● High, thick walls reinforced by towers.

● It is encircled by inner and outer walls nearly 4 miles (6.4 km) in circumference and supported by more than 160 towers.

● A temenos (temple enclosure) surrounds the principal sacred buildings in the city’s centre.

● The temples cover some 3 acres (1.2 hectares) and are dominated by the Great Temple, an enormous structure with vaults and columns that once rose to 100 feet (30 metres).

● Numerous sculptures and statues have also been discovered in the city.

● Built in a circular plan of military tradition.

● Hellenistic and Roman architecture blend with Eastern decorative features

2. Leptis Magna

Location: District of Khoms – Libya (Google maps) Year built: 7th c. BC

Before & After:

History: Leptis or Lepcis Magna, also known by other names in antiquity, was a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire and Roman Libya at the mouth of the Wadi Lebdam in the Mediterranean. Leptis Magna was enlarged and embellished by Septimius Severus, who was born there and later became emperor. It was one of the most beautiful cities of the Roman Empire, with its imposing public monuments, harbour, market-place, storehouses, shops and residential districts.

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Architectural features:

1. Amphitheater

● Built in AD 56. Old quarry for construction.

● The oval arena measures 57 x 47 m.

● The lower ranks were for the Lepcitanian elite, we still see the stone slabs that were once on the seats. Among these is an altar for Nemesis, the goddess of doom.

● It is likely that there was some sort of (wooden) portico surrounding the amphitheater: these were the cheaper seats.

2. Theater

● Built in the 1st century AD, construction was financed by several rich aristocrats.

● The upper part of the stands was not excavated from the hill, but built from natural stone, concrete, and bricks.

● Five flights of steps enabled the people to enter and leave the building, and divided the stands into six wedge-like segments.

● On the upper edge, a colonnaded walk was erected, which offered shade to the higher seats, where the poorer people sat. The front ranks were occupied by the city’s wealthiest citizens, with a tribunal for the magistrates.

● A small temple was added to the colonnaded walk in 35 or 36, dedicated to the goddess Ceres Augusta.

● Another addition was the semicircular wall surrounding the orchestra. Behind the stage of the theater was a trapezoidal construction that was called Porticus post scaenam by ancient architects. It is a square garden, surrounded by colonnades; in the center was a temple.

3. Hippodrome (Circus)

● 40 m long racecourse, built in the 2nd century AD.

● Measures about 100 x 450 m. Eleven rows of official seats.

● At the spina (the median strip), five water basins with fountains were added, a type of decoration otherwise only known from Rome’s Circus Maximus, fitting the “dolphins” on the corners, which indicated how many laps the charioteers still had to cover.

4. Market

● Initially market was built here in the 9th century AD, but present structures were built in the times of Septimius Severus.

● Consisted of a large square, surrounded by a portico, in which two octagonal buildings were placed, which are known to archaeologists as tholoi.

3. Palmyra

Location: Tadmur, Homs Governorate, Syria (Google maps) Year built: 3rd millennium BC

Before & After:

History: An oasis in the Syrian desert, north-east of Damascus, Palmyra contains the monumental ruins of a great city that was one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. From the 1st to the 2nd century, the art and architecture of Palmyra, standing at the crossroads of several civilizations, married GraecoRoman techniques with local traditions and Persian influences.

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Architectural features:

● Enclosed by a massive wall flanked with traditional Roman columns, Bel’s sanctuary plan was primarily Semitic. Similar to the Second Temple, the sanctuary consisted of a large courtyard with the deity’s main shrine off-center against its entrance (a plan preserving elements of the temples of Ebla and Ugarit).

● Palmyra began as a small settlement near the Efqa spring on the southern bank of Wadi al-Qubur. Palmyra’s architecture was influenced by the Greco-Roman style, while preserving local elements (best seen in the Temple of Bel).

● Along the principal 1.1-kilometre-long (0.68 mi) east-west street, named the Grand Colonnade, a double portico is ornamented with three nymphaea.

● It extended from the Temple of Bel in the east, to the Funerary Temple no.86 in the city’s western part. It had a monumental arch in its eastern section, and a tetrapylon stands in the center. The Baths of Diocletian were on the left side of the colonnade.

● Nearby were residences, the Temple of Baalshamin, and the Byzantine churches, which include “Basilica IV”, Palmyra’s largest church. The church is dated to the Justinian age, its columns are estimated to be 7 metres (23 ft) high, and its base measured 27.5 by 47.5 metres (90 by 156 ft).

● The Temple of Nabu and the Roman theater were built on the colonnade’s southern side.

● Behind the theater were a small senate building and the large Agora, with the remains of a triclinium (banquet room) and the Tariff Court. A cross street at the western end of the colonnade leads to the Camp of Diocletian, built by Sosianus Hierocles (the Roman governor of Syria).] Nearby are the Temple of Al-lāt and the Damascus Gate.

● In architecture the Corinthian order marks almost all the monuments, but the influence of Mesopotamia and Iran is also clearly evident.

● Notable structures:

1. Baths of Diocletian

● The complex’s entrance is marked by four massive Egyptian granite columns each 1.3 metres (4 ft 3 in) in diameter, 12.5 metres (41 ft) high and weigh 20 tonnes.

● Inside, the outline of a bathing pool surrounded by a colonnade of Corinthian columns is still visible in addition to an octagonal room that served as a dressing room containing a drain in its center. Sossianus Hierocles, a governor under Emperor Diocletian, claimed to have built the baths, but the building was probably erected in the late second century and Sossianus Hierocles renovated it.

2. Temple of Bel

● Dedicated in AD 32

● It consisted of a large precinct lined by porticos; it had a rectangular shape and was oriented north-south.

● The exterior wall was 205-metre (673 ft) long with a propylaea, and the cella stood on a podium in the middle of the enclosure.

3. Senate building

● Largely ruined.

● It is a small building that consists of a peristyle courtyard and a chamber that has an apse at one end and rows of seats around it.

4. Roman Theatre at Palmyra

● The second-century CE theatre was built in the center of a semicircular colonnaded piazza which opens up to the South Gate of Palmyra.

● The 82-by-104-metre (269 by 341 ft) piazza was located to the south-west of the main colonnaded street.

● The unfinished cavea is 92 metres (302 ft) in diameter and consists only of an ima cavea, the lowest section of the cavea, directly surrounding the orchestra. The ima cavea is organized into eleven cunei of twelve rows each and faces north-northeast towards the cardo maximus.

● The theatre’s aditus maximi, its main entrances, are 3.5 metres (11 ft) in width, and lead to a stone-paved orchestra with a diameter of 23.5 metres (77 ft). The orchestra is bounded by a circular wall with a diameter of 20.3 metres (67 ft). The proscenium wall is decorated with ten curved and nine rectangular niches placed alternately. The stage measures 45.5 by 10.5 metres (149 by 34 ft) and is accessed by two staircases.

● The scaenae frons had five doors: the main entrance, or valve regia, built into a broad curved niche; two guest doors on either side of the valve regia, or valve hospitalis, built into shallow rectangular niches; and two extra doors, at either end of the stage.

● Emperor Nero is known to have placed his statue in the niche of the regia of the theatre at Palmyra. The columns at the stage are decorated in the Corinthian order.

5. Palmyra Castle, also known as Fakhr-al-Din al-Ma’ani Castle or Tadmur Castle

● The castle is thought to have been built by the Mamluks in the 13th century on a high hill overlooking the historic site of Palmyra.

● The castle lying on raised bedrock was a well defended position for a fortification with thick and high walls, which was also surrounded by a moat that had only one access available through a drawbridge.

4. Portobelo-San Lorenzo fortifications

Location: Province of Colon – District of Cristobal, Panama (Google maps) Year built: 17th and 18th century

Before & After:

History: Magnificent examples of 17th- and 18th-century military architecture, these Panamanian forts on the Caribbean coast form part of the defence system built by the Spanish Crown to protect transatlantic trade.

There are diverse fortification sites around the Bay of Portobelo, denominated San Fernando fortifications: Lower Battery, Upper Battery and Hilltop Stronghold; San Jerónimo Battery Fort; Santiago fortifications: Castle of Santiago de la Gloria, Battery and Hilltop Stronghold; the old Santiago Fortress; ruins of Fort Farnese; the La Trinchera site; the Buenaventura Battery; and the San Cristóbal site. Forty-three kilometers away, at the mouth the Chagres River stands the San Lorenzo Castle (originally “San Lorenzo el Real del Chagre”) with its Upper Battery as a separate structure.

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Architectural features:

● The Bay of Portobelo has many fortifications, which replicate European designs of military architecture, built during the colonial period (1596–99). The structures built in the earlier years were in medieval style (Antonelli’s Spanish designs). However, in the 18th century, the structures were built by renovating neo-classical features (of Salas and Hernandez (1753–60)), as seen at the Santiago Fort, San Jeronimo Fort and San Fernando Fort, and the San Lorenzo Fort.

● From 1587 to 1599, the fortifications evolved into a sea-level battery and they were completed in 1601. The plans of the massive fortress were made by the Italian engineer Baptist Antonelli.

● The castle of San Lorenzo was built on top of a high reef, in a position that dominated the entrance of the Chagres River.

● In 1670, buccaneer Henry Morgan ordered an attack that left Fort San Lorenzo in ruins. He invaded Panama City the following year, using San Lorenzo as his base of operations.

● In the 1680s, the Spanish constructed a new fort 80 feet (24 m) above the water. Set on a cliff overlooking the entrance to the harbor, the fort was protected on the landward side by a dry moat with a drawbridge. During this time, the town of Chagres was established under the protection of the fort.

5. Nan Madol

Location: Temwen Island, Federated States of Micronesia (Google maps) Year built: 8th or 9th century

Before & After:

History: Nan Madol is a series of more than 100 islets off the south-east coast of Pohnpei that were constructed with walls of basalt and coral boulders. These islets harbour the remains of stone palaces, temples, tombs and residential domains built between 1200 and 1500 CE. These ruins represent the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur dynasty, a vibrant period in Pacific Island culture.

The huge scale of the edifices, their technical sophistication and the concentration of megalithic structures bear testimony to complex social and religious practices of the island societies of the period. The site was also inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger due to threats, notably the siltation of waterways that is contributing to the unchecked growth of mangroves and undermining existing edifices.

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Architectural features:

● The site core with its stone walls encloses an area approximately 1.5 km long by 0.5 km wide and it contains nearly 100 artificial islets–stone and coral fill platforms–bordered by tidal canals.

● It spread over 200 acres abutting Pohnpei’s mangrove-covered shore.

● Most of it was built from the 13th to the 17th centuries by the Saudeleurs, descendants of two brothers of unknown provenance who founded a religious community in the sixth century focused on the adoration of the sea. They and their successors brought from the other side of the island columns of black lava rock up to 20 feet long that are naturally pentagonal or hexagonal and straight. They used them in a log cabin formation to build outer walls as well as foundations filled in with lumps of coral to create elevated platforms where traditional thatched structures were used as lodgings.

● Islet of Pahnwi wall has huge, flat-sided stone rises 58 feet and encloses a tomb.

● Nandowas is by far the most elaborate building. It’s the royal mortuary, with two sets of 25-foot-high walls whose gracefully up-swept corners cover an area greater than a football field. One cornerstone is estimated to weigh 50 tons. Eight columns form the basis of a roof of the moss-encrusted tomb that lets in shards of sunlight.

Note: Computer based reconstruction of main islets and features, including selected house structures. The main Pahn Kadira (PKI) islet, the residential complex of the Sau Deleur chiefs, is 115 meters long.

6. Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls

Location: Jerusalem, Israel (Google maps) Year built: 1535

Before & After:

History: The Walls of Jerusalem surround the Old City of Jerusalem (approx. 1 km²). In 1535, when Jerusalem was part of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Suleiman I ordered the ruined city walls to be rebuilt. The work took some four years, between 1537 and 1541.

The length of the walls is 4,018 meters (2.4966 mi), their average height is 12 meters (39.37 feet) and the average thickness is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet). The walls contain 34 watchtowers and seven main gates open for traffic, with two minor gates reopened by archaeologists.

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Architectural features:

● Herod’s Temple was one of the larger construction projects of the 1st century BCE. It was Herod’s plan that the entire mountain be turned into a giant square platform. The Temple Mount was originally intended to be 1600 feet wide by 900 feet broad by 9 stories high, with walls up to 16 feet thick, but had never been finished. To complete it, a trench was dug around the mountain, and huge stone “bricks” were laid.

● The Western Wall, Wailing Wall, or Kotel, known in Islam as the Buraq Wall is an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known also in its entirety as the “Western Wall”. The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Jewish Temple begun by Herod the Great, which resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, in a huge rectangular structure topped by a flat platform, thus creating more space for the Temple itself, its auxiliary buildings, and crowds of worshippers and visitors.

References Unesco (2020). Hatra. unesco.org Wikipedia. (2020). Hatra. wikipedia.org Wikipedia. (2020). Leptis Magna. wikipedia.org Livius.org. (2020). Lepcis Magna, Amphitheater. livius.org Livius.org. (2020). Lepcis Magna, Theater. livius.org Livius.org. (2020). Lepcis Magna, Circus. livius.org Livius.org. (2020). Lepcis Magna, Macellum. livius.org Unesco (2013). Site of Palmyra. unesco.org Wikipedia. (2020). Palmyra. wikipedia.org Britannica. (2020). Palmyra. britannica.com Wikipedia. (2020). Palmyra Castle. wikipedia.org Unesco (2020). Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo. unesco.org Wikipedia. (2020). Fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo. wikipedia.org Wikipedia. (2020). Chagres and Fort San Lorenzo. wikipedia.org Unesco (2020). Nan Madol: Ceremonial Centre of Eastern Micronesia. unesco.org Smithsonianmag (Christopher Pala). Nan Madol: The City Built on Coral Reefs. smithsonianmag.com Discovermagazine (Corey S. Powell). A Space-Age Journey into the Past with Albert Lin. discovermagazine.com Wikipedia. (2020). Walls of Jerusalem. wikipedia.org Wikipedia. (2020). Western Wall. wikipedia.org Wikipedia. (2020). Second Temple. wikipedia.org

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Architecture – Major Buildings

Oscar Niemeyer’s Permanent International Fairground in Tripoli, Lebanon: photo © UNESCO Beirut Office Getty Foundation 2018 Keeping it Modern Grants

Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, Sidi Harazem, Morocco (architect: Jean-François Zevaco); Image © Frac Centre-Val de Loire Collection. Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex Building

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