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liberalist-international-assoc · 6 years ago

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Excerpts from an article by Shane Armstrong, published by the LIA and featured on the Ember. If you are interested in having an article published with us please contact us at [email protected]. Pressure has been mounting on MasterCard to ban transactions for those that people are calling “far right”. Activist organization SumOfUs, a 501(c)(4) Non-Profit for Social Welfare, has been making demands of MasterCard, forcing the credit organization to hold a shareholder vote over whether or not they ought to monitor payments transferred via the creditor’s services. Of course, MasterCard has a history of caving to such pressures in the past; last August they banned Robert Spencer, the curator behind Jihad Watch, with no explanation for their behavior. What is not speculation, however, is who is in charge of SumOfUs, that being Executive Director Hannah Lownsbrough. Hannah is known, when not being busy directing her acclaimed organization, for writing for publications including Huffington Post, The Guardian and Salon, providing them such timeless gems as “Silicon Valley CEO’s Have a Choice to Make: Oppose Trump’s Agenda, or Be Complicit In It”, and “How Banning Plastic Straws at McDonald's Could Help Save Our Oceans”. Clearly, the political aims and intentions of Ms. Lownsbrough are rather laid bare while she champions these causes, despite failing to ever identify what exactly she and others within her organization mean when they demand the de-platforming of the “far right”.

One finds it curious than the strange donations made to SumOfUs in 2015 and 2016, whereupon reviewing their tax history; finds donations from three individuals totaling a sum of no less than $1.2 Million US dollars. Admittedly, these donations account for less than 15% of SumOfUs funding over the 2 year period, but it's still strange how one can claim to be anti-corporate, while accepting anonymous donations of half a million dollars, as though that kind of money isn’t more than triple the median gross annual salary of American citizens. I take issue with charlatans declaring people to be “Far right” for doing nothing more than espousing that they don’t want their family members to be raped or assaulted by people who show no moral or ethical consideration for them within their own country, people who actively treat their fellow citizens as lesser for not sharing the same religion as their own, a fundamentally illiberal idea at its core. Are we then to understand that any criticism of Islam at all would be met by these accusations that a person is “far right”, and that they are therefore deserving to be stricken from all available platforms and summarily silenced from the discussion on the internet, all because of a deceptive fool, who condemns those who disagree with her with slurs, before ever explaining what those slurs are to mean to the average person? Of course, once SumOfUs and their crowd of useful pawns get their way, the very people accused will no longer have the means to defend themselves to the public anymore, and so the reputation of individuals will continue to be tarnished by those who never actually challenge their beliefs or interrogate their positions. Liars and frauds like Lownsbrough ought to be exposed for their manipulation of gullible and vulnerable masses of people whom she and others like her in the media have terrified with the specter of a Neo-Nazi renaissance haunting the horizon whenever possible. They ought to be ridiculed for their outlandish suggestions and failure to understand the very scope of the problem they seek to correct.

People who act this way are not the pioneers and saviors they claim to be. No, they are self-righteous bullies, idiots, and charlatans who know not what they speak of but are manipulative enough to know how to scare others enough to get them to believe what they say is true. It is long past time we stopped listening to hypocritical fear-mongers who put their pocketbooks before their principles. If you're interested in getting involved in our nonprofit here is our website and here is our discord discord.gg/9fUxgaZ if you ever wanna hang.

#news #freedom of speech #tommy robinson #free speech #censored #censorship #liberalist #liberalism #latest news #globalist #politics

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ancientbrit · 4 years ago

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Natter #4 7/4/2020

MI MG Natter #4 4th July 2020I hope you all have had a happy fourth - all fingers still attached and tummies filled. Pickle seems to be getting used to the bangs this year, or perhaps he is a little deaf. Usually, at the first bang, he disappears and hides under my bed. This time he has wandered upstairs and downstairs and doesn't seem to register the bangs much at all - which is good.

I am in contact with a guy back home who runs a regular allotment (PeaPatch here) blog, giving timely advice and other information related mostly to veggie & fruit culture. I find this very helpful as he jogs my memory on those extremely rare occasions when I forget. I know you think that I never forget, but I have to admit that there has been the occasional lapse ever since I stopped eating peanuts. Strange thing that. His words for July remind us that this month is the time to sow seeds for Fall and Winter veggie crops such as Chicory (does anybody actually grow this?), Chinese Cabbage, Kohl Rabi, Lettuce, French Beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Radish, Turnips, and Peas - pick early varieties - early Snow peas are an especially fast to crop

.If you have had the forethought to already start Leeks from seed, now is the time to plant out those starts. The easiest way to do this is to use an old broomstick handle and thrust it vertically into the soil to a depth of about 5-6".Just drop the seedlings carefully, roots first into the holes and then just water in - that's all you need to do. The water will wash soil from the sides of the holes down onto the roots and it will remain cool and moist enough to thoroughly root the seedlings well. The idea of doing it this way, apart from the ease of planting and gaining support from the sides, is that the hole blanches the stem of the leek as it grows to gain more usable parts of the plant. If they are kept reasonably moist they should grow quite rapidly through the Summer and be ready to make fabulous potato-leek soup in time to keep cold days at bay. If you have never eaten P-L soup accompanied by chunks of Crusty artisan bread generously spread with butter - you haven't lived. Food of the Gods this! If you have been growing spuds and have lifted them already, you can follow with a crop of French beans to both nourish yourself and the soil, or if beans aren't your thing try a green manure crop such as Mustard. However, bear in mind that if you have ever had Club Root on your cabbage family plants, do not use Mustard as it is also a brassica. Use one of the Pea family, both for the Nitrogen root boost, but also for the foliage. And now for something completely different:- Once more my friend Valerie Robertson has presented her view on things English on the other side of the pond and is sent all over the world.

Val is a very highly qualified State Registered Nurse who knows whereof she speaks.

Here we go.

From: Valerie Robertson GAG 14 Hope all is well with all. All Quiet in the Western Front over this way. Seattle’s CHOP was liberated leaving an appalling mess The pubs are open today so the protesters have disappeared. BLMUK. is proving to be an embarrassment to those who donated, bent the knee and supported a cause that advocates the abolition of the nuclear family (that means dad is superfluous), defund the police, destroy capitalism and support censorship plus the necessity for every white person to acknowledge that they are all subconsciously racist and privileged, and own up to the “fact” that every institution is inherently racist and disproportionally White supremacy managed. That’s a big ask, which has bewildered the millionaire black footballers, academics & artists, Labour leader Sir Keith what’s his name, (why would a Labour leader accept a knighthood?) and all the national institutions taking the knee, which the other men in the street saw, as bowing to street fighter activists outrageous demands. Ie supporting racial divide and suppressing diversity of opinions and abolishing history. Our moral leader Canterbury Arch Runcton, is also confused. He’s a woke bloke that got it wrong at Easter. Streaming his Easter service from his kitchen with his toaster in the background. For God's sake, he must have a parlour with a row of books as a backdrop, in his palatial abode. He’s now having a think about the effigies in the Cathedral and wondering which ones to get rid of. Should he paint Jesus black? Jesus loves all the children of the world, be they yellow, black or white. What about the brown ones? They were precious in His sight too? He’s going to need a lot of colours. The Bournemouth beach sunbathing nutters are bright pink still. The Cambridge academia have just funded a two-year study into the history of slavery to enable the oiks to confront their iniquitous past and say sorry to all offended by history. Waste of time, as it’s been done before, over and over and you can’t change it. I’ve got a better idea for them to study. Research the Benin bronzes. There are 3,OOO of them but only 500 left in Nigeria, the rest in Europe and USA museums. They are exquisite. The Portuguese kicked off the Atlantic slave trade in 1400 from the port of Benin with gold, which the Africans turned into these fantastic plaques, I think but not sure. I’m too busy doing my epidemic virus studies to go to the British Museum and find out. And we are not allowed yet, to visit Portugal unless keen enough to fly to Spain and walk across the border to check up on the museum artifacts in Lisbon. It’s good to see Lewis Hamilton constructively addressing inequality in the motor racing world. The aggrieved black community can be placated and inspired by their own incredibly successful race if they listen. We have diversity, we have opportunity, we have laws, education, healthcare, social services, state welfare funding and overall, a tolerant multicultural society, who are very tired of the woke politically-correct champagne socialists agenda over the last decade. There are deep social and economic injustices which are nothing to do with slavery or racial prejudice. Lewis Hamilton lives in Monte Carlo to save paying a hefty U.K. income tax liability. He was raised in Stevenage and lived in a council house with his family partially supported by the welfare state. Is he a philanthropist who promotes the welfare of others by donating money for schools etc.? No he’s not if he’s a British citizen tax evader. Is he a Monacoan now.? Is he a hypocrite? I don’t know? Perhaps the academics can ask the uni students to research, write a paper and make up their own minds. Estate agents will not in future be using Master Bedroom in their ads. Connotations of slave masters etc. Uncle Bens rice is to be repackaged without the jolly black man, Aunt Jemima also and awaiting more news re. MasterCard, Master chef, Master Mind, Headmaster ( the lefty teachers union still keeping schools shut) Masters degree, a tricky one for Cambridge. We are living with the virus and hanging in with our self-imposed restrictions and socially distancing. The copper masks and latex gloves worked a treat when John needed to visit the GP surgery for a blood test to check prostate antigen level insomuch not coughing. Although London has seen a slight rise in the R rate, no doubt due to the mass protests, the infection rate remains stable and patients being more successfully treated with drugs, to avoid intensive care. The disproportionate ethnic infection rate is due to blood group, genetic disparity, and body mass ratio, and a difference in the percentage of T cells. These cells decline with age and are responsible for fighting off infection without causing a major auto-immune response. People past 65, have very few left. This theory explains why the young can come in contact with the virus but don’t succumb, however, if repeatedly exposed will catch it and manufacture antibodies and can still remain asymptomatic. Mass testing suggests that 40 percent of the population has been exposed with few symptoms, the silent spreaders who have the herd immunity. So we know the virus is still around and can’t trust the idiots to self-isolate if positive. All we can hope for is that they wear a mask and keep away from the elderly. Once the herd immunity and those who have recovered from it reach 60 percent, providing the medically vulnerable and fatties avoid it, the virus will find no host, cannot, therefore, multiply and shed and theoretically die away. So it’s a balance. As the months go on there is hope for more preventive medication to alleviate the symptoms and of course a vaccine. Last October, the WHO found that U.K. and USA were the best in the world prepared for a pandemic. Cameron had placed an order for millions of PPE equipment with a French company with the deposit to fund the manufacturer to make it. By the time U.K. needed it, we got the deposit refunded but the stocks were needed in France and they had sold some items at a higher price, to Italy. That’s Globalisation for you and the free market. Meanwhile, a couple who were distilling boutique gin in the midlands, altered their equipment to distill hand sanitizers and viral cleansing fluids as NHS were buying it in from abroad at an inflated price. They now supply the NHS cheaply and in the past 12 weeks have made 30 million pounds profit. Well done as they are donating a substantial amount to Covid research. No doubt as a tax saving incentive, but still commendable. There’s a lot to be said for self-reliance. The govt. with its 80 strong SAGE - the Scientific, Advisory Government Epidemic advisors, have caused the pandemonium. At the outset, the models and graphs predicting the scale have been proved wrong. Simple precautions were overlooked. Emptying geriatric wards, filling up care homes with staff untrained in infection control was scandalous. Mask wearing should have been made compulsory on public transport, supermarkets and shops at the outset and at least some sort of temperature checking and contact tracing at airports and ferries. So, onto local lockdowns and long term containment. Boris is getting on with Brexit and left Hanlon to contain the virus, Hope the strategy works. I have faith in the laboratory’s scientists and the trials and the guinea pigs testing the emerging vaccines. Meanwhile, tomatoes coming along, being well-nourished and in good shape and we are up to four playing again at croquet. Sainsbury delivering without hassle and Miles and Giles still surprising me with a tablespoon of Baharat in a nifty environment-friendly container. It made the lamb taste different. The kennels are open but missed the boat as all the rescue dogs are adopted and long waiting lists for puppies.

A dog called Nigger, I imagine a black or brown Labrador, who was loved and died in 1878, had a headstone in the animal cemetery in a Sussex village graveyard. The local stonemason has ground away the name as the villagers thought it might cause offence to visitors and that dog’s owners would understand as they were dead anyway and not around to ask permission. Just love kind people. The drought's over and it’s cool as we are and hope you are too. Take care Love from Val And from your fearless leader,Gordon

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ianspirations · 4 years ago

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A BETTER KIND OF POLITICS: Chapter 5 of Fratelli Tutti

A global community of fraternity bound by ties of social friendship is possible if we upgrade to a better kind of politics, one that is truly at the service of the common good. Sadly, politics today often goes in the opposite direction by hindering progress toward a better world.

Populism and Liberalism

Populism exploits the vulnerable for its own purposes and liberalism only serves the economic interests of the powerful.

Populism is a political approach that tries to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their voice is not heard by the majority or elite. Such a politic threatens democracy because it thrives on the differences of people and in the bargain deepens the fractures. Populists try to exploit culture by pushing an ideological agenda that serves selfish purposes. To this end they are ready to exert pressure and ‘capture’ other institutions and amend laws. Despite the existence of different kinds of people there are also communitarian aspirations. “Men and women are capable of coming up with shared goals that transcend their differences and can thus engage in a common endeavour” (FT#157). We have to beware of demagoguery within politics. Our identity as ‘people’ is a shared notion that arises from social and cultural bonds. Thus, it is not something automatic and natural but something that develops gradually over a period of time and directed to a common end.

Contrary to Populist leaders we have Popular leaders who are capable of understanding the feelings and cultural dynamics of people and society. They have the potential to lead according to an enduring vision of transformation and growth that allows everyone space to pursue the common good.

One sign of populist politics is the concern for short-term advantage. Any initiative of development is done with the view of attracting votes and not for the real good of the people. Inequality can be eliminated with the help of economic growth that taps into each region’s potential and provides equal opportunity to all. Welfare projects which meet urgent needs are important but should only be a temporary response. Providing employment is one of the best ways to uplift the poor and offer them dignity through work. “Since production systems may change, political systems must keep working to structure society in such a way that everyone has a chance to contribute his/her own talents and efforts” (FT#162). Work does more than provide economic sustenance, it allows for personal growth, building of healthy relationships, self-expression and exchange of gifts; it gives a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world.

The concepts of people, along with their community and cultural bonds and neighbour are criticized by individualistic liberalists. Charity unites both the individual and the social. We cannot have a private life without a public order. An individual’s life depends on the security and stability assured by law; their wellbeing requires that there exist a division of labour, commercial exchange, social justice and political citizenship. Real charity is able to recognize these as necessities for an individual and is willing to offer it even to a foreigner or a neglected brother or sister. To do this, one can have recourse to various institutions that are willing to offer their services to provide these basic necessities. Even the Samaritan needed the inn to care for the hurt person. Love of neighbour is concrete and makes use of every resource to bring about historical change that benefits the poor and disadvantaged. But leftist ideologies and social doctrines can also prove ineffective if they are propelled by individualistic ambitions. Therefore, we see the need for worldwide organization to resolve the problems plaguing our world. There is no one solution.

Everything hinges on our ability to see the need for a change of heart, attitudes and lifestyles. Until then, political propaganda, the media and shapers of public opinion will continue to promote an individualistic culture that perpetuates the problem. The tendency to selfishness or what is known within Christian circles as Concupiscence is not limited to our times. It has been present since Adam and has only taken on different forms in different ages. It can be overcome with the help of God. (FT#166) Education and upbringing, concern for others, a well-integrated view of life and spiritual growth are all essential for better relations and a better society.

Some liberal approaches fail to consider the impact of concupiscence and hence envisage a world that is determined by certain laws and capable of providing its own solutions for every problem. This is clearly not true. Encouraging the rich to get richer and purporting that their excess wealth will ‘trickle’ over to help the disadvantaged just does not hold any water in reality. Such alleged ‘spillovers’ do not resolve inequality or the violence that ensues from desperation. We need an economic policy that encourages business creativity and creates jobs. A business that seeks quick profits ends up creating more havoc than good. The pandemic has shown that “not everything can be resolved by market freedom. It has also shown that, in addition to recovering sound political life that is not subject to the dictates of finance, we must put human dignity back at the centre and on that pillar build the alternative social structures we need” (FT#168).

We need an economic framework that integrates popular movements of the unemployed, temporary, informal and other kinds of workers who do not find a place in existing structures. Political and economic institutions stand to gain from allowing for the excluded to be included in the task of building up a common destiny. These movements act as ‘social poets’ who work, propose, promote and liberate; they make possible integral human development. Many might consider them troublesome and disruptive but they ensure that democracy stays alive and remains true to its nature of being a government for the people, by the people and of the people.

The response to the financial crisis of 07-08 was a lame effort at revival that did not include rethinking strategies to avoid such a crisis in the future but which rather “fostered greater individualism, less integration and increased freedom” for the wealthy to retain their wealth (FT#170). In keeping with the concept of justice, no individual or group can consider themselves to be above any other; they have no right to bypass the rights and dignity of others in serving their own interests. In order to prevent this we need a strong judicial system and an effective distribution of power among the population. What is noticeable is that politics is coming under the influence of economics such that those with economic power wield immense power within the political arena whether they enter into it directly or not. Often, this economic power is transnational, that is, it goes beyond state or national borders. Therefore, it is necessary to have “some form of world authority regulated by law” which can regulate transnational economics and impose sanctions if necessary, so as to prevent transnational economic powers from interfering and influencing local and global politics, and promoting the “global common good” and the “defence of fundamental human rights” (FT#172).

In this regard, the UN needs to evolve into something more than just an advisory and administrative body. It has to be able to set “clear legal limits to avoid power being co-opted only by a few countries and to prevent cultural impositions or a restriction of the basic freedoms of weaker nations on the basis of ideological differences” (FT#173).

In order to achieve these goals all of us have to show courage and generosity. To this end, agreements have to be honoured and controversies have to be resolved as peacefully as possible. It is fortuitous that many groups and organizations are striving to make up for the deficiencies of governments. Their work is a “concrete application of the principle of subsidiarity which justifies the participation and activity of communities and organizations on lower levels as a means of integrating and complementing the activity of the state” (FT#175).

Social and Political Charity

For many people, politics is a dirty word. This association has come through the way politics is done in many parts. But politics is essential to society and to building a better world. Recognizing all people as family and seeking social friendship is not a utopian ideal, “it demands decisive commitment to devising effective means to this end” (FT#180). This is a work of charity; politics is in fact, “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good” (FT#180).

Putting Jesus’ command of love of neighbour into action is itself a political act. Love of neighbour does not stop with those who are close to us but extends to macro relationships which are social, economic and political. Every action inspired by the Church’s social teaching is an act of charity that seeks to build a better world. We are fully human when we form part of a society but in the collective, the individual is valuable. Therefore, growth, development and progress cannot be individual feats but have to be communitarian. Business today is focused on the individual but a healthy politics will ensure that it does not restrict itself to the individual but rather extend to the whole community.

There is a form of love that is elicited, that is, actions which flow out of a deep love for people. There is another form of love which is commanded, that is, actions which “spur people to create more sound institutions, more just regulations, more supportive structures” (FT#186). This latter form of love encourages social friendship because it cannot see others suffer, deprived or exploited.

A simple act of charity can give a hungry person something to eat but a politician through a higher form of charity can create an opportunity for that person to earn their food. Such a form of charity ought to be the spiritual heart of politics. It has a preferential love for those in greatest need. Education has a role to play in helping each person shape their own future. Politicians need to take account and act against those things which threaten the fundamental human rights. They have to be men and women of vision whose concern is not about winning elections but finding solutions to the various challenges that hinder the common good.

We are still far from a globalization of the most basic of human rights: food! Politics needs to make the elimination of hunger a top priority. The huge amounts of wasted food speak of a crime against humanity. Another shameful practice is human trafficking. Politicians would do better to waste less time on speeches and give more time to eradicating these miseries (FT#189).

Political charity is expressed in a spirit of openness. Politicians ought to foster encounter and consensus on important issues. They should be ready to listen to alternative points of view and thus make room for different voices and opinions. In a world that is rearing fundamentalism and intolerance, we can make a difference by being respectful of others, welcoming differences, giving importance to the dignity of people over ideas and projects. Disagreements can lead to conflict but they are necessary for healthy societies; uniformity only leads to stagnation.

Politicians need to beware of the modern tendency to functionalize the satisfaction of human desires. Instead of viewing people as persons with an identity and interests, they are seen as sick and in need of medical attention, struggling and in need of financial backing, homeless and in need of a home or frustrated and in need of entertainment. We have to be aware that persons are persons at the end of the day and not mere beneficiaries.

Political love is also a tender love. Tenderness means being close to someone. This is a path for the strongest and most courageous. The ability to be tender to the most needy and oppressed is challenging but necessary and fulfilling. Political life cannot only be about achieving great results that is not possible all the time. It has to be about respecting people for who they are and giving them an opportunity to fulfil their potential. One might not achieve great things in a political career but every act of love is not lost to the universe, it remains in the world as a vital force (FT#195). For this reason, it is noble to place hope in the hidden power of the seeds of goodness that we sow. This makes starting new initiatives for a better future meaningful.

When we approach politics in this way we will see it as something noble. The focus needs to shift from media posturing and marketing oneself to focusing on how much love one has shown through one’s work.

#fratelli tutti #encyclical #summary #churchteaching #social #politics #betterworld #future #friendship #socialfriendship #politicians #economics #fraternity #society

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sublimecyclestudentlove · 7 years ago

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Sustainability

Sustainability has become popular in the policy-oriented researches for public policies want to achieve. The principal inspiration came from the Brundtland Report of 1987. This paper argues that the shift which exists between long-term sustainability and short-term welfare is for the better. But before that, we will have to understand sustainability is and the history behind it.

What are sustainability and the history

While there are a lot of definitions of what sustainability when looking up what sustainability means the Cambridge dictionary state that sustainability is “conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.” so if something is sustainable, it can be reused, recycled, repeated because it has no limits. It has biological systems in place. I will touch on biological and ecological systems later on. With a little history, the concept of sustainability initially started in the forestry industry, where it meant never harvesting more than what the forest provided in new growth. As it appeared in the forestry study in Germany as they called it Nachhaltigkeit (which was the German term for sustainability) meaning. The concern with preserving natural resources for the future, of course: undoubtedly our ancestors worried about their prey becoming extinct, and early farmers must have been apprehensive about maintaining soil fertility. The distinction between three ‘pillars’ of sustainability is conceptually fuzzy. We propose a definition that reverts to the original sense in which the concept was intended. Since that time, there have been two major developments in the concept of sustainability: its interpretation regarding three dimensions, which must be in harmony: social, economic and environmental. Two, the distinction between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ sustainability "The Brundtland report speaks of two concerns that should be reconciled: development and the environment. They can also be interpreted as needs versus resources, or as the short versus the long term. Today, however, sustainability is almost always seen regarding three dimensions: social, economic and environmental. This is embodied in the definition of sustainability adopted by the United Nations in its Agenda for Development: “development is a multidimensional undertaking to achieve a higher quality of life for all people. Economic development, social development and environmental protection are interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development.” with all this information about sustainability, I will focus what is meant by sustainable design and its importance.

What is Sustainable Design?

Sustainable design is about designing physical and conceptual objects, even in the built environment where they follow for principles of economic, social, and ecological sustainability. Sustainable designs are more commonly seen nowadays because of the rise in environmental issues like greenhouse effect and global warming. According to the Autodesk 2010 survey results, “designs that use less energy or reduce emissions remain the most important sustainable technology practice while manufacturing processes that use less energy and natural resources were also a priority.”

The importance of sustainability

Good sustainable design must relate to the people with the natural environment. Human and nature interaction are encouraged by allowing people to be in touch with the natural surroundings. Activities should promote environmental wellness and the quality of life. Recycled furniture is, therefore, becoming a trendy choice. Wood and glass are good examples of recycled material. However, recycled furniture could also mean to reuse old and unwanted items.

“CLIMATE Change Week might not be on the radar of everyone in the business community, let alone the commercial property organisations But it should be. Our built environment is responsible for 30% of all carbon emissions; which means you have a role within constructed environment supply chain with considering how your work, the choices you make and the materials specified and the project management process adopted affect carbon emissions, we need to make sure the energy efficiency of our built environment is improved. That means working on existing buildings, especially in the housing sector.”

Another example of the importance of sustainability is the Monmouthshire County Council “which has been delivering better educational environments, like the Rogiet Primary School which is making a real difference to the lives of pupils, teachers and the local community. The sustainable design required a low-energy, environmentally sensitive building that was innovative, flexible to change, safe, healthy and accessible to all, including improved education standards and greater community participation. The designers White Design undertook extensive consultation with end users from the earliest stage of the commission to ensure that the ambitions of the school and community were met. Teaching and learning environments are influenced by four key factors: levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), lighting, acoustics and temperature. White Design considered each of these issues throughout the design process to ensure ventilation, heating and noise levels optimised productivity among users of the school building. Design solutions to facilitate this included a single-storey plan to provide high levels of natural daylight across all learning areas, with all classrooms orientated north to benefit from consistent light levels and avoid over-heating in summer. Positioning classrooms in this way also enabled natural ventilation while avoiding acoustic problems from nearby motorways and national railway routes. Considerate design can also promote health and wellbeing in building users, landscape and planting strategies enhance educational benefits and biodiversity of the site for both the school and surrounding community. Access to the site and the school building is fully inclusive, with no internal level changes within the single storey design, and extensive consultation on colour ensures maximum assistance for visually impaired users. Low energy technologies In close collaboration with designers White Design.” Why we should consider sustainability in design: The Gaia theory The growth and development of our communities have a significant impact on our natural environment. The manufacturing, design, construction and operation of the buildings in which we live and work are responsible for the consumption of many of our natural resources. Because energy conservation is a primary goal of sustainability, and because a building's energy consumption is determined to a great extent by volume and cladding characteristics, architects must still concentrate design attention on building form and facades. More compact buildings require fewer materials, which means less energy invested in construction and, with the reduced exterior surface, less energy to heat and cool buildings after creation. At one extreme is the sphere, the most efficient form because its skin-to-volume ratio is lower than any other geometric shape. This suggests that for optimum sustainability, blob-like architecture might be the wave of the future. Whatever this Science may have been initially; it has grown ever more associated in the public mind with human ecology. The Gaia hypothesis, on the other hand, started with observations of the Earth's atmosphere and other inorganic properties. Where life is concerned, it focuses particular attention on what most people consider to be the lowest part, that represented by the microorganisms. The human species is, of course, a crucial development for Gaia, but we have appeared so late in her life that it hardly seemed appropriate to start our quest by discussing our relationships with her. Contemporary ecology may be deeply embedded in human affairs and a more general framework of geology. How then should we live in Gaia? What difference does her presence make to our relationships with the world and with one another? This means a stoical acceptance of the apocryphal Murphy's law: ‘If anything can go wrong, it will', and implies a programme for the future based on the realistic awareness of this law and of the fact that we live in a very unfair universe. When Aldo Leopold suggested in 1949 that a new requirement for any relevant contemporary ethic must include a "land ethic," he was talking about eco-ethics. When Rachel Carson pointed out the inevitability of some future "silent spring" if we do not contain our production and use of pesticides, she was talking eco-ethics. When E. F. Schumacher suggested for development theory the possibility that "small is beautiful” and that we need to develop a new “Buddhist economics"—an economics that would in fact function “as if people mattered"—he was focusing on eco-ethical concerns. When Christopher Stone posed the question"Should tree have to stand?" it was clear that new eco-ethical formulations were in process. There is an ancient myth describing how the king of the Persians applied a fundamental rule in evaluating the work of his regional governors. He would merely observe the condition of the land and the forests within particular jurisdictions. If the area and the forests were well cared for, he automatically rewarded his governors. If the nation was illtended and restoration efforts to repair damage delayed, the king replaced the caretakers. He evaluated the overall governing ability of his subordinates by their care for the natural world. `The political principle is clear and as applicable today as it was in the mythical past. Those who genuinely care for the Earth, who are sensitive to the effects of human impacts on the environment, can be trusted to govern well generally. The final assessment of the integrity of any political system may be judged on two primary concerns: the respect the network shows for nature, and the care it provides for the least advantaged in the society. Our dominant eco-ethic has been mainly instrumental. We see life as little more than the colourful background for working out our little dramas of fulfilment and salvation. Essentially, as Woody Allen once remarked, "We are at two with nature.” View of the human—nature connection is adequate, increasing numbers of people understand intuitively that nature has intrinsic value, in and of itself. Although usually not for reasons of sustainability. No matter how efficiently configured, a compact form remains aesthetically mute until its exterior walls are composed. And facades continue to offer architects their most excellent opportunity for developing new modes of artistic expression based on sustainability-related composition. Such opportunities are numerous: employ visually diverse cladding materials and textures; control, filter, reflect or transmit daylight to the interior; shade summer sun but admit winter sun to provide heat; cast ever-changing shadow patterns; allow natural ventilation; exploit views to and from the interior; and create overall window and door patterns, juxtaposing transparency and opacity, to animate and impart order to facades. Few of these moves are new. Ancient Greek and Roman builders, Renaissance and Enlightenment architects, and architects of the Modern movement understood these moves long before energy was an issue and long before anyone used the word “sustainability. Designing for sustainability merely continues an ageless architectural tradition, based on the idea that "necessity is the mother of invention." Sustainability in designs is hugely beneficial to our environment and hence strongly encouraged. The factors to consider when creating a sustainable model are ecological sustainability, built environment, economic sustainability and social responsibility. Everyone is responsible for the natural environment that they are living in and hence should play a part in protecting our Earth. Sustainable designs can be created through sensitive designs concerning the site context to achieve energy efficiency. Sustainable designs are achieved through sensitive models, for example, energy efficiency. Delicate designs include good contextual studies of the surroundings, factors like site location, weather and local culture. The choice of material for the design is also an essential factor as well. It is encouraged that renewable resources are used for building materials as it is environmentally-friendly. It adopts many climatic responsive techniques: “wind walls” to direct wind to internal spaces, solar panels, mechanically joined connections between building components to facilitate recycling, rainwater collection, sewage composting and grey-water reuse. The placement of the vegetation within the tower at different levels correspond to the microclimates of each sub-zone at the tower. Sustainable design aims to accommodate people's current demands and needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to supply their own needs. Many of the current processes the modern world chooses to obtain and use our natural resources are short-sighted. Companies looking to make a profit right away can cause long-term damage to the environment when they do activities, for example, cutting down too many trees or produce pollutants. However, a sustainable design would require the massive amount of time, money and research to find out which methods of production would damage the environment the least. This is the primary reason why people are hesitant to support sustainable development.

Referencing

Questia School, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questiaschool.comPublication information: Book title: Gaia:A New Look at Life on Earth. Contributors: James Lovelock -Author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of publication: Oxford. Publication year: 1982. Pagennumber: 116Questia School, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questiaschool.comPublication information: Book title: Gaia Connections:An Introduction to Ecology, Ecoethics, andEconomics. Contributors: Alan S. Miller - Author. Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield. Place of publication:Lanham, MD. Publication year: 1991. Page number: 9World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Our Common Future; Oxford UniversityPress: New York, NY, USA, 1987. [Google Scholar]impact Assessment Guidelines; EC Document No. SEC(2005) 791; European Commission: Brussels,Belgium, 2005.Strange, T.; Bayley, A. Sustainable Development. Linking Economy, Society, Environment; Organisation forEconomic Co-operation and Development (OECD): Paris, France, 2008.Gibson, R.B. Specification of Sustainability-based Environmental Assessment Decision Criteria andImplications for Determining “Significance” in Environmental Assessment; Paper prepared under acontribution agreement with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency Research and DevelopmentProgramme; Ottawa, Canada, 2001. [Google Scholar]Elkington, J. Towards the sustainable corporation: Win-win-win business strategies for sustainabledevelopment. Calif. Manage. Rev. 1994, 36, 90–100. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]Pope, J.; Annandale, D.; Morrison-Saunders, A. Conceptualising sustainability assessment. Environ.Impact Assess. Rev. 2004, 24, 595–616. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]Solow, R.M. An Almost Practical Step Toward Sustainability; Resources for the Future: Washington,DC, USA, 1992. [Google Scholar]Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary; Merriam-Webster: Springfield, MA, USA, 2004.García Martín, M.A. Desde el concepto de felicidad al abordaje de las variables implicadas en elbienestar subjetivo: un análisis conceptual. EF y Deportes, Revista Digital 2002, 48, 4. [GoogleScholar]Michalos, A.C. Education, Happiness and Wellbeing. Soc. Indic. Res. 2008, 87, 347–366. [GoogleScholar] [CrossRef]World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED). Our Common Future; OxfordUniversity Press: New York, NY, USA, 1987.

#sustainability #sustainabledesign

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localbloggist-blog · 5 years ago

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Insecurity and foreign investors’ response

[FILES] Insecurity

The persistent issue of insecurity in Nigeria has been fingered as a major reason behind foreign investors pulling out their investments from the country.

According to a recent report, over N1.77 trillion foreign investments have been divested from the country in the last two years as a result insecurity.

Indeed, for the greater part of the past four to five years no week has passed without some horrifying insecurity experiences and calls by various stakeholders on the Federal Government to seriously improve in the security of live and property in the country.

Unfortunately, till date, there has been no visible and appreciable sign that abatement of insecurity across the four corners of Nigeria is in sight. And, for as long as the prevailing insecure environment subsists, the country will continue to reap its unpleasant consequences.

For sure, those individuals and organisations that brought their money to invest in this country will not be docile and watch their investments evaporate.

Thus, one clear and certain way investors generally act is to, at least, protect or preserve the value of their investments even if they cannot account for any increase in their overall net worth. It should, therefore, not be a surprise that foreign investors in the country are acting true to type as they are reported to be divesting from the country. What must be of immediate concern for us is that their actions stem the prevailing, persistent and even aggravating state of insecurity across Nigeria.

It was widely reported the other day that the United Kingdom (UK) warned her citizens in Nigeria against travelling to 21 out of the 36 States in the country. That means that about 58.33 per cent of the country is being disadvantaged from both private and business visits by UK citizens. If this is not a thumbs-down, what is it? Most importantly, the UK government’s action may generate a bandwagon effect from other countries, if improperly handled and the country will become worse for it.

No doubt, insecurity is a major and critical investment risk. It will only be the uninitiated in foreign investment business that will be naïve enough to close his eyes to insecurity or any other investment risk that has the capacity to jeopardise his investments. Without caring about profit, an astute foreign investor will take flight with at least, the principal amount when danger is real, perceived or anticipated.

That it has taken the Nigerian authorities many years now without solving the grave insecurity problem in the nation is enough to question their preparedness to assume the exalted offices they occupy. It also questions their suitability for public office. If there is no other reason to justify these questions, the answer can be found in the Nigerian Constitution with a provision that welfare and security of the citizens shall be the primary responsibility of government. This means that, if the leadership of the country is incapable of providing security to the people and property, the legitimacy of such leadership remaining in their positions cannot be sustained or even justified.

It is not the investors in the Nigerian economy that should secure the country. So, shirking of government’s primary role has its consequences some of which are the reported divestment of over N1.77 trillion from the economy, loss of several jobs, lives and property.

The ripple effects of the investors’ action are diverse and include reduction in the quantum of investments in the economy, contraction of the economy and thus, decrease in production, increase in cost of funds and doing business, increase in unemployment, increase in social vices like armed robbery, terrorism, kidnapping for ransom, ritual killing, etc. None of these implications is supportive of reviving, rebuilding and growing the Nigerian economy, which are the desire and need of sincere stakeholders. Instead, they give heightened impetus to economic and social backwardness overtly expressed in abject poverty and numerous vices in the nation.

It is rather saddening that while this country is in need of and should be welcoming investments with both hands to improve infrastructure and raise the economy’s capacity to produce more for the benefit of the citizenry, the leaders have neglected or refused to solve the rampaging insecurity that has worsened in the last few years. It is astounding that despite various suggestions and recommendations that have been made to the Federal Government towards solving the insecurity dilemma, there has been no evident, pragmatic and reassurance response in the deployment of any of such solutions.

For instance, this newspaper had called for effective interagency collaborations and a wholistic interrogation of the security architecture of the country with a view to transforming it significantly.

Even, the need for a reconsideration of the suitability of those who are in the saddle of managing the country’s security affairs had equally been suggested. There has been a suggestion too that a situation where the leadership of all the security offices and agencies are from a section of this vast country, is neither equitable nor healthy, especially as such produces in the minimum, suspicion, sabotage, disloyalty and lack of patriotism.

There have also been recommendations for the establishment of State, Council and Community Policing. Besides all these, the government has been reminded that successfully fighting the kind of multifaceted insecurity ravaging the entire country requires not just provision of appropriate and adequate weapons but most importantly, effective mobilisation and participation of not just the security personnel but the entire populace. It is either the government is not listening or it’s hearing is impaired or it is preoccupied with pursuing agenda only known to it. Given the prevailing insecurity, authorities in the country should note that if this economy is allowed to face a downward trend and social order takes flight, the outcome will be tragic and in fact, far worse than the point at issue: insecurity. That will be like the heaven falling, which no one can escape.

It is, therefore, high time the authorities in Nigeria saved this nation from the scourge of widespread insecurity and the attendant adverse effects, especially divestments by both foreign and domestic investors. We need enormous investment inflows rather than outflows to rebuild and grow this economy to reduce unemployment and poverty in this land.

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thechasefiles · 6 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 3/4/2019

Good MORNING #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Monday 4th March 2019. Remember you can read full articles for FREE via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS) OR by purchasing by purchasing a Daily Nation Newspaper (DN).

AG: KEEP TIPS COMING – Attorney General Dale Marshall is urging Barbadians not to be quiet on crime and violence, as no corner of the island is off limits to the scourge. He made the plea on Saturday night during a cocktail reception to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Crime Stoppers Barbados at the Southern Palm Beach Club in St Lawrence Gap, Christ Church. Pointing out that the longest journey on the island, from South Point in St Philip to North Point, St Lucy, took under an hour, Marshall contended that all Barbadians were at “risk” and therefore did not have the luxury of saying that crime did not or would not affect their community. Making reference to Bathsheba in his St Joseph constituency, he revealed that the once peaceful village was also reeling from the upsurge of violent crime as “young men are threatening law-abiding neighbours with guns”. “So when you think that what confronts us today is limited only to inner City neighbourhoods like Chapman Lane and the New Orleans, it only takes a Bathsheba bus to get from Town to the East Coast of our country,” Marshall said. (DN)

SHAKE UP COMING – Barbados’ education system is in for a major shake-up. Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw made this promise yesterday as she acknowledged that too many children were leaving school without adequate literacy and numeracy skills to enable them to function effectively in the workplace. She said these shortcomings were manifesting themselves in students from the primary level, yet not enough was done through the years to deal with these problems at that early stage. So the children go through secondary school and leave without these basic deficiencies addressed. “This can no longer go on,” said Bradshaw, as she explained that based on the ministry’s files, this phenomenon was recognised yet little was done in the past decade to effectively address it. The St Michael South East representative declared that under her watch the changes necessary to rectify this trend must begin in order to look after the welfare of the children and Barbados’ future. (DN)

CLEAN UP AT THREE SCHOOLS – New-look surroundings will greet teachers and pupils of the Ann Hill, Irving Wilson and Wilkie Cumberbatch schools when they reopen today. Ann Hill School, on Pine Plantation Road, St Michael, was closed last week for emergency remedial work on the roof and ceiling, while Irving Wilson and Wilkie Cumberbatch schools, also in the Pine, were shut on Friday evening to allow for a clean-up. Yesterday, under the watchful eye of Minister of Environment Trevor Prescod, general manager of the National Conservation Commission (NCC), Keith Neblett, and other NCC officials, heavy-duty equipment was brought in to clear the overgrown bush, which had been causing skin irritation problems for students and teachers. “The Ministry of the Environment, through its agency, the NCC, has entered into a contract with a company in order to get this work done within a short space of time. We have to complete this work by Sunday evening, which is the cleaning of the entire area,” Prescod said. (DN)

FROM BOTTOM TO BOULEVARD – Move over Waterford Bottom; make way for Waterford Boulevard. The familiar and busy artery into Bridgetown, one of the favourite spots for illegal dumpers, is being given a facelift. And with more improvements to come, Minister of Environment and National Beautification Trevor Prescod said the days of rusting fridges, mattresses and smelly bags of garbage should be over as people viewed the area in a new light. He added he believed the beautified area would be, in itself, enough deterrent to would-be illegal dumpers. “People treat the environment the same way you treat them. I am telling you what we intend to do in Waterford Bottom, you would not see that because we are going to transform it into a boulevard. Nobody would do the things on a boulevard that they would do in a bottom. So Waterford Bottom would be treated according to how people perceive it. “And when we transform it into a boulevard, they would treat it how they normally treat a boulevard.” (DN)

NO MEASLES OUTBREAK IN BARBADOS - Contrary to a report carried elsewhere in the media on Friday, March 1, the public is advised that Barbados is not experiencing an outbreak of measles. According to Senior Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Karen Broome, Barbados has not documented a case of measles since 1990. Outbreaks of measles continue to be reported in North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and the Americas. (BT)

FEELING ‘LEFT BEHIND’ – THE MAJOR GROUP in Barbados representing the disabled is feeling decidedly left behind. This, said president of the Barbados Council for the Disabled, Maria Holder-Small, despite the island’s signing on to the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and its ratification of the Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities. The agenda pledges that “no one will be left behind”. Holder-Small said yesterday: “Over the past four years I have been making endless pleas, and so have many of my predecessors, for society to pay attention to the continued exclusion of persons with disabilities. We have seen some successes, but more often than not our inclusion has often been seen as an afterthought. “Our community is indeed saddened when policy-makers continue to make the same mistakes by not creating that inclusion and equality for persons with disabilities. It is even sadder when a building earmarked for the National Disabilities Unit could be simply given to another department, which leaves the present unit still located up two flights of stairs, totally inaccessible to persons with disabilities,” she lamented. (DN)

GOVERNMENT TO TACKLE POVERTY - Government is taking steps to identify the most vulnerable in Barbadian society to ensure that they receive the help they need. Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Cynthia Forde, made the announcement on Wednesday as she delivered the feature address at the opening of the National Strategic Consultation on the Social Response to Crime in Barbados. Minister Forde told the audience that her Ministry had been mandated by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley to undertake a household rapid poverty assessment aimed at “gathering information on the living conditions of the poor and vulnerable in society and ranking them according to the most needy, in order to offer them the necessary assistance”. She said this survey would complement other initiatives being undertaken by the Ministry and would also inform the further development of social policies as Government pursued its goal of a society with opportunities for all. The Minister of People Empowerment highlighted two projects within the Ministry targeted at inter-generational poverty. These projects, one funded by the Barbados Government and the other funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Government of China, aim to “identify, stabilize, enable and empower the most vulnerable in society”. Minister Forde stated: “The intent is to ensure that such persons are removed from abject poverty to become self-employed and employers rather than employees.” Noting that “an unprecedented period of change” was taking place in Barbadian society, she said that in response there was a need for mechanisms to be developed, which would engage the perpetrators of crime, regardless of their age, status and gender. The Minister submitted that there was a need for a cohesive, holistic, innovative, integrated approach to the crime challenge in Barbados. She told participants: “For this goal to be realized, the crime preventive measures which you recommend must, of necessity, address not only economic development, but good governance and the rule of law.” The consultation, which aimed to develop an integrated social response plan, brought together representatives from the public and private sectors, the faith-based community, non-governmental organizations, service clubs and the media. (BT))

WANTED: KAREEM O’BRIAN CLARKE – The Royal Barbados Police Force is seeking the assistance of the public in locating a wanted man. He is 19-year-old Kareem O’Brian Clarke who goes by the alias “Frog”; whose last known address is Johnson Road, Workmans, St. George. He is wanted for questioning in connection with a serious criminal matter. Clarke is approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall, with a dark complexion, and a slim build. He has average eyes, a short bulbous nose, average ears and thick lips and acne on his face. Clarke is advised that he can present himself to the Oistins Police Station, Oistins, Christ Church accompanied by an attorney-at-law of his choice. Any person, who may know the whereabouts of Kareem O’Brian Clarke, is asked to contact the Oistins Police Station at 418-2612 or 418-2606, Police Emergency at 211, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-TIPS (8477), or the nearest police station. The public is reminded that it is a serious offence to harbour or assist wanted persons; any person caught committing this offence can be prosecuted. (DN)

BCA BEHIND CAMERON – The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) will definitely be coming to the crease for incumbents Dave Cameron and Emmanuel Nanthan to continue to lead Cricket West Indies (CWI). BCA president Conde Riley made the revelation in an interview with NATIONSPORT yesterday. Riley also no-balled charges that the BCA didn’t allow Cameron’s presidential opponent Ricky Skerritt and his vice-president running mate, Dr Kishore Shallow, to address its members in the lead-up to the CWI’s electoral nomination process. In defending the BCA’s position, Riley said shortly after receiving the letter from Skerritt and Shallow, a vote was taken at the association’s monthly meeting on February 12 to support Cameron and Nanthan in their bid to be re-elected as president and vice-president, respectively, for another two-year term. “Once the board decided that they were supporting the incumbents, that was it. You can’t come out and go against something that has been agreed on a vote by the full BCA board,” said Riley while making it abundantly clear that it was a board decision and not a personal one. (DN)

HAYLEY MOVES UP TO CAPTAIN – Exciting West Indies’ all-rounder Hayley Matthews has been elevated to the captaincy of the Barbados women’s team for the first time. Matthews, who is the vice-captain of the West Indies side, takes over from the experienced seamer Shakera Selman for the upcoming Regional Women’s Super50 and Twenty20 Blaze tournaments in Guyana, from March 14 to April 4. Apart from Matthews and Selman, there are four other West Indies players in the 14-member squad. They are explosive all-rounder Deandra Dottin, fiery fast bowler Shamilia Connell and the Knight twin sisters, Kycia and Kyshonna, who is making a return after undergoing leg surgery. In an interview yesterday, head coach Ezra Moseley told NATIONSPORT that once the conditions in Guyana were good for cricket and the tournament was not affected by rain, he expected Barbados, with six Windies players, to emerge champions. (DN)

GOLD CUP UPSET - Horse number 1 Celestial Storm produced a stunning upset at odds of 14 to 1 to win the 38th running of the Sandy Lane Gold Cup in front a large crowd at the Garrison Savannah this evening. The 2018 champion jockey Rasheed Hughes who was tasting his first win in the Gold Cup settled the grey five-year-old mare in the centre of the pack behind pacesetters Infrared and Night Prowler. Then the mare produced a blistering turn of foot in the final furlong to overtake the pacesetters stopping the clock in a quick 149.4 to win her first nine-furlong race in the process. Infrared, who had won this year’s Coolmore Home of Champion Stakes defeating Celestial Storm, ran on to be second improving from his third place last year. Winning trainer Roger Parravicino who won the Sandy Spa Sprint with Celestial Storm last year celebrated his first win in the Caribbean's most prestigious race. It was a race Roger would never forget anytime soon as the smart mare was owned by his late father Nick, who passed away last year. The Bills Inc.-owned locally bred Brave Star had his record of seven wins and three second places from ten starts broken when he finished fourth. But this was no disgrace as it was the first time he was running with the top rated horses. Jalon Samuel, the Sandy Lane Gold Cup winning jockey for the last three years, had to settle for third this year with his mount Night Prowler. The forecast paid $89.90, trifecta $581 .10, superfecta 1-4-5-6 $4,368.40. The first prize winner received $133, 750. Trainers Victor Cheeseman and Liz Deane were the most successful on the day winning three races. Eleven different jockeys won on the 11-race card. Next race day will be March 16th. (BT)

LISA IS LIVING HER BEST LIFE – Lisa Ruck loves travelling, teaching and her hometown Barbados. And she is looking to one day combine those loves and create her dream job. She’s a 36-year old bright and bubbly Bajan girl living her absolute best life in Rome for the last eight years. “I love my job; it’s perfect. I did a short course in teaching English as a second language, so now I teach legal English and business English in Rome. I still do one or two business courses but at my pleasure,” she said proudly. However, when she left Barbados, teaching was not the plan. Interior design was her focus. “I was a primary school teacher in Barbados. And I always wanted to study interior design. I told myself I needed to take the chance now and go before I had more responsibilities and things tying me down. I decided to do a master’s in interior design in Italy,” she explained. And she ended up staying in the country. But Lisa couldn’t stay away from the classroom for long. The passion for teaching was too strong. “I did some internships while I was there in interior design but the market was so saturated. But in Rome there’s such a demand for English speaking teachers, so it made more sense to go back into the classroom. I missed the classroom a lot as well,” she said with a laugh. And she also speaks Italian fluently now. (DN)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 303 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles# dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

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mikemortgage · 6 years ago

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Paying able-bodied people not to work isn’t an act of compassion — it’s an act of surrender

The Ford government’s cancellation of Ontario’s basic income (BI) pilot project has generated considerable media and political attention. Editorial pages and social media have been marked by lamentations about “evidence-based policy” and accusations about the government’s supposed lack of compassion.

Both claims are unjustified. Not only was the pilot itself flawed, the basic idea of generous, unconditional and universal cash transfer wrongly sees joblessness as merely a material problem. The government is thus correct to scrap the initiative and instead focus on reforming the province’s income-support system to better enable and support paid work.

It’s worth unpacking both critiques — the government’s purported rejection of evidence and lack of compassion — to understand their inherent weaknesses and the case for welfare reform with a pro-work bias.

Ontario’s basic income plan was the welfare state on steroids — but it didn’t have to be

What happens when you offer ‘basic income’ for not working? People stop working

William Watson: Paying people not to work could cost more than just money

Start with the claims about the role for evidence. BI’s proponents’ own argument that there’s no “perfect study” is hardly a ringing endorsement, and obvious problems with this “experiment’s” design and implementation seriously erode its usefulness as a “test of concept.”

Even though a basic income is to replace the existing panoply of income-support programs and social benefits, participants in the pilot continued to be eligible for the Ontario Drug Benefit, geared-to-income housing, child-care subsidies, and so on. The layering of programming is contrary to most conceptions of a basic income program and would necessarily skew the results. Testing whether recipients like more generous welfare benefits is different than understanding the costs and benefits of shifting to a single, unconditional cash transfer.

There were also challenges with identifying eligible participants and simulating realistic conditions. Randomized mailouts frequently went to people who were ineligible. A 40-page application form became an obstacle for some prospective participants. And that benefits increased without a corresponding rise in taxes in the affected communities means the experiment failed to reflect the true costs associated with fully implementing a universal BI estimated at $17 billion by the province.

The idea that the rest of the world was waiting with bated breath for the results of this experiment is also rather fanciful. What some people elsewhere were really hoping for was that this experiment would return a more BI-favourable answer than the other experiments that have been tried, most recently in Finland. The fact is that no government that has experimented with BI has decided to pursue it. That, too, is evidence.

But the critics’ overstated claims about the purported utility of the pilot’s evidence is small beer compared to the hyperbole about the government’s “narrow-mindedness” and lack of compassion.

The idea that those favouring sending no-strings-attached cheques to low-income citizens are somehow more compassionate than those who want to incorporate them into mainstream economic life is simply wrong. Paying able-bodied people not to work isn’t an act of compassion. It’s an act of surrender. It’s about managing a liability rather than seeing people as assets to be developed, as U.S. economist Arthur Brooks has put it.

Paid work doesn’t just provide significant economic and social benefits — including lower incidences of poverty, greater financial security, better health outcomes, and so on. It also contributes to improved personal well-being because of the socialization, personal empowerment, and the sense of dignity that comes with work and caring for oneself and his or her family. An unconditional cheque from the government is no substitute for feeling needed.

This is why the government is right to put paid work at the centre of its opportunity agenda. What must such an agenda entail? We have limited space here but would highlight two key components.

The first is maximizing economic growth. This may seem self-evident, but governments regularly make choices (such as deficit spending) that erode long-run growth in exchange for some short-term objective. Long-term growth is the essential ingredient for higher business investment, job creation, and ultimately living standards for all citizens. Government’s principal focus, therefore, must be on growing the economic pie rather than merely slicing it up in the form of redistribution. A pro-growth strategy would involve sustainable public finances, competitive taxation, predictable and limited regulations (including land-use regulations), strong intellectual property rights, high-quality infrastructure and better education and training.

The second is to reform income-support programs to better support paid work. Experimenting with wage subsidies, work-sharing, and more market-responsive job training is a first step. Smoothing out high clawback rates (what economists call marginal effective rates) for income-support recipients is another. Governments ought to apply a “job lens” to different policy choices to better understand if they’re enabling or obstructing people from getting into paid work. The former should be single-mindedly pursued, and the latter should be discarded.

Refusing to accept that some people are “surplus to requirement” and should be warehoused on benefits is the easy half of the compassionate choice on welfare policy. The other half is getting real people into real jobs. It’s on that measure that the Ford government should be judged.

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director and Sean Speer is a Munk senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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jakegrxz · 6 years ago

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Be activists, not bureaucrats

This piece was originally written for new students’ union officers starting at Surrey in 2018, but has relevance for student officers and activists everywhere. The message is clear: in an age where universities, students and academics are under relentless attack, students’ union officers need to do more than arrange recreational events (as is often the case). Instead, they need to be energetic activists, constantly organising collective and empowering campaigns on campus. Without such activism, a progressive future for higher education recedes from the horizon of possibility. [Originally published online here.]

On the 9th July 2018, the new Students’ Union (SU) officers at Surrey take office. Social media accounts will be handed over, pictures on the SU website will be replaced, and eventually a new banner of fresh faces will grace the side of the SU building. Thus begins a new year at the Students’ Union.

This new start for the Union, however, should be more than cosmetic. For too long our Union has been an inert force for change, prioritising recreational events and “charitable objectives” over serious political campaigning, organising and educating. I thus write this article as an open call to all the new officers in the union – both the paid full-time officers and the voluntary part-time officers, within the ‘zones’ and the Liberation Committee – to make this year different. From those of you getting their first taste of student politics and campaigning to those of you more well-worn, I urge you all to be activists, not bureaucrats. Through this article, I want to help you all realise the power, importance and significance of your various positions, and implore you to use that in an effective political manner.

Think big: Higher education in context

The world of student politics, and university life more broadly, is one of constant flux. Thousands of students both begin and leave university every year, rapidly changing the make-up of the student body on an annual basis. Additionally, lengthy holiday periods over Christmas, Easter and summer puncture any sense of continuity within a single year, as many students leave campus to live at home, go on holiday, or work. Full-time officers in the Union, furthermore, can only serve a maximum of two one-year terms before they are forced to step down, adding to the lack of continuity that permeates student politics.

As a result, it can be extraordinarily difficult to appreciate the broader picture of what’s going on as a student officer or activist. But doing so is vital if you, as new officers, want to genuinely address the many injustices ongoing at Surrey. If you want to make serious, long-lasting change that benefits not only current students but also the many generations of students to come – some of whom may be your children – appreciating the larger historical and political context is necessary.

So what is this larger historical trajectory that I speak of? What is the ‘bigger picture’ in higher education? At the risk of sounding like a broken record to some who may read this piece, I would argue it can be summed up in one word: marketisation. Over the past three decades British higher education has undergone a radical transformation, predicated on a series of neoliberal ideological assumptions about education and society. Simply, marketisation is an ideology that believes education is best treated as a commodity that should be delivered through market mechanisms. Degrees (and university experiences) are treated as commodities whose benefits are perceived solely in relation to individuals (e.g how much money the degree will allow the graduate to earn) rather than society as a whole. Meanwhile, it is assumed that the best way to improve the ‘quality’ of these degree-commodities is for universities to compete in a marketplace over students and resources (rather than co-operate), supposedly driving up the quality of teaching and research.

While this may sound reasonable on the surface, these fundamental – and above all ideological – assumptions are why higher education is no longer free, the government has cut funding to universities (particularly for arts and social science courses), university league tables have been constructed (these only came into existence some 26 years ago), maintenance loans have replaced maintenance grants, the number of private universities in England is multiplying, and a dizzying array of largely arbitrary metrics like the NSS and the TEF have emerged to measure and ‘rank’ universities into a differentiated higher education ‘market’. The goal of all these reforms is clear – to fundamentally change the nature of higher education in the UK, such that universities behave like businesses (prioritising how they appear on an open day over actual student and staff welfare) and students think like consumers. The only people that benefit from this process are the rich, who find universities increasingly bending over to their profit-driven interests in order to secure funding and are able to afford the many costs of higher education, while ordinary students and university workers suffer, being loaded with debt and forced onto low-wage or insecure contracts. Marketisation makes universities engines that reinforce (rather than challenge) structures of inequality; it is a pernicious ideology that must be resisted at every turn.

“Marketisation is not an ‘abstract’ thing – some distant ‘national’ problem we can worry about later while we focus on ‘real’, local student issues for now – it affronts students everyday through a diverse range of often mundane and localised practices”

Furthermore, marketisation is not an ‘abstract’ thing – some distant ‘national’ problem we can worry about later while we focus on ‘real’, local student issues for now – it affronts students at Surrey everyday through a diverse range of often mundane and localised practices. Examples of these are plentiful: remember the Economics lectures happening in an Odeon earlier this academic year? That was marketisation in action, as the university over-recruited for a certain course in the interest of maximising tuition fee income in the wake of government funding cuts. The Politics department almost getting effectively shut down in 2015? Again that was marketisation, where the arbitrary demands of narrowly-defined “research excellence”, most prominently measured through the Research Excellence Framework, came above students’ and academics’ needs and interests. I could go on: from our Vice-Chancellor’s £366,000 a year salary while 47% of Surrey’s academics exist on casual or insecure job contracts, to the emphasis on building expensive student accommodation at Manor Park (which will be over £150 a week when completed) over the provision of cheaper accommodation, the neoliberal logic of marketisation is being enforced daily at Surrey.

It’s not just the historical context that student officers need to be aware of, though; it’s also the broader contemporary political context. For as the excellent NUS President candidate Sahaya James pointed out in her campaign earlier this year, ‘the world doesn’t end on our campus’. Universities are not bounded spaces that are simply occupied by students and nothing more. Instead, at every level we find universities maintaining important and often problematic links with the ‘outside world’. Indeed, in some sense, we can say the university is a factory – it produces knowledge and research that then circulates throughout society, and has particular effects. What knowledge, research, and teaching that is produced by universities and funded by governments is therefore a highly political process. SU officers and activists need to be aware of this fact, and struggle to make sure the research produced by universities serves the demands of global justice, emancipation and equality, not profit, imperialism, and greed.

“What knowledge, research, and teaching that is produced by universities and funded by governments is a highly political process. SU officers need to be aware of this fact, and struggle to make sure the research produced by universities serves the demands of global justice, emancipation and equality, not profit, imperialism, and greed.”

For example, at Surrey, we are seeing a particular emphasis on the interests of big business, defence institutions and aerospace companies in the kind of research produced and supported. One particularly egregious example here is the fact that BAE Systems, one of the world’s leading multinational defence, security and aerospace companies, houses its UK Head Office on the university’s Research Park. Even worse, the university and BAE are official partners, with BAE providing many placement opportunities for Surrey students, and more. In other words, the University of Surrey is the willing landlord to a multinational defence corporation that has major contracts with states such as Saudi Arabia, the US and the UK, providing them with weapons, communications and transport technologies that facilitate their fatal imperialist projects and murder innocent Middle Eastern populations. In 2014, for instance, BAE supplied Saudi Arabia with 72 fighter jets that were subsequently used to bomb hospitals in Yemen. Do we, as Surrey students, want to support this agenda? Do we want our university to be providing students, resources, and academic labour to such an immoral programme? The answer for student activists should be a resounding ‘no’.

Take action: Be activists, not bureaucrats

When all this is appreciated, it becomes clear that British higher education is in a state of crisis that needs action now – and students’ union officers around the country are some of the people best placed to fight this state of affairs. When we look back at this period in the future, when universities are potentially sites of ever-higher fees and rents that exist solely to service the interests of the wealthy, what side do you, as officers, want to have been on? Do you want to be the one who simply organised the odd social event? Or do you want to be the one that stood up, got unashamedly angry, and organised effective political opposition to university managers in the interests of the many, not the few?

I invoke history here not for the sake of moral grandstanding, but to make you realise that every act you make as an officer is an act of history. Your actions have impacts beyond your local, everyday environment, impacting bigger structures and trajectories, and having political consequences. Indeed, collectively the Students’ Union is a potentially powerful political and historical actor. It has its own building on campus, five full-time paid sabbatical officers, almost 20 full-time members of staff, and links to every student on campus. These kinds of resources are the stuff of dreams for everyday student activists, and indeed many flailing trade unions; collectively, they hold the potential power to make genuine progressive political change on campus.

But how to unleash this potential power? You may agree or appreciate that you stand at an important historical juncture, an actor in the broader historical process of marketisation, with the power to challenge this. But how? What does this ‘power’ look like?

The key point I want to stress here is that your power – indeed, students’ power – largely does not derive from your position on a university’s governing committee. At Surrey and I presume many other universities, full-time SU officers sit on literally more than a dozen university committees, successfully co-opted into the University’s governing structures and bureaucracy. (This is not the case, it should be noted, for the trade unions on campus.) Consequently, it is easy and commonplace for new officers to get sucked into this bureaucratic maze, internalising the language of university managers and thinking they are making a difference simply by being on a committee and chipping in now and then.

But while student voices on university committees are valuable, and can make small changes, they are remarkably limited as vehicles for advancing students’ interests. Being on a committee does nothing to empower students or fundamentally alter the structures that oppress them, because senior university managers have the power in these meetings and will not take action against their own interests without collective and public political opposition. Furthermore, sitting on committees is a significant time drain. Every second you sit on these committees, listening to university managers’ pointless jargon about hitting X or Y quota, you could be spending talking to actual students, getting them angry, getting them organised – in other words, empowering them.

“One SU officer in a committee meeting has very little leverage – but an SU officer in a meeting backed by hundreds of students taking action outside, through mass protest or direct action (such as a rent strike or a boycott), has the power to grab significant wins from university bosses.”

My basic point here is that Surrey students’ power cannot be fully realised in these committee meetings, where you will be one voice among many managers. We will not win significantly lower rents, free education, bigger bursaries, more ethical research funding or better postgraduate contracts solely by having an individual well-intentioned SU officer getting angry at a committee meeting. Instead, our power is fundamentally only realised when we act as a collective force – a union. One SU officer in a committee meeting has very little leverage – but an SU officer in a meeting backed by hundreds of students taking effective political action outside, through mass protest or direct action (such as a rent strike or a boycott), has the power to grab significant wins from powerful university bosses.

As a student officer, therefore, you need to get organising. Set up campaigns! Talk to students! Add them to campaign groups on Facebook! Organise fun and empowering meetings! Do banner drops! The list goes on. Essentially, you just need to get students speaking to each other about the political issues that concern them, organising them into a collective force as they do.

To conclude, I therefore plead to all new officers: don’t be passive bureaucrats. Organise your fellow students, raise their expectations, get them angry. The more you sit back, the more you simply poll students for their “feedback” rather than actually talking to them, informing them, and organising them, the more you reproduce a cycle of student apathy. Organising and campaigning is hard, yes, and entails a road paved with setbacks, defeat, and opposition from powerful actors. But the potential victories are too important to ignore, and could seriously empower and benefit the most marginalised current and future students of the university.

So to all the new officers, I implore you: learn about what’s happening in higher education; go to activist training events run by the NUS, People and Planet, or the National Campaigns Against Fees and Cuts; meet fellow student activists from around the country; organise and unite Surrey students around political goals; stand up to university managers; and above all, go out and win. Good luck – I wish you all the very best.

#student politics #student activism #students' unions

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commonsenseapocalypse · 7 years ago

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The gravity of the situation

With the most recent mass shooting, the liberal left and the uneducated are in a full-on feeding frenzy over gun control and banning so called “assault rifles”. I’m going to offer up my opinion on how we got to where we are and it’s not going to be popular, but it will be truthful and please keep in mind, this is my opinion, how I see things from a perspective that hasn’t been overly involved in politics.

Sixty years ago, the democratic party was completely against desegregation and equal rights. President Johnson voted against civil rights, it’s a fact. Civil rights were pushed for by republicans. Why? Because most conservative republicans believe that people should work for a living, earn their own way and live their lives in peace, free from heavy handed government oppression. The democrats, former plantation owners, slave owners and founders of the KKK, believe that those who work should give x-amount to the government to support unnecessary programs that ultimately line the pockets of the politicians on the left. The democratic party is the establishment that we should be rallying against. There is no better example of democratic corruption than Hillary Clinton.

When Hillary started her political career, she was, in fact, a republican. Soon after she realized the huge potential for personal gain off the backs of hard working American men and women, so she switched sides. The fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals is this; conservatives believe that you should get to keep what you work for, liberals believe that they are owed a part of what you work for. This is it, in its simplest form.

The two biggest catalysts that I feel are responsible for the degradation of the American social construct are: welfare and social media. I’ll explain in a minute, but I also want to say that I’ve seen and heard on both traditional media and social media is that we need God in schools. I don’t believe that. What I do believe is that there are good lessons in every religion that can be incorporated in the home, in schools and in the workplace. That being said, let’s move into welfare and social media.

Welfare: I firmly believe that our government, in their infinite wisdom, had the best interests of its citizenry at heart. There must be a safety net for those who fall on hard times, but it MUST be temporary and used sparingly and as a last resort. The federal welfare program has an annual budget of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. ($1,000,000,000,000.00) That is a whole lot of zeros. Here is the mind-blowing part, only 25% of that goes to recipients. The remaining seven hundred fifty billion goes to administering the funds. Imagine, if you would, a smaller, more efficient government that distributed double that amount ($500,000,000,000.00) and split it among the states and eliminated the federal program. We would have double the available funds to the people for when they needed it AND we would reduce our spending by half of a trillion dollars EVERY YEAR! Win-win, right? Not in the eyes of the democrats. Their inability to give up control over the people, they would spin this as a right-wing attack on welfare, when, in fact, it would double the available funds and put the money in the hands of the states, who also have their own welfare programs. Do you think the states would benefit from an additional ten-billion dollars a year?

I firmly believe that welfare recipients should be able to pass a drug screening, be subject to well-being checks by an officer of the state and should be made to comply with rules and regulations regarding the receiving and spending of state funds. Some of those funds could and should be used to supplement educational and vocational rehabilitation programs to help those get back into the workforce. There should also be time limits on how long you can receive benefits due to hardship. Welfare is a safety net, not a career. Don’t confuse welfare programs with disability programs. They are two different things and I’m not discussing disability programs here.

The objective of the liberal left is to keep as many people on welfare as possible. It is their vision that the state (government) is the provider for the people and since people have a limited field of vision, they are conned into believing that that government is good because it gives them free money, free housing and free food along with low or no cost medical, cellular phones, internet and utilities. This is phase one of the lefts agenda to create an oligarchy. Long term welfare is nothing more than government sponsored slavery and oppression. In effect, it is racism at it’s highest level, by providing these “benefits” to minorities and immigrants, the left is keeping minorities out of the workforce, not by race, religion or creed, but by catering to minorities under the guise of “caring” and “tolerance”. If they really were concerned, they would be doing more to lift up minorities through education, family planning and getting people to work, to owning a small business or generally contributing to society as a whole. Try instilling values instead of supporting cultural deconstruction through music and movies that glorify violence towards women, drug abuse and catering to mental illness instead of making excuses for it. There is a fine line between art and obscenity.

Social Media: I could talk about the dangers of social media for years, but for the purpose of this, I’ll keep it limited. The purpose of the invention of the internet (thanks Al Gore!) was to share information, quickly and globally, and to that end it has been a huge success. The introduction of social media, i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap chat and the like however have completely changed the paradigm of factual truth. In an open society like this, people bump and run. What I mean by that is people see something and blindly run with it, sharing it unchecked, uncontrolled and therefore spread inaccuracies, fallacies and downright blatant misinformation as fact. People post half truths or flat out lies and then others, claiming to be “social justice warriors” blast out complete falsehoods. That translates to real life and pollutes the system. It contributes to the decline of civilization as a whole and transmits grotesque violence and ignorance. Unfortunately, this genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. The only hope we have is a global catastrophe, like a massive CME that completely wrecks our power grid and disables this monster long enough for civilized people to reset our culture.

I read a shared post on Facebook of another “threat” to a school and the perpetrator used the phrase “30 kill streak”. Think about that for a moment. A phrase taken directly from violent video games. The culture has desensitized our youth and has bred a mentality that the more you kill, the more you win. There is a serious problem with that. It creates a mindset of action without consequence, much like participation trophies creates a mindset of unearned gratification. If you get the same result without earning it, that evolves into the “why try if I’m going to win anyway” attitude. The progressive movement has removed honor, dignity, consequence and personal responsibility.

To this end, I liken progressivism to religion. People blindly believe in the agenda without knowing the agenda, much like people follow the doctrine of religion based on belief and faith. Progressive liberals are the single most dangerous threat to our freedom and national security. Think I’m crazy? Who was recently defending North Korea’s dictator? Who has developed sanctuary cities for undocumented aliens from countries that support extremist groups and drug cartels? Who believes that things should be free “unearned” like college and health care? Who, and this is my absolute favorite, condemns a rifle because it has been used to kill less than 300 people in acts of violence since 1984, but supports safe spaces and clean needles for heroin addicts? Overdoses account for 64,000 deaths per year. Add that up… it makes no sense. Just for comparison, Daily statistics:

- All gun related deaths (suicide, accidental, murder and police involved) averages 86 per day, but murder only accounts for 33 per day on average

- All drug related overdose deaths average 175 per day

- Alcohol-impaired driving deaths (2015) average 33 per day

- All vehicle related deaths (2017) average 110 per day

- Abortions in the U. S. average 1,800 per day

- 16 million children in the U. S. alone do not have the minimum food requirements, every day

Just putting it perspective, the left’s attack on the AR-15 and the second amendment is both under-warranted and extremely dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that it leaves our citizenry unprotected against all threats, foreign and domestic. Case in point, 1946 – Athens, Tennessee, armed citizens removed a corrupt local government from power; 1941 – Empire of Japan attacked the U. S. Territory of Hawaii, but refused to attack the U. S. mainland due to the simple fact that our citizens were armed.

The Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” For fun, here is the definition of both Militia and infringed:

Militia: a group of people who are not part of the armed forces of a country but are trained like soldiers. Citizens who can mobilize as a military unit without being a part of the country funded military.

Infringed: to wrongly limit or restrict.

With that, I can see where people would take “wrongly” into their own context and say that restricting the rights of the people to keep and bear arms isn’t “wrong”, but it is as equally guaranteed as freedom of speech, religion and the press. If states continue to infringe upon the Second Amendment, once the people are disarmed, what is to stop them from revoking other amendments?

I know this seems like a bashing of the liberal left, and it is, but that being said, I have fundamental issues with the right as well. In order for us, as a nation to come together as a united front, we need compromise and open dialogue and we have to start by NOT trusting politicians and our elected officials. Anyone who says “I’m a politician” is a criminal. No one says “I’m a public servant” and there is a very distinct difference in the two.

We have, as a whole, given free reign to Congress and that needs to end. We need term limits and any benefit and pay that is given to Congress needs to be voted on by the public, not an in-house vote. Of course, I would vote for a raise for myself every single time if it were an option.

I know I touched on “free stuff” but just handing out free health care and free college isn’t a feasible option and in the “golden countries” like Denmark, it puts an unhealthy tax burden on the citizenry. If you want to fix health care, tuition costs and housing costs, put formulas in place to regulate what they can charge. I know the socialists like to tout the benefits of Denmark, but completely neglect to mention other socialist countries like Venezuela where it is failing. If you want to fix the deficit, take away foreign aid and tax shelters for the Fortune 500 companies. Make them pay their fair share and if they move operations to another country, impose a tariff to import back to the U. S. or to conduct business here.

I don’t have the solution to why some people choose to kill as many people as they can, but it’s not the AR-15 or any of it’s accessories that are the problem. Since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, over 200 people have been killed and/or wounded in two separate knife attacks, one here and one in China. If someone wants to rack up casualties, they will find a way, guns or no guns. Recently, people have used their cars and trucks as weapons and the terrorists of 9/11 used razor blades and airplanes. There is no legislation that we can put in place that will prevent acts of violence and/or terror. None. There are more guns in America than there are people. Even with a new ban on the AR-15, you will never, ever get enough guns off the streets to prevent these types of attacks.

People compare Japan’s gun laws to ours, there are two fundamental differences here. First, Japan isn’t a republic and their government wasn’t founded as ours was. Second, the Japanese teach discipline, honor and respect in their households and they have an acute focus on education. Their curriculum isn’t standardized, and they don’t lower the expectations to give everyone a fair chance. You succeed, or you don’t. They don’t have a need to legislate equality in education because they push their students to succeed and learn, they don’t have cry rooms, safe spaces and participation trophies. So compare if you want, but there are vast cultural differences between our two countries and it truly is like comparing apples to rocks.

A good place to start; cut foreign aid by 50%. That is roughly 17 billion dollars annually, that we could invest in teachers, school supplies and other educational benefits. Cut federal welfare and disperse half of the one trillion dollars to states to boost their own welfare programs and invest the other five-hundred billion dollars in infrastructure, creating more living wage jobs, invest in pharmaceutical programs that limit out of pocket expenses for citizens and foster family and meal planning programs that would help people make better food choices that leads to healthier citizens, both physically and mentally. I truly believe that the increase in mental health issues are directly related to diet, exercise and the lack of stable households. With family and meal preparation education and planning, we can fix a percentage of the issues that plague our country.

I suppose my bottom line is this. I have a deep rooted distrust for the government as a whole and I’m a firm believer in the Second Amendment for that reason alone, but I also believe that I should have the right to defend myself on the street against any threat, especially from people who believe that selling drugs illegally, perpetrating violence against women and taking things that aren’t theirs is their “cultural right” and who just have a general disregard for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We can fix a lot of our own issues, but it will take real work and real world action, not posting and sharing things on Facebook. That’s like spritzing water from a 3 oz. bottle on a wildfire. It makes zero difference. Instead of vilifying the NRA, how about a partnership, with government funds, to create a national gun safety program? Of course charge people who want to own guns for taking the class.

The more the government imposes its will on the people, the more people will resist. That’s why we have the president that we have. Get woke folks.

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ancientbrit · 4 years ago

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Natter #5 4th July 2020

MI MG Natter #5 4th July 2020I hope you all have had a happy fourth - all fingers still attached and tummies filled. Pickle seems to be getting used to the bangs this year, or perhaps he is a little deaf. Usually, at the first bang, he disappears and hides under my bed. This time he has wandered upstairs and downstairs and doesn't seem to register the bangs much at all - which is good. I am in contact with a guy back home who runs a regular allotment (PeaPatch here) blog, giving timely advice and other information related mostly to veggie & fruit culture. I find this very helpful as he jogs my memory on those extremely rare occasions when I forget. I know you think that I never forget, but I have to admit that there has been the occasional lapse ever since I stopped eating peanuts. Strange that. His words for July remind us that this month is the time to sow seeds for Fall and Winter veggie crops such as Chicory (does anybody actually grow this?), Chinese Cabbage, Kohl Rabi, Lettuce, French Beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Radish, Turnips, and Peas - pick early varieties - early Snow peas are especially fast to crop. If you have had the forethought to already start Leeks from seed, now is the time to plant out those starts. The easiest way to do this is to use an old broomstick handle and thrust it vertically into the soil to a depth of about 5-6". Just drop the seedlings, roots first into the holes and then just water in - that's all you need to do. The water will wash soil from the sides of the holes down onto the roots and it will remain cool and moist enough to thoroughly root the seedlings well. The idea of doing it this way, apart from the ease of planting and gaining support from the sides, is that the hole blanches the stem of the leek as it grows to gain more usable parts of the plant. If they are kept reasonably moist they should grow quite rapidly through the Summer and be ready to make fabulous potato-leek soup in time to keep cold days at bay. If you have never eaten P-L soup accompanied by chunks of Crusty artisan bread generously spread with butter - you haven't lived. Food of the Gods this! If you have been growing spuds and have lifted them already, you can follow with a crop of French beans to both nourish yourself and the soil, or if beans aren't your thing try a green manure crop such as Mustard. However, bear in mind that if you have ever had Club Root on your cabbage family plants, do not use Mustard as it is also a brassica. Use one of the Pea family, both for the Nitrogen root boost, but also for the foliage. And now for something completely different:- Once more my friend Valerie Robertson has presented her view on things English on the other side of the pond. From: Valerie Robertson GAG 14 Hope all is well with all. All Quiet in the Western Front over this way. Seattle’s CHOP was liberated leaving an appalling mess The pubs are open today so the protesters have disappeared. BLMUK. is proving to be an embarrassment to those who donated, bent the knee and supported a cause that advocates the abolition of the nuclear family (that means dad is superfluous) defund the police, destroy capitalism and support censorship plus the necessity for every white person to acknowledge that they are all subconsciously racist and privileged., and own up to that every institution is inherently racist and disproportionally White supremacy managed. That’s a big ask, which has bewildered the millionaire black footballers, academics, artists, Labour leader Sir Keith what’s his name, and all the national institutions taking the knee, which the other men in the street saw, as bowing to street fighter activists outrageous demands. Ie supporting racial divide and suppressing diversity of opinions and abolishing history. Our moral leader Canterbury Arch Runcton, is also confused. He’s a woke bloke that got it wrong at Easter. Streaming his Easter service from his kitchen with his toaster in the background. For God's sake, he must have a parlour with a row of books as a backdrop, in his palatial abode. He’s now having a think about the effigies in the Cathedral and wondering which ones to get rid of. Should he paint Jesus black? Jesus loves all the children of the world, be they yellow black or white. What about the brown ones? They were precious in His sight too? He’s going to need a lot of colours. The Bournemouth beach sunbathing nutters are bright pink still. The Cambridge academia have just funded a two-year study into the history of slavery to enable the oiks to confront their iniquitous past and say sorry to all offended by history. Waste of time, as it’s been done before, over and over and you can’t change it. I’ve got a better idea for them to study. Research the Benin bronzes. There are 3,OOO of them but only 500 left in Nigeria, the rest in Europe and USA museums. They are exquisite. The Portuguese kicked off the Atlantic slave trade in 1400 from the port of Benin with gold, which the Africans turned into these fantastic plaques, I think but not sure. I’m too busy doing my epidemic virus studies to go to the British Museum and find out. And we are not allowed yet, to visit Portugal unless keen enough to fly to Spain and walk across the border to check up on the museum artifacts in Lisbon. It’s good to see Lewis Hamilton constructively addressing inequality in the motor racing world. The aggrieved black community can be placated and inspired by their own incredibly successful race if they listen. We have diversity, we have opportunity, we have laws, education, healthcare, social services, state welfare funding and overall, a tolerant multicultural society, who are very tired of the woke political correct champagne socialists agenda over the last decade. There are deep social and economic injustices which are nothing to do with slavery or racial prejudice. Louis Hamilton lives in Monte Carlo to save paying a hefty U.K. income tax liability. He was raised in Stevenage and lived in a council house with his family partially supported by the welfare state. Is he a philanthropist who promotes the welfare of others by donating money for schools etc.? No he’s not if he’s a British citizen tax evader. Is he a Monacoan now.? Is he a hypocrite? I don’t know? Perhaps the academics can ask the uni students to research, write a paper and make up their own minds. Estate agents will not in future be using Master Bedroom in their ads. Connotations of slave masters etc. Uncle Bens rice is to be repackaged without the jolly black man and awaiting more news re. MasterCard, Master chef, Master Mind, Headmaster ( the lefty teachers union still keeping schools shut) Masters degree, a tricky one for Cambridge. We are living with the virus and hanging in with our self-imposed restrictions and socially distancing. The copper masks and latex gloves worked a treat when John needed to visit the GP surgery for a blood test to check prostate antigen level insomuch not coughing. Although London has seen a slight rise in the R rate, no doubt due to the mass protests, the infection rate remains stable and patients being more successfully treated with drugs, to avoid intensive care. The disproportionate ethnic infected is due to blood group, genetic disparity, and body mass ratio, and a difference in the percentage of T cells. These cells decline with age and are responsible for fighting off infection without causing a major autoimmune response. People past 65, have very few left. This theory explains why the young can come in contact with the virus but don’t succumb, however, if repeatedly exposed will catch it and manufacture antibodies and can still remain asymptomatic. Mass testing suggests that 40 percent of the population has been exposed with few symptoms, the silent spreaders who have the herd immunity. So we know the virus is still around and can’t trust the idiots to self-isolate if positive. All we can hope for is that they wear a mask and keep away from the elderly. Once the herd immunity and those who have recovered from it reach 60 percent, providing the medically vulnerable and fatties avoid it, the virus will find no host, cannot, therefore, multiply and shed and theoretically die away. So it’s a balance. As the months go on there is hope for more preventive medication to alleviate the symptoms and of course a vaccine. Last October, the WHO found that U.K. and USA were the best in the world prepared for a pandemic. Cameron had placed an order for millions of PPE equipment with a French company with the deposit to fund the manufacturer to make it. By the time U.K. needed it, we got the deposit refunded but the stocks were needed in France and they had sold some items at a higher price, to Italy. That’s Globalisation for you and the free market. Meanwhile, a couple who were distilling boutique gin in the midlands, altered their equipment to distill hand sanitizers and viral cleansing fluids as NHS were buying it in from abroad at an inflated price. They now supply the NHS cheaply and in the past 12 weeks have made 30 million pounds profit. Well done as they are donating a substantial amount to Covid research. No doubt as a tax saving incentive, but still commendable. There’s a lot to be said for self-reliance. The govt. with its 80 strong SAGE - the scientific, advisory government epidemic advisors, have caused the pandemonium. At the outset, the models and graphs predicting the scale have been proved wrong. Simple precautions were overlooked. Emptying geriatric wards, filling up care homes with staff untrained in infection control was scandalous. Mask wearing should have been made compulsory on public transport, supermarkets and shops at the outset and at least some sort of temperature checking and contact tracing at airports and ferries. So, on to local lockdowns and long term containment. Boris is getting on with Brexit and left Hanlon to contain the virus, Hope the strategy works. I have faith in the laboratory’s scientists and the trials and the guinea pigs testing the emerging vaccines. Meanwhile, tomatoes coming along, being well-nourished and in good shape and we are up to four playing again at croquet. Sainsbury delivering without hassle and Miles and Giles still surprising me with a tablespoon of Baharat in a nifty environment-friendly container. It made the lamb taste different. The kennels are open but missed the boat as all the rescue dogs are adopted and long waiting lists for puppies. A dog called Nigger, I imagine a black or brown Labrador, who was loved and died in 1878, had a headstone in the animal cemetery in a Sussex village graveyard. The local stonemason has ground away the name as the villagers thought it might cause offence to visitors and that dogs owners would understand as they were dead anyway and not around to ask permission. Just love kind people. The drought's over and it’s cool as we are and hope you are too. Take care Love from Val And from your fearless leader,Gordon

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rightsidenews · 7 years ago

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Soros Funded Liberals are Hypocrites and Bigots

John Rousseau

Liberals are bigots and liars.

It is well-known that liberals are afraid of minorities. When liberals live with minorities, white-liberals do not educate their children with minority children. Hypocritical, as shown by now disgraced Hollywood-mogul HarveyWeinstein.

Even so, liberals have rarely make their hypocrisy this obvious. In these two headlines you see two competing, and highly-contradictory, narratives. The left pushes both of these points on a daily basis because Soros-funded groups want you poor, possessing low information, and easy to control. A careful reading of the Soros funded Open Society’s mission statement shows their desire to control. One of the left’s most hypocritical arguments involves hard-work and immigrant-owned businesses. They state two major claims:

Hard work does not work, so we need a welfare state.

Immigrants always work very hard, so we are benefited by letting them settle in our lands.

The left’s favorite examples of immigrant-driven wealth generation are Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, whom they cite as immigrant-success stories. This is true.

Musk and Jobs are laudable people, but they completely contradict the left’s competing narrative that minorities, and the poor, cannot get ahead by working hard. This contradiction is stark. To further illustrate the leftists’ hypocrisy, we need only examine the frankly racist application of leftist-logic to gun control.

Guns are used to kill minorities by other minorities in disproportionate numbers, so no members of a minority should own guns. This is shown in the below chart, which shows that blacks are dangerous to each other.

2.Middle-class-whites need to protect themselves against minorities gives whites the rights to own guns. This is shown by the below chart, which shows blacks kill more whites than whites kill blacks.

Nobody, not even the most virulent racist argues that law-abiding blacks should not own guns due to the societal risk to black and whites alike.

The right-wing, which is considered racist by many commentators, does not make the argument that blacks should not own guns. When prosecutors attempted to punish a black woman for accidentally carrying a legal firearm licensed in another state, the right-wing sprung to her defense. The right-wing encourages urbanites to own guns legally. Chicago and Washington D.C. have some of the highest murder rates in America and the civilized world. They have strict gun regulations, so many regular citizens cannot obtain a gun in Chicago or Washington D.C.

Does anyone on the right side of the aisle cheer gun deaths in the inner-city? No, they do not, for the right-wing, by and large, want all to be safe and take responsibility for their own safety. Further, the right-wing understands that all Americans have rights, and those rights apply to everyone legally living in America. It would be hypocritical and frankly bigoted for the right-wing to promote gun-ownership for only one group, class, or race of people.

Yet, liberals lie. Liberals tell minorities, the natively-born-poor and especially African-Americans that hard-work will get them nowhere without handouts from a welfare state. However, when it comes to illegal -and legal- aliens, the left-wing promotes the idea that the migrant is naturally disposed to a life of hard work. Jack Dorsey, the Saudi-aligned CEO of Twitter, visited Knoxville, Tennessee to promoteimmigrant-owned businesses. Jack, and other Soros-aligned globalists like him, regularly tell regular citizens that without immigrant contributions to our economy that the economic system itself will collapse.

Can this be true?

Of course not: This is where the fantasy metastasizes into full-blown deception and duplicity.Japan has almost zero immigration, and it has an aging population. Jack and his minions tell us that without an immigration boom of new Americans to work hard and pay taxes, we will be unable to afford the boomers' healthcare. Does an aging population, or declining population make a country vulnerable to collapse?Let's look at Japan again. What has happened in Japan since its slow population decline? Their economy is strong. The fewer people that compete for jobs, the more jobs pay workers.

Not only are liberals hypocrites, bigots, and racists for implying that only certain groups can benefit from hard work, but the left-wing do not want our population to prosper as the Japanese population is doing! Yes,there’s an adjustment period -were a Japanese model to be adopted, the social drawbacks Japan has experienced cannot be ignored.

Seriously, go throw a football or something.

Even so, in basic terms fewer people always means more competition in the labor market. Do you think that George Soros, the Saudis, or Jack Dorsey want to see American wages increase? Hell no. Thankfully in Japan, the Japanese people, the rightful inhabitants of Japan, will eventually benefit from more living-space, higher-wages, less competition in schools due to its aging population. The lies the open-borders Soros-inspired people tell are unbelievable.

Let's explore this issue a bit more in-depth: Is there any evidence that declines in population create less productivity or wealth for a specific society? In a word, no- so long as you free yourself from the yoke of Neoclassical economics.

Let's examine the Black Death in the Middle Ages. What did the Black Death due to Europe? It eviscerated and annihilated large portions of Europe. Tens of millions of people died in Europe alone during the Black Death. What occurred after the Black Death?

Firstly, farmers converted land from labor-intensive gain-farming, to low-labor intensive animal farming. Before the Black Death, Europe's population was too dense for the feudal economic system of the day; high-intensity grain farmers used labor-intensive practices to maximize grain yields with little thought to the efficiency of the practice. Things were done in a particular way as they had usually been done that way in the past.

Justly put: Europeans spent so much time growing grain before the Black Death that their poor had little time for innovation, learning, or skill-building! While the economies of Europe would still only grow at ~1% per annum until the Industrial Revolution, it is here that the long road to a modernized world began.

This change in farming styles after the plague allowed more people in Europe to learn skills, and demand higher wages.

Secondly- even unskilled labor was worth more, almost over night.

Following the Black Death, laborers on farms were able to leave and travel to urban areas in search of higher pay. In these urban areas laborers with skills participated in the free-market, which as serfs on feudal-lands their lords restricted them from doing. Therefore, wages go up, and Europe began to prosper.

Third, the Renaissance itself began!

It is no coincidence that higher wages, less labor-intensive farming methods, and increasing urban populations full of skilled laborers led to something big. No one could have predicted just how big that change would be, for that change was the Renaissance. Without the Black Death to clear space, population, and provide a chance for workers to participate in the free-labor market perhaps Europeans would not have broken their cycle of feudalism and serfdom for many more centuries.

The liberal agenda is not only duplicitous, and bigoted, but it undermines the right that every citizen, of every country, has to benefit from demographic changes. Why would anyone want the West to be less prosperous and powerful? The open-borders types want an easily controlled population so that Soros and those like him can remorselessly practice the rapine he showed in World-War II! We have a right to live in a less-densely populated nation where our labor is worth more! In Maine business owners are finally hiring Americans again. For years business owners in Maine stated that Americans would not do the work they wished to see performed. Yet, as soon as Donald Trump announced that he would enforce immigration laws the business owners of Maine found money to hire Americans! Imagine. My. Shock.

Stop the liberal agenda. Liberals are bigots. Progressives are racists. Liberals hate borders and the peoples of a nation, any nation, rightfully prospering from the fruits of the people’s labor! With some qualifications, the freer the market, the freer the people. What do you call those who demand to control the market with an iron grip, and return all to the same level of the peasant?

This is what Soros and his ilk are working towards; a borderless gulag archipelago with each man set against his neighbour over the last grain.

http://bit.ly/2leY206

#RSN #Soros Funded Liberals are Hypocrites and Bigots #Ash Sharp

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