#like. most of the laws in the US people here and internationally complain about? we don’t fucking vote on them!!!

[monsterhugger]

sometimes I feel like non-Americans expect us to like. stage a military coup and enact an entirely new system of government

#like i truly wonder what some people expect us to do about. gestures vaguely at everything #and that’s honestly the only conclusion i can come to #yeah it would be awesome to have a president that’s not funding a genocide. it’s not going to happen though #short of said military coup #because the two-party system is a joke and the only real options are bad and slightly less bad #like. most of the laws in the US people here and internationally complain about? we don’t fucking vote on them!!! #we literally do not have a say in them!!! #personal responsibility is a fucking lie and if you believe the average American can change dogshit US policy #you have bought into US propaganda lmao #‘you can call your reps’ do you think they’re going to listen. be serious. #they still have private funding and a voter base of millions that aren’t calling them because they wouldn’t even think to #because they don’t know what’s going on because political awareness here is shit. or they don’t care

[sidbridgecomedy]

Comedy and Free Speech

If there's a constant in the comedy world, it's people complaining about being censored. Since I'm a comic by night and a corporate communicator by day with a double-degree in Communications and English, I think I can shed some light on this one.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm not an attorney or a constitutional law scholar. If any of my readers are and find any of this information to be incorrect, please let me know and I will edit this article appropriately).

There are really two separate issues here: Your freedom of speech and a show runner's right to protect his or her business.

Let's start with the constitutional stuff.

Here's the First Amendment's exact wording: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What does that mean? It means that the government cannot arrest you because you said something - even something about how crappy the government is. (By the way, remember this is from the Constitution of the United States of America. Every other country is different, so if you're traveling internationally, don't bust out your hilarious "Doesn't the Government of Saudi Arabia SUCK?!" jokes).

The First Amendment is a bit murky - you can still get arrested for some pretty specific language that would incite people to commit murder or cause a massive disturbance. You can also get in big trouble for compromising national security by leaking classified information.

Those things aside, comedians have enjoyed a lot of protection under free speech laws. You really have Lenny Bruce and George Carlin to thank for that. Bruce actually went to prison on obscenity charges for his stand-up and was posthumously pardoned.

George Carlin got arrested for his historic "Seven words you can't say on television" bit and the case was quickly dismissed by a sympathetic judge, setting a precedent that was so far reaching, it was actually part of the Communication Law curriculum I had to learn in college. Which is awesome.

Carlin and Bruce basically set a bar for profanity among comedians that has allowed us to say just about whatever the hell we want on stage for decades. If you've made a dick joke, you should, at some point, cup your hands together in prayer after you leave stage and thank them both profusely.

Some of you are probably thinking, "If that's the case, why do I keep getting censored?!"

The answer is you're not getting censored. You're getting fired. You're getting rejected. You're getting told when you suck. That leads us to the second side of this discussion:

You're free to say it, but the audience and the person who booked you don't have to like it or allow it on their stage.

The First Amendment only protects you from getting arrested. Comedy club owners are well-within their rights to pull your ass off the stage and deny stage time to people who use obscene material.

The comedy club isn't the government. It's a business and that business is allowed to make decisions on how to best serve its customers.

This doesn't just apply to bad words, by the way - if the club owner hates the word "moist", he can totally tell you not to use it and deny you stage time if you refuse.

On the flip side, if the club owner loves it raunchy, he has a right to allow the raunchiest, most foul garbage to spew from his stage and you can't call the cops because you were offended by "Aristocrats Night."

I didn't go digging for precedents, but I can't think of a case off the top of my head where a comedian said something offensive, got fired, then successfully sued.

Like any job, accepting stage time at a comedy club means accepting an implied contract. Even on an open mic show, comics are either briefed on the rules or the rules are posted on the wall. Going on stage means agreeing to those rules. The same way your job doesn't allow you to wear jeans, the club doesn't allow you to break those rules. And the same way an obstinate refusal to wear anything but jeans will get you FIRED, an obstinate refusal to avoid a word or topic in your material will cost you your stage time.

There's also the consideration of the audience.

A lot of audiences love clean shows. Some love dirty shows. The more risky your material, the more polarizing it can be. The opinions of the audience shouldn't dictate your material, but you do need to be aware and able to adapt to any situation you're in.

If there's one threat to the vast protections afforded to Americans by the First Amendment, it's over edgy comics pissing off audiences to the point of activism. I'm not saying it's fair, but the wrong joke in front of the wrong people while the wrong party controls the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the White House could lead to limits on free speech, and that's bad.

I'm not saying you can't take risks, but think before you rock the boat.

Additionally, with our current climate of social media warriors attacking any business who pisses them off, one upset audience member is all it takes to cause huge nightmares for a comedy club. If the club chooses to mitigate that risk by prohibiting a few words or topics, that's their choice. You can respect it or you can choose not to perform there.

In summary, you have a legal right to free speech that is potentially limited by inciting hate/murder talk. Everything else is fair game in the USA, including criticizing the people who uphold the First Amendment. The comedy club, however, has a right to protect its business and to deny stage time to anyone who doesn't meet their defined requirements.

So what's the best way to beat back the scourge of censorship by evil comedy club gatekeepers (like me)?

BE FUNNY.

If you can actually write funny jokes while still working within the restrictions of the house, you will get more time. Once you've paid your dues, show runners get a lot less restrictive. Headliners can say almost anything they want to on stage. Want the same freedom? Get good at comedy.

And if you think I'm being an unrealistic jerk when I say that, it's not just me talking. You know who else started out clean? George Carlin. Go on Youtube and look up his "Al Sleet the Hippy Dippy Weatherman" routine. He made it as a clean comic first before he started pushing the boundaries. Once he was already well known, it was a lot harder for the people in charge to deny him his pulpit.

Now get out there and enjoy your freedom.

[profitcord71]

Will Writing - Exactly How To Select A Professional Firm

Legalzoom Online Will Evaluation

Content

If You Don'T Wish To Utilize A Solicitor

Indication Your Will In Front Of Witnesses.

To Establish Who Will Take Care Of Your Minor Kid

Key Records To Have Along With Your Last Will And Testament.

When Should You Obtain Legal Advice To Prepare Your Will?

Making Older Individuals'S Voices Heard.

Full An Estate Tax Type.

Utilizing A Lawyer To Compose Your Will

What Is Probate?

What To Expect From Your Solicitor

If You Don'T Intend To Use A Solicitor

You might think that the generated paper shows your desires, however you would not recognize if there was a much better method due to the fact that you have no solicitor leading you. Further, if points fail, customers won't necessarily have the ability to complain to the Lawful Ombudsman or any one of the various other regulators if they depend on membership of the SWW or IPWW alone. Whilst the SWW as well as IPWW have a grievances service, they have no real comparable power to claim, the Legal Ombudsman, SRA, CILEX or ACTION. By contrast, a qualified lawyer such as a Solicitor or Chartered Legal Executive should follow a stringent specialist Standard procedure and also can be sanctioned both by the Ombudsman and also by their corresponding Regulatory authorities.

You can learn about the recommended minimum contribution quantity, and details of lawyers that can assist on the Will Aid website. Every November, participating solicitors will create a basic will at no cost in return for a contribution to Will Help. Prior to making a decision on who to make use of, it's constantly suggested to get in touch with a couple of neighborhood solicitors to discover just how much they bill. The fees for creating a will vary between lawyers and also depend on the intricacy of the will. However, will-writing firms are not controlled by the Legislation Culture so there are couple of safeguards if things go wrong.

The requirements for a valid will are much less strict for service employees on active service. If somebody makes a will yet it is not legitimately valid, on their death their estate will be shared out under particular rules, not according to the dreams shared in the will. They will need to accumulate with each other all the possessions of the estate, deal with all the documentation and also pay all the financial obligations, taxes, funeral service and also administration expenses out of money in the estate. Executors are the people who will be accountable for carrying out your wishes and for figuring out the estate.

Possibly you're not sure of your dreams-- or don't know what the best alternatives to take may be to safeguard your estate for the future generation. When this occurs a person's assets are dispersed according to a collection of guidelines called Intestacy Rules. This is a set legal order which decides where your money goes-- and the outcome might not mirror your desires. Many individuals recognize exactly how crucial it is to have a will in position-- yet an alarming number don't yet have one in place, as well as haven't place their desires down in writing. Mostly individuals put it off since they see it as something to deal with when they are older, or they know they require to sort it out however then forget it.

Who should keep the original Will UK?

1. Leave it with a solicitor. If a solicitor writes your will, they will usually store the original free of charge and give you a copy – but ask them to make sure. Most solicitors will also store a will they didn't write, but there will probably be a fee.

Release your brand name and increase exposure to hundreds of wills as well as probate professionals daily by protecting an advertising and marketing room on the Today's Wills & Probate web site and once a week newsletter. Established in 2014, Today's Wills & Probate is the leading news magazine for wills and probate experts. We offer comprehensive training, technical support, as well as literature/resources to our accredited members, and offer fully detailed estate planning services. Our Consultants are available free of charge on the internet consultations as well as telephone consultations, to use you suggestions on all your estate planning requirements, whilst you stay in the security and comfort of your very own home. We additionally have 2 workplaces in Hellesdon, Norwich as well as St Ives, Cambridgeshire and are using Face-to-face appointments in accordance with Government standards on social distancing.

Indication Your Will In Front Of Witnesses.

I'm single or single without children.Even if you lived with your companion, your making it through companion is not qualified to anything.

I'm single or solitary with children.Even if you dealt with your companion, your enduring partner does not inherit anything.

plenty of software supplies a certain degree of legal protection for married or civil-partnered couples, however this protection doesn't apply to cohabiting pairs-- also if you've been together for 20 years as well as have 3 kids.

The rules are complex though, so legal recommendations deserves having, and things vary discreetly across the UK nations.

Actually, there are just limited civil liberties for cohabiting companions.

If you're not married or in a civil collaboration, also if you split up, there is generally no lawful commitment to merge your assets and also divide them.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic and also the fact some individuals need to 'protect', the Federal government has actually introduced regulation enabling the observing of wills to be done using video clip.

If you have no making it through blood relatives, your estate will go to the Crown.

If it's less than ₤ 2million, consider looking in other places, as you may discover it tough to get payment from companies supplying much less than this should points go wrong. A lot of lawyers save wills for free if you made the will with them.

To Identify Who Will Take Care Of Your Minor Kid

Your will writing firm might maintain your details on data and advise you when it's time to review your will. It's a great concept to assess your will often to guarantee that it stands and still reflects your dreams. If you leave an old will as well as don't upgrade it you might locate that it does not abide by current laws and also might leave your estate available to Intestacy Law.

Solicitors operate in a controlled market, which indicates that you have much more rights as a customer need to something fail with your Will. Typically, you can get in touch with the Legal Ombudsman to whine if you have actually talked with the solicitor directly and also your issues aren't attended to. Many Will-writing services are covered by the Customer Civil Liberty Act 2015, yet it deserves examining as policies can vary from business to firm. Some also come from main organisations that can action in to assist you out if you're not delighted with the procedure.

Can I leave my wife out of my will UK?

Under UK law you have a lot of freedom in your Will to leave your Estate to whoever you like. However, you need to be aware that legally you have to provide reasonable support to all people who are financially dependent on you (e.g. spouse, children etc.) and anyone you maintained / supported financially.

Secret Documents To Have Together With Your Last Will As Well As Testimony.

Complete the form below to find out more concerning any of our solutions. By giving away today, you might aid us respond to much more phones call to our recommendations line, project harder for older people's rights and also fair therapy as well as provide normal relationship calls to people who are frantically lonesome. If you have children as well as your spouse or companion is deceased your youngsters will acquire every little thing, split equally between them.

The new will should start with a provision specifying that it withdraws all previous wills and also codicils. Withdrawing a will implies that the will is no longer legally legitimate. You can also ask the firm to get in touch with lawyers in the area where the individual lived to ask if they hold a will. The individual that has actually passed away, or their solicitor, may have registered their will with a commercial organisation such as Certainty () as well as, after the person's death, you can spend for a search of the wills signed up on the firm's database.

April King's team of attorneys is led by Paul King, a complete member of the Culture of Trusts as well as Estates Practitioners. ACTION is the worldwide expert association for practitioners that specialise in family members inheritance and succession preparation. Full ACTION participants like Paul are internationally acknowledged as professionals in their area, with proven credentials and experience. In addition, even if the service states that the Will is inspected by a certified person later on, that person can not correctly check the paper suits your conditions since there is no interview or notes to compare to!

Use our rapid online service and also established your own will within 20 mins. Alternative 1-- You can look our directory of will writing experts, which you can discover right here. from a lawyer in case of a complicated scenario, such as multiple separations, abroad investments, organization properties or large estates.

When Should You Obtain Lawful Advice To Prepare Your Will?

Will-writing solutions start at around ₤ 80, and also will increase to a few hundred extra pounds, depending on the intricacy of your estate, as well as the competence of the firm. When writing a will, many people select to take the DIY course rather than seek professional aid.

Can my husband throw me out of our house UK?

In short, then you cannot simply kick your husband out of the house. Instead, you will need to apply for your own occupation order from the court, which will determine who can occupy the property.

Along with becoming part of an acknowledged network of professionals, becoming a member of the IPW can help your business attract attention versus competitors, demonstrating the high requirement of your solutions. Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update 22/09/ In accordance with the current Federal government suggestions, we have actually returned to functioning from residence. Our solutions continue to be uninterrupted and also our functioning hrs are customarily. This is excellent for any individual that doesn't have an e-mail address or would simply choose to speak to an expert. In this circumstance, your partner would additionally inherit 100% of your ₤ 325,000 tax obligation allowance, giving them an overall allowance of ₤ 650,000.

Making a Will enables you to define where your properties must go on your death. You can attend to liked ones and also in doing so, show that you care. Furthermore, Wills can cover issues such as philanthropic gifts, guardianship for small youngsters, care for pet dogs and whether the testator wishes to be hidden or cremated. Every Will is backed-up with ₤ 2m of specialist indemnity insurance.

If you are in any uncertainty regarding whether or not you ought to make a will, you need to consult a solicitor or a Citizens Advice neighborhood office that can provide you lists of solicitors. Regardless of whether you choose ahome check out, telephone orvideo chatappointment, the same team of pleasant, skilled legal professionals will direct you through the intricacies of writing your Will.

This is due to the fact that it is followed up by on-going area guidance to improve knowledge every step of the means. Distinctively, we are the only network to evaluate and inspect every Will that is written. Finally, we are the only Will writing company to take duty for ALL suggestions provided. An extremely sincere organization as well as have actually currently made myself reassured that my family is secured.

Your partner might after that leave an estate as much as the value of ₤ 650,000 without needing to pay any type of estate tax. The estate tax rate for 2019/20 is ₤ 325,000-- this is additionally known as the nil price band. If your estate is worth greater than ₤ 325,000, you will typically have to pay 40% on whatever over the zero price band. Nonetheless, if you're married or in a civil partnership and also your companion is domiciled in the UK, anything you delegate your partner will be free of tax, regardless of the size of your estate.

What is better a will or a trust?

Unlike a will, a living trust passes property outside of probate court. There are no court or attorney fees after the trust is established. Your property can be passed immediately and directly to your named beneficiaries. Trusts tend to be more expensive than wills to create and maintain.

The most well-recognised organisations are the Institute of Expert Willwriters and also the Culture of Will Writers. It's also worth inspecting if they're certified by the Trading Specification Institute Customer Codes Authorization Plan. Ultimately, you ought to ask the Will-writing business where their indemnity cover starts.

If you as well as a spouse or partner want substantively the exact same wills - called mirror wills - you'll generally obtain a discount rate for writing both at once. Before writing your will, it deserves recognizing all the possessions you have, along with any type of emotional products you wish to leave to enjoyed ones.

If you do not feel great writing a will online, among our specialists would certainly enjoy to make your will over the phone. We can then get it printed, bound and also sent to you in the blog post. After writing a will and getting it inspected by our specialists, you require to print and authorize it before 2 witnesses to make it lawfully binding. You can do it from the comfort of your very own home in simply 15 minutes. Create a will online in as little as 15 minutes and also take care of what actually matters.

You ought to also work out plans for your kids's care, and take into consideration whether you would love to leave details guidelines for your funeral. If you're intending to write a will, you can choose whether to do it yourself or seek aid from a professional. The right alternative for you will depend upon exactly how complex your affairs are, as well as how much help you're most likely to require. We discuss your options for doing-it-yourself, making use of a solicitor, or hiring a will-writing service below.

What happens if the witness to your will Dies UK?

That said, the death of a witness does not necessarily invalidate a will. At the outset of probate proceedings, if the witnesses have not survived, the executor will be required to produce proof that the original witness signatures were valid, as well as proof of the witnesses' deaths.

The Will Associates is just one of the UK's largest estate planning companies, being experts in Wills, Depends On, Powers of Attorney as well as Probate. We have hundreds of qualified professionals and head office team and we have actually aided over 7,000 individuals protect in excess of ₤ 1.5 BN in properties. If you are named in someone else's will as an administrator, you may need to look for probate to ensure that you can take care of their estate. There are rigorous time limits for testing a will and if you intend to test a will, you must look for legal advice immediately.

#Making a will #Will writing services #How to make a will #Fixed Fee Will Writing #Online Will Writing #Will Aid #Will Writing Specialist #will template #how to write a simple will #will writing services near me #legal will #online will #family will #simple will #how to end a will

[schoe1995]

Solo Traveling

I’ll first start off by saying and acknowledging that I do come from a well household. My mom runs her own dry cleaners and my dad works at a hospital for computer programming. Wasn’t like that always. In elementary school, I had classmates leave school to go on vacation. Super jealous that they went because I hated being in school 🤣🤣🤣 so the few times I could go on vacation was during like the major breaks or holidays. As I got older and family tensions increased, i began traveling with other people. Let’s just say after a series of not knowing other people’s personalities, cliques, and plus ones....I called it quits with group traveling. It’s a huge part of why my extroverted personality changed to more of an introvert/ extrovert. Since I have my own money, why not travel by myself.

I’ll talk about the cons of traveling solo first.

It can be very expensive: even if you do go with a group...be prepared to shell out a couple of dollars depending on where your going, staying, and activities

Have to be more aware of the surroundings: there has been a couple of times I’ve been exhausted because I was trying to be more aware of what’s going on. I have to watch my own back without relaying on somebody.

It can be scary: not going to lie...the day of trips I get really bad anxiety that I kinda want to throw up. Scratch that, I have thrown up. For example, when I went to D.C, I wasn’t worried about Lyft or Uber because my big bro was picking me up. However other airports....I have no idea where lyft or Uber would pick me up. Certain airports like O’Hare Chicago airport has two levels. One is for traditional friend/ family pick up. The other level is for rideshares. Ever since that mess I decided to look up airports ahead of time and look at maps for where to find the designated area. Helps a lot of stress out.

Benefits of solo traveling

Lollllll there wasn’t a whole lot of cons. Granted not everyone is going to have the same experience as me. So this is all from my personal experience.

Planning can be fun: When you travel alone, YOU are in charge of everything. I’m every pop culture orientated so I’m looking for the best spots for photos, food, shopping, etc. it’s the millennial (probably spelled it wrong) in me.

Moving at my own pace: so this was the best part for me. I’m a huge theme park junky! When I went to Orlando with my parents back in 2017 we did Disney World all in one day. Yes it can be possible to visit all 4 parks in one day😂 but that trip in general had the most arguments I had with my mom. She basically complained about all the walking we had to do. Also couldn’t watch fireworks. Everything was so rushed that back in 2019, I did a redo Disney World trip. Oh! I’ll definitely be doing a multi part blog for that. So when you travel by yourself you don’t have to deal with “I don’t want to do this!” “Why we going here?” Less arguments...PERIODT

Moving at your own time: this kinda goes with your own pace. I’m a huge HUGE be on time person. One of my sayings is “If your early, ya on time. If your on time, ya late. If your late...don’t bother showing up”. It’s one of my biggest pet peeves when people aren’t on time. Idk if it’s just Asians but Asian people AINT NEVER ON TIME FOR ANYTHING! So you have free reign with time.

Flexibility: This was one of the things I found super awesome when it came to solo trips. My schedule to travel had so much flexibility. And since I was working in retail, I could do what I want...per say. If my days weren’t approved I’d still go on this trip🤣 but I found traveling during the off season for holidays or non busy or non important seasons were a lot cheaper. That’s what I kinda wanted to make up for; not being able to travel when I was younger and leaving school to go 🤣 now that I can...✌️

No cliques: personality wise, I describe myself as a walking tv show. So picture every Disney show, Nickelodeon, and VH1 reality shows all in one person. I really don’t fit into a mold so I call it an outsider habit. I thought I’d get super lonely when traveling alone but oddly...I’m more comfortable with it. There is this no judgement zone when traveling alone. When I went to Universal Studio with my parents, it was “why do you want to buy this” or “how old are you?” First of all...you can never be too old of anything:) This might be a con for others, so it all depends🤷‍♂️ besides with technology I’m able to FaceTime, Live Stream, record things I want others to see. Ha! This is what this blog is for!

In no way shape or form am I throwing shade to group trips. I call those experiences that helped shape my travel knowledge. I’m always grateful for that. But the couple solo travel tips I’ll give is this.

Research! I can’t stress this enough. Knowing where you are going can save so much hassle. If your traveling internationally know where your country embassy is just in case. Second, the culture of the city or country. Being knowledgeable can help avoid any cultural ignorance, stereotypes.

Flights: alright flights can be very touchy subject. I usually find great deals with Southwest when they offer sales. Sometimes buying two - one way tickets is cheaper than round trip. They also offer two free checked bags, one carry one, and one personal items. If Southwest is a little out of your budget, don’t worry! Other airlines have great prices. I use Google Flights.

Train: if your destination is a couple hours away, I’d suggest taking Amtrak. Believe it or not Amtrak depending on what city you go too have awesome deals. If you follow them on Instagram they have beautiful photos of scenic railways. When I was younger I had a huge obsession with trains. I had every train from Thomas The Tank Engine. 😂 anyways, trains also have dining cars, and sleeping cars. Some have observation decks so you can do a 360* of the surroundings

Car: I put this last for transportation. Believe it or not, traveling by car may sound cost efficient but it’s really not. Just from my personal experience from driving to Branson Missouri, Tennessee, Chicago. There is gas you have to pay and hotels can charge a ridiculous amount for overnight parking x the amount of nights your staying. WHEW CHILEEEE THE MESS!

Hotels & location: This is the boujee side of me. I like to be comfortable after a day of riding rides or exploring. Just being able to act like this is my home for the time being. I usually use Bookings.com, Trivago.com, etc. to find the best one. Use filters if you need to find exactly what you need. When I travel to concerts, I try finding hotels close to the venue. That way I’m not paying extra for lyft, Uber, or taxis. BTW, don’t ever take taxis after concerts. Such a rip off...idk if there is a law that prevents them for jacking up their prices.

Air BnB’s: So I found this to be half and half. Sometimes it’s less expensive sometimes...not so much. Air BnB is pretty much either paying for a room or whole house for a certain amount of days. My big bro introduced me to it when we went to LA. I used it on my road trip to LA with a “friend” who is no longer a friend. But it was more of other situations I don’t really use. Honestly after seeing videos of how people were being racist to other guests, that was a major turn off to me. Second I had a friend who posted a conversation of a Air BnB host who tried to play her. Yes the app does have host ratings and reviews but there are so many fees and rules that it’s like, I might as well pay for the hotel. Again it’s totally up to you but staying at a random strangers house....Issa no dawg if I’m traveling by myself.

BUDGETING IS CRUCIAL!! Anytime I go anywhere I budget how much I’m spending. So with that being said, I get all information from attractions I want to go see, restaurants, ride share, everything. You don’t have to be so exact like me but it certainly helps me to know exactly how much I’m spending. Lol

Oh!!!! Sign up for reward programs at any restaurant you eat, shops you shop, or hotels! I do it all the time because for a lot of reward programs just by signing up you get a freebie. So why not take advantage of it.

So I wrote this blog up at like 5:30AM in the morning 🤣🤣🤣😭 I know I’m in for a struggle. But I decided to do this blog post because I was just going through my social media of all the travels I did. I really hope it does help you guys out a lot.

#travel #solo travel #travel blog #travel tips #blogger #blog #solo traveller

[an-ephemeral-blog]

What’s standing in the way of women’s soccer?

When chants of ‘equal pay!’ ring through soccer stadiums, men jump on Twitter to explain why, despite performing better internationally than the men’s team, women soccer players don’t deserve equal pay because they don’t earn as much revenue.

Over the past two months I’ve become a big NWSL fan.  It’s very different from being an MLB fan, my only previous experience of passionate sports fandom.  There are a lot of things I take for granted that a professional sports team has, which NWSL teams do not have.  These things absolutely affect revenue, either directly, or by lowering the quality of play or the experience of watching games.  Here’s a list.

1.  NWSL stadiums are less accessible than MLS and other stadiums.

My local team, the Washington Spirit, plays at the Maryland SoccerPlex.  To get to the Plex, if you don’t have a car, requires an hour-plus train ride to the end of the metro and then either a 25+ minute car ride or a 45+ bus ride.  I have multiple friends who’ve expressed interested in going to a game but balked when they found out how long it would take to get there.  Another friend had to cancel because she was working late and couldn’t finish by 5:30pm, which was the time she’d have to leave to make it to a 7:30pm game.

As a trial run, the Spirit are playing a game tomorrow at Audi Field, home field of the MLS team DC United.  Audi Field is about 30 minutes away from downtown and is easily accessible via Metro.  Correspondingly, the Spirit is on track to more than triple their season record at the Plex.  They may even sell out Audi Field.  Surely if they can sell out Audi Field, they deserve to play in it?

Which brings me to the next item on the list...

2.  NWSL stadiums are smaller than MLS stadiums.

The Spirit’s plex sells out at around 5,500 tickets.  For tomorrow’s Audi Field game, they’ve currently sold over 16,000 tickets.

Sky Blue’s regular park also holds about 5,000 fans.  When they played a game last weekend at Red Bull Arena, aka the stadium of their local MLS team, they nearly doubled attendance at 9,000+ tickets sold.

I don’t know the breakdown for every team in the league.  I do know that Orlando Pride, despite having access to a great stadium, tends to draw fewer fans do to their lower quality of play.  (They’re second to last in the league.)  On the other hand, the Portland Thorns already share a stadium with their MLS neighbor team, the Timbers, and also boast the biggest and loudest fanbase in the NWSL.  Portland recently set a league record with 25,000+ tickets sold to a game.

Items #1 and #2 combine to make clear that to grow as a league, NWSL teams need to play in larger stadiums that are easier to access.  (This doesn’t even take into account how stadium facilities might impact quality of play.  Some NWSL teams don’t even have showers in their locker rooms!)  Owners and league managers need to invest in securing these spaces for teams, even if they might not be profitable at first. The experience of Sky Blue and Spirit suggests that managers won’t have to wait to reap the benefits.  

3.  NWSL games are often scheduled simultaneously, decreasing viewership.

With only nine teams in the NWSL, there are four to six NWSL games each week.  Given this small number, you’d think they’d all be on at different times, right?

Nope.  Every week, there’s at least one pair of games scheduled against each other.  Often there’s two.  If you don’t have the ability to tape games, you’re forced to miss at least one game every week.  As I have taken to tweeting despairingly at the NWSL each time this happens: whyyyyyyyy.

Schedule creation is complicated, and there are more factors that go into it than I know of.  But one key element is when teams even have their field available.  Most teams don’t own their own fields, and have to work within a restricted subset of dates and times.  To the extent that this contributed to overlapping games, it’s yet another way that issues securing good stadiums get in the way of fans supporting their teams.

4.  NWSL teams have a lower quality of commentating.

Complaining about the announcers/commentators on NWSL matches is a sport of its own.  Announcers regularly mispronounce players’ names and sometimes misidentify them.  They repeat facts and stories, and use the same turns of phrase over and over until you can’t help but twitch every time you hear them say “she sprays the ball out wide” or “the ball found it’s way to...” The last Spirit game I attended, I sat in front of a woman who, after Elise Kellond-Knight left with a pulled hamstring, briefly explained to her friends why women were more likely than men to have hamstring injuries.  (It has something to do with women having more developed quad muscles, which puts the opposing muscles, the hamstrings, at greater risk.  This also leads to increased ACL injuries among women.)  This random stranger had more interesting commentary than any of the people I’d heard on TV. But why are these announcers so bad?  The answer’s easy: NWSL announcers are barely paid.  They make $300-$400 a game, with no travel or lodging expenses paid, which means unless you live in Fort Lauderdale where the announcing is recorded, you have to pay to announce.   I don’t know how much MLS announcers make, but I bet it’s better than that.

5.  NWSL teams have a lower quality of refereeing.

Oh boy.  Okay.  There have been some issues with NWSL refereeing lately.  As national team star Ali Krieger put it:

We’re putting a good product out on the field and every year we’re getting better and the referees seem like they are not.  So, I beg the NWSL — just the standard needs to be higher. It’s just unfortunate that you feel like the referee is ruining the game. They are taking the fun out of the game because they are not good enough.

How could we raise the standards of referees?  Well, they could stop treating the NWSL like a training ground for MLS:

There are five tiers in the U.S. Soccer refereeing program. The top-level, called “FIFA,” is the highest tier. These referees can officiate in FIFA-sanctioned matches. 

”The second tier is “P.R.O.” These referees can officiate MLS matches and are selected by the Professional Referee Organization.

The next tier down is called “National,” and these officials are certified by U.S. Soccer. These referees can officiate USL Championship and NWSL matches. And therein lies the problem.

The NWSL will never have officiating as good as the MLS as long as this remains US Soccer’s official policy.  It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

6.  NWSL games are not marketed as well as they could be.

I won’t pretend to understand marketing, but I know that it’s hard for people to go to games they don’t even know about: 

[Portland Thorns defender Meghan Klingenberg ] couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when she saw Fox discuss the U.S. Men’s National Team’s run at the CONCACAF Gold Cup during halftime of the Women’s World Cup final Sunday, rather than preview the upcoming games in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

“I love Fox. I think they did a great job. They gave the Women’s World Cup the attention that it deserves, but I wish we mentioned the NWSL more. [...] We need that to be put into the consciousness of the general public. We need ESPN to talk about the NWSL year-round. We need beat reporters in every single city that has an NWSL team. We need investment in advertising and marketing, in ground support, in make sure that people know that there’s a freaking team in their area.”  [source]

It seems that marketing is another area in which US Soccer is underinvesting in women:

[Soccer United Marketing, the commercial arm of Major League Soccer] handles deals for MLS and the U.S. Soccer Federation but not the NWSL, even though U.S. Soccer runs the NWSL. This fact has long been lamented by the women’s soccer community.

The NWSL marketing team needs the resources to at least let people know that their teams exist and their games are happening.  But beyond that... the NWSL is full of charismatic stars, both current and potential.  Let’s give them the spotlight.

7.  NWSL salaries are, for all but the biggest stars, below average income.

No one goes into women’s soccer for the money, even if a few of the game’s biggest stars have managed to get some lucrative sponsorships.  The league guarantees a minimum salary of $16,538, barely above the poverty line, and caps max salary at $46,200, a bit belong the mean American income.

Talented young women who are making decisions about where to go to college and what to do after college need to take this into account.  If they have dependents, family members with health issues, or significant debt, they simply may not be able to afford to play soccer professionally.  

This impacts the number of women available to play professionally as well as their ability to nurture their own talent by investing in themselves via special camps and training.  For every Megan Rapinoe or Alex Morgan or Crystal Dunn who has made it to the NWSL there’s someone equally talented who stopped playing in high school or college because law school or medical school or learning to code seemed like a more financially viable career path.  

In other words, for all the strides women’s soccer has made over the last twenty to thirty years, the NWSL still selecting from only a fraction of the potential talent pool.

*

I’ve been an NWSL fan for less than two months, so I’m surely missing other ways that women’s soccer has been under-invested in.  But the seven issues outlined above should be enough to convince you there’s a problem.  

Saying that people just don’t want to watch women’s soccer isn’t merely an oversimplification - it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The whole point of investment is you take a risk now to reap a payoff later.  The NWSL needs US Soccer and the wider sports community to invest in them, and given time, everyone will benefit.

You know what keeps ringing in my ears?  Research that shows that men are judged on their potential, while women are only judged on their performance.  The NWSL has the potential to be a thriving league with the revenues and fan enthusiasm of the MLS.  The question is whether women’s soccer will be given the support they need to deliver on that potential.

#soccer #nwsl

[kpoptimeout]

My Top 10 K-Dramas of 2017 - What’s Yours?

2017 is ending soon and K-Dramaland has once again brought us so many goodies this year. As per our blog’s tradition [For 2016 faves click here] , below are my Top 10 favs of the year (my faves in alphabetical order so it might not be yours so please don’t judge)

My only specific criteria this year is that the show must have had started in 2017 to be considered a 2017 series (Hence, Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bookjoo and Goblin were in last year’s list)

Chicago Typewriter (tvN)

Ever thought of a haunted typewriter that will slowly help you recover stories of your past life? Maybe not but this innovative drama does just that. Featuring talented movie focused actors Yoo Ah In and Im Soojung (HER FIRST DRAMA IN 13 YEARS SINCE THE LEGENDARY “I’m Sorry, I Love You”) as lovers separated from the past life but current bickering duo and rising talent Go Kyung-Po of Reply 1988 fame as their half puppy-half manipulative ghost friend from the past, the drama is one rollercoaster of emotions jumping between two equally interesting timelines of modern South Korea and Japanese occupied South Korea. I really enjoy the combination of working out the characters’ mysterious past life and also the commentary on the modern literary world. If you want an intriguing and fun story-line with revolutionary history shenanigans and early 20th century speakeasies, Chicago Typewriter is the drama to watch!

Duel (OCN)

Finally, CLONES ARE PART OF K-DRAMALAND. After many dramas on multiple personality disorder and twins switched at birth etc., we see the concept of genetic copies and the ethics of such science finally pursued in this well-written and exciting thriller. Yang Sejong plays the clones in question and as a newcomer who only debuted in 2016, he is one to watch out. He expertly played the two dramatically different clones and honestly got me super freaked out watching the show. OCN continues their amazing run with thrillers and I cannot wait for more new content from them.

Fight My Way (KBS2)

Every year there is one bomb slice of life drama and this year it’s “Fight My Way”! Inspired by the real-life romance of mixed martial artist Choo Sunghoon and his wife Shiho Yano, this rom-com about a UFC fighter and his childhood love is sweet, funny, and poignant, touching on realistic experiences of everyday couples. Park Seojoon excels as the fighter Ko Dongman and I think he honestly does the best when acting in these common man roles like in “She Was Pretty” and “Witch’s Romance” versus the over the top hero ones like in “Hwarang.” Kim Jiwon proves she is no one-hit wonder and here to stay after her “Descendants of the Sun” fame in this relatable role of a girl who has to abandon her dreams due to practicalities of the real world and Ahn Jaehong continues to be a pure delight after “Reply 1988”.

Hwayugi (tvN)

Only 2 episodes in, the Hong Sisters already prove that once again they are the producing queens of K-Dramaland and Hwayugi is going to be scoring home runs like their earlier supernatural dramas “My Girlfriend Is a Nine-Tailed Fox” and “Master’s Sun”, whilst riding the wave of another widely popular mythical tvN drama “Goblin.” Reinterpreting the Chinese fantasy story “Journey to the West”, this drama plays with characters already well-known in Asian folklore and throws in interesting ghost/demon/monster fighting side stories along the way. Having worked with the Hong Sisters many times, Lee Seung Gi shines in his first role back from the military, playing the mischevious Monkey King Son Oh Gong. The other castings are also great - with Cha Seungwon fittingly being the eccentric and mercurial Bull Demon King, FT Island’s Hongki as the super flirt Zhu Bajie, and Oh Yeon Seo as the pure but strong-willed reincarnation of Xuanzang. If you need a fix after “Goblin”, just watch this already.

My Secret Romance (OCN)

OCN’s first ever rom-com is a fan favorite locally and internationally and for good reason. It is one of those expected rom-com plots with chaebol male lead, awkward grassroots female lead, BFF with a crush on her, etc. but just done very well. It does do something innovative - going around all the awkward will they kiss or not KDrama stuff to a male and female lead who meet three years later after an awkward one-night stand. Additionally, the chemistry between Sung Hoon and Secret’s main vocalist Jieun is great and made the drama all the more fun, cute and entertaining. Also, THE OSTs ARE AMAZING BECAUSE BOTH LEADS ARE GOOD SINGERS.

Ruler: Master of the Mask (MBC)

One of the K-Dramas I looked forward to the most this year was “Ruler: Master of the Mask” because of the amazing cast of Yoo Seungho, INFINITE’s L, Kim Sohyun, and Yoon Sohee and boy I was not disappointed. Going with a Prince and the Pauper-esque plot in Joseon Korea, Yoo Seungho and L did a great job in the delivering the two roles respectively. While some people complained the show was kind of slow, I rather the PDs slowly build up the story than rush a lot in the first few episodes then drag on forever at the end.

Strong Woman Do Bong-soon (jTBC)

Following the popularity of another tough female lead drama “Weightlifting Fairy Kim Bok Joo”, “Strong Woman Do Bong-soon” also made a strong impression on viewers. The story surrounding a cute and petite girl with supernatural human strength, played by popular actress Park Boyoung, made for a lot of laughs and also led to some fun romantic moments with male leads ZE:A’s Hyungsik and Ji Soo. The pairing of Park Boyoung as Hyungsik’s bodyguard was a well-done flip of normal K-Drama gender roles and I am excited about more female empowerment in K-Dramaland! 

Tunnel (OCN)

After tvN’s “Signal”, I was not sure if I can find another amazing time-travelling thriller of that quality to watch. But OMG OCN is back at it again with their thriller generating machine and they delivered me with “Tunnel.” The male lead, played by the honestly still underrated talent Choi Jinhyuk, is a detective from 1986 who finds himself in 2016 after traveling through a tunnel. Discovering the case he was working on is still unsolved, he joins forces with a modern police officer played by Yoon Hyunmin and a criminal psychologist played by Lee Yooyoung. This show inspired by the Hwaseong serial murders is very good and deserved to be the major hit it was in South Korea, being the most viewed OCN drama of all time. 

While You Were Sleeping (SBS)

Suzy and Lee Jong Suk is one drama already sounds like aesthetic goals but this drama also had good writing and plot to carry itself well. With Suzy playing a journalist who can dream of future deaths and Lee Jong Suk being a prosecutor who acquires her ability after moving into her neighborhood, the two form a likable team and really took us on a roller-coaster ride of emotions. While I am not the biggest fan of Suzy’s acting in the past, she has definitely improved a lot and I think people who are avoiding the drama just because of her should really give it a try.

Whisper (SBS)

Legal dramas with strong female leads are always fun to watch, be it tvN’s “Good Wife” or SBS’s “Punch.” Another such drama is “Whisper”, which is supposedly set in the same universe as “Punch” according to some eagle-eyed fans, and it follows the alliance between Lee Bo-young’s charismatic but debt-ridden female section chief police officer and Lee Sang-yoon’s virtuous elite judge in their journey to uncover defense industry corruption at Taebaek, the nation's biggest law firm. These two top actors of course delivered great performances and Kwon Yul continues to rise on my list of second male leads to watch out for.

Honorable Mentions:

Circle (tvN): An ambitious exploration of dystopian futures by tvN featuring a talented cast including Yeo Jingoo, Kim Kangwoo, Gong Seungyeon and HIGHLIGHT’s Kikwang.

I’m Not a Robot (MBC): Yoo Seungho aka #BAE? Count me in and ready to watch all the episodes. Also, the robot thing is a newer drama trope that has lots of potential.

The Liar and His Lover (tvN): While the storyline is the expected K-Drama rom-com fare, this was a solid debut performance from Red Velvet’s Joy and damn the OSTs were great. Crude Play needs to debut as a real band real quick.

Mad Dog (KBS2): Another amazing action-packed K-Drama thriller starring the amazing actor Yoo Jitae of legendary movie “Oldboy” fame. Also, K-Drama fans need to watch out for Woo Dohwan as this young actor is very talented and has huge potential.

Suspicious Partner (SBS): The final drama of Ji Chang Wook before his enlistment, this is a feel-good rom-com with a great cast of Nam Jihyun, Choi Taejoon, and Nara.

What’s your Top 10 K-Dramas of the Year? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below and may the drama sharing begin (and the road to more excuse for holiday procrastination!)

Also, if you want to check out underrated K-Pop songs of 2017, here are the lists for idol songs, artist songs, and OSTs!

#kdrama #k-drama #kdrama 2017 #k-drama 2017 #chicago typewriter #duel #fight my way #hwayugi #my secret romance #ruler master of the mask #master of the mask #strong woman do bong soon #tunnel #while you were sleeping #whisper #circle #i'm not a robot #the liar and his lover #mad dog #suspicious partner #kpop #k-pop #tvn #ocn #kbs #mbc #jtbc #sbs

[rfhusnik]

Afghanistan Farewell

Written By:  Orlon Braem

  I’m hoping that anyone who, prior to the recent disasters in Afghanistan, felt that the Biden presidency was anything but a tragic failure, and a threat to freedom worldwide, has now changed his or her mind concerning that topic. While the current American president continues to embarrass himself and his nation, his ineptitude to function properly as one of the world’s most important leaders is now spreading fear and peril domestically and internationally.

But many people had warned American voters of what lay ahead should he be elected. Nonetheless, he assumed office, and since then a continuous wave of problems and tragedies have swept across America. And while the current situation in Afghanistan is the greatest illustration of his incompetency as a commander in chief, the crisis at America’s southern border still remains (in my opinion) his greatest failure.

Yet, I must admit that for some the influx of massive amounts of undocumented foreigners into the U.S. is not a failure. Apparently today a number of people, mostly liberals, believe that flooding America with illegal aliens is a great way to undermine either one or all of the following:  The ability of Americans to hold or express conservative viewpoints, the Republican Party, and the very American way of life itself, as it’s manifested in a belief in spoken and written free speech, and a capitalist economic system which really, if allowed to operate properly, is the economic system which best affords people a chance to succeed at worthy goals, and which best wards off the possible fall of a society into dictatorship.

But apparently the thirst for power is so great amongst many liberals, that they’ll place not only their own nation’s welfare, but also that of all others at risk to quench it. And meanwhile the coronavirus continues to ravish on. And while America’s current left-wing leaders either rightly or wrongly (depending upon your viewpoint) tell its citizens to get vaccinated and wear masks, they simultaneously allow unknown amounts of people with either Covid or other serious diseases to illegally enter the nation and infect people who actually are American citizens. And one can only wonder how long this insanity will be allowed to continue. How many more people who arrive here illegally from its south, will The United States of America be forced to pander to?

And, while the question posed at the end of the last paragraph speaks to America’s greatest domestic challenge, the following are serious questions concerning other disastrous current trends in the U.S.:  Why, since a new administration has taken control of America, has “Cancel Culture” become such a goal? Why does the American left feel that anything that disagrees with their hurtful tenets needs to be attacked? Why do the names of various products and sports teams need to be changed? Why are some people trying to rewrite children’s text books so that those books will then present a “liberal spin” to the subjects they address? Why would the strongest nation on Planet Earth elect as its leaders people who apparently are fortunate to know the day of the week? Why are successful people demeaned in America? Why is it that instead of honoring the accomplishments of successful Americans, all the American media and left-wing politicians do is complain that those who’ve known success in America don’t pay enough taxes? What effect will the demeaning of successful Americans have in the future? Will America’s youth come to believe that success is no longer a worthwhile goal, since all it accrues for one, should one achieve it, is left-wing disdain, and the theory that the successful are actually hurting America because they don’t pay enough taxes? And why are many law abiding citizens, and the police who protect them called pigs and fascists? Why are some people convinced that police salaries should be lowered or completely defunded? And why do America’s media and late night talk show hosts remain strangely silent concerning the problems of the current U.S. president, while they seemingly went out of their way to criticize anything involving his predecessor?

But here are some noteworthy condemnations involving the U.S. withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. Why, when many Americans say they fear fascism, would they allow a strategic Asian nation to fall prey to what appears to be an example of that ism? Are some radical leftists in America confusing conservatism with fascism? And if so, will those people now see and learn what real fascism can do if it becomes a nation’s economic and social ism?

And while those who say that after twenty years of American intervention, the Afghan people should by now be able to fend for themselves may be correct in that assumption, why aren’t the Afghans still prepared to defend themselves? Did they just become complacent, and expect the U.S. to take care of their security unendingly? Was that what happened in South Vietnam as well? And what about the nations to America’s south? Why can’t they learn to take care of themselves and their populations?

If indeed there was any justification for America’s withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan at this time, surely the process followed during that withdrawal was seriously flawed. And that process has already at this time cost several lives, some of which were American. Don’t our leaders know that when an intervening nation pulls its military personnel out of what apparently is a nation in jeopardy of losing its basic freedoms, civilian citizens of the intervening nation who are left behind will be in peril?

And now when Americans see what will most likely continue to happen in Afghanistan, they’ll see what fascism really is, And that Asian nation may now be used as a terrorist training ground by America’s enemies. A large amount of American military hardware has apparently been left behind in Afghanistan. And there’s little doubt but that that equipment will now be used by either the Taliban or other terrorist groups.

But America’s prestige has been damaged greatly by its abandonment of Afghanistan. And surely other areas of the world which live under a constant threat of either fascist or communist takeover must now be alarmed.

And if from time to time America sees the need to intervene in the affairs of other nations, why can’t it convince the citizenries of those nations that eventually they’ll need to fend for themselves? And as one last hurtful and brutal condemnation of the Afghan situation, maybe those  who say they’re especially concerned about the rights of women should watch what will become of Afghanistan’s female population now.

Oh, and when we need to check our watch at a ceremony honoring fallen soldiers, that says who we really are. We’re someone who cares about our self and no one else. And although our media friends may eventually try to spin the Afghanistan withdrawal as not having been as bad as it initially seemed, hopefully Americans will remember, and know better.  

[lauraklimaszewska]

HAS THE POWER OF MEN DEPRECIATED THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WOMEN?

It’s 2020, and somehow people have managed to convince themselves that a spray tanned billionaire who doesn’t believe in the interest of humanitarians or humans for that matter would be a worthy president to rule one of the most powerful nations in the world; yet somehow some people still cannot be convinced that women deserve to earn one pound for every one pound a man makes for the same work (despite posting significantly better returns than men-only teams). With far more men called John leading the UK’s biggest companies than women, the statistics show that gender divide at the top of the corporate world as well as a lack of equality in general is still miles away from where it should be. With the currently slowly dying conversation on Feminism, I wanted to remind us of the importance to continue this heated debate especially in the light of current powerful and persuasive male figures managing to expand their following base.

Not so long ago I came across a modern-day Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, whose mindset seemed to have a strong correlation to the people’s opinions in the Before Christ era, during Aristotle’s philosophical reign. Before freedom of speech was a legalised form of expression, people's views on women simply followed Aristotle’s ideologies. In his politics, he saw women as subjects to men and lacking authority; he had a certain belief that the husband should exert political rule over the wife. Among women’s differences from men were that they were, in his view they were also more impulsive, more compassionate, more complaining and more deceptive.

Now here is where I think the main issue derives from in terms of our lack of progress in gender equality. In an interview on Channel 4 news, Peterson, who is known to advocate against gender equality,  discussed the reasons for the gender pay gaps.  He argued that the unequal salary gap is largely a natural reflection of differences between men and women. He also tells the audience that multiple, various analyses of the gender pay gap show that prejudice is only one small factor in this, one that’s much less than “feminists claim”. Other factors include women’s tendency for neuroticism – their likelihood to experience stress, depression and unpredictability – and their high level of agreeableness, to be cooperative and compassionate.

If you notice Peterson as well as Aristotle share a homogenous view on this topic, so much so that Peterson even used the same words as Aristotle from the BC era, in the 21st century…

People of political power like Vladimir Putin have also had an impact on people’s perspective on treatment towards women. Putin has somehow managed to persuade people internationally that raping woman isn’t offensive or dehumanising or abusive but in fact humorous since he has made previous jokes about sexually assaulting women in the past 20 years he has been in office, he has also convinced many that Russia has the best prostitutes worldwide and that he “doesn’t have bad days because he is ‘not a woman’ and doesn’t have ’natural cycles’”. Simultaneously he has gained respect and a great following from many citizens of Russia even though it has been publicly announced that a Russian women dies every 40 minutes from domestic abuse. More shockingly however, Vlad Putin also claimed that ”if he beats you, it means he loves you.” For someone who has witnessed physical abuse amongst distant family members in the past, I can assure anyone that the nosebleeds, the tears and aggressive verbal fights from the alcoholic man were not a sign of love but rather broken partnership which should have been separated. Only last year a law was passed confirming that weaker legal sanctions against men will be given for when they beat their female partners but will only be taken into consideration if her bones are broken.

With all this happening, the excuses for gender pay gap, the unbothered attitudes to domestic violence and ridiculing women for menstruating, it is evident that the world needs to continue to have a proactive discussion about the changes needed to be made and actions to provide these changes. I think the real question is how can we prevent the male dominancy over women and my suggestion would be to get rid of  the word “empowerment” as a defining word of feminism. The term has always bothered me slightly. To me it seemed like it was too widely used and became a generic term which didn’t necessarily link to feminism. But then I looked up the meaning of the word. The dictionary definition of ‘empower’ is to ‘give power or authority to’. Suddenly I realised that the issue all along wasn’t the broad use of the word but the idea that the power must ‘be given’. The danger here is that as soon as we want to ‘empower women’, the power must be handed to them, presumably by an entity that already has it. With the world filled with authoritative mostly male figures such as Peterson or Putin or even Trump or John CEO’s of corporate companies, we are putting women on the receiving end, waiting politely to be empowered. Ultimately, we cannot wait upon the day that a gentleman gives us the rod to reign because from the evidence proven earlier, some men still have an almost identical mindset to Aristotle from nearly 2,500 years ago. So unless we are willing to give the best damsel in distress acts for another eternity, we shouldn’t throw the word ‘empowerment’ around thoughtlessly, giving men the satisfaction that only their authority can be passed on.

Especially today when their twitter comments receive larger attention than the fact that Saudi Arabian women have for the first time ever been able to join the Baloot Championship in Riyadh, we need to support each other and raise our voices louder to celebrate our achievements but also criticise our lack of equality.

[tygerseye]

Alternate title: WHATS WRONG WITH EVERYTHING.

I’m just so fed up with everything right now.  Liberals, conservatives, democrats, republicans, LGBT, activists, BATHROOM BILLS, healthcare, refugee debates, vegans, carnivores... It feels like the entire world has lost its fucking mind.

EVERYTHING is a battle now.  EVERY topic there is a line drawn.  And EVERYONE is being duped into believing they aren’t being duped.

“Rich people have always stayed on top by dividing white people from colored people.” - Bulworth 1998

Except now it’s not just Black vs White.  It’s LGBT vs CIShet.  It’s Feminists vs MRAs.  It’s US vs THEMMMMM... except where it really matters... like rich vs everyone else...

Everyone is so busy fighting each other in this imaginary social war that they don’t see the Generals ™ that are profiting from the quarreling.

I bring this up to point out why almost everyone is wrong in their opinion; their opinions are based in this US vs THEM mentality.  I guarantee you are WRONG if you think the answer to any social issue is simple.  I FUCKING GUARANTEE IT. If you are not a centrist then you are most likely fucking wrong.

Nothing regarding criminal law, civil law, or social law is simple.  There are consequences to EVERY FUCKING DECISION MADE and some of the most FEEL GOOD decisions are the MOST DAMAGING.

I’m just going to start getting into examples to explain my point.

BATHROOM BILL

Feel Good Opinion: Anyone and everyone should be allowed to go into the bathroom they are most comfortable with!!!!

“THEM” Opinion: You are born a man, you are born a woman, you go into the bathroom designated for you!

Reality: It’s not a fucking problem.  Why the fuck do you all want to spend YOUR OWN TAX DOLLARS debating on a fucking bathroom? Why should you be allowing career politicians to control you by forcing this fake social war?  Guess what, in reality no one really fucking cares what bathroom you go into, not after high school anyway and guess what; high schoolers shouldn’t have the right to make political decisions for this country for a reason.  If you think the world is like high school and you’re going to get a swirly for going into the “opposite gender” bathroom then you should also not be allowed to make political decisions.  IN REALITY, women go into men’s bathrooms all the time and men go into women’s bathrooms all the time and 99.99999999999% of the time no one gives a fuck.  Why are you letting yourself get fucking duped into this war?

Consequences of the “feel good”: You’re creating a world for EVERYONE that’s terrifying.  You’re telling stories about how what you feel inside might get you beat up and killed when it isn’t true and now people are terrified to do what they need to do to be happy.  You’re creating the opposite of what you want to achieve by FORCING a war when there was none to begin with.  Guess what?  If this “war” didn’t exist and you never turned it into a hot-button issue no one would give one fuck about what bathroom you went into.

Gun Control

Feel Good Opinion: If we make it harder for people to get guns then it’ll be harder for bad people to get guns! No guns = no gun violence! Lets eliminate gun violence by eliminating guns.

“THEM” Opinion: More guns = more protection! You’re ONLY limiting good people getting guns by strengthening gun control laws!

Reality: Bad people will always get guns.  If you make it harder for good people to get guns via retail/wholesale then you will see a rise in international gun smuggling so the demand can still be met.  Not only that but you might even see a decrease in price for internationally illegally shipped guns because of the increase demand.  If you make it easier for people to get guns then you might see a rise in retail-purchased guns being stolen and used in crimes.  REALITY IS IT ISN’T SIMPLE AND YOU HAVE TO CONSIDER THE CONSEQUENCES.  Reality is our country doesn’t work like other countries and we have to consider what our country needs.  Reality is there will always be murder and violence.  You want to change crime? CHANGE POVERTY.  CHANGE EDUCATION.  CURE THE ILLNESS, DON’T JUST TREAT THE SYMPTOMS.

Consequences of the “feel good”: I stated it before but by continuing to strengthen our gun laws you very well could cause a situation where our illegal market is flooded with untraceable internationally smuggled weapons.  Guns not in our system.  Guns that can’t be traced back to anyone or to multiple crimes.  You very well might get real innocent people fucking murdered because you didn’t consider the ramifications regarding the international economy of illegal gun smuggling.

Healthcare Reform

Feel Good Opinion: EVERYONE has the RIGHT to a healthy life and if they can’t afford a doctor then the government needs to pay for it!  EVERYONE deserves the right to 100% free healthcare!!

“THEM” Opinion: : I’m not going to pay for BOB to eat 100 hamburgers and get a heart attack with my tax dollars!  I’m not going to pay money so that opiate addict can get all the pills they want and then go into rehab because of their own mistakes.  It’s my tax dollars and I’m not going to pay for some woman to have fifteen babies.  Our system is just fine and if you want insurance then you can get a JOB and pay for it like the rest of us!

Reality: In reality I could make a fucking 10,000 word rant on what’s wrong with our healthcare system in the U.S. of A. Again, this isn’t a simple problem.  Being able to AFFORD to see a doctor when you’re sick should be a right.  HOW we enable that is the real question.  Look... your tax dollars ALREADY pay for the people who fall through the healthcare holes.  When someone doesn’t have insurance and wait and wait to see a doctor to the point they have to go to an ER because it’s the only thing they can do... guess who has to pay that bill? You do.  Either through what the insurance company forces you to pay or through your tax dollars.  THAT system is incredibly inefficient and is very very costly to you.  It also kills people.  Wouldn’t it be cheaper to instead allow that person to see a doctor early to prevent a bigger problem? HMMMMMMMM.  However, NOTHING is FREE guys. NOTHING.  If you think the government can just suddenly confetti-rain down healthcare onto the whole of America you’re wrong.  It is an INCREDIBLE MIND BLOWING amount of burden on an already over-burdened system.  Nothing is free.  The real solution is to STOP ARGUING LIKE THIS IS A FUCKING WAR and start LISTENING to each other.  You need to realize that our current system is costing you a shit ton of money but a completely-100% government run healthcare program could potentially be disastrous to our economy as well.  Balance is key.  REALITY is we need to change our entire way of looking at healthcare from the American Disease Model to PREVENTION.  Preventing diabetes is cheaper than treating diabetes.  Preventing influenza is cheaper than treating influenza.  Preventing pregnancy is cheaper than treating pregnancy.  While we’re at it can we get some mother fucking MENTAL health care up in here? GOD DAMN.

Consequences of the “feel good”: You have created a system where doctors are so limited by government law that they can no longer properly care for people.  It’s already happening right now.  You may create a system so over-burdened that our government can’t keep up and it ends up basically becoming bankrupt.  You create a system where people don’t just have a right to healthcare but they think they are ENTITLED to it and live unhealthy lifestyles, damaging lifestyles, because they know the government will just bail them out.

LGBT/Minority/Women’s Rights

Feel Good Opinion: EVERYONE has the right to EVERYTHING that makes them happy and we should make laws to make SURE that everyone has an equal chance at life and to succeed and be happy.

“THEM” Opinion: Everything is fine as it is! You’re complaining about nothing!  Men/Cishet/White people are more oppressed in our society than YOU are!

Reality:

In REALITY in the U.S. we already have a fuck-ton of laws that are aimed to prevent sexism, racism, and all other isms. MAKING LAWS DO NOT INHERENTLY OR AUTOMATICALLY CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE THINK OR ACT.  You keep wanting to make more and more and more and more changes to our laws to FORCE people to see things you’re way but you fucking CAN’T.  Society can not be FORCED; it can only flow. 

In reality THINGS ARE FUCKED UP ACROSS THE BOARD FOR EVERYONE. Legally AND socially there are fucked up things happening to every sex, gender, and race across the whole world.  In REALITY there is only one real “ism” that exists and that’s classism. Rich people in power want to stay rich people in power... and generally want more money, security and power.  This is reinforced by a system that allows for golden parachutes and tax loopholes to keep rich people rich.  It’s also reinforced by a society where we STILL think rich people are rich because they earned it and poor people are poor because they are lazy.  Wrong.. you’re all wrong.  Some rich people worked for it absolutely, many didn’t.  Some poor people are poor because they are lazy, MANY are not.  When will you fucking realize the real problem is that our government no longer represents us... it represents corporations and wealthy organizations/individuals.  You want to talk about fucking “stay woke”?? WAKE UP YOU FUCKING SHEEP and realize that there’s a bunch of fucking assholes making a fucking KILLING off you arguing about wage gap and BLM and bathroom fucking bills.  God damn this pisses me off because it’s so god damn obvious.

Both sides of your fake SJW war are being fucked in the ass and both sides are blaming the other for how much that ass fucking hurts.

Consequences of the “feel good”: 

Spending millions upon millions of dollars debating things that have already been debated 50-100 years ago and in which laws already exist to protect people.  Creating a society where men are ridiculed and abused and killed because of how they look and what sex they were born as.  Creating a society where people are afraid to defend themselves because their perpetrator is a minority, female, or LGBT.  Creating a  society that listens to the loudest cryer and not the soundest of mind.

Oh.  That’s right.  You’ve already created that society.

Good fucking job.  I hope you’re enjoying this dystopia you’ve created because I am sure as fuck am not.

#I'm so fucking angry #lgbt #rights #human rights #social change #laws #government #united states #classism #racism #sexism #rant #angry #centrist #centrism

[equinelites]

Stand BY me, NOT ON me...........

~Stand by me, NOT on me~

 If the only way you can be seen is to give yourself away, what good it is to be seen?

If the only way you can be “loved”, is to meet all of their needs first, when will it ever be your turn?

If the only way to be supported is to let them stand on you,

how long can you hold them up before you fall down?

This article is about many people and it may be about you. Although, you may also be the one who did the “taking” and “standing upon”, as opposed to the one who gave endlessly until she or he was at risk of being all used up.

Both positions are unhealthy, and for one person to take, the other has to be willing to give

For one person to be stood upon, they must be willing to let the other stand on them.

Both positions represent ½ of an unhealthy co-dependent dance that many humans do in relationship.

   The topic for today’s blog came to me after I encountered for about the 10th time this month, the following thoughts from my client’s mouths.

Here are the thoughts as expressed by my many  clients, with the words changed to protect identity: * I agreed to do this activity with him even though it was not my first  choice and then when I asked for a little flexibility on when I would do it, he became verbally abusive.

*I have been supporting his career now for 20 years by working full time while also doing all of the house-work and child care and now that I have lost my job, he is also “firing” me.

* Our agreement is that I work full time while she agrees to do the house work and yet she complains that I won’t help with the cleaning on the weekends.

*I need some time to go to the gym like he does, and when I ask, he says” sure, go ahead”, but is not willing to take care of the kids so I can do this.

*There is something really creepy about the similarities between him and D. Trump but I can’t put my finger on how this could be.

 The relational dynamic that I am talking about  in my opening comments and what I have heard clients talking about represents a couple’s “dysfunctional dance” that is known as “ 1-up and 1-down”.

Pia Mellody, internationally known author, lecturer and workshop presenter talks about this dynamic as the dance between a Love Avoidant and Love Addict.

This particular dysfunctional dance is created by both partners in childhood. The love avoidant experiences the love they receive from their parents as toxic and so they actually “avoid” true intimacy by avoiding their partner’s needs and focusing on getting their needs met exclusively.

The Love Addict experienced the love they received from their parents as sometimes there and sometimes not, setting up a need in them for more of what at times seemed good. (Please read Mellody’s book on Love Addiction for an-depth exploration of this stance that is so common in relationships).

Whether you see yourself as the Addict or the Avoidant, it is important to understand that one position cannot exist without the other. That is, the one who seems to take more or stand upon the other more, cannot do this unless the one they take from or stand upon is willing to over-give.

The one who seems to over-give does this in hopes of someday having the other give back. This will NEVER happen unless they stop over-functioning or over-giving. Again, this is a dysfunctional dance that requires two partners.

The one who over-gives needs to say to themselves, “if I don’t stop this, soon, there will be nothing left of me”. They have to realize that Who they are is as valuable as anyone else in the world. They have to realize that they deserve to “receive as they give”.

The one who over-gives is usually the one in the dance that has to stop the pattern first. For the one that is under-giving likes to receive without giving. It can “seem” to feel so good to get without giving that unless they become conscious about the inequality in the relationship, they will keep on getting without giving. I say “seem”, because I would say that most people, if they really think about it, will see that it is not right or fair to get without giving. This violates the Law of Giving and Receiving, which can be a topic for another blog on another day.

 In summary, the way to stop this dysfunctional dance of 1-up and 1-down is for one (or both) partners to decide to first connect to their own truth and to invite the other to do this as well.

Then, the two (or more, no matter how many are in the group, these steps always apply), must agree that one is not better than or less than the other.  There must be an agreement that equality between both sides reigns supreme and though each side is entitled to their own truth; there is no supreme TRUTH for everyone.    However, as each shares their own truth, we approach the possibility that Happiness and Harmony can be touched and experienced.

   �tQ�I��=���h@��okkD1n��PNG

#equality #relationships #love addiction #love avoidance #communication in relationships

[jasbirjohn-hyperfrontal]

Learning Lessons from 2016 - How Did we Survive Year One!

Now, I am not here to misrepresent to anyone how easy or difficult it is to be a photographer in Singapore. Quite honestly, it is difficult to be a photographer (or simply a creative individual) in any part of world. In today's day and age with the economic landscape and growing openness to explore art in general, more and more people are stepping into the game. So, let us not fool ourselves into thinking that how easy or difficult venturing into the arts industry is a geographical issue. It is really an issue of your mindset, abilities and willingness to learn from both successes and mistakes. 

In this article I will explore my thoughts over the mindset I developed so that HyperFrontal Productions survives to see another year. These steps/ methods/ strategies or whatever else you would like to call them are gems of wisdom I believe every creative individual should adopt whether you are running a business or pursuing your creative freedom as a freelancer. I hope what I share drives that inspirational nail back home for you as much as it has for me!  

1) Make Friends, not Clients!

I kept in mind that while I am running a business, it is, at the end of the day, a photography/ media services business and not a corporation-styled "paper-and-pen-pushing" business. The idea is to connect with hearts, be great at your work and maintain humility.

In some of my first few client meetings, I dressed all formal and spoke generically. Many times, it did not work for me. Negotiating in the creative industry is not one of promises of profits. It is really about you being likable. There has to be that raw deal about you that stands out over your competitors. Yes, your work has to be great too, but, just go look around and see how many people out there are producing incredible work. What makes you stand out from them?

I found that appearing like a friend was more important than appearing like a businessman or artist. The reason why dressing up like I was applying for a job at a bank did not work is because THIS IS NOT AN INDUSTRY THAT IS IMPRESSED BY SUPERFICIALITY but, rather by your ability to express, evoke, and emote.

Your ingenuity is in building long-term relationships and not plainly going all out for just short-term monetary goals. Remember, clients who like you and your work will most likely be the ones sharing them out to the rest of their work and social circle, not the clients who will be putting their watermark on the content you create and only using them to market their products.

2) Be Different!

How many times has someone from another industry advised you to "play it safe" and measure things carefully before you do whatever it is you want to do? Often enough, a creative individual will have to dare to do something completely different to stand out. For me, it was Bedtime Tales: An Exhibition of Illustrative Photography (among many other projects that I did).  This is something people from other industries will write-off as impulsive or bad financial decision-making.

When an idea comes to mind (and it is not going to cause you to kill yourself, someone else or go bankrupt), it is best to just give it a shot because you may never know what comes out of it. It is your creative-self's wisdom to understand that impulse is a gift and curse. I learnt to work with it and, sometimes, drew a balance or imposed certain limits that allowed me to explore not only my art, but, myself too.

Mid-last year, the thought came to mind to turn important literary quotes into photographic art. One thing led to another and this year I am having my solo show! Had I stuck to the standard way of patiently waiting, like how most people do for a job promotion, I would have probably talked myself out of trying to do something different - which would have led me to miss on what has to be the best thing to happen in my career as a photographer so far.

So, never be satisfied and just keep pushing out content that is different and who knows...

3) Learn!

The Rule of Law in all of the creative wisdom is that no one is above learning. Whether you are a 20 years veteran or a 20 days amateur in your field of art, learning is never ending. I found that what held me back in the past was my ego.

Ego, like fire, is a good slave and bad master. It is, of course, impossible to completely eradicate egoism so the other way around this is to befriend it and use it to drive you towards betterment. Prior to setting up HyperFrontal Productions, I used to get flabbergasted whenever my work was critiqued negatively. My negative reception converted into negative perception and I was on my way to giving up on photography. In an attempt to save my passion, I decided to start watching videos on photography. Here is the great thing about the time we live in, YOU CAN GOOGLE-SEARCH ALMOST ANYTHING! 

The Millennium will go down in history as the era where mankind rediscovered learning. So, what then is your excuse? The vast deep blue sea of resources made available to us today is something our seniors would have really appreciated, especially in the time of film cameras. Why, then, are we so reluctant to learn?

"I do not think I need to learn anymore because I am already at such a level" VERSUS "I am already at such a level, let's see what else is there I could learn to carry me beyond." Which one are you? 

4) Personal Projects

This stems off of the point of being different, except that, now we are leaning towards being defiantly progressive. One of the meanings of "progress" as a noun (according to Google Search) is "development towards an improved or more advanced condition." The only meaning that the word has to me is to "NEVER EVER EVER EVER STOP." The moment an idea comes to mind, get consumed by it, build on it, be obsessed over developing it, and then, finally, deliver it.

The reason why I bring an element of defiance to this is because you are only truly invested into an idea when you want to deliver it no matter the obstacles (though, I stress again, as long as it does not kill you, anyone else, or bankrupts you). Ironically, this is one of the only times you would notice that "defiance" actually might have a similar meaning with "discipline".

It is through taking on several personal projects that you practice consistency. There are two things to gain from this. Firstly, you are always improving because you are always pushing your creative juices. Secondly, you are also delivering more to your audience.

Admittedly, HyperFrontal Productions does not have a huge following as compared to some of the other photography sites out there. However, that does not mean I have no responsibility towards those who are following our social media, and, more importantly, that does not mean my social media presence will never grow.

Consistent delivery of personal projects is a great way of showing your capabilities as an artist and furthermore gives people a reason to stay invested or even promote your work out to others. 

In November of last year, I approached a darling friend, Ylenia Casali, who is a stage actress from Italy to work on a project called INTENTIONS. The project was a provocative look at how we can express without using the two easiest forms of expression, the face and the speech. The project had garnered us a lot of compliments internationally. Although there were no physical rewards to it, it was a proud moment for her and myself.

It showed me my strengths and made me realize that if I could work harder and deliver more content like that, one fine day, I may actually reach that golden destination.

Your time to shine can be anytime, it is just whether you are going to wait for opportunities or create them instead...     

5) Drive

I brought up a complain to a friend and mentor, Kamil Haque, founder of Haque Centre of Acting and Creativity, about the lack of support I receive. My complain spanned out to little nitty-gritty observations about people and how it disturbed me. His reply was succinct but impactful. He said, "the path of a creative individual is a lonely one. You're going to have to rely on yourself for almost everything."

While we all may have family and friends rooting for us, it is important to keep in mind that external motivation does not work if there is a lacking of internal motivation. The logic is really simple, why would anyone want to put in effort into you if you do not want to put in effort into yourself first?

Then, there will be times where no matter what you say or how good your work is, people (including friends) will simply not support you in the way you want them to. The general content consumers on social media are, for a lack of better term, hypocrites. They would react to content that a famous individual puts out but not yours. Unfortunately, it is a waste of time to try combating the mindset of the general content consumers on social media, therefore, even I will choose to not get into it too much. My concentration is myself and my work, not the opinions of others.

Whether it is that you lack motivation or it is simply that you have not gained the attention of others on social media, nothing is not as important as what you think of yourself. This path is your own and fulfilling it alone comes with its own satisfaction. Yes, it is always nice to have a support system but, finding that one person who is willing to be there for you while you toil through this path is incredibly rare. Then again, if you have someone there already hold them tight and never let go! 

The reason why I chose to write about drive instead of hard work is because there are hundreds of thousands of articles and videos out there telling you that hard work is everything. WRONG! Before hard work, you need drive - you need self-confidence and you have to be sure that you have built a self-motivating mechanism in your mind.

People will disappoint you almost 100 percent of the time. Keep your expectations low, live simple and build motivation internally. External support will come after that...

IN SUMMARY

The path of a creative individual is a difficult path in the technical sense. However, your mind at the end of the day gives you the final say. I am of the opinion that most educational/ inspirational articles or videos shared only tell you things that you already know. What I have shared are building-blocks of an impenetrable mindset to help in pursuing your creative freedom. Anyone can tell you that you must work hard, but what exactly do you use to build that up with is something far more important than hard work itself, the mentality of Conqueror of your path to creative freedom.

#PHOTOGRAPHY #EDITORIAL #educational #INSPIRATIONS #BUSINESS #2017

[thisdaynews]

Guterres and Trump embody clashing visions at UN summit

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/guterres-and-trump-embody-clashing-visions-at-un-summit/

Guterres and Trump embody clashing visions at UN summit

NEW YORK — It was a war of words, and a clash of world views, in the well of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, a lifelong social democrat whose early political career was forged during his native Portugal’s democratic revolution in 1974, opened the annual leaders’ gathering with a fervent plea for greater international solidarity and cooperation — to fight climate change and economic inequality, to resist rising authoritarianism and halt rollbacks in democratic freedoms, to protect those who face discrimination and persecution, and above all to prevent war.

Guterres concluded his speech by calling for a reaffirmation of the principles of multilateralism and international cooperation upon which the U.N. was founded in 1945.

“We are here to advance the common good while upholding our shared humanity and values,” he said. “That vision united the founders of our organization. At a time of division today, we must reconnect with that spirit. Let us restore trust, rebuild hope and move ahead, together.”

In sharp contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump — a Republican by affiliation but often out of step with the party’s historic ideological pillars, whose political career began only with his campaign for president following a career in real estate and reality TV — delivered a forceful defense of nationalism and individual state sovereignty, which also served as a denunciation of globalization and a warning against pluralist compromise that included blustery boasting about U.S. military supremacy.

“The future does not belong to globalists”— Donald Trump, U.S. president

“The free world must embrace its national foundations,” Trump said. “It must not attempt to erase them or replace them. Looking around in all of this large magnificent planet, the truth is plain to see: If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty, and if you want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first.

“The future does not belong to globalists,” Trump added, delivering perhaps the most memorable line of the day in the General Assembly, which is comprised of 193 member states. “The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations, who protect their citizens, respect their neighbors and honor the differences which make each country special and unique.”

Opposing views

Guterres and Trump have been circling each other, trading barbed (albeit indirect) attacks on each other’s world view for months, if not years.

While it’s not clear that the American president gives the understated Portuguese secretary-general much thought, his actions — abandoning the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal, quitting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and provoking a series of trade wars — have demonstrated Trump’s scorn for the type of global cooperation that Guterres considers essential to the future of humankind.

Trump, with his wife Melania, speaking to the media at the U.N. General Assembly | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Meanwhile, it was more than obvious whom Guterres had in mind when he traveled to the summit of G7 economic powers in Biarritz, France last month and complained that the world’s wealthiest nations are not doing enough to fight climate change.

And it was more than clear whom Guterres was thinking of when he spoke on Tuesday of a dangerous new risk of great-power conflict.

“At this time of transition and dysfunction in global power relations, there is a new risk looming on the horizon that may not yet be large, but it is real,” Guterres said. “I fear the possibility of a great fracture: the world splitting in two, with the two largest economies on earth creating two separate and competing worlds, each with their own dominant currency, trade and financial rules, their own internet and artificial intelligence capacities, and their own zero sum geopolitical and military strategies.”

He continued: “We must do everything possible to avert the great fracture and maintain a universal system — a universal economy with universal respect for international law; a multipolar world with strong multilateral institutions.”

In many ways, the secretary-general’s remarks echoed comments by another American president, Harry Truman, speaking in San Francisco on the day in 1945 when global delegates completed work on the U.N. charter. In that speech, Truman made a fierce case for internationalism as the key to ending wars.

“Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice,” Truman said. “The charter recognizes this fact because it has provided for economic and social cooperation as well. It has provided for this cooperation as a part of the very heart of the entire compact. It has set up machinery of international cooperation which men and nations of goodwill can use to help correct economic and social causes for conflict.”

Like Truman, who was then weeks away from giving the order to drop atomic bombs on Japan, Trump addressed delegates of the U.N. with the possibility of a military strike very much on his mind — a potential attack on Iran that he has threatened on and off throughout his presidency. Trump opened his remarks on Tuesday with a declaration that the U.S. has never been stronger.

“The United States, after having spent over two and a half trillion dollars since my election to completely rebuild our great military, is also by far the world’s most powerful nation,” he said. “Hopefully it will never have to use this power.”

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

On the one hand, the number seemed unnecessarily exaggerated. The entire U.S. annual defense budget is a bit less than $700 billion. On the other hand, his professed reluctance to using force likely came as a surprise to leaders of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Serbia, Panama and other nations in the General Assembly that have directly felt the impact of the U.S. military’s long reach. 

“I have the immense privilege of addressing you today as the elected leader of a nation that prizes liberty, independence and self-government above all,” Trump said. “That is why the United States rigorously defends the traditions and customs that have made us who we are.”

For many leaders in the audience, however, serious doubts about the fundamental principles underpinning U.S. policy have only arisen since Trump took office. And much of their actions, especially among Washington’s traditional European allies, now often seem aimed at appeasing Trump and coaxing him back into the Western fold.

When U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday issued two separate statements, one reiterating Britain’s commitment to the Iran nuclear deal and another declaring the deal deeply flawed and urging that Trump help negotiate a new one, officials quickly explained the discrepancy by saying it was partly intended to bring Trump back to the negotiating table with Tehran.

When French President Emmanuel Macron decided to skip the custom of issuing leaders’ conclusions at the G7 summit in Biarritz, it was a strategy designed specifically with the combustible American president in mind.

Disrupters all around

But there was no mistaking just how disruptive and destructive Guterres believes Trump has been to the international order, delivering remarks in which actions by the U.S. president could easily be lumped together with those of authoritarian dictators. Are journalists the “enemy of the people” in Russia and China, or in America? Are environmentalists viewed as antagonists in Brasilia or Washington?

“We see wide-ranging impunity, including for violations of international humanitarian law,” Guterres said in his speech. “New forms of authoritarianism are flourishing. Civic space is narrowing. Environmental activists, human rights defenders, journalists and others are being targeted.

“At a time when record numbers of refugees and internally displaced people are on the move, solidarity is on the run,” Guterres said at another point in his address. “We see not only borders, but hearts, closing — as refugee families are torn apart and the right to seek asylum torn asunder.”

By contrast, Trump, in his own speech, denounced “open-border activists who cloak themselves in the rhetoric of social justice.”

“We are here to advance the common good while upholding our shared humanity and values”— Antonio Guterres, U.N. secretary-general

But it was not just Trump who embodied the disruption that Guterres decried in his speech. As the secretary-general fretted about new forms of authoritarianism, it was Johnson who made arrangements to leave New York early after the U.K. Supreme Court ruled that he had illegally suspended parliament.

Guterres was applauded heartily. Trump’s remarks did not draw laughter as he did last year when he asserted his presidency in two years had accomplished more than any other, nor did his speech draw much applause. Leaders were mostly silent. The U.S. commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, appeared to fall asleep.

Even in their positivity, Guterres and Trump showed their differences.

“We are here to serve,” Guterres said. “We are here to advance the common good while upholding our shared humanity and values.”

Trump took another tack. “Love of our own nations,” he said, “makes the world better for all nations.”

Read More

#Foreign #Politics #summit #visions

[rolandfontana]

Four Essential Principles of Emerging Market Success

About 15 years ago — before this blog and China became such a big part of my legal practice, I thought of myself as an “emerging market lawyer.” Back then, my work and that of my law firm consisted mostly of Russia, Korea, China and a smattering of Southeast Asian, Latin American and Eastern European countries. Despite the wide-ranging scope of countries, our legal work — then as now — consisted mostly of representing/protecting American and Western European companies that do business in countries with less developed legal systems. Emerging markets.

Then as now, this mostly consisted of my law firm doing the following:

Protecting intellectual property internationally (mostly trademarks and copyrights), via contracts and IP registrations.

Drafting international contracts. This mostly consists of contracts between a company in one country and a company in another country, though sometimes these contracts involve an actual country on the other side of the deal. These contracts truly cover the waterfront, but our most common ones involve manufacturing, employment, IP licensing, real estate, media/entertainment, high technology, or the sale of goods or services.

Helping companies figure out in what country to do business and guiding them on how to do business in or with particular countries.

International Litigation and arbitration that involves companies from different countries.

Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions.

I am getting nostalgic because I was just informed today by a leading legal publishing site that it will shortly be cancelling all non-paid accounts. This is relevant because one of my all-time favorite articles was one I did for this site way back in 2004 and it saddens me to learn that article will soon cease to exist on the Internet, unless I do something fast, which is the point of this post.

What I am doing is simply reprising that article here and with all that is happening with China, it could not be more timely. My law firm’s client base of mostly American and Western European companies has largely grown wary of dealing with China and looking at other countries in which to conduct their business. Many companies that have their products manufactured in China are looking to completely sever their China ties — some immediately and some over time. But most of our other clients are looking more towards simply diversifying so as to minimize their China risks. These companies are looking to have their software coded or their research and development undertaken or for other tech services. Few are looking to change their operations that focus on selling to China as opposed to buying from China, though many are cognizant that even this may end up having to change due to political and trade tensions with China.

And all of the above has brought emerging market countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Mexico, the Philippines, Malaysia, Turkey, the Ukraine, Cambodia, and countless others to the fore. All this makes my old (but not outdated!) article hyper-relevant for today. So here goes (modified ever so slightly for today’s world ….

  FOUR ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF EMERGING MARKET SUCCESS 

Emerging markets are high risk and high reward. In my work as an attorney representing Western companies in emerging markets, I have concluded there are four essential elements to emerging market success: a good partner, an open mind, active participation, and extreme patience.

I have seen enough essential similarities between such diverse countries as Russia, Korea (ten years ago when it was still an emerging market country), Vietnam, and even the Gambia and Papua New Guinea, to believe certain core generalizations hold true for all or nearly all emerging market nations. Just as a good concept, a strong market, and good execution are necessary in all countries, so too are these four simple principles the keys to success in emerging market nations.

  PRINCIPLE ONE: A Good Partner is the sine qua non of Success.

The quality of your local partner is the indispensable element for emerging market success. So where do you begin?

Start with due diligence. Before doing business with anyone, you must first determine what you need from your partner in the particular country in which you will be conducting business. In my experience, foreign companies need a local partner who is effective, cooperative, and (most important of all) trustworthy.

Emerging market countries almost always have less-than-fully-formed legal systems. Their laws are oftentimes slanted towards the government and away from free markets. Their courts are slow and often corrupt. Form takes precedence over substance in ways completely unfamiliar to Westerners. One small technical miscue on your part might eliminate your right to sue your partner for having stolen all your money. It might even lead to you and your company being kicked out of the country, while your assets remain.

Of course you should do your best to avoid technical miscues, but the better strategy is to pick your partner well. So what should you look for in a local partner? Political connections? Yes and no:

• Yes, because you probably will need someone with sufficient dexterity to maneuver around often-suffocating business laws and a bureaucracy that may try to cut in on your business at every turn.

• No, if you think that is all you will need. Just as in the West, the politically connected are usually more a “government type” than a business person. Partnering with someone in an emerging country with whom you would never consider partnering back home is a mistake. Political clout in emerging market countries is often more effective for avoiding legal responsibility for something like a debt than it is in generating business revenues. I have seen countless instances where a foreign company partners with someone because he or she “is tight with the governor,” only to see the business crushed by the new governor as part of a political house cleaning. The best partner is politically connected only to the extent necessary for business success.

Your partner’s character and reputation are your protection in countries where the court system is not. Do not partner in any sense of that term without having conducted thorough due diligence.

Get to know your potential partner. If they are legitimate and want to work with you for the long term, they will expect you to want to get to know them better and they will think nothing of your wanting multiple meetings before signing any deal.

Use every source you have to find out about your potential partner. Check their references, particularly those of other foreign firms with which they have worked. Hire a local lawyer or investigator to confirm that they and their various businesses are in good standing with all creditors and taxing authorities. If your potential partner is in Chiang Mi, Thailand or Hanoi, Vietnam, hiring a lawyer in Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh may not be good enough. Find someone you can trust with contacts where your potential partner conducts business.

  PRINCIPLE TWO: Keep an Open Mind. Assume Nothing.

Doing business in an emerging market means taking nothing for granted. I have a mantra for my own legal work in these countries that translates well to the business world: “Assume nothing, but assume that you are assuming things without even realizing you are doing so.”

Things will be different. Very different. Things you take for granted in your home country might not exist in the emerging market country. Things you take for granted in your home country might be the exact opposite in the emerging market country. Things you think will be totally different in the emerging market country may be exactly the same. Things you thought you knew about emerging market countries based on what you know from another emerging market country may be completely different in a neighboring country, or even in another region within the same country.

The principle, one more time: Keep an open mind, and assume nothing.

  PRINCIPLE THREE: Participate in Everything.

In many emerging market countries, local businesses take advantage of corruption to avoid complying with laws. This may work for the locals, but it will not work for you. The easiest way for a local rival to drive you out is for you to do something illegal. Neither you nor your government will have good grounds to complain if your rival gets your business closed down due to your illegal activity. It might even be your own partner who reports you so he or she can assume full ownership and control of your business.

You must have your own people on the ground, leading, training, and instructing on business methods, business ethics, efficiency, and quality control, among other things.

We have a saying in our law firm that one day of face-to-face meetings is equivalent to one month of telephone calls and e-mails in terms of getting things done. This is equally true on the business front.

  PRINCIPLE FOUR: Exercise Extreme Patience.

This principle stems from the maxim that everything takes twice as long as you think it will. If it takes twice as long in the West, triple that in emerging market countries. You’ll go in both as a businessperson and a teacher—and in both roles, the learning curve of your partner will almost certainly take way more time to deal with than you think.

For example, many emerging market countries have a history where “bad business” meant “thinking long-term.” A year or two after the fall of Soviet communism, I was involved in a matter where an investor put $250,000 into a Russian joint venture. The business very quickly was making good money and all indicators pointed towards steadily increasing profitability. But, quite quickly, the Russian company stole the $250,000. Was it so irrational for this Russian company to think so short term in a country where the government and tax systems had such a history of unpredictability?

Remember: It takes patience to encourage change of mindset. Extreme patience.

  EMERGING MARKET SUCCESS

Emerging markets cannot be approached with a quick-kill mentality. Above all else, emerging market success demands a good partner, an open mind, a high degree of participation, and extreme patience. It is certainly risky. It can also be very profitable.

Four Essential Principles of Emerging Market Success syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[biofunmy]

Microsoft Employees Want To Protect A Post Pushing Back Against The “996” Workweek In China From Censorship

A group of largely US-based Microsoft employees is pressuring their employer to defend a public statement posted on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned code sharing platform and social network for programmers, that advocates for workers’ rights in China against the increasingly common “996” workweek: 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

The original statement they’re trying to protect, posted by Chinese developers about a month ago (here is an English-language translation), says overwork in the Chinese tech industry could be both a health hazard and violation of Chinese labor law. The phrase “996.ICU” is a joke, suggesting that a 72 hour workweek could land workers in intensive care.

While the post is still accessible in the United States, the Microsoft employees say it has been the target of censorship on some Chinese browsers and are concerned Microsoft could soon come under pressure by the Chinese government to remove the pro-worker repository as well.

A separate petition began circulating publicly on Monday morning asking Microsoft to ensure the post remains live in the event of such pressure. More than 30 employees have signed sharing their support for Chinese workers.

“In response to these events, we, the workers of Microsoft and GitHub, support the 996.ICU movement and stand in solidarity with tech workers in China,” their petition says. “We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.”

BuzzFeed News has reached out to Microsoft and GitHub for comment and will update this post with their response.

The original 996.ICU post on GitHub has nearly 230,000 stars, making it one of GitHub’s most popular repositories.

The page offers resources, like a list of “work-life balanced companies” and other legal resources for workers, but says 996.ICU is “not a political movement.

“We firmly uphold the labor law and request employers to respect the legitimate rights and interests of their employees,” the page says.

This is not the first time Chinese censorship has become an issue inside a major US tech company: last year, after employees revealed that Google was secretly working on a censored search product for China codenamed Dragonfly, employees demanded that the project to be canceled, and some engineers quit their jobs in protest. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has since said the company isn’t planning to imminently launch a Chinese search product, which military officials are concerned could jeopardize US interested there, but continues to be interested in the Chinese market.

Most popular American social media platforms are already blocked in China, which puts GitHub in a unique position. While the platform is primarily a place for programmers to collaborate on open source projects, the 996.ICU repository has also made it a place for programmers to discuss working conditions internationally.

This is not the first time that GitHub has been drawn into political issues. When a programmer used GitHub to build a directory of Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees using LinkedIn data, GitHub removed the project and said its creator had violated its community guidelines by scraping and posting the names and locations of immigration agency employees.

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, who co-founded Alibaba, has endorsed the 996 work schedule, saying in a social media post last week that the model is not a problem for workers who love what they do.

American venture capitalists have also praised the concept, arguing that the sixty hour work week could allow the Chinese tech industry to surpass American innovation even more quickly.

In a Financial Times op-ed last year, Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz wrote: “In China … it is quite usual for the management of 10 and 15-year-old companies to have working dinners followed by two or three meetings. If a Chinese company schedules tasks for the weekend, nobody complains about missing a Little League game or skipping a basketball outing with friends. Little wonder it is a common sight at a Chinese company to see many people with their heads resting on their desks taking a nap in the early afternoon.” This cultural standard, Moritz predicted, will soon make “the habits of western companies will start to seem antique.”

But petitioners say American tech workers aren’t interested in adopting Chinese workplace habits. “We know this is a problem that crosses national borders,” the Microsoft employee petition reads. “These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole.”

Here’s the full text of the Microsoft employee petition:

Microsoft and GitHub Workers Support 996.ICU

Tech workers in China started a GitHub repository titled 996.ICU, a reference to the grueling and illegal working hours of many tech companies in China – from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week. “By following the ‘996’ work schedule, you are risking yourself getting into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit),” says the 996.ICU GitHub project description. The project calls for Chinese tech companies to obey the labor laws in China and the international labor convention.

This initiative has garnered massive support within China. GitHub users have been starring the repository as a way of showing their support. In the span of a few weeks, the project has been starred over 200,000 times, making it one of the fastest growing GitHub repositories in the service’s history.

The code-sharing platform GitHub, owned by Microsoft, is a place for developers to save, share, and collaborate on software projects. Most important for the 996.ICU movement is that GitHub is accessible in China. It is the dominant platform for developers to collaborate and is a crucial part of Chinese tech companies’ daily operations. Since going viral, Chinese domestic browsers, such as those by Tencent and Alibaba, have restricted access to the 996.ICU repository on their web browsers, warning users that the repository contains illegal or malicious content. We must entertain the possibility that Microsoft and GitHub will be pressured to remove the repository as well.

In response to these events, we, the workers of Microsoft and GitHub, support the 996.ICU movement and stand in solidarity with tech workers in China. We know this is a problem that crosses national borders. These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole. Another reason we must take a stand in solidarity with Chinese workers is that history tells us that multinational companies will pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom as they outsource jobs and take advantage of weak labor standards in the pursuit of profit. We have to come together across national boundaries to ensure just working conditions for everyone around the globe.

We encourage Microsoft and GitHub to keep the 996.ICU GitHub repository uncensored and available to everyone.

To other tech workers and industry supporters, we urge you to join us in our support of the 996.ICU movement.

Sahred From Source link World News

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AT FIRST GLANCE, the streets in my Barcelona neighborhood have nothing literary about them. There are no plaques dedicated to the writers who once lived there, no sandwich boards with witty puns in chalk, no bookshops selling the very books that were written just down the street.

So it’s no surprise that, until someone pointed it out to me, I had no idea I was living in Gabriel García Márquez’s apartment.

I wasn’t the only clueless resident. When I probed into the history of my apartment, going straight to the building’s concierge, who had worked there for 20 years, she laughed. “It wasn’t until he died that I knew myself,” she said.

In 2014, after García Márquez’s death in faraway Mexico City, she was bombarded by journalists who showed up at the building’s entrance. Shocked by the unusual commotion in a quiet neighborhood far from the city center, they asked her if they could come up to the apartment where Gabo, as he was known among his friends, once lived.

“At first I told them, ‘You must have the wrong place,’” she said. “I had never heard of García Márquez ever having lived here. When I asked the residents, none of them had any idea.”

I found out García Márquez lived in my apartment with his wife and two sons for a little over a year, from late 1967 to early 1969. Despite having recently published One Hundred Years of Solitude in South America, he had not yet reached celebrity status in Spain — so for the year-and-some-months in my neighborhood, he was able to go about his life and keep a low profile. Yet a look into the seven years he spent in Barcelona — he later moved to a bigger apartment in another neighborhood — opened up another story of the time when Latin American authors filled Barcelona’s streets, inspiring each other’s writings and kicking off what’s known today as the Latin American Boom.

This flourishing is commonly understood to have started in 1967, when García Márquez moved into my apartment and started writing The Autumn of the Patriarch. But others argue its roots are in the prior meeting of García Márquez and his literary agent, Carmen Balcells, a Catalan woman who would change the face of Spanish publishing forever.

Balcells brought a crack platoon of Latin American writers over to Old World Barcelona, including Mario Vargas Llosa and Julio Cortázar, turning this city into a 1920s Paris for expatriate Hispanophones. Balcells was their Gertrude Stein: muse, den mother, and intellectual chef.

All this was going on amid a period of unease in Spain. While the rest of the Western world was caught up in 1960s antiwar protests and social movements, Spain was still trapped under the lid of Francisco Franco, a dictatorship that ended with his death in 1975. Censorship laws were still in place, yet Barcelona — despite the ban on the regional language of Catalan — was the hub of Spanish publishing. These writers were right in the middle of the tension, creating novels that would forever change Latin American literature.

¤

Catalan journalist Xavi Ayén documented those years in his engaging history Aquellos Años del Boom (“Those Years of the Boom”), a near-thousand-page-long anthology of those 10-odd years. He begins by saying that the cultural fusion couldn’t have been born anywhere else but Barcelona, a “city where the book was king and during a time when literature was queen.”

Many books and authors emerged from that era — most notably, the literary genre of magical realism broke out of Latin America into a global readership. But the “who should be included” in this literary period and “who shouldn’t” is still questionable. García Márquez’s biographer Gerald Martin says there are a handful of undisputed Boom writers, whom he calls the Fab Four: Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortázar, and Carlos Fuentes.

“The Boom is best understood as the crystallization and culmination of Latin America’s twentieth-century modernist movement,” Martin writes in his biography, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life. It’s when Latin American literature was, after decades of a post-colonial world, finally introduced to a wider audience.

And the spark that set it off was, arguably, García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Ayén writes that since the novel was published in 1967, it has sold over 100,000 copies every year, a never-before-seen figure in Latin American literature. It was this explosion, he adds, that let other Latin American writers follow suit and, for the first time, become best sellers in European bookstands.

“Latin American literature had been completely marginalized internationally up until that point,” said Ayén when I met him at a cafe in Barcelona. “So for the first time, the best living writers in the world were Latin American. That had never happened before. And it was a huge pride, a huge boost, it was like winning the World Cup in literature for all of Latin America.”

The Boom was more than just a time in history — it also resulted in close friendships between the writers that formed part of it. García Márquez and Vargas Llosa both settled in Barcelona in the late ’60s — they lived down the street from each other in the upscale neighborhood of Sarrià, where Gabo moved after living in my apartment. Gabo used to joke that he would tap on his walls to communicate with Vargas Llosa, so close were their apartments to one another. They would spend hours at the neighborhood’s Bar Tomás, an early 20th-century joint still popular today, talking literature and politics.

Their families, and those of their other Spanish and Catalan friends, would spend birthdays together, holidays together, and many evenings listening to music in Gabo’s apartment, a music lover who was known for having one of the best sound systems in the neighborhood. Leticia Escario and her husband, Luis Feduchi, became an integral part of this group, despite not being writers themselves.

“Gabo was a very generous person, kind of shy. He didn’t like to show off,” said Escario when I met her for coffee one morning. “We were like one big family. We would spend Sundays together, we met each other’s extended families. Luis and Gabo would even recite poetry together.”

But not all of the Boom writers built their lives in Barcelona. Cortázar, for example, chose to live in Paris. Yet he spent a lot of his time in the Catalan capital. What held them all together — the rock in a sea of drifters — was their literary agent Carmen Balcells.

¤

I met Carmen Balcells’s son, Luis Miguel Palomares, at the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency offices. He took over the agency when his mother died in 2015. The spacious centuries-old apartment was full of light, despite it being a dreary rainy day; at his desk, he had a white bust of his mother and a collage of photos, including one of them together when he was a child.

When I asked if he thought Balcells and Gabo were the rocks of the Latin American Boom, comparing them to “the John and Paul of the Beatles,” Palomares hesitated.

“There were a lot of other people,” he said, listing a handful. “They were just two of many. I’m not here to comment on the importance of my mother, but you pull up just a few articles on the topic, and you’ll see that biographers and journalists all say the same thing: she changed Spanish publishing forever.”

And it’s true. Just a quick search of Balcells’s name will result in dozens of articles, crediting her with shepherding a generation of Latin American authors. She was one of the big reasons a lot of these writers moved to Barcelona — or at the very least, visited often — and gave them access to Europe’s literary markets for the first time. But it was the way she approached publishing, and the way she treated her writers, that made her stand out. Many of them called her la mamá grande, the big mama.

“She was all about taking care of the author, one hundred percent,” said Palomares, who from a young age helped his mother out at the agency and met many, if not all, of the Boom writers. “This wasn’t about economics or business. It was about the human element.”

On top of negotiating multi-book deals and pushing for better contracts with publishers, Balcells would take care of finding apartments for the writers, often far from the city center to prevent them from getting distracted (in sympathy to García Márquez, I’ve often complained that my apartment is far from everything, inconveniently located up a hill). She would support the writers financially when they couldn’t make ends meet and even help them take care of personal things, like finding a school for their children or a doctor when they were sick.

“They called her for every little thing, like little children,” said journalist Ayén. “But, the agreement was, you do what I tell you then. So, no one questioned her.”

Balcells wanted these writers to do what they did best: write, and only write.

“She took huge economic risks,” said Palomares. “The protection she gave them surpassed what’s normally seen. She would make their lives easier.”

And while Balcells may have held the group of writers together — even after García Márquez and Vargas Llosa got in a famous fistfight in 1976 — biographer Gerald Martin says the key to understanding the Latin American Boom is more than just Balcells; it’s the coming together of her and Gabo.

“He writes the most successful book in the history of Latin America, ever. Which, it still is. So, she falls in and wins the lottery, as they say,” he said over a phone conversation. “The absolute key was that Carmen Balcells got him as her writer.”

The two maintained a close friendship throughout their lives — they died just one year apart. During the years García Márquez lived in Barcelona, he would visit Balcells’s office several times a week, to talk or just get advice. They spent time with each other’s families; Palomares remembers going to the Gabos’s house and playing with his sons, who were about his age. Even after his Barcelona years, García Márquez visited the Catalan capital often; Balcells’s agency always had his green SEAT 1430 car ready for him to drive.

“She’s the person he went straight to when he arrived. She’s the person who almost certainty fixed him up with the first apartments,” said Martin. “She’s the person who turned his books into commodities, in the most successful way. It was a marriage made in heaven between these brilliant writers and this brilliant agent.”

¤

Though García Márquez was no fan of Franco, his love for all things Catalan began as a young man growing up in Colombia, where he was exposed to the exiles that had fled after the Spanish Civil War. When he arrived here three decades later, Barcelona was still full of anti-Franco activists and underground movements; the Catalan region had been especially oppressed because of its drive to speak its own language and practice its own culture.

“There’s something about the Mediterranean Sea that brings in a breeze of fresh air,” said Leticia Escario, who lived in Barcelona through the dictatorship. “It was more open to the rest of the world, literally speaking. It’s close to France, so it was easier for people to travel.”

Gabo remembers his time in Barcelona as some of the happiest years of his life. In a personal reflection published in Ayén’s Aquellos Años del Boom, he admitted that, in light of the Francoist dictatorship in power, the freedom he found in Barcelona surprised him. But he realized it was a space that had been “won” — though, in this case, not through war — by the everyday perseverance of writers, artists, journalists, and the Catalan people. And now he was like one of them.

The Latin American Boom has largely been washed from Barcelona’s history: the city is often identified with the architect Antoni Gaudí, or perhaps with the years Pablo Picasso spent here, or more recently with the Barcelona soccer team and its Argentine star, Lionel Messi. There are no public memorials dedicated to the writers who started a literary revolution 50 years ago, or their energetic Catalan agent. Though there are dozens of literary tours around the city, they usually revolve around novels and stories set in Barcelona, not what was actually written here.

Alex Lloreda organizes tours through his company Literat Tours, and says that in his 10 years of work, not one person has proposed a literary tour based on the Boom. He’s not opposed to the idea, however; and has for a while considered creating one in Sarrià, where both Gabo and Vargas Llosa lived.

García Márquez will, however, get his name on something: construction for a new library named after him began just some months ago, but the place isn’t due to open for another two or so years.

Many people asked me how it was possible that the apartment’s owner didn’t tell me, when I rented out the place, that García Márquez once lived there. But the owner didn’t even know. My roommate, who had lived at the apartment for years before I arrived, also didn’t know. Nobody in the building or the neighborhood remembers the years Gabo lived here, and nobody who lived through it 50 years ago bothered to pass down the stories to their children or younger neighbors.

Only in the Sarrià neighborhood are there whispers of his having been around. The bartenders at the Bar Tomás, where García Márquez and Vargas Llosa used to drink, speak of them like ghosts. The place was buzzing with customers on a recent Tuesday afternoon, and they kept their eyes on their work as they talked, pouring beers and serving croquetas on little plates. “There are stories about Gabo around here,” one of them says. “And maybe some of the older people around the neighborhood will remember seeing him around. But other than that, everyone else has passed away.”

Just like my apartment, the place where he moved to in Sarrià has no indication of Gabo having lived there. It stands quietly as if nothing had ever happened in there, as if a famous novel had not been written inside there, as if a group of influential writers had not spent hours talking politics in there.

And as I stood outside the building, looking up into the windows that Gabo once gazed through, I wondered if maybe it’s better that way. The local geography is our own little secret; a history relived for those lucky enough to know it.

¤

Lucia Benavides is a writer and journalist currently based in Barcelona, who has worked as a reporter/producer at the NPR affiliate in Austin, Texas. Her work has also appeared in Teen Vogue and Al Jazeera English.

The post García Márquez Slept Here appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[battybat-boss]

California Pediatrician Bob Sears Breaks Silence on Medical Board Opposition to Vaccine Exemptions

Dr. Bob Sears – Image from Facebook.

Comments by Brian Shilhavy Editor, Health Impact News

Two years ago we covered the story about Dr. Bob Sears in California who faced discipline by the California state Medical Board after he wrote a medical exemption for vaccines on behalf of a 2-year-old patient who experienced adverse reactions from earlier vaccines.

See:

California Dr. Bob Sears Faces Medical Board Discipline for Writing Medical Vaccine Exemption

This action taken against Dr. Sears happened after the new law in California, SB277, went into effect removing religious and philosophical exemptions for vaccines. After the passage of SB277 in 2015, only a doctor can issue an exemption for vaccines for medical reasons.

Dr. Bob Sears is internationally renown for his stance on parental rights and informed consent, and although he is not anti-vaccine, he does believe that a one-size-fits-all approach to vaccines is misguided, and that the medical needs of his patients need to be taken into consideration regarding vaccines and the spacing of vaccines.

Therefore, the attack on Dr. Sears was generally seen as a political move in California to try and intimidate him and other doctors who write medical exemptions for vaccines for their patients, which is perfectly legal, even after the passage of SB277. California lawmakers are heavily lobbied and influenced by Big Pharma, which would like to see all vaccines mandated for everyone, regardless of medical conditions.

Dr. Sears has broken his silence after 2 years, and he has revealed that there are several other cases the California Medical Board is looking into regarding his medical practice.

Public Statement From Dr. Bob Sears

Dr. Bob Sears Facebook Page

Patients, friends, and colleagues:

I want to update all of you on the status of the California medical board case against me which began in 2015. For those who don't know, the board has been investigating me for writing a court opinion letter for a child who had an adverse reaction to vaccines. Recently, instead of proceeding to a trial, the board has offered me a settlement of 35 months probation, and I have accepted. I am at peace with this outcome. Probation means that I will choose a pediatric colleague in the area who will periodically review some of my charts to verify I am, as always, practicing within the standard of care. I will also have to take some extra continuing medical education classes and an ethics course.

Why accept a settlement when I've done nothing wrong? The challenge with medical board cases is that even if I win on all aspects of a case, the medical board can still exercise its authority and put me on probation anyway. I win, or lose, a trial before a judge, then the medical board decides the punishment based on how they see the facts. Since it was likely that I'd get probation anyway, I accepted the offer.

All this for a court opinion letter? Medical boards are normally tasked with protecting patients against doctors who do things like sell drugs, see patients while intoxicated, commit insurance fraud, prescribe a wrong drug that ends up hurting a patient. However, this investigation probably came from higher up the chain of command. I picked a fight with a California Legislator, and he has been very vocal about openly working with the medical board to prosecute doctors who excuse patients from their vaccines, regardless of the merits of a case. I signed up for this.

So what really happened, and why should the very existence of this case concern every American? A child and his mother came to me for help. The mom described how her baby had suffered a moderate to severe neurologic reaction to vaccines almost three years prior, and she was afraid a judge in her upcoming hearing was going to force her to resume vaccines now. Medical records of the reaction were not available yet, and I gave the patient a letter of opinion to show the judge that the reaction was severe enough to justify not doing any more vaccines. The board accusation against me states that such a judgement should not be made without medical records. But this patient needed a letter right away. Getting the patient's medical records ended up taking over a year. Isn't it my job to listen to my patients and believe what a parent says happened to her baby? Isn't that what ALL doctors do with their patients? A patient's word is often the only evidence we have – as doctors we must trust our patients, the same way our patients trust us to look out for their best interest. After all, I don't want a child to receive a medical treatment that could cause more harm. I am going to first do no harm, every time.

The second detail in this case, and the part which ultimately prompted me to agree to a settlement, is the medical board observed that I did not make complete medical notes of the neurological exam I performed on the child at a second visit. The child came in complaining that he had been hit on the head with a hammer. I checked him out thoroughly, performed a complete neurologic exam, but you know what? I didn't write down all aspects of the exam. I documented everything else but that one detail.

Is this fight over? No it is not. This was just case number one. The medical board is already lining up four more cases, and these will be about vaccine medical exemptions under the new vaccine law. It seems there is an attempt to keep me on probation for the rest of my medical career. But the one thing I'm going to do differently this time is that I'm going to be very open with all the proceedings. With case one, I was silent. Upon the recommendation of my lawyers I haven't said a thing until now. But I'm tired of being quiet.

So, case number two involves siblings who got vaccine medical exemptions from me because one of the children has a severe medical condition that research has shown can get worse with ongoing vaccination. The other child doesn't have the condition, yet, but dad does. Exemption for reasons in a family's medical history is an amendment guaranteed under SB277. We'll see if the medical board agrees – probably about two years from now. These things take a long time.

Case number three is a child with a family member who had a severe permanent neurological injury after vaccines.

Case number four is a teen who had a severe reaction to an infant vaccine, her own doctor told her to opt out of that vaccine after that, and I gave her an exemption from the teen booster dose. We'll see if the board agrees.

Case number five involves siblings to whom I did not give vaccine exemptions to, but a parent somehow reported me to the medical board anyway. I don't know why yet. Should be interesting.

It alarms me to see any medical board questioning exemptions that are given to families who have suffered severe vaccine reactions. It should alarm everybody. More doctors need to stand up for their patients, especially the ones who are the most vulnerable. I'm going to continue to stand for these children.

Now that case one is settled, I can go back to being loud and proud about my belief that every single patient should receive complete informed consent prior to vaccinations. This two-year period of silence has been tough. I will not rest until every single family has been given access to full, complete, objective, and un-doctored information that makes every parent fully aware of the risks they accept if they don't vaccinate their child, and all the risks they take if they do vaccinate their child. Period. And I will fight against mandatory vaccination laws until they are no more. When every single person on this planet has access to informed consent, and can make a free choice, I will then be able to say my work is done.

Thank you all for the outpouring of love and support, and your continued prayers.

Source.

Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com.

Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people. In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine. FREE Shipping Available! Order here.

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Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced?

eBook – Available for immediate download.

One of the biggest myths being propagated in the compliant mainstream media today is that doctors are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and that the anti-vaccine doctors are all “quacks.”

However, nothing could be further from the truth in the vaccine debate. Doctors are not unified at all on their positions regarding “the science” of vaccines, nor are they unified in the position of removing informed consent to a medical procedure like vaccines.

The two most extreme positions are those doctors who are 100% against vaccines and do not administer them at all, and those doctors that believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective for ALL people, ALL the time, by force if necessary.

Very few doctors fall into either of these two extremist positions, and yet it is the extreme pro-vaccine position that is presented by the U.S. Government and mainstream media as being the dominant position of the medical field.

In between these two extreme views, however, is where the vast majority of doctors practicing today would probably categorize their position. Many doctors who consider themselves “pro-vaccine,” for example, do not believe that every single vaccine is appropriate for every single individual.

Many doctors recommend a “delayed” vaccine schedule for some patients, and not always the recommended one-size-fits-all CDC childhood schedule. Other doctors choose to recommend vaccines based on the actual science and merit of each vaccine, recommending some, while determining that others are not worth the risk for children, such as the suspect seasonal flu shot.

These doctors who do not hold extreme positions would be opposed to government-mandated vaccinations and the removal of all parental exemptions.

In this eBook, I am going to summarize the many doctors today who do not take the most extremist pro-vaccine position, which is probably not held by very many doctors at all, in spite of what the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government, and the mainstream media would like the public to believe.

Read:

Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations – Should Their Views be Silenced?

on your mobile device!

$0.99

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Dr. Andrew Moulden: Every Vaccine Produces Harm

eBook – Available for immediate download.

Canadian physician Dr. Andrew Moulden provided clear scientific evidence to prove that every dose of vaccine given to a child or an adult produces harm. The truth that he uncovered was rejected by the conventional medical system and the pharmaceutical industry. Nevertheless, his warning and his message to America remains as a solid legacy of the man who stood up against big pharma and their program to vaccinate every person on the Earth.

Dr. Moulden died unexpectedly in November of 2013 at age 49.

Because of the strong opposition from big pharma concerning Dr. Moulden's research, we became concerned that the name of this brilliant researcher and his life's work had nearly been deleted from the internet. His reputation was being disparaged, and his message of warning and hope was being distorted and buried without a tombstone. This book summarizes his teaching and is a must-read for everyone who wants to learn the “other-side” of the vaccine debate that the mainstream media routinely censors.

Read:

Read Dr. Andrew Moulden: Every Vaccine Produces Harm on your mobile device!

on your mobile device!

$3.99

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Say NO to Mandatory Vaccines T-Shirt

100% Pre-shrunk Cotton Order here!

Make a Statement for Health Freedom!

Big Pharma and government health authorities are trying to pass laws mandating vaccines for all children, and even adults.

Show your opposition to forced vaccinations and support the cause of Vaccine Impact, part of the Health Impact News network.

Order here!

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