#would that have happened if the declaration came 'from' the person liberals were primed to distrust rather than one they decided was

[bopinion]

2024 / 08

Aperçu of the Week:

"The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

(Nelson Mandela)

Bad News of the Week:

Saturday marked the second anniversary of the Russian attack on Ukraine. One of the macabre highlights was that the mother of political activist Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny was allowed to receive the body of her son, who died under still unexplained circumstances in a prison camp in Kharp, Siberia. Perhaps his death (after all, he was by far the most prominent opposition figure in Russia) is most emblematic of Vladimir Putin's self-image, which simply does not tolerate any contradiction. He is the all-powerful tsar who alone knows what is good for his people - even outside Russia's borders.

That very Saturday, we were invited to dinner with friends. Our hostess comes from Ukraine. There are - of course - Russian traces in her family memory too. After all, she spent her childhood as an Ukrainian in the Soviet Union. Back then, she would have liked to do sports and loved dancing. She was not allowed to do either. She wasn't good enough to be promoted by the system as a cadre. And she wasn't supposed to do it just for fun. When the children of a society are not allowed to pursue their childhood interests, it shows the ignorance of a system towards its citizens - who only count as high achievers, not as people.

I was most impressed by the story of her grandmother. She was "relocalized" from western Ukraine to the Urals under Joseph Stalin. Without being asked, she had to leave overnight with her six children, leaving all her belongings behind, her husband was separated, officially considered "missing" and declared dead a few years later. Josef Vissarionovich Stalin ruled the country with a heavy and cruel hand - from 1927 until his death in 1953. Countless people died under his dictatorship, the figures range from 7 to 60 million. Both are incredible numbers. He strategically uprooted the lives of many more people, as there was to be no sense of (national or personal) identity in the Soviet Union. Like for our friend's grandmother, who was deported over 3,000 kilometers with her children.

It is well known that Putin considers the collapse of the Soviet Union to be the greatest misfortune in human history. From this point of view, his wars in Chechnya, Georgia and now Ukraine are only logical. In the "good old days", the Soviet Union covered almost a seventh of the planet's land mass. And it was the only system, before China today, that dared to challenge US supremacy in the world, see for example the Cuban Missile Crisis. The end of the Cold War, which among other things enabled Germany to reunify, may seem like a great liberation to us in the West. In the Russian self-image, however, things may be different. Despite all the atrocities, Stalin was extremely popular in the Soviet Union and his death was sincerely mourned, our friend told us. Perhaps Putin did not "hijack" the country, but is an expression of a human longing for authoritarian leadership. Which would also explain Viktor Orbán, Recep Erdogan and a whole series of African despots. And in their world, there is no room for dissent or questioning their power. Anyone who dares to do so will pay dearly for it. Like Navalny.

But perhaps that's not really bad news - after all, who is really surprised by this prime example of the nefariousness of Putin's regime?

Good News of the Week:

Not so long ago, NATO was declared "brain dead" (French President Emmanuel Macron) and "obsolete" (US President Donald Trump). And then came the Ukraine war. Suddenly, everything happened in quick succession: Sweden and Finland were or are being admitted to NATO, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is postponing his retirement, Germany is setting up a "special fund" of 100 billion to modernize its military, various troop units are being deployed to the Baltic countries, the arms industry is ramping up production everywhere, more and more members are targeting 2% of their gross domestic product for defence spending, the largest manoeuvre in the history of the defence alliance is being carried out, some of Russia's neighbors would rather apply for membership today than tomorrow ... In short: NATO suddenly seems to be alive and kicking.

Why? Quite simply because it is needed. At least Article 5, i.e. the duty to provide assistance in the event of defense, has become extremely attractive in view of the new threat situation. As a kind of life insurance against the new Russian danger. I don't understand why this should be new, as it has been on the cards for long enough. All the hope that "But Putin won't really..." was rather naive. Democratic values are being called into question and the security situation in Europe is unstable. In this respect, it is good that there is a solidarity between the states that have learned from past wars. And who have therefore clearly positioned themselves as a defense alliance.

But perhaps that's not really good news - after all, who can feel comfortable in the face of security policy uncertainties?

Personal happy moment of the week:

I met my wife 36 years ago. In French Canada. We both have family there. We will see them again in late summer. Because we're finally making it back across the Atlantic. We made the initial plans at the weekend and booked the flights. The anticipation is a happy moment that will last a long time. Nice. Very nice.

I couldn't care less...

...about the latest battle in which PeTA is currently engaged. The rebels for animal rights (PeTA = People for the ethical treatment of animals), as justified as their mission is, sometimes overshoot the mark. But this time you could almost take it for a media hoax: they no longer want animal figures on carousels. Because "the use of artificial animals can create the wrong image for people." What's next? A campaign against zodiac signs? Or that horses should no longer be abused in chess?

It's fine with me...

...that FC Bayern is terminating the contract with its coach Thomas Tuchel at the end of this soccer season. After Paris St. Germain and Chelsea FC, he has simply not delivered (enough) in Munich either. Besides, a coach is easier to replace than an entire team.

As I write this...

...I'm listening to "50s Rock" - a tip from my daughter. Because this music (Elvis, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, The Everly Brothers...) would simply put you in a good mood. Works for me.

Post Scriptum

Germany is not doing well economically. The country that achieved the "economic miracle" after the Second World War, mastered the reunification with his east part, was instrumental in overcoming the euro crisis and has always been the largest net contributor to the European Union, is groaning. Too much bureaucracy, too little digitalization, too high labour costs, too little space, collapsing exports, too high tax burden, dilapidated infrastructure, too high energy costs, a lack of innovative strength, too slow regulation, too much pandemic, too much inflation, too much war...

This more than unfavorable mixture of factors has been felt for some time and with increasing intensity, and now we have it in writing. The latest economic report presented last week by Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck states in short that Germany is expensive, bureaucratic and slow. Habeck therefore sees "cause for concern". Fortunately, he blames this not only on external factors (historically low global trade, loss of purchasing power or high interest rates), but also on home-grown problems: Due to the many disputes, the government has lost confidence, he says.

Now defense spending is set to increase significantly, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner is already publicly considering freezing social spending, the investment backlog would like to be resolved and then there's this annoying climate change that nobody takes seriously enough. I had the luxury of growing up in a world where things basically seemed to be on the up. But apparently only seemed to be. Now I fear that my children will have to pay a price for this.

[anestheticrage]

Be me: Japanese honor student🎓, 15, with half a brain and even less of a plan. Hunting bitches by day and witches by night. Livin that dank only child✌️ life while mom n dad yeet all over the globe, leavin me plenty of time to forget not to make 2 lunches for myself #quirky 😜

no time for socialization or basic electronics skills ???📱??? when your best friends are an alien demon rabbit🐰👽 and the inexplicable Hole ™ in your brain. lmao, btw did i mention im ✨M✨A✨G✨I✨C✨A✨L✨

dreamin bout my 2D waifus again when familiar pink haired cancer patient dances through my brain passin out fliers: Kamihama Meguca Dating Service: Sponsored by Cult of the Magius. 250 stones per session 🤔

seems legit, Mr. Moneybags. wasn't spending my unwieldy sack of gemstones on anything else anyway. lets pull 💎💎💎

first up we have Redhead Radagast and her plethora of plants. 🌿☺️🦎

anndd, nearly dies immediately. 

well not off to a great start but i guess shes pretty cute at lea- oh FUCK its her girlfriend, Tsundere Poseidon😒🔱💦, and their exasperated, straight and single Sword Mom 😔🗡️🔥. fml gonna have to save up for the next pull. might as well play a few rounds with what i got tho. 

get in some good girl talk about things like school, color coded hair styles, body count, permanent soul damage, and our personal demon pacts. ya know, the usual 😚 . realize my dark backstory seems to be missing, so the girls take me to Ketchup Queen Sappho 🍅🥧 (wtf?) to molest my glowy egg stone. whatevs, more action than ive had since Kuroe 🖤 got added to the story anyway

the gang agrees it's time to hunt down the cutest rabbit pimp 🕶️🐇💵 in the city. >> say 🎵mukyuuu🎵 one more time and ill hug you so hard my backstory will pop right out, you adorable fluffy bastard. plz be my new best friend 💕

Form brand new friendship pact with Kyubae, and remember that my lil Sis 🐥 was always the best wingman for pickin up magic chicks, and kept her side of the room so spotless i forgot she existed. whoops 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ Maybe if I find her i can stop paying these exorbitant pull fees.📵💎

speaking of which: hot damn this week's featured bachelorette is a 19 year old model and magical detective🔎 with massive levels of PTSD and self loathing 🥵💙💦 more likely to stab you or dramatically jump off a rooftoop than utter a single positive comment. wow, maybe i really COULD find true love…

... if i had MORE THAN A 1% FUCKING DRAW CHANCE. 😡 smh

hard to make much progress finding sis or winning the broken heart of a hard boiled detective amidst the never ending lover's quarrel of the Trident Vine Lesbians. 💔 Sword Mom tells them if they don't behave a monster will take them away. LOL classic mom 🤣

>>>HOLY FUCK IT DID

declare all-out war on urban legends, starting with staircases ⚔️ to reunite the dysfunctional trio, and hope that I net a way better lineup with the next 10x pull. at least sad sleuth lady came to help out. they say combat is the best way to bond wi-   and there she goes off the rooftop again 🙄 fml

alright that got way off track, we need a fresh start, away from all the loli drama. how bout a little B&E🔓🔨🤷🏻‍♀️ at the local house of worship to clear my head. ahh nothing like the unanswered prayers of the masses to get you in the mood for another wasted pull, and the 🔥 MIGHTIEST 🔥 headache you could ask for with a side of Double Cooked Pork 🐖🍜 (meh 5/10🧾)

venture forth into the spiritual unknown with your new human flamethrower🔥🌻🧡 and ask your favorite private eye to please, for the love of Eve, trade Meguca accounts with me~~~ Head through the eastern spirit portal to meet up with hologram propaganda sis and detective crush's evil ex, who joined a dating-app cult (#fuck) and also turned into the moon?🌕?(that's rough buddy)

get ambushed by Acid Horse on Wheels 🌈🐴 and vomit up my soul so hard that its time for a crossover episode. T U R F F F   W A R R R *que operatic harmonies* 💛 Blondie with the hair drills and enough attitude and guns to fill up a noble phantasm tries to ban my account permanently, but PI heartthrob denies her admin privileges. aww babe i didn't know you cared. 😭♥️

get kidnapped by my new true love and go back to her place 😏  defs enough empty rooms to house five emotionally traumatized girls and at least two ghosts hehehe👻 XD 💚🃏💜🎸 decide to form the anti-gossip brigade and recruit my blazing sunflower after getting ambushed by the witch living in my fruit loops🥣

❌outvoted 2:1 that cults are bad. mf. fiinneee one last pull to round out the team and then I'll delete the app. cmonnn Karin 🎃~

OH HELL YEAH TWO FOR ONE.

Always wanted a daughter 💜🔨🐄 with a penchant for pissing off the local Martial Arts & Books Club and drinking suspicious liquids offered by total strangers. Well if it's good enough for her AND the sexy mayadere with enough game to seduce a mermaid, might as well get in on that myself. 

#curseddrank 🤢 0/24 would not recommend to a friend, 'cept maybe Ria

win alot of cash 🤑, blow up a fountain, meet the pied piper²🎶🖕, moon cult, monochrome feathers, something about liberation✊🏻; adopt temper tantrum cow girl. aces 💜🥩

Next up!!! skydiving with DJ Hammer! Jump to apparently-not-certain death after suicidal A.I. 💚💾🗼 tells you to rescue her hostage before they run out of Radiohead albums and have to move on to Thom Yorke's solo discography. save the invisible shield kitten 💚👑😿 from happiness and get chased through the internet by the sexiest homicidal Paint Pallette 💚🎨😈 since Caravaggio. (apparently green is the color of the digital apocalypse. i’m deleting Kako from my friend's list)

that’s it, fuck this app. 250 stones 💎 per-life-threatening-experience is more than i’m willing to deal with 😓 don’t wanna mess with the perfect nuclear family anyway. we've already got: 

✔️the two emotionally traumatized moms with memory and commitment issues

✔️the adhd daughter with anger management problems and a giant hammer

✔️the psychologically abused scizophrenic cat

✔️and the eccentric aunt with crippling anxiety

#squadgoals

now that were done hoarding bitches, its time to hunt the witches. and the bitches makin the witches. btw did i mention the witches ARE the bitches! AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!? 📽️⁉️💀 wait fuck lets back up a second

This is Nemo📕 and Token🧪 and they have all the answers but prefer if you only ask vague questions in exchange for vague responses so they can fill in the rest by discussing their superior intellect 🧠 at length. not to mention they built that dating app, so of course everyone in my harem decides to be a FUCKING. TRAITOR.🤬

cept waifu prime ofc 🥰💙. [PTSD > brainwashing] 'yOu CaN bE tHe LeAdEr NoW'. i have been from the very beginning you traumatized Hinedere nightmare. maybe if you weren't so caught up collecting surrogate daughters you would've noticed IM👏THE👏ONLY👏 ONE👏PROGRESSING👏THE FUCKING👏PLOT✨

rescue the rest of dysfunctional found-family™ from selves before my adorable firebender burns down Disnihama🎡🔥😱 during her weekly anxiety attack. (love the makeover T B H) 

CHAPTER 8: Magical Girl Massacre🩸🗡️

   - everyone has like, the shittiest day ever

   - the new Pope really needs to be extradited from the church

   - make friends with a really pretty tree 🌺🌲✨

i swear, if i don't finish this god damn story in time to get that free pull im gonna beat the shit out of every mirror i find in that giant mansion that i haven't even had any time to even mention yet. 🖕🏚️ let alone EVERYTHING happening with the prequel [fuck you, I'm the star] girls 💗💜💙💛❤️️ and their multidimensional melodrama. We don't need that many repetitive af episodes to emphasize that Homo-ra is a shitty person. we've all seen Rebellion. 🙄

NO, I DONT CARE IF YOU WANT SAPPHO'S BACKSTORY, I ONLY HAVE 79 STONES LEFT AND IF YACHAN FINDS OUT I HAVEN'T DELETED THE APP YET IM GONNA HAVE TO GO SLEEP IN WITH SANA 😭💎💸😠

uhhhggggg where were we… Topple a cult and burn down Hotel Denoument only to realize that Sis was fused with the dating app servers this entire madokafuckin time (told ya she was the best wingman 😊). 

Dilemma: Sis =🥚, Triumvirate of Trouble want 🐣. What do? vote now:

Help Hatch - IIIIIII

Not Do That - IIIII

What The Actual Fuck Is Going On - IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Lets just fight everyone until something good happens.

🔥🔫🔥🗡️🔥😱🔥🌆🔥😱🔥🛡️🔥💣🔥

Kill (???) the artist-in-chief of the italian reindeer murder police after teaching her the true meaning of Christmas 🎄 hatch 🐣lil Sis and realize she WAS your wingman all along🐰 MUKYUUUU! we're just gonna ignore how much trouble it would have saved if you'd just mentioned that. "yOu DiDnT aSk..." 

FUCK YOU SPACE BITCH. ONCE AN INCUBATOR ALWAYS AN INCUBATOR 🖕🐇🔪

anywho, somewhere along the lines we of course summoned the Antichrist ⚙️ because why not raise the stakes to max and still not kill off a single character. Madofuckinkami, can we PLEASE wrap this up. 😩💤

feathers (not the culty kind, tfm) rain from the sky, and the power of friendship and not having the Urobutcher 🔪🩸as a lead writer saves our peacefully sectioned off alternate reality 😇

TL:DR fuck cults, real life waifus DO exist, don't sell your soul to space rabbits, or your stones to megacorporations. Enjoy arc 2 on the JP server with your shitty translation patch you filthy fuckin weebs 

Yours Truly, 

- Thirsty Weeb Eroha 💗💎😘 

[humanrightsupdates]

Israel/OPT: 10 things you need to know about “annexation”

1. Is a flagrant violation of international law

“Annexation” is acquiring territory by force and is a flagrant violation of international law. As such it can have no effect on the legal status of the territory, which remains de jure occupied. In the context of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), “annexation” means extending Israeli law to areas which are recognized as occupied and treating them as part of the territory of Israel.

2. Illustrates cynical disregard for international law

International law is crystal clear on this matter – annexation is unlawful. Israel’s continued pursuit of this policy further illustrates its cynical disregard for international law. Such policies do not change the legal status of the territory and its inhabitants under international law as occupied nor remove Israel’s responsibilities as the occupying power under international humanitarian law– rather it points to the to the longstanding need for the international community to put an end to impunity for violations of international law by Israel.

3. Exacerbates decades of human rights violations

Amnesty International is calling on the Israeli authorities to immediately abandon plans to further “annex” territory in the occupied West Bank because they will exacerbate decades of systematic human rights violations against Palestinians and aim to deprive Palestinians in the OPT of the protection of international humanitarian law.

Such a step by Israel would also violate the UN Charter, peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens), and obligations under international humanitarian law.

4. Entrenches institutionalized discrimination

Under domestic Israeli law, moves towards further “annexation” of Palestinian territory would mean a continuation of Israeli settlement expansion. It would also further entrench policies of institutionalized discrimination and mass human rights violations that Palestinians face in the OPT as a result of the occupation, including systematic denial of civil and political rights of Palestinians, as well as violations of other rights such as freedom of movement,  equality and non-discrimination.

5. Amounts to ‘war crimes’

Israel’s policy of settling its civilians in occupied Palestinian territory and displacing the local Palestinian population continues to contravene fundamental rules of international humanitarian law. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”

Settlements are created with the sole purpose of permanently establishing Israeli civilians on occupied land; this is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and “annexation” has no bearing on this legal determination.

Recently, dozens of UN experts have voiced concerns that the proposed annexation plan would create a “21st century apartheid”.

6. Must be rejected by the international community

Members of the international community must enforce international law and re-state that “annexation” of any part of the occupied West Bank is null and void. They must also work to immediately stop the construction or expansion of illegal Israeli settlements and related infrastructure in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. As a first step they should end all trade with Israeli settlements by banning settlement products and stopping companies domiciled in their territories from operating in or with settlements.

The international community should also reject the so-called “deal of the century”, and any other proposal seeking to undermine Palestinians’ human rights, including the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Amnesty supports the opening of an International Criminal Court Investigation into the situation in the OPT and calls on governments to offer their full political and practical support to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as it decides on its jurisdiction over the “situation in Palestine”.

7. Does not change Israel’s legal obligations as an occupying power

“Annexation” does not change the main two international legal regimes that apply to the OPT. The situation is primarily governed by both international humanitarian law (including the rules of the law of occupation) and international human rights law. International criminal law is also relevant as some serious violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. Annexation is unlawful under international law and is therefore “null and void and without international legal effect.”

It would not change the legal status of the territory under international law as occupied, nor remove Israel’s responsibilities as the occupying power. According to Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “protected persons who are in occupied territory shall not be deprived of their rights as the result of the occupation nor by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power, nor by any annexation by the Occupying Power of the whole or part of the occupied territory.”

8. Other serious implications

“Annexation” can have serious implications. For example, the residency and citizenship status of Palestinians in the proposed annexed territory is not yet clear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said publicly that Palestinian residents in the areas to be “annexed” would not be given Israeli citizenship.

“Annexation” would also likely result in the mass expropriation of privately-owned Palestinian land and expropriation of other private property. The “annexation” of Israeli settlements will probably include the expropriation of agricultural lands owned by Palestinians in the OPT.

It deepens violations of the right to adequate housing. Israel’s “annexation” plan places individuals and communities - particularly communities in villages which are unrecognized by Israel - at risk of expulsion or targeting for home demolitions, especially if they fall within any “annexed” area.

The “annexation” of large parts of the West Bank would also further limit Palestinians’ freedom of movement. Many of the existing restrictions are directly linked to the settlements, including restrictions aimed at protecting the settlements and maintaining “buffer zones.”

The ongoing illegal blockade on Gaza and continuing separation of that part of the OPT from the rest works to entrench the fragmentation of the occupied population and is major factor in facilitating the “annexation” of parts of the West Bank.

9. Has provoked the following response from the Palestinian side

The Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs has commented that the “annexation” plan is “the most heinous public robbery of the occupied Palestinian land” and has called on the international community to impose sanctions on Israel.

In May, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to the long-standing security coordination between the Palestinian authorities and Israel in response to “annexation” plans.  The Palestinian Liberation Organization has called for the formation of an international coalition to confront Israel’s “annexation” plan.

On 15 June, senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil said at a press conference in the Gaza Strip that the Israeli “annexation” plan should be faced with “resistance in all forms,” and has called for popular Palestinian actions against the plan. On 25 June, Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, said that Israel’s plan to “annex” parts of the West Bank would be considered a “declaration of war” on the Palestinians.

On 1 July, Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza protested against Israel’s annexation plan.

10. Has happened before

In 1967, Israel unilaterally “annexed” East Jerusalem and included this part of the city, as well as the surrounding area of 64 square kilometers, within the boundaries of the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem. The new municipal boundaries covered an area of 70 square kilometers. The additional lands belonged to about 28 Palestinian villages from surrounding areas and was delineated along specific coordinates to ensure the inclusion of maximum land with a minimum number of Palestinians.

Israel’s “annexation” of East Jerusalem, which remains part of the OPT under international law, has been repeatedly condemned by the international community through various UN Security Council resolutions.

Further, the Syrian Golan Heights came under Israeli occupation following the 1967 war. Thousands of Syrians were forcibly displaced from the Golan Heights as a result of the war and the occupation. Israel destroyed more than 100 villages, most of whose land was used for establishing illegal settlements. In 1981, Israel adopted the Golan Heights law which extends Israeli jurisdiction and law to the occupied Golan Heights. The “annexation” of the Golan Heights was specifically condemned by the UN Security Council in Resolution 497. - Amnesty International

[phroyd]

Trump knew about the virus the entire time from day 1. - Phroyd

More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.

A number of CDC staffers are regularly detailed to work at WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.

The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump’s charge that the WHO’s failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States.

The administration has also sharply criticized the Chinese government for withholding information.

But the president, who often touts a personal relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping and is reluctant to inflict damage on a trade deal with Beijing, appears to see the WHO as a more defenseless target.

Asked early Sunday about the presence of CDC and other officials at the WHO, and whether it was “fair to blame the WHO for covering up the spread of this virus,” Deborah Birx, the State Department expert who is part of the White House pandemic team, gently shifted the onus to China, and the need to “over-communicate.”

“It’s always the first country that get exposed to the pandemic that has a — really a higher moral obligation on communicating, on transparency, because all the other countries around the world are making decisions on that,” Birx told ABC’s This Week. “And when we get through this as a global community, we can figure out really what has to happen for first alerts and transparency and understanding very early on about … how incredibly contagious this virus is.”

Following a Trump-hosted video conference of the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations on Thursday, a White House statement said “much of the conversation centered on the lack of transparency and chronic mismanagement of the pandemic by the WHO.”

The group’s focus on the global health organization during the call stemmed largely from Trump’s announcement two days earlier that he was freezing all U.S. funding for it, saying donors would be discussing “what do we do with all of that money that goes to WHO.” The United States provides up to $500 million a year in assessed and voluntary contributions, significantly more than any other nation.

In statements following the G-7 call, however, other leaders emphasized the need to build up the WHO, rather than tear it down.

French President Emmanuel Macron “expressed his support for the WHO and underscored the key role it must play,” according to a statement from his office. German Chancellor Angela Merkel “made clear that the pandemic can only be defeated with a strong and coordinated international response,” her spokesman said. “In this context, she expressed full support for the WHO as well as a number of other partners.”

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that the WHO “cannot be weakened or in any way be called into question politically. … Every inch that the U.S. withdraws from the wider world, especially at this level, is space that will be occupied by others — and that tends to be those that don’t share our values of liberal democracy,” he said.

Canada, Japan and the European Union — all of whom participated in the call — also issued strong statements backing the organization.

A G-7 statement issued after the call supported the need to review WHO performance. “We cannot have business as usual and must ask the hard questions about how [the pandemic] came about,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, standing in for virus-stricken Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said. But he stressed a post-crisis review should be “driven by science.”

In announcing the funding cutoff, Trump charged last week that the WHO parroted incorrect Chinese statements and “failed to investigate credible reports … that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts.” He criticized “the inability of the WHO to obtain virus samples” that China continues to refuse to supply.

A Senate aide who has tracked the issue said “there was clearly an effort” by China “not to provide transparent date and information” in the early stages of the outbreak.

“We were looking to WHO to provide that information, and they did not. It was unclear as to whether they didn’t get that transparency from the Chinese, or that they chose not to share what they did get under pressure from the Chinese,” said the aide who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

But some noted that the WHO has no power to compel member governments to do its bidding.

The organization “has no intelligence capabilities, and no investigatory power,” said Daniel Spiegel, who served as ambassador to the United Nation’s Geneva-based organizations, including the WHO, for the Clinton administration. “They should have been more skeptical about what the Chinese were telling them, but they’re totally at the mercy of what governments provide.”

Among his complaints, Trump seems most aggrieved by the initial WHO failure to support his Jan. 31 decision to partially ban incoming travel from China. Days later, at a meeting of the WHO executive board, Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there was no need to “unnecessarily interfere with international travel and trade” to halt the spread of the disease. That message reiterated what he had said before Trump’s announcement, after meeting with Xi in Beijing.

Trump called Tedros’ statement “one of the most dangerous and costly decisions from the WHO. … They were very much opposed to what we did,” he said last week. “Fortunately, I was not convinced and suspended travel from China, saving untold numbers of lives.”

International public health experts have long debated whether border closures helped stem the spread of infectious diseases, or worsen the situation by blocking cooperation among countries. But many, including Antony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the administration's coronavirus task force, have said it was probably helpful in this case as the efforts of individual countries to contain and mitigate the virus were outpaced by its rapid global spread.

On Saturday, Trump said without elaboration that “we’re finding more and more problems” with the WHO. Speaking at a White House virus briefing, he said the administration was “doing some research” on “other ways” to spend money originally intended for both the WHO and the National Institutes of Health, which he said was “giving away $32 billion a year.”

The meaning of Trump’s reference to NIH, whose fiscal year 2020 budget totals $41.6 billion, was unclear.

The administration’s 2019 Global Health Security Strategy advocates increased cooperation with the WHO and other international health organizations. But although the United States has a three-year seat on the WHO executive board, expiring in 2021, the post has remained vacant. Last month, Trump nominated Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir for the position.

U.S. participation in the range of Geneva-based U.N. organizations is supervised by the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, whose assistant secretary left office last November after the department’s inspector general issued a sweeping condemnation of his leadership, including “political harassment” of career officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump. It is currently headed in an acting capacity by a deputy.

But below the level of political appointments, communication between the U.S. government’s public health bureaucracy and the WHO has continued throughout the Trump administration.

In addition to working at WHO, on assignments first reported Saturday by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, CDC officials are often members of its many advisory groups. The emergency committee advising the organization on whether to declare “a public health emergency of international concern” during deliberations in mid to late January included Martin Centron, director for CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine.

When China eventually agreed to let a joint WHO mission into the country in mid-February, it included two U.S. scientists among 25 national and international experts from eight countries, although the Americans were not permitted to visit the “core area” in Wuhan.

From the beginning of the outbreak, CDC officials were tracking the disease and consulting with WHO counterparts. A team led by Ray Arthur, director of the Global Disease Detection Operations Center at CDC, compiles a daily summary about infectious disease events and outbreaks, categorized by level of urgency, that is sent to agency officials.

Arthur, according to a CDC official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, has participated in the CDC daily “incident management” calls, discussing information he learned from WHO officials.

Information is passed up the chain of command from CDC to the Department of Health and Human Services in daily reports and telephone discussions, this official said.

Any information of a sensitive nature about the growing outbreak was and continues to be shared by CDC officials with other U.S. officials in a secure facility located behind the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center at its Atlanta headquarters.

In the early days of the virus response, those officials included HHS Secretary Alex Azar. Information about what the WHO was planning to do or announce was often shared days in advance, the CDC official said.

Anne Gearan and Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.

Phroyd

[badbookreviewclub]

Empress Theresa, Chapters 21-28. IT’S FINALLY OVER.

Disclaimer: If you haven’t read the previous review, you can find it here (chapters 11-20). This will contain spoilers. 

Well, the ending is finally here and holy fuck this book went off the rails. I only have one reaction to the ending of it and that’s just what the fuck. Just… What The Fuck Norman whatever the fuck you were on when you wrote the end of this book must have been some powerful shit because holy fuck. Let’s just get started and maybe you’ll see what I mean. These chapters are also completely nonsensical in how they’re put together and just so much information is shoved into them that it can get confusing. I’ll do my best to keep it clear. Chapter 21 The boat that was driven into the Exxon Maria was deemed as a terrorist attack because “the world know that this had been a terrorist bombing” (pg 321). They know this because a bunch of explosives had been smuggled onto the boat beforehand by Middle Eastern terrorists (because Norman is convinced there are no other kind of terrorists) and they drove it straight into the Exxon Maria to try and get back at Theresa for her oil mining operation. So how does Theresa retaliate? She drops the price of oil down to ten dollars a barrel. Thinking that OPEC (which I guess Norman still thinks is a terrorist organization. It’s not) is going to retaliate, Theresa has her parents moved to a safe place (West Point), and tells Prime Minister Scherzer that they have to evacuate the Israeli people now. He tells her that it will take 36 hours to start the evacuation. To remind Saudi Arabia of their deal (because there was a deal apparently in Theresa’s mind, even though there was absolutely no deals made, just an offer put on the table) Theresa raises a mountain in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert. 

When the Israeli people start to cross evacuate via the landbridge to Crete because as it turns out, no, the island isn’t ready yet, Theresa parts the fucking sea to make giant water walls that terrorists and missiles can’t get through. Moses parting the Red Sea moment, anyone? Because of this, Prime Minister Scherzer calls Theresa the ‘Right Hand of God’. Theresa also decides that it’s time for her to head home, so the Ambassador of the United States to England asks if she would ride home on the Ronald Reagan (the same ship that led took her to the plane she was supposed to be blown up on) to give the ship her honor back. Theresa disagrees, but Steve says that Theresa should play (American) football with the navy of the Ronald Reagan against the Army (I think Norman means foot soldiers specifically). Theresa does agree eventually. 

Someone attempts to do the same drop that Theresa did when she was almost blown up and of course, rather than dissuading them, Theresa gives him tips on how he might survive. Unsurprisingly, he fucking dies. All Theresa does is say “oh whoopsy-doopsy, he fell into still water, not wavy water like I did. Must be why. Sorry that you’re dead bro. Nobody should do that again.” Chapter 22 

Theresa heads back to the United States, but in the process, HAL puts everyone in the plane into a deep sleep, including the piolets and every electronic. Somehow though, the Autopilot still works, so that’s lucky for Theresa I guess. Bitch learns how to fly a plane in under four hours. She lands it after causing millions of dollars worth of damages to the windows of buildings after flying just a little too low to them and as such that causes a lot of injuries, but she doesn’t get in trouble for that because she’s just too sweet and innocent for that. 

Chapter 23 

Am I moving really fast through this? I feel like I am. Though I will say, it’s definitely because I want to be done with this book as fast as I possibly can it’s so fucking dumb. I hate this book so much. I have never met a book that has baffled me as much as this one but absolutely fueled my anger to no end. Anyways… Theresa arrives at West Point (where her parents are) and going to the ranch house that was built specifically for her and her family. The football game takes place, and surprisingly, Theresa and the Navy lose to the Army. 48-36. I don’t know American football very well, despite living in the United States, so if anyone could tell me how good this is I would really appreciate it. 

We learn that her island is producing 3 million barrels of oil a day and by the next year is predicted to be producing 15 million barrels a day, so Theresa is rich as fuck and is going to have a monopoly on oil (what a wonderful capitalist she is). Because all the oil tycoons are worried she’s going to monopolize (she is) and then raise the price drastically, they put her into a two-year deal (bc that’s long enough) saying that the price can’t go above ten dollars a barrel. Theresa agrees without hesitation. 

It’s suggested to Theresa that she should monopolize the manufacturing industry as well, but she turns that down because it could “start a global trade war” (pg 370). 

Theresa, while being a jerk and ignoring everybody when she goes out into public because how could she possibly be expected to meet or even wave or smile at people, finally gives in and talks to 10 North Korean men (via a translator) who have brought her a PBS Documentary to show her the conditions of North Korea. Theresa watches it and is so moved that she comes down and tells the men that she’ll save their families. So essentially, this one PBS Documentary has convinced Theresa to declare war on North Korea’s government. 

Because the North Korean’s wouldn’t listen to her because she holds no power, Theresa joins the army (not really because she never ever ever ever sees combat, but she gets the titles that come with it). 

Chapter 25

Theresa gets her uniform. She specifically requests to have the male uniform because the female one doesn’t look powerful enough. She also gets men’s shoes instead of women’s shoes because the women’s would look stupid with the men’s uniform, I guess. Theresa also insists on wearing her hair down because nobody is going to say jack shit to her about it. Because Theresa got the uniform we learn that Steve has a uniform kink. “Steve thought I looked awful cute in my little uniform.  “‘Hon, you never looked better. It turns me on’” (pg 389). 

Now Norman, I thought this book didn’t have sexual content? Yet here we are, learning about Steve’s fetishes. I’m not going to fetish shame anyone, and more power to you Steve for being open with your sexuality, though I just wanted to point out that Norman specifically said this wouldn’t happen (just like the swearing). 

Anyways, Theresa goes to a meeting at the White House where she immediately becomes a five-star general, the first person after Omar Bradley died. Now I may be wrong, but Omar Bradley was a World War II veteran (a senior officer) and was Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff and oversaw policymaking during the Korean War. The only thing Theresa has (realistically) done up until this point is kill off most of the population, if not all of the population. 

Theresa came up with the idea earlier on that the only way to liberate North Korea is to destroy their weaponry in a certain mile radius and then take over as their dictator for the time being until things could get set up. In a really complicated matter, Theresa sets up a plan wherein ten-miles around Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, all weapons, planes, bombs, missiles, and helicopters will be destroyed. She works with the South Korean government in order to achieve this with HAL and so they can invade safely. 

But, duN DUN DUN! because all the weapons are destroyed, the government orders unarmed citizens and soldiers and other personnel to attack as soon as they see Theresa and the army. Because there’s 5 million of them, the South Korean army knows that they’ll be easily overwhelmed. Theresa’s solution? Take a Japanese island and move it a bit closer to North and South Korea, and then break North and South Korea away from China and move it closer to the Japanese Island. This way the Japanese Island can build a bridge over and then teach North Korea about a new government. And it fucking works. 

They invade Pyongyang after doing this and the South Korean army basically liters the city with pictures of Theresa’s face and a promise that she’s going to save and liberate them all. They drop all these pictures and promises with an airplane to hopefully quell the people’s worries. There’s a big crowd of North Koreans who are basically lining a gigantic boulevard and the South Korean’s are surrounding the tanks and Theresa, prepared to shoot anyone who gets rowdy or gets too close. Theresa tells them their leaders have left them on a complete fucking bluff, and the South Korean general who has been working with her confirms that they fled to China. Theresa is so relieved by this she almost starts crying, and then the North Korean’s start cheering and wailing and are basically so so so so so happy that Theresa is their new leader. 

And Theresa’s big speech as the new leader? She reads the first couple of paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence. And it’s a smash hit and her greatest success ever. She gives it to a translator so that the North Korean people can understand and just… “Nobody could translate such elegant language on the fly and maintain its beauty. I anticipated that. I’d given the translator the English text the day before and she worked all night at it. When I finished speaking she read what I’d said in Korean with all the emotions and nuances only a Korea could express. My speech or rather the translator’s rendition of it was a spectacular success. The crowd cheered their hearts out. Witnesses said President Stinson cried when I gave the speech. This event, broadcast to the whole world, was called by greatest achievement” (pg 418). And yes, I meant to write ‘a Korea’. That’s how it’s written in the fucking book. But the Declaration of Independence wasn’t written by Theresa and yet somehow it’s ‘her’ speech. And it’s a smashing success because fuck you. Chapter 26

Theresa sets up the South Korean government in North Korea because she can’t be fucked to actually lead it, but comes back when she needs to. In this chapter, Theresa gets really into biology and teaching HAL about biology. She also gets really into archaeology and discovers a bunch of really old Jewish scrolls but nobody can have them. They can look but only she can have them. She also finds Joan of the Arc’s remains because why the fuck not. 

Theresa also makes a mountain in the middle of Lake Michigan without consequence. This is all so they can have the Winter Olympics because I guess Mountain = Snow despite the fact that it’s summer the entire year.

Oh yeah, and Theresa recognizes that she could have thousands of lives with teaching HAL biology and learning how to do surgeries that could save lives that couldn’t otherwise be done. But she decides this is a terrible idea because she’ll end up in court if something goes wrong. 

“‘I can immobilize them like this [basically just holding their body together in a temporarily immortalized, unaging, undying stated] while the surgeon operates and saves thousands of lives.’ (Theresa) “‘And get yourself thousands of lawsuits when things go wrong. Hell the families will hope something goes wrong so they can go after your money’ (Steve) “‘You’re right. I’d spend the rest of my life in courtrooms. It’s a shame. Greed keeps me from saving lives’”  (pg 423).

The only greed keeping you from saving lives is your own. How fucking selfish of you to believe that people want their loved ones to die just so they can get some money. There are horrible people out there in the world like that, there’s no denying it, but the majority of people aren’t. You recognize you could save lives, but you chose not to because you don’t want to go to court if something goes wrong. You’re a fucking villain, Theresa. 

Because of this, I really don’t feel bad when Theresa gets hit by a car, breaks her back, and loses the ability to walk. Getting hit by the car was apparently a terrorist attack that was carefully planned because they wanted to hit Theresa. Because everything just has to be a fucking terrorist attack. But this is why Norman had Theresa suddenly pick up an interest in biology that was never ever even hinted at before. It’s so Theresa can start working on a plan to fix her back so she can walk again. And so she can figure out a way to be immortal. You’re supposed to feel bad for Theresa, but I honestly don’t.

Chapter 27 

More HAL’s show up because when Theresa was about to be blown up and she jumped from the plane, HAL divided itself into 420 other HAL’s. Now all these HAL’s are merging with people. Because Theresa doesn’t want to not be special anymore, she puts the entire world into a deep sleep under the pretense that all of these people could be another Adolf Hitler and she needs to take care of it and stop that before it happens. You know, so the logical explanation, because she can’t just put on HAL into a deep sleep, is to put the entire world into a deep sleep regardless of the consequences. Doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of surgery or you’re in the ICU. It doesn’t matter if you’re about to die or something is happening. We’re just going to put everyone into a deep sleep because Theresa can’t be fucked to figure out a solution right now.

Chapter 28

600 years have passed and everyone starts to wake up. Everyone thinks Theresa is dead but she shows up with Steve and 420 (nice) children. All these children are geniuses and specialize in something and have the equivalent of like 10 college degrees. So in the past 600 years (where nobody aged, not even Theresa and Steve) the world has advanced massively because of the children and Steve and Theresa. 

Theresa also kept the children as 10-year-olds rather than letting them age. “I’d kept them in a pre-puberty state so they wouldn’t fool around with each other” (pg 464). It’s not like they’re siblings and look like mini replicas of you and your husband. It’s not like you should discourage incest among them because incest isn’t a good thing and can mess with someone’s psyche because it’s damaging a familial relationship by intertwining it with a sexual relationship. Not at all.

But these children, as it would turn out, don’t have a HAL. Theresa and Steve just had like 420 (nice) children I guess. No, Theresa just absorbed all of the other HAL’s and will absorb any other HAL that shows up on earth. And that’s the end of the fucking book. This shit show of a book is finally over. I hated it so much and I’m glad to finally be done with it. 

-8/10 stars. Get fucked Norman Boutin. Your book is stupid as shit and I hate it. 

[bountyofbeads]

Europe Confronts Coronavirus as Italy Battles an Eruption of Cases https://nyti.ms/2SPybgt

Europe Confronts Coronavirus as Italy Battles an Eruption of Cases

The country announced more than 150 cases, many in the densely populated region around Milan, as officials closed schools and canceled Venice’s carnival celebrations.

By Jason Horowitz and Elisabetta Povoledo | Published Feb. 23, 2020 Updated 7:57 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 23, 2020 |

CASALPUSTERLENGO, Italy — Europe confronted its first major outbreak of the coronavirus as an eruption of more than 150 cases in Italy prompted officials on Sunday to lock down at least 10 towns, close schools in major cities and cancel sporting events and cultural touchstones, including the Venice carnival.

The worrisome spike — from fewer than five known cases in Italy before Thursday — shattered the sense of safety and distance that much of the continent had felt in recent months even as the virus has infected more than 78,000 worldwide and killed more than 2,400, nearly all in China.

The perception of a rising threat was amplified on television channels, newspaper headlines and social media feeds across Europe, where leaders could face their greatest challenge since the 2015 migration crisis.

That surge of people into Europe radically altered the politics of the European Union and exposed its institutional weaknesses. This time, it is an invisible virus from abroad that has slipped past Europe’s borders and presents its bickering coalitions with a new potential emergency.

If the virus spreads, the fundamental principle of open borders within much of Europe — so central to the identity of the bloc — will undergo a stress test, as will the vaunted but strained European public health systems, especially in countries that have undergone austerity measures.

Already, a new nervousness has pervaded Europe.

Austrian officials stopped a train en route from Italy to Austria and Germany to test passengers for the virus. The Austrian interior minister, Karl Nehammer, said the tests came back negative so the train got the “all clear.”

In France, the new health minister, Olivier Veran, stressed the country’s preparedness, saying it would significantly ramp up its testing.

“There is a problematic situation at the door, in Italy, that we are watching with great attention,” he said on Sunday, adding that a Europe-wide discussion between health ministers was in the works.

On Sunday night, an aid ship bringing hundreds of migrants, who had been rescued off the coast of Libya, to a Sicilian port received instructions from the Italian government to remain in quarantine for 14 days as a precaution, according to the ship’s Twitter account.

Fears of foreigners spreading the virus across oceans has already prompted some governments around the world to impose new border or travel controls.

The Trump administration has barred entry to the United States by most foreign nationals who have recently visited China, where the virus first appeared and spread. Much of the world has adopted similar controls, but the virus has continued to spread, most notably to South Korea, where more cases have been recorded than anywhere else outside China, and this past week to Iran, where eight deaths have been reported.

Israel on Monday will block entry to all nonresidents who have visited Japan and South Korea in the 14 days before their arrival. On Sunday, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, which has 602 confirmed infections and six deaths, put the country on the highest possible alert, empowering the government to ban visitors from China and take other sweeping measures to contain the outbreak.

“The coming few days will be a critical time for us,” Mr. Moon said at an emergency meeting of government officials.

Even China — with an authoritarian government that has locked down areas with tens of millions of people in an attempt to stamp out the epidemic — has struggled to contain the virus, which has no known cure.

But the scores of new cases in Italy, mostly in the Lombardy region that includes densely populated Milan, present a new challenge for a country with a wobbly government often paralyzed by infighting.

That government has now become the reluctant laboratory to test whether the virus can be successfully contained in an open European society with a liberal approach to restrictions.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy said on Italian television on Sunday that the country had taken precautions, including barring flights from China in January. These measures seemed to have paid off “even if now it looks like it didn’t,” he said.

He suggested that the surge of Italian cases only reflected Italy’s casting a wider net in terms of testing.

“We cannot exclude that after tests that are equally rigorous, the numbers can go up in other countries,” Mr. Conte said.

Beatrice Lorenzin, a former Italian health minister, said the sharp rise in cases in Italy resulted from systematic checks that discovered a “second generation of contagion.”

She said this was probably caused by infected people who traveled to Italy from China using indirect flights without declaring their original departure point or putting themselves in voluntary quarantine during the virus’ incubation period.

“I hope similar things did not happen in other countries,” she said.

In the Lombardy region, which has reported the majority of cases in Italy, 10 towns were locked down after a cluster of cases emerged in the town of Codogno, about 60 kilometers southeast of Milan.

At least 50,000 people are affected by the lockdown. Residents were supposed to leave or enter the towns only with special permission.

The outbreak in Codogno was detected after a 38-year-old man was admitted to the city’s hospital and diagnosed with the virus on Thursday. But the man had developed symptoms perhaps five days before that, potentially allowing the virus to spread.

Health officials are trying to figure out how he contracted the virus; he had not been to China. Many cases in Lombardy, officials say, may be traceable to that one case.

At least five members of the hospital medical staff and several patients have been infected. Other persons who tested positive include the man’s pregnant wife, some friends, and others who spent time with them. The towns surrounding the ones where the man works and lives have been included in the shutdown.

On Sunday night on a road outside Casalpusterlengo, one of the locked-down towns, police officers in surgical masks waved down cars, asking what business they had in the town. The officers suggested that motorists take an alternate route and urged them against going any further.

Most of the drivers didn’t need much convincing.

Bahije Mounia, a 42-year-old caretaker from a nearby town who wore a surgical mask, turned right back around. She said the government should have let people in the area know how dangerous things were much earlier. With the spike of cases in the region, she said, “It’s almost like we’re in China.”

The exaggeration could be forgiven considering the dramatic turn of events in Italy in recent days.

What had seemed like a contained few cases spread throughout the country’s wealthy north. So did the precautions.

People wore surgical masks in Aosta, which is on the Swiss border. Officials in the Piedmont region closed schools in Turin, and Venice cut its Carnival short. The patriarch of Venice, the Reverend Francesco Moraglia, suspended all religious ceremonies, including Ash Wednesday celebrations that mark the beginning of Lent.

Two elderly people who tested positive for the coronavirus were in intensive care at Venice’s municipal hospital.

In the regional capital of Milan, officials closed museums, schools, its cathedral, and halted religious and cultural events. Many other venues, aside from those providing essential services, have been closed, including most bars and nightclubs.

Fears that the city could be quarantined triggered a run on supermarkets. By 5 p.m. on Sunday, at least one supermarket had run out of fruit, vegetables, meat and nearly all canned food.

Some of the customers wore masks, and they all seemed in a hurry to fill up their carts with whatever was left on the shelves.

Vanessa Maiocchi, 45, said she worried about getting her children enough food. She was also concerned that her brother, who has a weak immune system, might be more vulnerable, especially if his company kept making him go to work.

“At least in these cases,” she said, “the state should intervene.”

So far, the virus has killed three people in Italy, including a 78-year-old man from Veneto who died Friday; an elderly woman who died in Crema on Sunday; and a 77-year-old woman who died in her home in Casalpusterlengo and posthumously tested positive for the virus.

The Italian state, which leads the third largest economy in the eurozone, has not inspired much confidence of late, as it has been consumed by internal machinations. But health experts said they were more worried because the Italian health ministry appeared to have moved aggressively to prevent an outbreak, to no avail.

Francesco Passerini, the mayor of Codogno, said in an interview on Sunday evening that he still had not received concrete logistical instructions from Rome.

“Who is going to bring essential goods here?” he said. “Who is going to take care of provisions and medical transportation?��

Two military structures in Lombardy are being prepared to become isolation camps. A military base in Rome has been housing evacuees from Wuhan, China, where the virus began, and the Italian passengers of the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that has been under quarantine in Yokohama, Japan.

Lockdown procedures like the ones in Lombardy will be applied to other towns if new clusters emerge, officials said. Quarantine measures will also be applied to anyone who has close contact with someone who has the virus.

Elia Delmiglio, the mayor of Casalpusterlengo, said people continued going in and out of his town for most of the day on Sunday.

“We got the decree, but not a precise schedule for when it will be implemented,” he said.

But by late Sunday night, police began arriving to seal the town off.

“People are worried,” said Paolo Camia, a 55-year-old manager of a software company from Casalpusterlengo, who drove out of town in his blue surgical mask to take some pictures of the police checkpoints. “Basically, we can’t leave.”

_____

Jason Horowitz reported from Casalpusterlengo, Italy, and Milan, and Elisabetta Povoledo reported from Rome. Katrin Bennhold contributed reporting from Berlin, Constant Meheut from Paris, and Emma Bubola from Milan.

*********

[lhs3020b]

Post Mortem

I promised some thoughts on the nightmarish debacle that has happened. Here they are.

TL;DR I am scathing about everything. Everyone who should have helped us, failed.

It's the morning after. They've won. Continuity Remain is dead; there isn't going to be any second referendum and Article 50 won't be revoked. You cannot imagine how I feel right now, typing those words. However, I have never sought to deny reality (however lovely denial might be) and reality is what it is. We've lost a referendum and two general elections; we're finished. There is no come-back from this. The country has made a sick, twisted, greedy, myopic and stupid decision - but that's the decision it's made. I have nothing good to say for what happened, except that it did happen.

Well, let's look at the one tiny silver lining: since the ship has now sailed, I can indulge my deep, seething pool of vitriol for our collection of useless opposition parties. I'd held back previously because I didn't want to add to the circular firing squad. But they've all shot each other now and the corpses have largely stopped twitching. So off we go. (Before we start, I won't be writing about CUK/TiG/Change-UK, because they were just annoying, and I can't be arsed. I think we've all spent enough time on that shower of idiots.)

Here's the core reason for why I'm so angry: all this was completely avoidable. The media will, of course, spin BoJo's victory as a paragonic triumph of political conservatism. Like that infamous Pravda article from the 30s, on the Soviet constitution, they'll fawn over BoJo and declare him a visionary and a victor, a veritable genius of the ages, dripping with lyricism and wit. He isn't. He's an over-promoted buffoon who lucked into the top office due to the self-destruction of his inept predecessor, aided and abetted by a lying and sycophantic media - and, by a collection of opposition parties whose sole interest was in fighting each other.

Here we have the real core problem. The people on our side only switch on for fighting each other. There's little sign that they actually really care about Brexit, or the wider state of the UK. But pursuing partisan vendettas against each other? Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Let's think back to the summer, when BoJo was faced with stalling polls and a hung parliament. He could have been ousted then - but, of course, the Lib Dems were adamant that they couldn't countenance the idea of Mr Corbyn as Prime Minister. They'd had this tendency for a while - it's not new - but it accelerated and was nurtured under Jo Swinson.

When she was elected as leader I was initially a bit sympathetic - it seemed reasonable to give her a chance. Unfortunately, it turned out that she might be the most rightwing leader they've ever had - I actually suspect now that she might be to the right of Clegg. And she went and turbocharged all of their most self-destructive tendencies. I think what she thought she was doing was clawing Tory Remainers off of the Tories. This ran into two problems; 1) there weren't that many Tory Remainers to begin with and b) most of them are more Tory than they are Remain. So they mostly stayed put, and they few who did leave (thank you, to those of you that did) just weren't enough. Meanwhile, the hard-right tilt scared off the Lib Dem's left-leaning supporters.

A while back I predicted they'd lose seats at this election; I'm sad to have been proved right. I am, however, grimly-amused that Swinson herself lost her seat. The other problem with Swinson's rampany anti-Corbynism was that it partially demobilised continuity!Remain. A lot of people sensed that she was more anti-Corbyn than anti-Brexit; that also implied no plausible chance of an anti-Brexit coalition. Hoenstly, given how overt and personal the vitriol between her and Corbyn got, it's hard to see how it could ever have worked. And there's no point voting for something that you know is impossible. I do wonder if maybe this switched some left-leaning people off, or perhaps even sent a few ditherers back to the Tories (under the assumption that any sort of government is better than no government, I suppose).

As for the Lib Dem campaign, it was a mess. At one point their leader went on air to deny killing squirrels (yes, seriously, this actually happened). She got all excited about thermonuclear genocide at one point, because that's not at all weird and creepy, amirite?! Then there was the bizzarity that was "skills wallets" (don't ask - basically, the sort of policy abortion that happens when a collection of wonks are locked in a room with a boxed set of the West Wing and too much cocaine).

[OK, I'll expand this one. Briefly, skills wallets were a weird continuing-adult-education idea, where you'd have a pot of money that you could access at certain ages, apparently to take some kind of training or re-education or something. Why the ages in question, why that amount of money, and why not just make adult-ed free at the point of use, were never really explained. Then there was the can of worms that was additional voluntary contributions - what I took away from this was it was the adult-ed version of pensions auto-enrollment. I spent the last four years fighting a corrupt auto-enrollment fund, so I have strong feelings here!]

As for general themes, really, the LD campaign didn't have one. There was a lot of "Corbyn, THE MONSTER, the monster, Corbyn!". And, kind of oddly, there wasn't actually that much about Brexit. It actually didn't figure very strongly in their campaign. You came away from watching it all with a) a bad taste in your mouth and b) a nagging feeling that these people didn't know what they were doing.

To be fair to them, their vote share did go up, a bit - from 7.4% in 2017 to 11.4% yesterday. Which is, uh, not exactly dizzying. And it seems to have happened in all the wrong places, so they still managed to lose seats overall.

OK, we've gawped at the piss-stained ashes of the old Liberal Party, lying in state where some eggregious family-member has dumped them, on a roadside verge in the middle of nowhere. (Perhaps some enterprising squirrel has buried a nut amongst them.) Let's move onto the other vast, soul-sucking black hole of despair, also know as the Labour and Co-operative Party.

Oh dear god. The Labour Party.

The Labour Party is Britain's perennial second party, and nothing that happened last night challenged its second-place status. Their vote share dropped by 7.8 percentage points on 2017; this is what produced the Tory landslide, essentially. The Tory vote went up a little, by about 1 point, but otherwise stayed largely flat on 2017. This time, though, Labour collapsed. They lost a swathe of seats across the country, including places like Bolsover and Blyth Valley, which were previously rock-solid.

What went wrong? Everything. Basically, the stars aligned against us, in every single way.

First of all, Labour's campaign was dogged by the antisemitism scandal. And you know what? It was bloody well right that it did. The leadership dealt with antisemitism by ... doing nothing. Anyone who tried to raise the issue instead would get "Corbyn outriders" dumping on them on Twitter. Apparently we're suddenly not allowed to be concerned about racism on the Left anymore? Frankly, fuck that.

What they should have done was a quick-and-brutal party purge, perhaps early in 2018, when there was still time. Take some initiative, get control of the narrative again, and get rid of people who are only going to shit all over your campaign. But, uh, no. That didn't happen. I'll note that the Chris Williamson show in particular went on far, far longer than it should have.

Then we come to Brexit itself. Corbyn spent three years equivocating on the issue. OK, I'll allow that in hindsight, perhaps strategic ambiguity made some sense back in 2017 (though note that they still lost that election too). It didn't by 2019. But Corbyn was still trying to stand in the middle of the road as late as the summer - and by doing so inadvertently opened up political space for the (brief) Lib Dem revival, which in turn shunted Labour onto the defensive. And as I believe Paddy Ashdown once said, if you stand in the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic.

Eventually, the Labour leadership reluctantly adopted a second referendum position, but by then the damage was done. Basically, Corbyn had convinced Leavers that he was a Remainer, and Remainers that he was a Leaver. Labour appears to have lost votes about evenly across both Remain/Leave areas(!). In a way, he actually did unite the country - just against him. Ooops.

The rest of Labour's prospectus was a mess this year. Home Office reform was de-emphasized (arbitrary deportation by the Home Office is a huge concern amongst ethnic minorities). Drugs-law reform seems to have fallen off the agenda. There was no obvious theme to the campaign - surprising given that 2017's "For the Many" theme did cut across. Instead the "offer", such as it was, appeared to be a largely-incoherent grab-bag of spending promises, some of them with very large headline numbers. (The £58 billion for the WASPI pensions thing stands out there.) A lot of people simply didn't believe the country could afford it. You don't vote for things that you fear will bankrupt you.

Also, in a way, there's a parallel to the skills wallets thing here. Labour would have been better off, I think, just doing something straightforward like saying, "If elected we'll raise disability, sickness and unemployment benefits by £x per week, and we'll get rid of the ATOS fit-for-work assesments". It would have the advantages of simplicity, clarity and a clear political theme. Instead we got this weird fiscal machine that would produce some of those effects, except via a complicated multi-part kludge (which probably wouldn't even work properly anyway). I don't know how this came about; presumably it was an after-effect of one of the party's unending internal power-struggles.

Corbyn himself is a controversial figure, from his past associations with the IRA (more vague than the press would have you believe, but still a drag on the doorstep) to the perception of socialist extremism. Again, let me note that the "but he's a Communist, because that starts with 'C' too!" stuff is disingenuous, but this perception exists, and the Party have not found any apparent way to challenge it. Honestly? If your candidate is a ship that's holed below the waterline, yes it is horribly-unfair and all the rest of it, but you do need to run someone else. (I see no point softening that punch ; while Corbyn's been leader, the whole UK has voted 4 times, at 2 general elections, 1 referendum and 1 EU Parliament election. Every time, Labour has bombed. It's hard not to see a pattern here.)

Finally, the Labour Party itself has failed to ever re-unite. It's effectively two political parties in one - or possibly three, depending on how you want to look at Momentum. On a fair day with a strong wind, the Parliamentary portion sometimes manages to move just-about-consistently, but nothing else seems to have that behaviour. Honestly I suspect a lot of people's real fear about a Labour government is not that it would be a socialist tyranny, but rather that it would implode within about six months. Labour has lost its way amongst a storm of factional infighting. To be fair to Corbyn, this isn't new. Ed Milliband's desperate tenure was derailed by internal struggles. Even the 1997-2010 period had the ongoing squabbles between Brownites and Blairites (remember them?).

So yeah, Labour's campaign was an absolute shambles this year, and the whole country is suffering now for that.

Lastly, let's have a quick look at the Green Party. Where were they this year? With Extinction Rebellion making headlines, the Amazon burning, Australia on fire and weather records being smashed everywhere - remember that day when we had summer back in February? - it should have been the Greens' year. Environmental concerns are going up in salience - people are starting to get genuinely worried. And, uh, where were they? I can't recall hearing a single peep from the Green Party during the election. Whatever it was they were doing, it seems to have completely failed to capitalise on the moment. Perhaps they should have been a bit more visible.

The only people who come out of this with any credit are the SNP. I haven't heard anything teeth-grinding about them - though, that might just be because I live in southern England.

Oh, and let's take a final kick in the teeth, shall we? If you add up the shares of the votes received by pro-second-referendum parties ... guess what it comes to? Yup: 52%, versus 48% for the pro-Brexit parties. 52/48 - aaaaargh! Yet, the 48% had a narrative that kept their vote all in one place, so they won an absolute majority at Westminster. Ours got scattered to the four winds by several separate inept campaigns and several useless party leaders. Had there been a second referendum, we could have won it. But we never got the chance, because everyone supposedly on our side were completely, perfectly, useless.

Sigh :(

[a-wandering-fool]

The Daily Beast recently came under fire for investigating and ultimately outing a private citizenfor the crime of sharing a video that makes fun of Nancy Pelosi.

Now they are claiming that speculating about Joe Biden’s health is out of bounds.

Justin Baragona writes:

Fox News Stars Begin Pushing Rumors About Joe Biden’s Health

One month after Joe Biden announced his run for president, several Fox News stars have already begun quietly pushing rumors that the 76-year-old ex-veep is in poor health.

Since the end of May, Fox Business Network and Fox News star Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery and Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity have speculated on-air, on at least four separate occasions, that the current Democratic presidential frontrunner is secretly dealing with health issues, often comparing his condition to illness-related conspiracy theories the network pushed about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

The Biden rumor-mongering seemingly began May 29, during the broadcast of Fox News’ afternoon gabfest The Five. While assessing Biden’s candidacy, Kennedy claimed to know Democratic operatives engaged in a whisper campaign about Biden’s health.

“He is much more like Hillary Clinton, because if you talk to Democrats, who are working for different campaigns, all of the aggressive gossip whisperers—and this is where the action is happening in terms of opposition research—it’s people having a few drinks at a bar and whispering, ‘You know there is something wrong with the former vice president,’” she claimed. “But that’s what they are actively doing right now. And it is surprising because they are concerned with taking Biden down and getting their candidate out there.”

Here’s the best part of the article. It’s so good I’m going to bold it:

In the news business, it is considered irresponsible to spread baseless, potentially damaging rumors about public figures.

That is an astounding statement, and if it were true, every liberal media outlet would now be effectively out of business. CNN and MSNBC have built their entire business models on this notion.

And what about the Daily Beast? We recently noted the return of the Democrats’ favorite Yale psychiatrist, the one who has helped them push the idea that Trump is mentally unfit for office.

And in March of 2018, the Daily Beast published this:

How Close Is Donald Trump to a Psychiatric Breakdown?

With reports that a giddy commander in chief is running around the White House like a kid freed of any adult supervision, having dispatched every moderate who hasn’t resigned in hopes of saving a shred of his integrity, Donald Trump now appears to be in a state of mania as he escalates his efforts to bolster his fragile ego before he goes into the cage with special counsel Robert Mueller—or fires him.

This was exactly what the contributors to the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump warned about six months ago. The psychiatric professionals who contributed to the book have monitored and come to know Trump’s character better than most clients they have treated or people they have interviewed. As the special prosecutor’s noose tightens around the president and his cultish family, it is increasingly clear that he is an imminent danger to the public, and this impinges on professionals’ duty to society. Sheehy wrote about the book and its genesis in these pages last October (Sheehy and Sword also contributed to the book).

In October of 2017, the Daily Beast published this:

These 27 Top Shrinks Think Trump Might Be Nuts

The president attacks the mayor of San Juan after a devastating hurricane as the death toll rises. In his maiden UN speech, he threatens North Korea with “total destruction.” His tweetstorms show a narcissistic mind obsessed with cutting down critics and igniting culture wars while ignoring the responsibilities of his office. No wonder a new poll shows that a stunning 56 percent of Americans believe Donald Trump is “not fit” to serve as president.

But while much of America has begun speaking openly about the mental state of their president, the actual professionals in the field of psychiatry are prohibited from doing so because of the gag rule imposed by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Does anyone at the Daily Beast read the Daily Beast?

And more importantly, haven’t they heard this?

In the news business, it is considered irresponsible to spread baseless, potentially damaging rumors about public figures.

CNN, which has also pushed the narrative about Trump’s mental health, is also now running interference for Biden.

Chris Cillizza writes:

Fox News crosses the line on Joe Biden

For anyone who watches Fox News Channel, it’s not at all surprising that its anchors and hosts (with few notable exceptions) talk up President Donald Trump while knocking down the Democrats running against him in 2020.

While that position puts Fox somewhere in the grey area between journalism and activism, it’s not exactly new. There are ratings in partisanship — so Fox News engages in partisanship.

But even partisanship should have its limits. And one of those limits should be raising entirely unfounded questions about a presidential candidate’s health. Which is exactly what two Fox News personalities — Kennedy and Sean Hannity — have done, according to this terrific piece by the Daily Beast Justin Baragona…

CNN’s Brian Stelter tweeted this:

Biden camp says "these are baseless lies meant to stoke fear in their viewers. It has no place in our public discourse, and anyone amplifying it bears some responsibility for giving it legitimacy it most certainly does not deserve"

NEW — Taking a page from the 2016 playbook, Fox News hosts are already spreading baseless rumors about Joe Biden’s healthhttps://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-stars-begin-pushing-rumors-about-joe-bidens-health?ref=home …

229 people are talking about this

They have made every aspect of Trump’s life and well-being fair game for over two years. Now they are calling for rules of decency to protect the person they expect to face off against Trump in November of 2020.

They think they can have it both ways. They’re wrong.

====================================

If it wasn’t for double standards, there would be no standards at all.....

[newstfionline]

Headlines

What Happens in a Single Minute on the Internet? (Digital Information World) There are 1 million Facebook Logins, 4.5 million YouTube videos viewed and 2.1 million snaps taken (this number would have been significantly higher if it wasn’t for the redesign) every minute. Additionally, there are 3.8 million Search queries on Google, online spending of $996.956 and 41.6 million messages sent on Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

In a new major document, Pope Francis says the church should support women’s rights (Washington Post) The pontiff’s 33,000-word letter called for a church with “open doors” that can acknowledge past ills and be attentive to women seeking “greater justice and equality.”

Canada’s Trudeau Expels Two Ex-Ministers From Ruling Party in Bid to End Scandal (Reuters) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday sought to quell a crisis that threatens his chances of re-election, expelling from party ranks two former Cabinet members he said had undermined the ruling Liberals.

Trump’s threat to close border stirs fears of economic harm (AP) President Donald Trump’s threat to shut down the southern border raised fears Monday of dire economic consequences in the U.S. and an upheaval of daily life in a stretch of the country that relies on the international flow of not just goods and services but also students, families and workers. Politicians, business leaders and economists warned that such a move would block incoming shipments of fruits and vegetables, TVs, medical devices and other products and cut off people who commute to their jobs or school or come across to go shopping. “Let’s hope the threat is nothing but a bad April Fools’ joke,” said economist Dan Griswold at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. He said Trump’s threat would be the “height of folly,” noting that an average of 15,000 trucks and $1.6 billion in goods cross the border every day.

US resorts to expanded ‘catch and release’ as migrants surge (AP) The surge of migrants arriving at the southern border has led the Trump administration to dramatically expand a practice it has long mocked as “catch and release.” Since Dec. 21, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has set free about 108,500 people who came as families. On some days, more than 1,000 people were released in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley alone.

Americans borrow $88 billion annually to pay for health care, survey finds (CNN) Americans borrowed a staggering $88 billion in the past year to pay for health care, a new survey finds. “Not only do you have a real significant number that are deferring care, forgoing care altogether, you also have a big chunk that are getting the care but having to borrow to get it,” said Dan Witters, Gallup senior researcher. “There are few Americans out there who are safe from the American health care cost crisis.” These statistics are the latest examples of how the nation is struggling with the high cost of medical care. The United States spent more than $10,700 per person on health care in 2017, federal data shows. That’s more than any other country, yet America consistently ranks near the bottom of major health indices among developed nations, the survey said.

Maduro Loyalists Strip Venezuela’s Juan Guaido of Immunity (AP) Maduro loyalists stripped Venezuela’s Juan Guaidó of immunity Tuesday, paving the way for the opposition leader’s prosecution and potential arrest for supposedly violating the constitution when he declared himself interim president.

PM May Seeks Brexit Delay, Compromise to Break Logjam (Reuters) Prime Minister Theresa May said on Tuesday she would ask the European Union for a further delay to Brexit beyond April 12 to give her time to sit down with the opposition Labour Party in a bid to break the impasse over Britain’s departure.

Turkey’s Electoral Board Says Votes in Eight Istanbul Districts to Be Recounted (Reuters) Turkey’s High Election Board (YSK) will recount local election votes in eight districts of Istanbul after objections, YSK head Sadi Guven said on Wednesday, after President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) appealed results across the city.

India Declines Comment on NASA’s Anti-Satellite Criticism (AP) India on Wednesday declined to comment on a statement by a U.S. space official that India’s recent test of an anti-satellite weapon created debris that could threaten the International Space Station.

Hong Kong Launches New Extradition Law Despite Opposition (Reuters) Hong Kong’s leaders launched laws on Wednesday to change extradition rules to allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial, standing fast against growing opposition to a move many fear could further erode the city’s legal protections.

Thai Junta Files Sedition Complaint Against New Party Leader (AP) Thailand’s ruling junta has filed a complaint accusing the leader of a popular new political party of sedition and aiding criminals, a move that its target described as politically motivated.

Malaysia’s Former Leader Najib in the Dock as Graft Trial Begins (Reuters) Ten years to the day after he was sworn in, disgraced former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak stood trial on Wednesday for corruption charges linked to a multibillion-dollar scandal that brought down his government.

Saudi Women Activists Back in Court (Reuters) Nearly a dozen prominent Saudi women activists returned to court on Wednesday to face charges related to their human rights work and contacts with foreign journalists and diplomats, in a case that has intensified Western criticism of a key Mideast ally.

Algerian Businessman Ali Haddad Placed in Custody (Reuters) Algerian businessman Ali Haddad, a backer of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who resigned on Tuesday, is facing corruption charges and has been placed in custody, Ennahar TV reported on Wednesday.

Mozambique cholera cases now above 1,400; vaccines arrive (AP) Cholera cases in cyclone-hit Mozambique have risen above 1,400, government officials said Tuesday, as hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses arrived in an attempt to limit the rapid spread of the disease.

[whatisonthemoon]

On the MRA’s Ideology, its influence on Kishi and potentially Moon

MRA founder Frank Buchman

Buchman's special ideological emphasis was on becoming "changed" from being self -centered to being God-centered, the importance of a daily listening for "guidance" from God, devotion to four moral absolutes, regular self-scrutiny, and confession and restitution for wrongs done. The four absolutes included: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness and absolute love.

 . . . MRA was active in southern Africa from as far back as 1928. The strategy which was pursued to work for positive change in Rhodesia involved four elements. These included: pursuit of personal friendships with key figures, a methodology which involved sharing of personal failings and confessing of wrong attitudes, bringing in resource people from other countries, and using the media and public meetings to attempt to exert moral influence on the larger society. Kraybill indicates that numerous liberation front leaders had learned about MRA in the 1950's and had a very positive attitude toward the group because MRA had already challenged individual whites to change their racist attitudes. Specifically, while a student Mugabe had seen MRA films, he told an MRA worker in 1976 that he had great respect for MRA's focus upon mending one's own ways first as the beginning for healing relationships. But, he noted while this philosophy would work in families and in social relationships generally, he didn't think it could work in the current political climate.

THE MORAL RE-ARMAMENT MOVEMENT: IS "GENERIC" THE RIGHT PRESCRIPTION FOR TODAY?

27 July 1908, thirty-year-old Frank Buchman (MRA founder*), a Pennsylvanian Lutheran Minister, walked into an afternoon service with 17 other people to hear Jessie Penn Lewis preach on the cross of Christ. And then it happened. As Buchman sat in that Chapel, 'There was a moment of spiritual peak of what God could do for me. I was made a new man. My hatred was gone...I knew I had to write six letters to those men I hated.'

'I am writing,' declared Buchman, 'to tell you that I have harbored an unkind feeling toward you - at times I conquered it but it always came back. Our views may differ but as brothers, we must love. I write to ask your forgiveness and to assure that I love you and trust by God's grace I shall never more speak unkindly or disparagingly of you.' Those letters of amends spawned a revolution in Frank Buchman, a revolution that led to the birth of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Frank Buchman and Alcoholics Anonymous

The founder and director of the country’s first spy agency, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), added, “The tendency of Japanese society to be dragged along without objection to the nation’s leaders’ wrongful acts can be seen again now.” Kim said that former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, grandfather to Abe, “had a deep understanding of Korea.” Kim recalled that Kishi told him that “Japan tormented Korea. I apologize as a Japanese. Though the past days were not good, I wish Korea and Japan will holds hands and that Korea will be revived.” The late Kishi, who served as a minister of industry in the war cabinet and had been accused by the United States of being a Class-A war criminal, served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Kim added that he was very close to the current prime minister’s father, Shintaro Abe, a former foreign minister in the 1980s, and described him as “a very good person who avoided hurtful words or actions.” Kim said that the elder Abe “tried in his own way to better Korea-Japan relations.

Kim Jong-pil says Abe should learn from elders

It may be recalled that Kishi, once a key figure in General Tojo’s World War II cabinet, became one of the most passionate spokesmen for Dr Frank Buchman’s Moral Rearmament (MRA) in 1950s and 1960s. The striking similarity between the moral precepts and secular programmes of MRA and Moon’s church is of interest here because the latter was born as an international movement at the very time when MRA was swiftly declining in Japan. Following the upheaval over the Security Treaty in 1960, which forced his resignation as prime minister, Kishi declared with characteristic hyperbole: “But for Moral Rearmament, Japan would be under communist control today.” Curiously, little was heard about MRA after the early 1960s. Instead, there was much bombast about the Asian People’s Anticommunist League, in which Kishi played the same role as elder statesman and spokesman. There are reports that in 1959 or thereabouts Moon played go-between for an alliance between the MRA leadership and the APACL. When the World Anticommunist League and IFFVOC were formed in the late 1966 and 1967 respectively, Kishi again came to the fore, and today he is front man for the Day of Hope.

Happiness ginseng from earth-conquering Moonies – Japan 1978

[bopinion]

2021 / 28

Aperçu of the Week:

"For some reason, the climate issue has suddenly become a global issue."

(Armin Laschet, current Minister President of, of all places, North Rhine-Westphalia, who apparently lacks both foresight and perspective. Yet he leads in the polls to become Germany's next chancellor).

Bad News of the Week:

Last week I wrote: "Who still doubts the man-made climate change: look out of the damn window!" And now it is really here, the climate change. Or rather its effects. On our doorstep. No more threatened islands in the South Pacific, no more melting polar ice caps far away, no more fires in North America, no more sinking groundwater in the Middle East - here, in our neighborhood, immediately, now.

It doesn't take a tsunami, a tornado, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption. It just needs rain. Much rain. Lots of rain. Former small streams burst their banks as torrents, mountain slopes slide down, floods rush through inhabited areas, sweeping everything away. Entire towns are under water, houses collapse, cars are thrown around like tennis balls, complete infrastructures are destroyed, people drown - almost 200 so far.

In parts of Bavaria and Saxony, but especially in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate, the pictures look like a war zone. Not only because military recovery vehicles are often the only vehicles that can even pass the roads full of rubble and mud. The suffering of fellow citizens who have lost a loved one or simply their entire possessions from one moment to the next seems incomprehensible. Overcoming the consequences is a joint task. Politicians are putting together aid packages, while the solidarity of individuals and the commitment of many volunteers are setting standards.

One of the hardest hit places is called "Schuld", literally "Guilt". And this brings a bizarre realization: yes, we are guilty for what is happening. Not an unexpected phenomenon that comes out of nowhere. But the concrete result of what we have done and are doing. Or rather, what we have not done or are not doing.

It is always said that a crisis is the hour of the executive. Because it can decide, take concrete measures, send help, make money available. Normally, this is done - yes, we are currently campaigning for the federal elections in September - at the expense of the opposition, which, in the absence of government responsibility, can really only show concern. In this case, the Greens, the strongest challenger to the current governing coalition of conservatives and social democrats. But they are the ones who have always warned about the consequences of ignoring nature, who have declared sustainability to be the guiding principle and who are the only ones with concrete environmental and climate protection plans in their party program. Let's see how this realistic far-sightedness and this credible commitment will carry the day when the voters have to put their crosses. Hopefully in the right place...

Good News of the Week:

At the Eurovision Song Contest, many are always surprised by the hardly known countries in Europe (okay, we'll leave out the questionable participations of Israel or Australia). This includes for example the Republica Moldova. A small country between Romania and Ukraine, (almost) on the Black Sea, one of the many former Soviet republics. It shares the same classic fate of autocratic structures, corruption, an ailing economy, isolation from the West, and dependence on big brother Russia. In Transnistria, there were already pro-Russian independence efforts supported by Moscow before there were more high-profile ones in the Ukrainian Donbas region.

But just as in Ukraine, a democratic spring is dawning. Back in the 2014 parliamentary elections, pro-EU parties won a clear majority of 55 seats to the pro-Russian 46, but then failed due to cronyism, dubious entanglements and sabotage. But then came Maia Sandu. Coming from the World Bank as a lateral entrant, she first gained a reputation as a fearless fighter against corruption as education minister in the Liberal Democratic Party before failing as prime minister due to a lack of support for her radical judicial reform. In 2020, however, as the candidate of the "Partidul Acțiune și Solidaritate" ("Action and Solidarity Party" / PAS), which she co-founded, she finally won the presidential election with 58% in the runoff against incumbent Igor Dodon.

In last week's parliamentary elections, PAS was now the clear winner, winning a clear absolute majority in parliament with 63 of 101 seats. Memories of Emanuel Macron and "En marche" are awakening. PAS and Sandu now have the power to shape the government, freed from coalition concessions or multiparty dependencies. And their objectives were unambiguously defined as democratization and turning toward Europe. Sandu: "The people here have been lied to and disappointed so many times". The election results express "the desire of our people that order be established in this country and that corruption be fought. People want law and justice."

The great challenge will be to rid the country's institutions of the felt, to clean up and reorganize the administrative apparatus. For only on this basis can an economic perspective emerge for one of the poorest countries in Europe. It is precisely this lack of prospects that has caused an exodus of those willing and able to perform: one-third of Moldova's population now lives abroad. Sandu's first priority is therefore to modernize the education system and infrastructure and to develop a healthy sector of small and medium-sized enterprises. Only then would positive outlooks for the future have been created for the population - by their own efforts and they could then seek cooperative support from the EU. That this is not a foregone conclusion can be seen by looking across the border to neighboring Romania: a member of the EU for 14 years, the country is still struggling with economic misery and fundamental structural reforms. One can only wish the Republic of Moldova all the best and Maia Sandu a lucky hand.

Personal happy moment of the week:

I don't really know...

How pleased am I that Japan will not succumb to the commercial temptation to allow the same spectator madness at the Summer Olympics starting next week as England and Hungary did at the European soccer championships?

How satisfied am I to have found a solid solution to a complex challenge in weekend work that I can present to colleagues in the office tomorrow?

How relieved am I to live neither on a riverbank nor in a valley and therefore to be exposed to flood hazards only in underground garages and underpasses?

How happy am I that my wife will be standing in the kitchen tonight while I open the red wine, listen to the spherical sounds of Tangerine Dream and comfortably read the newspaper?

In some weeks you just have to be satisfied with the little pleasures in between. All good.

I couldn't care less...

...that insurance companies fear being confronted with claims arising from the flood disaster. After all, their business model should be to provide support in the event of an emergency. And not to look for backdoors and exclusion clauses in the fine print of their cryptic contracts.

As I write this...

...I'm tasting delicious olives my daughter brought back from her graduation trip in Tuscany.

[thisdaynews]

The remarkable Mr Vokrri: Kosovo's football rise

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-remarkable-mr-vokrri-kosovos-football-rise/

The remarkable Mr Vokrri: Kosovo's football rise

Fadil Vokrri (right) is considered the best footballer Kosovo has ever produced

All day the word “miracle” kept coming up. Maybe these thousands of people spilling out into Pristina’s streets have just seen another.

It was September 2016 when Kosovo played their first competitive international football match.

On Saturday, they extended an unbeaten run to 15 games with possibly their most significant result yet – a 2-1 home victory over the Czech Republic. It is the longest such run in Europe.

Kosovo already have a very good chance of reaching Euro 2020. And their next qualifier is against England on Tuesday (19:45 BST). They are relishing the prospect.

This country of about 1.8 million people campaigned for eight years before being admitted as Fifa and Uefa members in 2016. The process began immediately after its declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008. Some countries – including Serbia – still do not recognise its right to exist.

That such a young and troubled nation from the heart of the Balkans should shine on football’s biggest stages was not the dream of only one man. But there is one figure who is revered here above all others – and his story helps explain the origins of this special team.

He was crucial to Kosovo’s campaign for recognition as a football nation, and is a hero in his country. After his death last year at the age of 57, the national team’s home ground was renamed in his honour: The Fadil Vokrri Stadium.

Like so many people here, Vokrri’s life was marked by the war that still raged in this region only just over 20 years ago. By the bitter cycle of vengeance and counter-vengeance, and the tensions between ethnic Albanians and Serbs that still exist today.

And yet Vokrri was one of very few – perhaps the only one – able to communicate across the deep divides that cost so many lives. Football was his language.

When Vokrri was made president of the Football Federation of Kosovo he was starting from scratch. His offices were two rooms in a Pristina apartment block; two desks and two computers. It was 16 February 2008. Kosovo declared its independence the next day.

Vokrri was in charge of an association with no money, he had a national team that didn’t have the right to play any official matches, in an isolated nation with little infrastructure.

What he did have was his reputation. He was the greatest footballer Kosovo produced – though that title may be challenged soon by the exciting new generation of talent that is emerging.

He was charming, charismatic and convincing. He and general secretary Errol Salihu were the campaigners the country needed.

“When we talked at home at this time, at the very beginning my father was thinking the process would be easy,” says Vokrri’s eldest son Gramoz, 33.

“Now we are recognised as a country, it will be fast, he thought. He soon realised it would be anything but easy, but he didn’t mind it that way.”

Gramoz lives in Pristina now. When he was old enough, he would often accompany his father and help with his work. Like his dad, he is well known in Kosovo’s capital. Conversation is interrupted every five minutes as allies and acquaintances stop to say hello. Many stay much longer. Among them are government officials, football agents, and former generals in the Kosovo Liberation Army.

“My father never made a political declaration in his life and only focused on football. Football is higher than everything else – that was his vision,” he says.

“It allowed my father to help achieve our goal – of entering Uefa and Fifa.”

Vokrri was an adventurous forward with two good feet. If he wasn’t the most prolific goalscorer perhaps his flair and determination made amends. He was loved by the fans. They recognised in him one of their own – even when he wasn’t.

Gramoz Vokrri with his father. This picture was taken around six months before Fadil Vokrri died in June 2018

He grew up in Podujeva, a small city which today lies close to Kosovo’s northern border with Serbia. Back then, just like the rest of Kosovo, it was part of Yugoslavia. He was born in 1960. During his childhood, Yugoslavia was a communist country made up of diverse nationalities, languages and religions, all more or less held together by its charismatic leader Josip Broz Tito.

It was an age when Kosovar Albanians like Vokrri were rarely celebrated. They seldom became symbols of Yugoslav pride. But this talent was impossible to ignore.

Vokrri was the first to play for Yugoslavia – and he would be the only one. His debut came in a 6-1 defeat by Scotland and scored the goal, the first of six in 12 caps between 1984 and 1987.

He had started out at Llapi, his hometown club, before moving to Pristina. In 1986 he went on to Partizan Belgrade and stayed for three years – “the most beautiful” of his career, he said.

They won the league title in 1987 and the cup in 1989. In between, Italian giants Juventus came calling – but Vokrri was forced to turn them down. He hadn’t completed the then-compulsory two years’ military service, and so couldn’t go abroad. He completed his duties while playing for Partizan, fulfilling light tasks during the week in between matches.

But leave the country he would, for reasons that were spiralling out of anyone’s control.

Kosovan boys play football at an Intercampus training session in a refugees’ camp in Albania during the Kosovo war, in June 1998

Many historians place President Tito’s death as the key point in the collapse of Yugoslavia. They say he left behind a power vacuum which would be filled by resurgent rival nationalist factions.

Born in 1986, Gramoz was the first of Vokrri and his wife Edita’s three children. By 1989, the family had decided they could stay in Yugoslavia no longer. Vokrri settled on the idea of leaving for France. In the summer, he signed for Nimes.

“At this time, everyone in Yugoslavia knew that war would happen,” Gramoz says. “They just didn’t know when or where it would start.”

Years of suffering would define the next decade. During the 1990s, Yugoslavia was plunged into a bloody conflict in which as many as 140,000 people were killed.

From this fighting emerged the separate modern territories of today: Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the recently renamed North Macedonia. Kosovo was the last to declare itself an independent nation.

A scene from life in Kosovo’s top flight in the mid-1990s as players wash after a match

Lulzim Berisha was 20 when he took up arms. He joined the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). It was 1998.

For the previous six years he had been in Pristina, still living under Yugoslav rule but playing football in what was an unofficial Kosovan top flight set up after the establishment of a separatist shadow republic there.

Matches were held on rough pitches in remote, rural locations. Fans would gather on sloping hillsides to watch. Serbian police would stop the players on the way and detain them for hours. But always somehow they managed to get word up the road for the opposition to wait. After the match, players would wash their muddy bodies in a nearby river.

This football league stopped when heavy fighting began in 1998.

“I decided to join the KLA because of my country,” says Berisha. “I had no military experience but I saw many bad things happening here. That was the reason.”

There was now open conflict between Kosovo’s independence fighters the KLA and Serbian police in the region. It led to a brutal crackdown. Civilians were driven from their homes. There were killings, atrocities and forced expulsions at the hands of Serb forces.

The key turning point in the war came in 1999. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) had already intervened in Bosnia and it did so again in Kosovo. A 78-day bombing campaign forced Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw troops and allow international peacekeepers in. Milosevic’s government collapsed a year later. He would later be held at the United Nations (UN) war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes carried out in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia. In 2006, he was found dead in his cell aged 64, before his trial could be completed.

After Serb forces left Kosovo in 1999, the territory remained under UN rule for nine years. About 850,000 people had fled the fighting. An estimated 13,500 people were killed or went missing, according to the Humanitarian Law Centre(HLC). The HLC, with offices in Pristina and Belgrade, continues to work on documenting the human cost of Yugoslavia’s wars – including the civilian victims of Nato’s bombardment.

As peace returned to the region, so did many of Kosovo’s refugees. Children were named after then UK prime minister Tony Blair – rendered in Albanian as one single first name: Tonibler. There is enormous gratitude in Kosovo to the countries that intervened. Nowhere is it more obvious than on Bill Clinton Boulevard in Pristina, where a giant image of the former US president looks out across the traffic below.

Now 41, Berisha uses few words to describe his life as a soldier and the violence he witnessed.

Lulzim Berisha at the Dardanet cafe and bar in Pristina

Today he is one of the main personalities behind the Kosovo national team’s biggest fan club: Dardanet. The name means “the Dardanians” – the people of an ancient kingdom that ruled here.

Dardanet have just opened a new cafe bar that serves as their headquarters. Opposite an old tile factory whose chimneys rise high into the sky, the call to prayer from a local mosque carries over lively conversation between the animated chain-smokers gesturing in their outside seats. The other fuels are dark black espresso coffee and conversation about football of any kind. Serie A is no longer the most passionately discussed. That would be the Premier League.

Lulzim sucks sharply on his teeth as a staccato point at the end of each short sentence.

“We want every kind of people to come to the stadium. Every game we give 100 tickets for free to female fans. We want families to come,” he says.

On the table next to us, a reel of tickets for the England match in Southampton is unfurled with glee. They arrived that morning. The visas to travel are through too. Lulzim explains there will be a match against an English fan club, England Fans FC, in Hounslow on Monday, before Tuesday’s Euro 2020 qualifier at St Mary’s.

Inside, the walls are packed high with framed photos of Kosovo players, new and old. Vokrri’s image is everywhere. They describe themselves as “Children of Vokrri”. He has become an icon for the fan club. They produce banners, T-shirts and online posts that carry his image under messages such as: “Looking down on us.”

“Vokrri is a legend,” says Berisha. “He is our hero. For everything he did. For the people.”

But pride of place in the fan club bar belongs to the match shirt worn by Valon Berisha when he scored Kosovo’s first goal in official competition. That was a 1-1 draw in Finland, a 2018 World Cup qualifier played in September 2016.

It was the culmination of many years’ hard work. Not so long afterwards, it looked like things would only go downhill.

Vokrri returned to Kosovo from France about five years after the war ended. With him at the helm, football’s world governing body Fifa turned down Kosovo’s first attempts towards membership in 2008. At that point the country had only been recognised by 51 of the UN’s 193 member nations. It seemed a majority would be required.

Instead, they continued to play unofficial matches against unrecognised states: Northern Cyprus, a team representing Monaco, a team representing the Sami people of north Norway, Sweden, Russia and Finland.

The players at this time were drawn almost exclusively from the domestic pool. People who had been forced to flee their homes only a few years ago, or who had taken up arms and fought.

There was another way. One that was still tantalisingly out of reach.

“In 2012, when Switzerland played a match against Albania, 15 of the players on the pitch were eligible to represent Kosovo,” Gramoz says.

“My father was at the game, watching with Sepp Blatter, then the Fifa president. Mr Blatter said to my dad: ‘How are you enjoying the match?’

“He replied: ‘It’s like watching Kosovo A versus Kosovo B.'”

The major step forward came in 2014, when Fifa allowed Kosovo to play friendly matches against its member nations – as long as certain conditions were met. There was still significant opposition from Serbia.

Mitrovica was the location for Kosovo’s first recognised friendly match. This city, with local Albanian and Serbian populations divided in two by the Ibar river, still requires the presence of Nato troops today, 20 years on from their arrival as a peacekeeping force. Oliver Ivanovic, a prominent politician seen as a moderate Kosovo Serb leader, was shot dead outside his party offices there in January 2018.

Albania goalkeeper Samir Ujkani chose to accept a call-up, as did Finland international Lum Rexhepi, Norway’s Ardian Gashi and Switzerland’s Albert Bunjaku. The opposition were Haiti. It finished 0-0.

“For us, it was a big, big victory,” says Gramoz.

“It was a clear message from Fifa. The moment they allowed us to play friendly matches we took that to mean: ‘Don’t stop, you will enter as full members – but we need time to prepare people.’

“Even if we didn’t have the right to play our national anthem, it’s OK. We play football. That was the most important thing.

“First of all friendly games. After that, our delegation was invited to a Uefa congress for the first time. My father went to the Ballon d’Or ceremony. We had indications that the work was going well.”

In May 2016, all the determined efforts, all the canvassing and campaigning done by Vokrri and Eroll Salihu finally came to fruition. Kosovo were admitted as full members, first of Uefa, then of Fifa.

“The whole country stopped. Everything,” says Gramoz. “After independence, it was the biggest thing that’s happened in Kosovo.

“People started throwing fireworks, pouring out into the streets. It was like we won the World Cup.”

At the Uefa vote, there were 28 in favour and 24 against, plus two invalid votes. Serbian Football Federation president Tomislav Karadzic said the result would “create tumult in the region and open a Pandora’s box throughout Europe”. It challenged the ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Uefa’s decision was upheld.

Now Kosovo had an official national team, it could take part in the upcoming qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup. But what would the team look like?

Kosovo delegation members react emotionally after receiving Uefa membership in May 2016

In June 2016, at the European Championship in France, Albania and Switzerland met again.

Among the Swiss side were Arsenal’s Granit Xhaka and Xherdan Shaqiri, now of Liverpool. Xhaka’s elder brother, Taulant, played for Albania. Each of these – and several more – might have decided to switch allegiances and join the new Kosovo team.

Uefa said it would consider applications to do so on a case-by-case basis. The Swiss FA released a statement complaining that Kosovo was unsettling its players. Gramoz believes Uefa’s strategy was a concession to those member nations worried about losing talent.

“Uefa and Fifa never said publicly that they all had the right to play – even though every application was successful,” he says. “It was very diplomatic.”

Xhaka and Shaqiri – perhaps the two best known eligible players – decided to stay with Switzerland. For those who did make the switch, the process did not go as smoothly as planned.

Five hours before kick-off in Kosovo’s first competitive match, the team was still awaiting clearance for six players – including one of their most promising, Valon Berisha, who had already played 19 times for Norway.

It was 5 September 2016. Eventually the clearance came through. Berisha played and scored the equaliser in a 1-1 draw in Turku on Finland’s west coast. It was an encouraging start, and a hugely emotional moment for players, fans and the country.

But Kosovo were beaten heavily in their next qualifier, 6-0 by Croatia – one of several home ties played in the Albanian city Shkoder. The national stadium in Pristina needed work to meet the required standards.

The draw in their first match against Finland would be their only point of the campaign. Kosovo finished bottom of their group, suffering nine consecutive defeats.

They had got a tough draw and, back then, perhaps it felt like just taking to the field was a victory.

Now the picture is very different indeed.

The day before Saturday’s game there is a thunderstorm in Pristina that flashes back against the black night sky, recalling a very different time from not so long ago. Peace lives here now. Even when the rain does fall it doesn’t bother the children chasing each other along the city’s central street, no matter the risk to their ice creams.

Down below, the stadium’s floodlights are lit. Kosovo are playing the Czech Republic the next day. Something very strange is about to happen.

The following morning, reports surface about arrests the police have made. Eight Czech fans were allegedly found with a drone, a Serbian flag and a banner reading “Kosovo is Serbia”. It seems a revenge stunt was planned.

In 2014, a drone flew over the Belgrade ground hosting a match between Serbia and Albania. It was carrying a banner labelling Kosovo part of “Greater Albania”. There was outrage. A mass brawl broke out on the pitch, fans streamed in from the stands and lashed out at players. The match was abandoned and Albania were eventually awarded a 3-0 default win.

Shortly after news of the arrests breaks, the Dardanet fan group responds. “We invite prudence and restraint,” they say. “Any potential incident could harm Kosovo.”

There is instead a happy ending.

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Riot police had to be brought in to restore calm but the Serbia-Albania match was abandoned, as Wendy Urquhart reports

Going into the match, Kosovo are unbeaten in 14 games. Their last defeat was in October 2017. Six of those matches came in the inaugural Uefa Nations League, where performances have already guaranteed them a place in the play-offs for a spot at the Euro 2020 finals.

Georgia, North Macedonia and Belarus are the three other teams likely to contest Kosovo’s section of the play-offs. Only one of those countries recognises Kosovo – its southern neighbour North Macedonia.

Uefa currently keeps Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina apart from Kosovo for security reasons, but all other countries must play them. Uefa will allow a team to request their home fixture be played on neutral territory – as happened when Ukraine and Kosovo met in Poland in a World Cup qualifier in October 2016.

As for what happens should Kosovo reach Euro 2020, four of the 12 nations hosting games in next year’s tournament – Azerbaijan, Romania, Russia and Spain – do not recognize Kosovo’s independence either.

And it is beginning to look like they will make it. They might even end up qualifying automatically.

Come kick-off time, the Fadil Vokrri Stadium is packed. Tickets apparently sold out completely in 15 minutes.

Men in uniform are watching the sky through binoculars from the top of a high building opposite. There are no drones in sight. On the other side, a group of children have outdone them, perched atop an unfinished tower block that stands a good 10 storeys tall. The bent steel tips of its exposed reinforced concrete stretch higher above them still.

The Czechs take the lead. Arijanet Muric, the Nottingham Forest keeper on loan from Manchester City, is beaten by Patrick Schick’s delicate finish inside the box.

But the home fans rally their team. Their passion is raw and irresistible, and it runs through the Kosovo side and harries them forward. There are rash challenges, hurried touches at the vital moment. There is the bravery to persist, the drive to force their opponents back again and again.

Kosovo’s 68-year-old Swiss manager Bernard Challandes – appointed by Vokrri in March 2018 – is the only calm presence around. The whole ground is constantly carried away, including everybody who isn’t Czech in the press box.

Even when Vedat Muriqi gets the equaliser before half-time, Challandes keeps his cool. But when Mergim Vojvoda stabs the home team in front from a short corner there is a volcanic chain reaction of emotions: joy, pride, delight. Challandes cannot resist. The substitutes are up from the bench. The injured players who travelled to be with their team leap forward too – only a little more carefully.

With the final whistle approaching, the Czech Republic fashion four good chances in about three minutes. In extremely polite English totally at odds with the situation, the Kosovan journalist next to me says: “Phew, that was close.”

Five minutes of added time. Superstition kicks in. Fenerbahce striker Muriqi – a huge presence – hauls his team up the pitch, protecting possession like he has been for what seems an eternity. Challandes is gesturing wildly now, like everyone else.

And then the stadium erupts. The players hug each other. Challandes is under a mountain of tracksuited bodies. There is a long and reflective lap of victory. England are next. They cannot wait.

The Dardanet members wave their banners and sing their songs. The Children of Vokrri will go home very happy tonight – eventually.

When Vokrri died last June, having suffered a heart attack, his burial was marked by a special state ceremony in Pristina.

“Some Serbian officials came to his funeral, including the former FA president Tomislav Karadzic. It’s very rare to make a visit like that,” Gramoz says.

“Afterwards, Partizan Belgrade invited me to visit them. I went to Belgrade, and they showed me huge respect. They didn’t care if I was Albanian, they told me I was part of their family, because of my father.

“This is why I think, especially here in this case between Kosovo and Serbia, we should use sports and football to promote relations between the countries.

“It will be a great victory for our national team the day when a Kosovan Serb lines up with us on the pitch.”

Gramoz is perhaps like his father in that he likes to dream. But football can do powerful things. Here it has already done so much.

Kosovo fans celebrate their latest victory. The country has the youngest population in Europe with half its people under the age of 25

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The conflict in Europe that won’t go away: Three BBC correspondents explain the Kosovo war two decades on

The ‘Heroinat’ (‘Heroines’) monument in Pristina honours the contribution and sacrifice of every ethnic Albanian woman during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo

Ibrahim Rugova (left) became president of Kosovo’s separatist republic in 1992. Vokrri’s status as a footballer assisted him in his diplomatic efforts abroad – here the two are pictured in Turkey. Vokrri played for Fenerbahce from 1990-1992

Red Star Belgrade fans display a banner reading: ‘Kosovo is Serbia’ in a Uefa Cup match at home to Bolton in 2007

Fadil Vokrri and his wife and children lived in Montlucon in France during the Kosovo war. Vokrri was the coach of Montlucon FC. Gramoz says his father was constantly checking on family back home

Flamurtari FC’s football stadium in the Kosovo capital of Pristina. They finished sixth in the Kosovan top flight last season

Salihu (L) and Vokrri (R) waiting at the Uefa congress in Budapest in May 2016, when Kosovo was about to be made a member nation

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Biomed Grid| The Impact of Feminism in the Branch of Women’s Studies: The Study of the Development of Sex according to the Theories of Gender

Abstract

In the branch of gender studies, the impact of feminism was noticeable. From the history of feminist movements, we can see that the feminist activists were adamant to establish women’s rights same as men both at home and their work place. The history of gender has comparatively short story and its emergence became happened during the 1960s and the evolution got activated through second wave feminism. Gender inequality came to regard from both the personal relationships and in social positioning such as economically and politically, second wave feminism actually did introduce about how the issues of gender inequality got eliminated from academic disciplines, therefore they did pay the attention about how women’s roles and identity were neglected and this thing occurred prior to the 1970s. The social sciences did ignore this issue of gender in general and sociology did it in a larger way.

In pre 1970s gender blind sociology only did highlight women as wives and mothers within their families but at that time this kind of differences or inequalities between men and women were not seen or recognized as sociological awareness and problems to be noted. The differences and inequalities actually happened in 1970s and especially by women sociologists, therefore they felt the urgency or need to identify and took the initiatives to examine those problems. In English literature, women’s worthiness got ignored and prohibited, therefore they were searching for their authority to get the general law of great works of literature. The hegemony of a canon of great works of literature which particularly excluded women writers altogether and had nothing to say about the material and social conditions that prohibited the emergence of ‘great women in this arena’. To analyses in which arena women’s worthiness of study in their own right arrived and to search the clear success for feminist politics, scholars went beyond the normal boundaries of their home disciplines. Here I would like to mention [2] that moved effortlessly from literary criticism to a critique of Freud and Marx. Her perspectives later became the business of literary studies very much.

Do in 1960s and early 1970s sheer number of women have in the fields of humanities in comparison to other academic fields made it an era that was fully developed for feminist critique and also the existence of women was developed and the result of the gendered logic of the work place. In the late 1960s in US and from the mid to late 1970s in the UK that women’s studies begun to develop as a specialized area of academic interest, also it was rapidly spreading elsewhere around the globe. In UK British women’s studies was emerged in MA program in Kent (1980), then York and Warwick. In those places and era women’s studies was included as a discrete area of study. In US (1969) such courses like women’s studies begun to be taught quite spontaneously natural or careless way without substantial prior organization in many US colleges and universities. So, we can say it was a similar story in the UK and retrospectively without considering any past situations. The teachers in the field did communicate both nationally and internationally. Then they also involved in the debate about what women’s studies was and could be. The first national women’s studies conference took place in the UK in 1976. The scholars of women’s studies were often found beyond the academy such as in the newsletters, at conferences and generally used to connect with same-minded thinkers. Their research will further prove that feminist activists and theorists did set a solid era to gain women’s existence in a male dominated society and later this this got elaboration and constructive analysis though the theories of gender development.

Keywords: Gender; Sex; Feminism; Women’s Studies; Theories of Gender Development

Introduction

For detecting gender differences women’s studies played a very prime role. And then the segments of gender development theories eventually let us know about how the differences happens between male and female sex. To prove that fact first of all I would like to discuss about women’s studies and their roles to present women both at home and in their job areas. Such as in the fields of government, non-government jobs, political field, and economic sector. In many of the women’s studies there have been included consciousness raising (CR) component. Formal characteristics of academic study, particularly the teacher-student relationship and assessment were kept under scrutiny and other means of teaching and assessment than formal lecture or seminar, were experimented with. Women’s studies mainly resided in English, history and sociology and sometimes separated individuals working within a general male- oriented curriculum. After the emergence of women’s studies, it has been the work of scholars across the disciplines into one center or as the main area of MA or undergrad degrees. So, this area did develop a crystal-clear identity rather than casting a critical eye over the traditional disciplines like other male- oriented subjects. In this way it can be said that women’s studies could become more broad and specific without the contestation of knowledge under patriarchy and allow assessing the value of something again such as knowledge, art and experience that had originated the basis of women’s lives where the more important thing is, this study is still centered around the social sciences, arts and humanities rather than physical sciences such as engineering and medicine. But the ramification of women’s studies raised as the core practices and prejudices of the latter and under scrutiny. Women’s studies basically suggest a degree or study of empowerment for feminist knowledge. It has always two directions. One is within the disciplines where the critique sometimes said that men too are gendered beings. Such as the arising out of men’s pro-feminist politics, therefore begun to develop in 1980s. A body of knowledge and theorizing that men as men. Consequently, books on men and masculinity proliferated in 1990s and introduced men’s studies as a specialist area of academic focus. Secondly, gender studies is seen by many to open up field of women’s studies beyond its beginning in the politics of women’s liberation movement.

Then at the same time women’s studies and men’s studies became established as a specialized areas of academic inquiry broader theoretical developments begun to undermine their rationale. In postmodern and post structuralism approaches, the idea of women and men are discrete and categories that is challenged. The individual status of both groups called men and women are argued in a great way over time, space and also culture. Hence there is not huge justification for the use of the collective nouns. On the other hands, post-structuralism says women and men are considered as representation and these nouns called women and men achieved through performance and repetition than real entities. These two types of theoretical approaches have had a great impact on feminism. Women’s and men’s studies.

Also, these theories have been a main driver of increased notion of diversity and difference. In gender studies, the concept of gender inequality transcends not only between genders but within genders such as class, sexuality, ethnicity, age, disability, nationality, and religion and citizenship status. This is the reason about women and men’s studies which known as the contested terms. Though gender issue developed as a complex, multi-faceted and multidisciplinary area, where the women studies advocates that, the rise of gender studies usually make women as invisible in the study of masculinity or male/female relations. The existing sense about the fact of women’s studies continue towards social inequality that has been destroyed utterly and as a result DE politicization happens out of controversy and political violence. Some feel that women’s studies has lost its confidence and way. They also feel that gender studies consider as a weaker sign, hence feminist knowledge has been controlled by the reformed academy. Women’s studies have had accept that the rigid model of women do prohibit and declare inequality where gender studies is the best way of addressing this concern. In this 21st century there are number of characteristics about gender studies that remains in existence such as multi and inter-disciplinary gender studies that got profound impact on other contemporary theory and attitudes for generating knowledge and constellation method. Secondly, gender studies constitute by the methods of texts, knowledge and theorizing on and about gender. Gender studies not only confined within social, arts and humanity disciplines but also centered in the mainstream disciplines widely and enthusiastically embraced by students. Thirdly, feminism remains the core issue reason for the study of gender relation. The feminism reminds us about women as a group who were wrongly presented in both the public sphere and in the real natures. As we know gender relations continue to change so for this reason feminism as a political ideology will also be changed and find new arenas to explore. Gender studies will continue to change since the academic institutions themselves have changed noticeably in the last 30 years and in Britain, the shifting ideas of university polytechnic has had an impact on the development of women’s studies from 1992. The certain increasing numbers of students were women, and also many women studies academics now the first generation to be educated in gender as students. That means women are ahead than men in this area of study called gender studies. They are in the same way correspondingly distant from heady politics and campus activism of 1960s and 1970s.

Here we can say challenges can be made from within the institution from a gendered perspective but gender studies remain dependent upon the academy for survival and for the support of feminist and gender-related research. Therefore, it is to be said that gender studies is a complex, multi-faced topic and where feminist perspectives remain the prominent thing. This branch of study is known as an academic specialism and across a range of disciplines and knowledge boundaries. So, this is not fix or straight forward but evolve during the period of writing and remains with issues of more recent and current concern. Gender studies identify about the positioning of Western industrial societies which is Britain where the white, middle class feminists working within the discipline of sociology. To detect the concepts of gender studies we got to know about come concepts such as psychoanalytical, feminism, post modernism, queer theory and cyborg. And also gender studies refers to the off-used terms such as identity politics, backlash and equality.

To sum up we can say, gender studies remain as a vibrant and productive academic activity and its effects continue to change in a broader way people think about themselves.

Universally it’s decided that women are entitled to expecting and giving nutrition to their progeny, hence they have limitations to have children. Thus, women aspire to have limited number of progenies to keep extreme level of genes and in the end they reproduce. While on the other sides, men are not sure about their parenthood because they are uncertain to identify the name of biological father of their offspring. According to Buss, Larsen, Westen, and Semmelroth (1992), further, it has to be said that, for explaining the gender differences in mate likeliness and antagonism, evolutionary theories have been used to describe gender distinctions in jealousy and also according to Alexander, Eals and Silverman (1992), sextyped toy preferences and spatial abilities have been emphasized. Since this world is known as the kingdom of male’s dominance everywhere such as at home and outside of home. They are always motivated to be more energetic and resilient than females. So, to have this type of quality society named that as spatial ability by which males are encourage to do hunting, other types of manly tasks whereas females are confined to take care of their children at home. To present the worldwide phenomenon about identifying females and males Alexander (2003) remarked that females are entitled to play or buy with feminine toys while males are likely to prefer masculine toys. Behind this Alexander gave logics that to choose masculine toys make males more masculine and teach them to do hunting successfully. Also, for him this successful hunting leads towards the visual system of males to be more perfect to track the spatial motions of objects that describe about boys’ desired objects like cars. In contrary, according to Alexander (2003) for females, the society and as a whole the world has decided to forage for food and take care of their offspring. This leads women to be highly demotivated and make them sensitive for grabbing the objects like dolls and warm colors.

Gender identity to recognize Sex Differences

From the very stage of life gender identity started to shape and is not reversible by age 4. Though the accurate reason of gender identity become unidentifiable. Biological, psychological and social variables explicitly motivate the procedure. A toddler’s gender identity got interacted through genetics, prenatal and postnatal hormones which create differences in the brain and the reproductive organs as well as socialization also interact to mold a child’s gender identity. All these differences actually happened though physiological processes and eventually got interact with social-learning influences to form a clear gender identity for children and gradually to the adults.

Psychological and social influences on gender identity

Gender identity is basically originated from chromosomal presence and physical appearance. But this origination of gender identity doesn’t explain that psychological influences got missing. Socialization is one of the salient branches which helps a child to learn norms and roles which has created by society for male and female. Also plays important role in the establishment of a male and female child’s sense of maleness and femaleness. When a female child learns she is a female and raised as a female then that child believes she is a female, whether on the other hands the situation is vice versa for a male. When a male child has been told that he is a male and raised as a male then tat male child firmly believes he is a male. The most noticeable example of notify the gender identity lies when parents trace their children’s sex at first when a child give birth according to their genitals. To handle children, parents prefer to handle their female child less aggressively than their male child. By witnessing this type of activity, children get to understand or develop a crystal-clear realization whether they are female or male child. As well as they become habituated to a strong desire for adopting gender‐appropriate mannerisms and attributes. This kind of realization usually happens with the age of 2 according to many scholars. We can say that biology sets the stage, but children’s attachment and interaction with social environments and surroundings basically identify the nature of gender identity.

Gender roles to identify Men and Women’s Behaviors

Gender roles exhibit both the cultural and personal phenomenon. These roles purposefully determine how males and females do talk, think, get dressed and interact within the sphere of society. These gender schemas are firmly weaved cognitive outlines about the meaning of masculinity and femininity. Also, the several socializing agents for example, educators, peers, dramas, movies, television, music, books and religion teach and reinforce gender roles throughout a child’s whole life time. Most probably parents showed great influence in the time of their children’s young age. After doing the minute research about adults and parents’ mentality towards their children, it can be said that adult consider and treat female and male infants more politely. Parents do this type of behaviors to their young children themselves. There is one tradition about pampering and teaching children for fathers and mothers. For instance, fathers usually teach boys and also give them teaching how to fix and build things, while on the other hands, mothers teach girls how to cook, sew and keep house clean. By observing all these things, children get to know about their parents’ approval when they face gender expectations, therefore embrace the culturally accepted the traditional roles. These conventional lessons are hugely reinforced by the most familiar socializing agents, for example ‘media”. In other ways, it is to be noted that, to learn gender roles always happen within the social spheres and with the values and teachings of parents and society that breed the generations through children.

Theories of gender development

In my earlier discussion I have mentioned that gender is socially learned phenomenon but didn’t add what are the process actually look like. Through our spontaneous interactions, usually socialization happens, therefore this interaction is not as simple as it may look like. To analyze how the socialization occurs through interactions, gender theorists proposed five different theories of gender development.

Psychodynamic

Psychodynamic is the first and foremost theory which has got its origin in the work of Viennese Psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. This psychodynamic theory give emphasis on the role of the family, especially towards the mother specifically, as predominantly in forming one’s gender identity. Generally, all boys and girls form their identity in relation to that of their mother. As we know girls are actually like their mothers and biologically, they consider themselves as connected her. Because girls are like their mothers biologically, they see themselves as connected to her. Because on the other sides, boys are biologically distinct or separate from their mother, they construct their gender identity in contrast to their mother. Boys usually resembles with their father more than mother.

Symbolic interactionism

Communication is the significant branch to identify gender development. Symbolic Interactionism (George Herbert Mead) is the one which basically concentrate towards the issue of communication. Although this branch has been evolved specifically to understand gender development and it has particular credibility. As it has to be said here that, gender has been learned through communication in cultural spheres. To comprehend the main messages of gender transformation, and whole activity of gender development, communication plays the vital role. For example, when teenage girls have been advised to sit straight and also have been told that, if the sit like that then they look like a lady and on the other sides, boys are considered as gentlemen who open doors for others. In this way girls and boys learn how to be gendered and divided themselves into the sections of masculine and feminine through several words (symbols) and have been told by others which we call interaction.

Social learning

Thirdly, the gender development theorist has presented the social learning theory which is based on outward inspirational factors and do argue about children’s way of receiving positive reinforcement that they are inspired to continue their specific attribute. In this way children receive punishment which detect the signals of disapproval and get the order to stop that behavior for which they were getting disapproval. In terms of receiving reward or positive approval in gender development means that children get praise when they are involved in culturally accurate gender displays and punishment. The notion of aggressiveness always matches with the boys and it has been established in society and boys usually get acceptance or people say boys will be boys, because they got unique attitude than girls. But for girl’s aggressiveness is somehow not acceptable and they have been throwing it out to their section of repository while boys have permission to show their aggressiveness in every way. Therefore, we can see boys and girls both have their own ways of learning different meanings of aggressiveness which is relate to their gender development.

Cognitive learning

From the previous theory which is social learning theory we got to know that it is based on external rewards and punishment, but cognitive learning theory is something different because this theory establishes children’s gender development at their own extent. Kohlberg presented that children get to know their gender identity when they are at the age of three but can’t see properly if their age become fixed is not up to the level of five or seven. This model of Kohlberg provides children a set of experienced or spoken rules about attaching to the social or cultural interactions. For doing so they can able to arrange much of their attributes and also of others. Thus, they look for role models to emulate maleness or femaleness as they grow older.

Standpoint

Standpoint is the last but not the least section of understanding gender development according to the gender development theorists. In my earlier discussion I have discussed how important is the role of culture in comprehending gender. Standpoint theory give the vital place to the issue of culture for realizing gender development. Race and class are two important identity makers which is salient to understand the gender in the process of identity formation according to the theorists Collins and Harding. The fact is that, culture and many other sections are organized hierarchically. For instance, some people do have more capital and cultural advantages than others. The most prominent example of showing the dominant culture, we can talk about the culture of supreme cultural aspects of USA. They have well-educated, upper middle-class Caucasian male who usually gets more sociopolitical privileges than the working class African American female. To understand the upper middle-class families, here the theory of standpoint plays one of the vital roles. In this way it’s almost sure that different people get different type of scopes and chances according to the standpoints. They gradually grow for observing and knowing themselves in an accurate and specific ways. For instance, we can see that in middle class family’s children are growing with the concept of attending college, and they also hear from other people about the moving place of them. But this kind of saying is anyhow different than the saying about going to university. So here we can take this as a norm where children perhaps grow up with the thinking of that university. According to the standpoint that exhibits less accessibility of university attendance. But in contrast with this, the children of elite class families will be asked about the league of school where they should attend. In of all these branches, children begin to construct their identity and roles in the society according to the norms, values and scopes donated by the specific standpoint.

Conclusion

Feminists were the ones who actually showed about gender disparity and presented gender as an important aspect to analyze. Thus, the impact of feminism came to the branch of gender studies, especially to the women’s studies. And through their analysis about male and female sex we got to know the differences between them and how they are surviving differently at their home and work place unlike the male members. Gender originated and explored mainly by feminist sociologists. They have portrayed gender as a crucial aspect of research from the year 1970. Feminist sociologists were keeping the utmost oath to make the people understand that to what extent the issue of gender is predominated. According to them, gender is a set of all apparatus such as work, politics, law and other apparatus. Simultaneously, gender inequality has been an issue of rapidly growing apprehension. The word feminism came from the French word feminism in the 19th century. The medical term of feminism has been described as different ways such as feminization of male body or women with masculine traits.

The origin of feminism is derived from USA in the early part of 20th century. Basically, the term feminism alludes towards the notion to conceive the ideology about men and women’s right to appeal as equal human beings from perspectives of politics, and moral issues. This term makes us remember that men and women should be treated as equal where there will be no discrimination. However, as we know feminism is a dynamic term which has been used to run different types of movements since the last two decades and also the most active task of feminism was the notion to establish the vision of equality by implanting it through law and culture. Feminism soon became understood to identify a political viewpoint of someone committed to change the social position of women. “Since then the term has taken on the sense of one who believes that women are subjugated because of their sex and that women deserve at least formal equality in the eyes of the law” [1]. Hence the feminist writers and activists shared their desire to imagine a world where women will be able to identify their potentiality as an individual person. But simultaneously women needed to think or keep in their mind that, they had no legal identity as individuals, literally unidentifiable. Therefore, all feminists agree that women suffer social and or material inequalities simply because of their biological identity and are committed to challenge this but the means by which such challenges might be made are many and various. Feminists agree on the central fact of women’s subordination, most feminists regard feminism’s heterogeneity as a sign of healthy debate. As a liberal feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft remarked, “it is argued that if men and women are educated equally, then it follows that they will get equal access to society” [1]. For feminists, revolution is the only answer to all the injustice by men upon women. In feminism there are some diverse branches and they often don’t agree on the significance of equality. Individual feminists are those who think equality should remain under laws which are entitled to provide respect the people and property of entire human beings just the same of secondary features, for example sex, race and ethnicity. Another branch of feminism that is known as radical feminism, for them equality means socioeconomic equality. So, in this section it’s all about power and wealth that are established by convention through society for erasing the historical advantages of men. These two branches of feminism prove the extreme activities within the movement. Within western society two women called Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft who were the pioneers to issue the rights of women during the 18th century.

They stood against the laws that made women as subordinate entity of men. Another set of historical circumstance created by an organized American feminism which has been originated abolitionist movement during the 1830s. Abolitionism has been actually referred to the radical antislavery movement. After abolitionism there is another familiar section of feminism called Second Wave feminism. Second wave feminism aimed at reform rather than revolution. Furthermore, the rise of logical branches of feminism that advocate the traditional family and orthodox values to unsharpened the historical mission and goals of feminism. Culture actually form the scheme of the essential attributes which are acceptable for men and women, besides this culture also denote about what kind of attributes are between men and women. There is a resilient connection between gender identity and culture, since both are salient and continuously contribute both in the sphere of home and outside of home in the work place and in society. In spite of that there are some significant differences from one culture to another culture. In the area of labor division culture plays the important role, it symbolizes what types of jobs are suitable for men or women. For example, in society we can see the stereotyped ideas about men and women’s job sectors and also for other matters which do show how men are superior to women both at home and outside of home. Women are inferior to men in order to take any decision, they have less autonomy, no resources of their own also women have limited power to manage their actual place in their respective society and as well as at home. In Bangladesh there are some cultural barriers for women such as education and communication barriers, undernourishment and unsafe birth Practices, cultural practices based on religion, the notion of sharing different culture and religious faiths. Gender issue and supposition in a male dominated society.

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[365news]

BREXIT: A Long Road To Independence For UK

BREXIT: A Long Road To Independence For UK       As Britain is confused on BREXIT, let us cast a look back at the past. This article was first published in this column on September 11, 2016. It is relevant today as there is still no headway, almost three years after. Read on: When on June 23, 2016, the majority of British voters decided it was time to dump the European Union, they never expected it would take this long before the process that will ease them out will start. The joy of the announcement of the result in the early morning of June 24 had turned into a nightmare for them now. While some have openly regretted the decision to vote to leg it from the EU, the majority have no idea what is going to happen next because of the foot-dragging of their leaders. For some of them voting out was on sentiments rather than hard facts. Many have confessed if they were as educated as they are now on BREXIT, they probably would have voted otherwise. Going down history lane, we do recall that the BREXITEERS were apprehensive on the eve of the referendum, they, however, woke up to a surprise result in their favour a day after. They were not confident in the ability to deliver Britain from what they described as European bureaucracy. To further compound their situation, the exit polls on the eve of the referendum gave them no chance. The rest is now history. However, the way and manner the campaign for the exit was carried out portrayed the United Kingdom in a mad rush to leave the EU. The impression at this time was that immediately the referendum was won the process of disengaging from the club would begin. It was not to be. The only process that commenced immediately was the exit of David Cameron from 10 Downing Street. It did not take him so long to figure out that he should quit the stage. However, this has been the opposite for the citizens who voted based on the propaganda fed them by politicians on what Britain stands to gain in the event of an EU exit. Just after the shock result was announced, the EU leaders, disappointed by the negative vibes oozing from the BREXITEERS, were quick to remind Britain that there was no turning back. To them, exit means exit and the earlier the process is started the better. EUs Jean-Claude Juncker advised that Britain should not delay its exit from the union. The eagerness of the EU leaders to see Britain start the process of exit is the opposite of the reaction of the BREXIT leaders. They could not hide their joy on the morning of June 24, as they jostled to claim responsibility for the victory. We all remember the powerful speech the outgoing leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Nigel Farage made after the result. He could not help himself when he giggled and announced that June 23 should be declared the Independence Day for Great Britain. You wonder what type of independence? He made himself very clear in his usual garrulous manner that it was independence from the European bureaucrats in Brussels. He said: The EU is failing, the EU is dying. I hope we have knocked the first brick out of the wall. Not too long after, the others, such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove hurriedly came out, bare-chested to claim some of the accolades for the independent UK. While these ones looked dishevelled, supporters put it down to the stress associated with the campaign for the referendum. To keen political observers, it was not anything associated with stress, but a confusion arising from the cluelessness of what to make of the just announced result. And right on the result day, they showed they really have no idea of the magnitude of what they have led Britain into. Johnson said: I want to reassure everybody that, in my view, as a result of this Britain will continue to be a great European power, leading discussions on defence and intelligence sharing and all the work that currently goes on to make our world safer. In the same vein, Gove wanted the benefits of Europe without being part of it. He declared: We can build a new, stronger and more positive relationship with our European neighbours based on free trade and friendly co-operation. Fast forward to the present, the strain and disappointment of the people that voted Leave are becoming visible. The joy and happiness that greeted the results of the referendum have now been replaced by weariness and confusion. The voters have suddenly realised that the dream may take a while to become a reality. Apart from this, there is a feeling of having been taken for a ride by the politicians. There are no more visible BREXIT leaders as they have all settled into new roles in the government. One has the feeling that these politicians who actively supported the Leave campaign did it for personal and selfish reasons. Some observers have described their action as a coup against the government of Cameron. The Theresa Mays, Amber Rudds and the Boris Johnsons are the beneficiaries of the referendum. The confusing part of the post-referendum is the quietness that has pervaded on this subject. The political leaders who were all over the places before the referendum are now shy to discuss when Britain should trigger Article 50 that will start the exit process. The Prime Minister, Theresa May, is not in any hurry to start this process. In fact, she made it clear that the EU exit would not be rushed. In her first visit to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, May reiterated the intention of Britain to quit the union but still maintain the status quo. She declared: So its good that we start from such a strong foundation and a position where both our countries believe in liberal markets and free trade and these should be the principles that guide us in the discussions ahead. Interestingly some of the BREXIT leaders have been trying to pull the wool over the faces of other EU leaders. They are giving the impression that they want an exit without a loss of status in the continent or in the single market. The debate on when to trigger Article 50 is gathering. The prime minister has stated categorically that it would not be done this year. However, the minister in charge of BREXIT, David Davis has suggested it should take place before the end of 2016. His famous line of there will be no attempt to stay in the EU by the back door. No attempt to delay, frustrate or thwart the will of the British people, speech has not in any way allayed the fears of the British people. The question on the lips of everybody is when will British leaders be bold enough to follow through the wish of the people? Observers believe that as it stands now, Theresa May would have wished there was no EU exit burden on her Prime Ministerial neck. She would have loved the job without the headache of BREXIT. For the BREXIT voters, the wait is still long. The independent Great Britain they voted for a few months ago may take longer than envisaged to become a reality. Frustrations may set in, but there is really nothing they can do than wait patiently as the leaders slowly plan or pretend to plan the exit.   Read the full article

[jimmypageonline]

~The “Strawberry Fields Festival” Original Lineup Poster~

Why Did New Brunswick Pull The Plug On An Epic Rock Concert In August 1970?

Long before the Rolling Stones graced the stage at Moncton’s Magnetic Hill Concert Site in 2005, a concert that would ultimately usher the Hub City into a new era of hosting some of the biggest names in music, the city had earned a reputation as being a concert hub. Throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Moncton Coliseum played host to a who’s who of international pop stars, including Tina Turner, Cher, Rod Stewart, Iron Maiden, David Bowie, Huey Lewis & The News, and Shania Twain. Meanwhile during that same timeframe just up Highway 15 in Shediac, that seaside community was making waves, albeit somewhat smaller ones, on the concert scene itself, hosting a select group of pop and rock acts including the Beach Boys, Milli Vanilli and Bryan Adams. Arguably lesser known among many New Brunswickers, however, is the folklore around the Strawberry Fields Festival, which had been scheduled to take place in Barachois, just outside of Shediac, from Aug. 7 through 9, 1970. The lineup for the festival, which was slated to include Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, Leonard Cohen, Sly & The Family Stone, among others, reads like a classic rock dream come true. So just how close was Led Zeppelin to performing in southeast New Brunswick? Closer than you might think. Had it not been for a dose of festival phobia for residents and interference from the provincial government of the day, Strawberry Fields might have established the region as a major concert centre long before it would earn the title nonetheless. To uncover the origins of the Strawberry Fields Festival, and how southeast New Brunswick missed out on such a significant opportunity, one needs to look west to Toronto.

~The Toronto Peace Festival~

In September 1969, Toronto played host to the Toronto Rock & Roll Revival. Headlined by the Doors, the concert was a cultural phenomenon, earning its place in the history books thanks to a little help from John Lennon, who used the occasion to perform without the Beatles for the first time.

Together with his business partner Kenny Walker, John Brower was one of the brains behind the historic festival. Although Brower and Walker’s partnership dissolved shortly after, Brower, a Canadian concert promoter, had struck up a friendship with Lennon, who agreed to come on board for Brower’s Toronto Peace Festival, which was to be held in July 1970.

“Together with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, we announced the Toronto Peace Festival to great fanfare in December 1969 at the city’s Science Centre,” Brower tells us from his home in Los Angeles.

“We had just finished doing the Toronto leg of the War Is Over campaign, which turned out to be the largest exposure of associated billboards, handbills and posters of anywhere in the world.”

Shortly after the announcement of the peace festival, Lennon and Ono, together with Brower and a select group of others, travelled from Toronto to Ottawa via private train. Once in the nation’s capital, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau met with the Beatle and Ono in what was supposed to be a 15-minute meeting.

“They were originally scheduled to meet for 15 minutes and ended up talking for an hour,” Brower says, furthering the notion of Trudeau’s progressively liberal approach.

It wouldn’t take long for external powers to quash Brower’s best-laid plans, however.

“The Toronto Peace Festival became a target for the (American President Richard) Nixon administration, which was terrified of the notion that John Lennon was going to participate in a peace festival on the July 4th weekend. They were sure he was going to lambaste the U.S. government and the Vietnam War, among other things. Although I can’t say anything for certain, I feel relatively confident their hunches were right.”

It wasn’t just the Americans who were concerned about the Toronto Peace Festival, however.

Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government was also opposed to the festival, putting it in an awkward, direct conflict with the federal government under Trudeau, which indirectly supported the gathering.

The Toronto Peace Festival was scheduled for the weekend of July 4, 1970, and within weeks of its unceremonious demise in the first half of 1970, some good luck finally came Brower’s way. The promoter was introduced to William Webster, whose family had assumed ownership of The Globe and Mail in the early ‘50s.

“William indicated to me that he would be willing to underwrite a pop festival if I was looking to put one together. We knew from experience that we weren’t going to get anywhere trying to do a festival in Ontario … because of their concern over John Lennon’s political influence,” Brower says.

It was at this point that his attention turned toward New Brunswick.

~The Strawberry Fields Festival~

“We had some friends that had a beautiful farm in Shediac, so it was suggested that we go there to see if they would be interested in letting us put on the festival there.”

After determining the site, approximately eight acres of land, to be more than ideal to host a music festival, Brower obtained preliminary permits from the local authority, which allowed him to move forward with booking the acts.

“I ended up going on a shopping spree in New York City, booking Led Zeppelin, Eric Burdon and War, Alice Cooper, Ten Years After, and the other artists that were scheduled to play the festival.”

By the time Brower left the city, he had spent upwards of $500,000 — equalling about $3.1 million today.

Festival preparations seemed to be proceeding smoothly. Advertisements and posters decorated newspapers and bulletin boards in Canada and south of the border. “Strawberry Fields” the ad declared, “an international carnival of sound and freedom visit free North America,” accompanied by an image of a strawberry with a dove nipping at its top. The ad touted three days of “love, sun and sound” on “virgin beaches surrounded by wild strawberry bushes.” A scrawled map on the bottom of the poster showed obscure directions from Chicago, New York City, Montreal, Boston and Toronto all heading to Moncton.

Contrary to the notion that the Strawberry Fields Festival took its name from the Beatles’ 1967 song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” Brower says the festival earned its moniker as organizers had heard that Shediac was deemed the strawberry capital of the province.

“I realize there is a certain synchronicity with the Beatles song, but that is not where the festival took its name.”

In an interview with the Telegraph-Journal approximately one month before the show was due to descend upon Barachois, promoters said they anticipated upwards of 60,000 attendees, thanks to an extensive advertising campaign undertaken in both Canada and the United States.

Jerrold Kushnick, a New York-based attorney for the festival, told the paper that co-operation with the provincial government had been “satisfying,” and noted the Barachois site had been chosen specifically because of the beach facilities and everything the area had to offer. He shared that approximately 100 washroom facilities would be brought to the festival site, and would be complemented by food and medical facilities.

It didn’t take long for things to begin falling apart for Brower and his team, however. As news of the festival spread like wildfire throughout Canada and the U.S., estimates on concert attendance ticked higher and higher, raising concern at both the municipal and provincial levels.

An informal opinion poll undertaken by local media showed residents were concerned that a “major invasion” of “young rock fans” could cause trouble for the community. Shediac business owners talked about closing up shop for the duration of the festival.

“Shediac depends on tourism as a great part of its livelihood,” an unnamed official with the local police force said at the time. “Stores are geared to service…a population of 15,000. They couldn’t possibly handle a crowd of 50,000. That’s big city stuff.”

Even Shediac’s “Lobster Queen” at the time, Violette Richard, chimed in on the matter, saying, “Personally, I think it is the worst thing that could happen here. Everyone is afraid of it.”

As fear and misunderstanding over the festival continued to spread, with many people associating big rock concerts with riots, drugs and vandalism and fearing the “Picture Province’s” reputation could be ruined, it didn’t take long for the provincial government under Premier Louis J. Robichaud to step in.

The government said that on June 15, the promoters of the show were given a “travelling show licence,” which would have been sufficient had they not been selling tickets.

After determining the show and its $15 ticket would instead fall under the Provincial Amusement Act and be subject to taxes, members of the provincial government met to discuss the festival’s future, ultimately determining the show would not go on in Barachois. This was just weeks before the concert was scheduled to take place.

Robichaud said the decision was based on the government’s concern that the promoters would be unable to meet the necessary standards for security, hygiene, food and water.

“It is the opinion of the government that the promoters cannot guarantee the protection of the public interest,” stated a press release from the premier’s office.

Moncton resident Denis Marquette was a 15-year-old teen living in Shediac in the summer of 1970. Although he and a group of friends had hoped to find temporary work with the festival, he recalls the sense of disappointment that the festival’s cancellation had upon area music fans.

“Woodstock had taken place in the U.S. the year before,” Marquette says. “A lot of people saw Strawberry Fields as our chance to join the history books, so to speak.”

While a palpable sense of relief permeated some parts of the community, not everyone was pleased with the government’s decision. In Moncton, up to 500 protesters took to the streets, marching to City Hall demanding the decision to cancel the festival be reversed. In Saint John, police questioned two teens after the burning of a New Brunswick flag was done to protest the government’s decision to axe the festival.

~The music moves back West~

With a half-million dollars tied up in entertainment and nowhere to put on a show, Brower and his team looked west to Ontario again. While the move might have seemed pointless on the surface, given the opposition that faced the Toronto Peace Festival, Brower says they had a bit of an ace up their sleeves.

“This is where the story takes on an interesting political twist,” Brower says. “There was an RCMP liaison with ties to the Prime Minister’s office that also had close ties to the hippy community in Toronto. He never tried to hide his position from anyone, and had been tasked with watching for American draft dodgers. Anyway, he was good a friend of ours and, when Strawberry Fields was axed in New Brunswick, had advised with us to meet with a specific attorney who would be able to counsel us on how to make the festival happen in Ontario.”

He says that, on the advice of their new attorney, he and his team were told to rent Mosport Park, located just east of Toronto, for the weekend in question and to bill the event as a motorcycle race with “added entertainment.”

“Of course, there was no description of what the ‘added entertainment’ would entail,” Brower says with a laugh.

With that, the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race was confirmed to take place on Aug. 7, 8, and 9, 1970. While specific details on the entertainment would entail remained intentionally vague in Canada, Brower says advertising in the U.S. showed the acts that had been slated to perform in New Brunswick would be appearing in concert.

“It took a few weeks for the connection to be made, but eventually, Ontario’s attorney general went to court, alleging the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race was a fraud, because in the U.S., we were promoting all of the acts that were going to appear. The Ontario government was determined to stop the festival in its tracks,” Brower says.

The case was eventually brought to Ontario Supreme Court, with the provincial government charging that Durham County, the jurisdiction where the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race was to be held, could not provide the necessary medical services for the 150,000-plus people they anticipated would attend the festival.

The Ontario government was dealt a serious setback when it was revealed that a Montreal-based company, one that was allegedly formed specifically for the purpose of signing the lease at Mosport Park, was putting on the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race.

“Our lawyers knew this was the case. They intentionally let the Ontario government waste weeks of time to get the matter to court, only to find out they would have to move the case to the Supreme Court of Canada,” Brower says.

And so, just two days before the festival was set to begin, amid allegations from the Ontario attorney general that the promoters were flagrantly manipulating the law, the case was heard before the Supreme Court of Canada.

“At this point, there were already 30,000 people gathered at Mosport Park in anticipation of the festival. The Ontario attorney general brought the same argument to the Supreme Court: there was no way the festival site was equipped to handle the necessary medical facilities required to accommodate the anticipated crowds.”

Brower says what happened next took even him by surprise.

“One of our lawyers hauled a letter out of his pocket from the Addiction Research Foundation, who confirmed they had a 150-bed field hospital, complete with necessary medical facilities, already established on an airfield adjacent to Mosport Park. The judge looked at the attorney general and said that if the availability of medical facilities was the basis of wanting to have the festival shut down, there was, in his opinion, no reason for the festival to be stopped.”

~‘You had to be there’~

The green light given to the festival caught virtually everyone off guard. The province of Ontario attempted to close the border, and enacted a requirement that all those attending the festival have $50 in cash on them. Although thousands were allegedly refused admission to Canada, some concert patrons successfully passed through customs by stating they were going camping at Algonquin Park.

Brower recalls that the owner of Mosport Park held food rights to the festival, but had not anticipated it was going to happen and had not purchased supplies necessary to feed the immense crowds.

“If you go on YouTube, there is footage of helicopters dropping packages of bread, bologna and cheese for the concert goers. That’s all people ate for three days,” Brower says, laughing. “There was no other way to get food in there; the roads leading into the park were absolutely jammed.”

While the show went on for the bulk of the performers who had originally signed on to perform when the festival was due to take place in New Brunswick, Brower notes a number of acts, including Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen and Buffy St. Marie did not end up performing at Mosport Park.

“The bulk of the artists that didn’t end up performing had been staying current with the legal developments around the festival. By the time we received the green light to go ahead with the festival, it was just too late to make the necessary arrangements to get to Toronto.”

Toronto resident Sean Gadon was one of those in attendance at Mosport Park for the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race for those three nights in August 1970. An ardent music fan that had already seen the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Miles Davis and others perform in Canada’s biggest city, he simply knew there was no way he could pass up taking the festival in.

“I was 16 years old at the time. My friends and I heard about the festival on FM radio the night before it was to begin. If it hadn’t have been for that, I don’t know that we would have known about the festival at all as there really wasn’t much advertising being done in Ontario,” Gadon says, adding he and his friends hitchhiked to the festival with only the clothes on their backs.

Although the Ontario Provincial Police expectedly issued a number of citations for various infractions during the course of the festival, Gadon insists the Woodstock spirit of peace and love dominated the overall feeling of the Strawberry Cup Trophy Race.

“It may sound ironic or cliché, but it was a transcendent few days, a real coming of age kind of event. The spirit of peace and love, combined with the music instilled a real sense of community among all who attended. It was one of those ‘you had to be there’ kind of moments, and I am so glad that I was.”

- Ken Kelly

[thecoroutfitters]

The liberal left loves to act as if they own the moral high ground. They regularly look down their noses at those of us who call ourselves conservative, even doing the same for those who might be considered moderate.

In the left’s way of looking at things, you’re only a “good person” if you say everything they say you should say, believe everything that they say you should believe and support all the causes they say you should support.

This is somewhat humorous in its way, as it comes from the same group that suggests that there is no God, as the source of morality and moral judgment. In my personal opinion, without God, any god, there is no ultimate arbitrator of what is good and evil; but rather, society decides for itself what is good and what is evil.

This means that morality is fluid and changes with every passing fad. Whatever society decides is moral, is moral, and whatever society decides is immoral, becomes immoral. The danger in that, is that society can change its fickle mind at any time, taking what is good and deciding it is bad, while declaring that the bad has become good.

This happened in Germany, during the last century. Adolph Hitler decided that a number of people were so morally reprehensible, that they should be destroyed. He specifically went after the Jews, but his bloodthirstiness didn’t end there. He also went after blacks, homosexuals, gypsies, the mentally retarded and anyone with any sort of physical defect. Basically, he decided to kill off everyone who didn’t match his image of the perfect Aryan man.

In this, we see a perfect example of what happens when there is no firm basis for morality. While it is supposedly society who decides what is moral in such a case, the reality is that a very small group of “elites” makes that decision, while the rest of society is forced to go along with it.

How do they force people to go along with their definition of morality? Mostly by bullying them in the media. The left has developed the art of name calling to the point where they can get just about anyone to dance to their tune, but it works best with politicians and other high-profile people.

In our society, the elite who are making such decisions are the PC police. This group, which consists of the left-leaning mainstream media, academia, liberal politicians and Hollywood, has taken it upon themselves to be the ultimate arbitrators of what is right and wrong, declaring their decisions with all the authority of Moses, descending the mount with the tablets of stone.

Yet, their pronouncements aren’t carved on stone, nor were they written by the hand of God. Rather, they are blasted forth on television and in the print media. This actually serves their needs considerably better, as stone is just too permanent for their liking. They’d rather have something that they can conveniently forget, when they decide that what they had already said, just isn’t going to work today.

Where Comes the Morality From?

It actually has a number of roots, prime amongst them is a feeling of guilt. The attempt to eliminate the need for forgiveness, by eliminating God, is shown to be a failure by every action that they take.

It is easy for people who feel constant guilt to see a need to expunge themselves of that guilt. Since they refuse to accept their guilt, even while recognizing the feeling of guilt, they have collectively decided that it must be the society that spawned them which is at guilt, hence their hatred for America and all things associated with America’s greatness.

The list of things that the progressive liberal left hates is long. Let it suffice to mention a few key ones:

First of all, they hate financial and material prosperity, while wanting it all the time. Yet it is worthy of hate, because there is nothing that defines America as well as our wealth. It is American wealth which is helping to lift other countries out of poverty.

Then there is God Himself and those who represent Him. They hate those, because they stand as constant reminders that the liberal elite aren’t the gods they make themselves out to be; nor is their “morality” a true morality.

I’d also say that they hate American history, as it is the story of success. When they look at the rest of the world, and see that not everyone has succeeded, they feel a sense of shame; shame brought about by being better off than others.

Hating anyone who is white, especially men and even more especially conservatives goes hand in hand with hating American history, for no other reason that it has been the Caucasians in the world, both in Europe and in the West, who have made the most of the progress in the sciences, invention, and free market capitalism.

Finally, I’d say that they hate the military, because of a warped idea that our military prevents the rest of the world from being as successful as we are. The left loves to talk about America’s imperial ambitions, even though America is the only country in history, who has given freedom back to people who we have conquered.

When we understand this, it’s easy to see why they have such a strong desire to “make things right” for those who don’t fully share the advantages of being American.

Of course, while the left has decided that they need to help these people in order to expunge their feelings of guilt, they don’t feel so guilty as to be willing to sacrifice themselves. Rather, they seek ways of taking from others, in order to do so. After all, they’re the elite, they shouldn’t have to make that sort of sacrifice themselves.

Hence, the liberal idea that they have a “right” to control politics and the government. It is only through the legality of using the government, that they can steal from the productive in our society, and use that money as an offering to those who have been selected as the objects of their largess.

In turn, this requires keeping the disadvantaged in their place. They can’t allow the disadvantaged to become independent, or they will lose the salve for their bruised and guilty consciences. So they work to maintain racial and class warfare, perpetuating discrimination of all kinds.

As you can see, this is all a fragile house of cards. All it would take is the slightest puff of wind, and it would all come crashing down. Which explains why the left tries so hard to prevent anyone else from having a voice.

If they can chant and yell loud enough to drown out the voices from the right, it makes it easier for their people to maintain the faith. That’s not so much for the leaders, but for the masses that they have following them.

One of the advantages to the left’s system of governing is that they end up with a lot of people beholden to them. Those people become followers, if for no other reason than to keep getting free handouts. It is those people, whose faith the left has to hold onto, simply because they are the ones who vote the left’s candidates into office.

The former president and his party blew it on that one. They were so sure that the people on the left would stay there, following his politics of hate and division, that they didn’t pay attention to what was happening. They forgot that they had to keep paying the piper, for the piper to keep playing.

At the same time, the silent majority rose up, mostly in response to the oppression of the PC police. The end was predictable, although few predicted it. Donald Trump, the long-shot candidate in the outside lane, ran the race and came in first, winning the prize.

Video first seen on DONALD TRUMP SPEECHES & PRESS CONFERENCE. 

So, who owns the moral high ground now? Sadly, the left still thinks they do. They haven’t read the tea leaves and seen that things have changed. They don’t recognize that America has turned the corner and that they have lost both their power and their supposed moral high ground.

They’re living in an echo chamber, telling each other that they won, and they are afraid to look at reality.

This article has been written by Bill White for Survivopedia. 

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