#he and his party are still very active in politics in norway

[childrenofgheirstotheearth]

Can You Say Abhorrent Admirer (Street Fighter Oc)?

Name: Tyre Birthday: March 20th Headcannon Voice Actor: Kenji Nomura (Japanese voice actor); Tom Fahn (English voice actor) Sexuality: Straight Age: Same Age As Gill Love Interest: Gbohunmi (one-sided); Kolin (one-sided) Birthplace: Olso, Norway Occupation: Illuminati Member; Crisis Management Unit Likes: Beautiful, Strong Women; Grace;  Gbohunmi; Mead; Picking On Weaklings; Vikings; Meat; Kolin; Parties; Training Dislikes: Gill; Losing; Weaklings; Someone Interupting His Battles And His Attempts To Pick Up Women; Being Told No; Mobo Fighting Style: Glima; Illuminati Techniques; Gravity Manipulation Personality: Due to being a past candidate for president, he shows great arrogance in his skills and believes himself to actually be able to one day overthrow Gill, despite his public persona conveying he has no interest. Despite believing he can be the leader, he displays a lack of incompetency when it comes to running anything and usually makes a mess of stuff. When it comes to battle style he's focused on brute force rather than strategy. He also is very vain and loves showing off his body and good looks. He's shown to be very self-serving and selfish and wants to be seen as godlike like Gill. While he's skeptical of some beliefs about the Secret Society's teachings, he does fully believe in the descriptions of the strong overpowering the weak and thus believes that those who are strong should rule. He is very resentful of being overlooked and often shows his anger in private when he feels fed up with his act. He is often shown to be obsessed with battling and will go out to find opponents to fight in order to prove his strength. He despises those who puts a stop to his battles and treats it like someone is ruining his fun. He also doesn't like being called weak or being compared to Gill or even worse Urien.  He is also on the look out for any breedable strong women so that he can procreate his lineage. As a result he lusts after women like Kolin and Gbohunmi, even when she's still a minor. He doesn't' care about a woman's personal space and will invade it if he feels he's entitled to a woman he fancies. He will even resort to kidnapping them if he feels he wants them that much. This is especially seen when he finds out Gbohunmi is a demi-goddess daughter of G and is even more determined to have her as his woman. Despite having bullied Urien in the past, he does agree to work with him alongside Grace in order to overthrow Gill but also secretly plans to screw him over as well. He also shows a cruel side that revels in the suffering of others and often will taunt his opponents after he's defeated them. Like Urien he too envisions having a rule based on fear and domination, where the strong will rule supreme. He's also shown to be manipulative by the way he keeps up pretending not to want to dethrone Gill or even later Urien. Despite pretending to not show any ambitions like Urien, he can still be rude and dissmive towards those he has no respect for. He also displays a bit of a frat boy mentality and loves to indulge in hedonistic activities like drinking womanizing and boozing. He can also tend to spout politically incorrect views and terms for people which adds to his unappealing nature. He can also be selectively oblivious about reality especially when it comes to how strong he is and how women react to him.  Background: Like Gill and Urien, he had parents who were longtime members of the Society and were candidates for the position of president. He was taken from his parents when he was six and was genetically enhanced where he went through the same program as the brothers. From the experiments done on him, he gained gravity powers. During this time, he grew to have a rivalry with the brothers, especially Gill. He would often bully Urien in order to get at Gill, which would often result in them having skirmishes with one another. As they grew up, all three were huge candidates to be president and was looked over in favor of Gill and even worse the brother he used to bully was picked as Vice President while he was forced to take command under both. He was allowed to be a member of the crisis management units but was resentful for his spot. However, he put on false persona of acting supportive of Gill being president despite being resentful. He secretly will do what he can to undermine the man to the point he will team up with Grace, a longtime elder, and the man he bullied in childhood, Urien, in order to overthrow Gill. He also grew to lust after Gbohunmi after she joined and was disappointed to see that she was apparently under Gill's thumb and is dedicated to one day having her.  

[dwellordream]

“Certain characteristics of the new nation had important consequences for how children and parents treated each other, as well as for politics and economics. The American Constitution had made no provisions for political parties of the kind that brought Jefferson to office peacefully in 1801. But it did foresee the immense expansion of the economy and the possibilities for territorial growth that defined the United States during its first century of existence. A limited population, largely hovering along the Atlantic coast, exploded in size and in ambition after the Constitution took effect in 1789. New territories, resulting from treaties, purchase, and conquest, brought the United States to the limits of its contiguous continental expanse by the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 (Alaska would be added during the war).

Rural expansion and a vigorous and voraciously expanding farming population that spread onto the rapidly acquired new territory meant that there was always more work to do than workers available to do it. This gave young people opportunities to test their independence. But working on the land was not the only option. Young people began also to look to new industrial production as manufacturing and the factory system expanded choices for young laborers in towns and cities on the East Coast. Even young women were rapidly absorbed into these new occupations. Despite the existence of poverty and inequality, the United States opened doors for young workers from among its own people and from abroad, tantalizing and welcoming immigrants from countries such as Germany, Norway, Switzerland, Ireland, and the rest of the British Isles.

Catherine Beecher, an educator, pioneer in ideas about household efficiency, daughter of an influential preacher, and sister of the famous novelist, described the buzzing and humming consequences. “Everything is moving and changing. Persons in poverty, are rising to opulence, and persons of wealth are sinking to poverty. The children of common laborers, by their talents and enterprise, are becoming nobles in intellect, or wealth, or station; while the children of the wealthy, enervated by indulgence, are sinking to humbler stations.” It is worth noting that even in this early period, some Americans were concerned about “indulgence” and its baneful effect on children and their future success. Beecher was concerned especially with the “domestic economy,” and she quickly focused on children as the necessary beneficiaries (or victims) of this loosened social system. 

The uncertainties of station were directly influenced by the tumult of the economy. Children could not expect to follow in their fathers’ paths, nor could fathers’ influence be too heavy- handed, if they were not to squash their children’s potentials— or lose their willingness to reside at home. Beecher also recognized the consequences of the labor shortage that defined the times. Her own concern centered on domestic service. “There is such a disproportion between those who wish to hire, and those who are willing to go to domestic service, that . . . were it not for the supply of poverty- stricken foreigners, there would not be one domestic for each family.” 

The absence of adequate domestics and their sloppy service would be a constant plaint of middle- class housewives of the time, whose many duties and many children made some kind of assistance a necessity. The absence of help from a permanently designated servant class would have significance for the kinds of work that the children in the house, even middle- class children, could be expected to perform. This shortage helps to explain why young Henry Clarke Wright, with no sisters available, could be found alongside his stepmother at various domestic tasks. American labor shortages made gender as well as age assignments more fluid in the household. Labor shortages both for in- home tasks and for those on the land and in the factory made youthful work profitable and desirable. 

It also meant that young people would move often from one kind of work to another. Young female school teachers became mill workers when factories opened up in places like Lowell, Lawrence, and Chicopee, Massachusetts. Men became clerks, taught school for a while, and then studied law or medicine. The fluidity of occupations and the scarcity of labor destroyed older apprenticeships, since few people wanted to invest years in such training when work was unstable and new options beckoned. It was a young person’s world— full of opportunities and risks. This economic pattern helped to make young people more independent of their parents. It also gave them a sturdy sense of their ability to take chances and to exercise their judgment. 

Another source for the changes in domestic relations was the nature of American law. Starting early in his career, Thomas Jefferson had actively opposed the kinds of inheritance laws that stymied personal independence and success, laws that maintained family order, hierarchy, and prestige at the cost of the future of children. He was vehement in rejecting primogeniture and entail, two aspects of British property law that put land in permanent and deeply undemocratic patterns of family descent. By the time Jefferson wrote against them in the 1780s, they were fast declining in practice, but he understood how important even lingering remnants of this older landbased family system could be, and he was vociferous in denouncing them where they still applied. 

As one historian of the law has noted, “It is significant that at least one influential Revolutionary American perceived that the logic of republican revolution pointed toward radical reevaluation of the law of inheritance.” By 1800, not only sons but also daughters inherited equally. In the new United States, the traditional obstacles created by laws that governed inheritance and the relationship between parents and children were removed. These impediments had maintained both patriarchy and hierarchical distinctions within the family. Jefferson’s thoughts on this matter appeared in a letter to James Madison in 1789 (at the point that the new constitution was going into effect): “ ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”

For those unfamiliar with the quaint term “usufruct,” it means the fruits of property gained through labor. Jefferson embraced the right of future generations to acquire and work the land equally and to own it in full. The land, for Jefferson, was the basis for all economic prosperity as well as independence; it should not be withdrawn from usage by laws that upheld the rights of past or present generations. Not held hostage to family tradition, or to the laws that supported it, children could venture forth to enjoy the fruits of the new society. To grasp what the new legal regime meant for children in the new nation, it is hardly necessary to cross the Atlantic. 

Even in North America, some of these older patterns persisted— but not in territory contained in the new republic. In Alta California, still under Mexican jurisdiction and Mexican law, land was not divided equally among all children, as the law allowed in the United States. Mexican law still kept land in entail, holding it within the family estate, even after the father’s death. This upheld a vision of the family as an institution with substance and traditions of its own, whose honor and prestige took precedence over the individual needs or desires of its members. Indeed, the power of patriarchy was unchallenged as fathers in Alta California determined whom their children should marry in order to increase family power and prestige, and constrained the choices their sons made about their future occupations.

In fact, wherever the law codes enacted in the Napoleonic period were adopted, they defined the responsibilities of parents and the obligations of children through inheritance, and these laws affected much of Europe and South America. Americans did not attempt to restrain children or impose an older view of the family through inheritance laws. Even children born out of wedlock found conditions much more flexible in the United States as brutal laws (once applied in the American colonies and still potent in other places such as Latin America) were relaxed so that children born outside of marriage could inherit and be recognized by their fathers. 

As one Texas court noted in 1850, “the rights of the children do not depend on the legality or illegality of the marriage of the parents. If there be a crime . . . they are considered unconscious of the guilt, and not the proper subject for the infliction of its retributive consequences.” And Timothy Walker, one of the most significant legal scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century, thought the old common law practices (no longer applied in the United States) in this regard were devoid of “justice and humanity” because “the sins of the parents” were imposed on the “unoffending offspring.”

Law in the United States also had few provisions regarding the specific obligations of children to their parents. Parents were free to use inheritance for their purposes, and children could reject the offer. Walker, who found few laws that obligated children at the time he produced his legal compilation in 1837, was impressed by how much had changed since the colonial period. “From unlimited authority over the person, property, and even life of the child, the parent is now curtailed to a very guarded and qualified authority during the years of minority. And even this authority finds but little aid in the law in case of resistance.” 

Where previously a child “might be whipped if he presumed to strike a parent,” there was no longer any “legal provision for compelling even an affluent child, after majority, to support an indigent parent. . . . [F]ilial, like parental, duty is left as they should be by the legislature to depend upon natural affection.” In the United States, inheritance of land that defined obligations within families and relations between generations were no longer regulated as in the Old World in ways that upheld patriarchal authority and subordinated the children’s future to the will of the family. Outside of the South— where in the nineteenth century the desire to maintain the patriarchal order that underwrote slavery affected laws regarding families and children— American laws did not enforce traditional hierarchical obligations.”

- Paula S. Fass, “Childhood and Parenting in the New Republic: Sowing the Seeds of Independence, 1800–1860.” in The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child

[cactusnotes]

Cultural Globalisation

Cultures and traditions, through globalisation, have been intermingling, creasing a whole array of good and bad impacts, the base for striking debates, and for me importantly: a chunk of what my exams are probably going to be on. Well, here are my notes and case studies:

In 1959, Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a communist country, separated from Western capitalism. It remained isolated for 50 years, relying on subsidies from communist USSR until 1991, when it collapsed. Cuba seemed to have no other option but to allow in tourism to develop its economy, resulting in increasing awareness of other cultures. 

In 2008, Fidel Castro resigned, and his brother took over, and decided to weaken communism. Free enterprise businesses were allowed to set up, in a relaxed communism that somewhat reflected China’s. Since 2012, Cubans could buy and sell houses, take out loans and start businesses, at the loss of state-employment guarantees and state-owned farmland was sold. This allowed USA-Cuban relations to improve. However, it has increased divisions, with some wealthy Cuban entrepreneurs living in luxury, while some live in tumble-down houses, with no variety in their simple diet--bread, eggs and plantain and state rations. This is as differences in wealth, and person leads to different chances of success. From then, it’s positive feedback, as the poor cannot help their kids do better. Capitalists too, don’t have such incentive to help their workers.

Today, Cuba is in a state of change. Tourists, TV and the internet have allowed Cubans to broaden their knowledge of the wider world, and learn about the challenges to their values and traditions, so globalisation is diluting Cuban culture. This cultural erosion has also led to a detriment in the environment, with the coral reefs at risk as beach-side tourist resorts are erupted.  This process is called cultural diffusion: Western attitudes and values have spread to Cuba, and also to around the world. Maintaining a strong Cuban identity is very difficult.

The economy changes, ways of life changes, attitudes and values change. Global changes are impacting how people view the world, and these global changes can be seen on a local level: called glocal cultures. British cities have been transformed by inwards migration to hubs of cultural diversity, with its own new character, new identity, compared to just a mix of others. These areas are called ethnic enclaves, with some examples being Indian populations in London, South East, and East of England.

There are several key ideas surrounding this concept of globalisation of society: culture is the ideas, customs and social practices of a particular people or society; cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and activities from one group (ethnicities, religions, nationalities) to another through communication, transport and technology; cultural erosion is when cultural diversity is reduced through popularisation; cultural imperialism is when one culture of a nation is promoted over another, otherwise known as westernisation. 

The main culprits of cultural imperialism, westernisation and americanisation are, of course, Europe and North America, turning western culture into a global culture. The factors amplifying this today include TNCs, tourism, global media and migration. The main protector of individual cultures is language: things don’t translate straight into each other, something is lost in translation. But as the same groups control global media, which impacts language, there is increasingly common vocabulary.  Global homogenisation is the process of culture everywhere becoming one.

News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, impacts political and cultural thinking worldwide. They have 101 newspapers in Australia (national and suburban); four in the Uk including The Times and The Sun; over 25 papers in the USA including The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal and a 33% share in Russia’s leading financial times paper. Television wise: Fox is theirs; My Network TV; channels in Eastern Europe, Israel, Indonesia and NZ. Their satellites are: BSkyB in the UK, Foxtel in Aus, SKY in NZ/Ita/Ger and StarTV in Asia. Politically, Fox TV in the USA openly supports the Republican Party, while every winning party in the UK since 1979 has been promoted by the Sun (EW, WHY UK?).

IT and digital communication means that the rate and desire of consumption has changed, and the products themselves have changed, as hybrid products are on the rise, where global TNCs create a cultural mix. What we consume generally is based on the work of small groups of big TNCs. 90% of the music market is owned by five companies: EMI, Universal, AOL, Time Warner, SonyBMG. They’ve focused on cutting the range of successful artists: it’s easier to promote one than promote several. This one becomes universal, rather than having different, local artists, contributing to homogenisation in the music world. Globalisation is the new term for cultural imperialism, and helps this musical homogenisation as it promotes the spread of TNCs due to easier connections to promote one thing worldwide, and distribute one product rather than  just producing local music.

Some may consider the change of value as a good thing (the fact that the textbook author portrays this as good literally demonstrates this westernisation, as he proposes that these values are right. Don’t get me wrong, I 100% agree that these values are good, but the fact that he’s portraying them positively is literally proof of what he’s saying and it’s funny. Or is that just me? Just me, sorry, ignore this). One of these is the attitude to disability. In China, 2011, official data reported that only 25% of disabled people could find employment. They were stigmatised, marginalised, abused. Yet, in 2012, they won the paralympics. This helps to destigmatize disability (but boy, have we got far to go!) as described by disabled Australian TV presenter Adam Hills: “Sydney was the first Paralympics to treat Paralympians as equals. London was the first to treat them as heros”. The West is adopting more liberal ideas on ethical issues, such as gay rights (gay rights!), and we can see that homogenisation is far off from total control, with how this contrasts with attitudes in places like Russia and the Middle East.

There is obviously resistance to globalisation. I personally feel like these notes do portray it as negative until the last few paragraphs. It’s perceived to be exploitation of people and the environment. The general criticisms link to: the environment, third world debt, animal rights, child-labour, anarchism, and mostly anti-capitalism and opposition to TNCs. There are many anti-globalisation and environmental pressure groups rejecting globalised culture and TNCs especially (like tax avoidance). The Occupy is one such group, and held demonstrations in cities like London and New York (now that is ironic). The main targets for anti-globalisation movements are the WTO, IMF and World Bank, as well as large US TNCs like McDonald and Starbucks, on the exploitation of the workers, and environment, making it easier for the rich to get away with wrong, and erasing cultures (Americanisation).

Anti-globalisation and rejection of cultural diffusion can even occur on a governmental level. Iran confiscated Barbie Dolls for being un-islamic in the 2000s, but ended up liberalised due to a need for international assistance in dealing with radicalism, and the youth still accessing banned social media, like Twitter and Facebook. Until the 2000s, France led the anti-globalisation movement, limiting broadcasting of foreign material--40% of broadcasts had to be French and no more than 55% American film imports--but has had to liberalise this due to internet downloading of media and due to successful TNCs from France, like EDF energy.

In Norway, for hundreds of years, local fishermen have hunted whales and the food source was considered part of their tradition and culture. The Norwegian representatives claimed that their northern coastal villages depended on hunting and fishing for their livelihoods. Although whaling is not a big part of the Norwegian national budget, it is still considered a crucial source of income for those fishermen who need it. They also argued that the global effort to prohibit the hunting of whales amounted to an imposition of other countries' cultural values that contradicted their own, since it cannot be environmental concerns, for the whales they hunted were not endangered--it’s all based on values. The US Department of Commerce has even suggested that trade restrictions be imposed upon Norway, because it was violating the International Whaling Commission's ban on these kinds of whaling activities. Here, the environment, different values and nationalism clash.

Papua New Guinea has over 7000 cultural groups, with different languages, diets, etc. living in different villages or hamlets, and generally sustained by subsidence farming, fishing and collection. People who are skilled and also generous in getting food are well respected. Then, colonisation meant tribal tensions were crushed, and people were used on plantations and integrated into a new economic and political system. Christianity and western ideals have come forth, with value being placed in well-educated and successful workers, and intermarriage between tribes has lead to losses of languages and direct cultural conflict. Mining took place in one tribal area, meant to benefit all, but the local tribe was doubtful, and resented those on the mainland for allowing the Aussies and Brits to come in and mine. They developed into a revolutionary army, causing conflict in the 1990s, fighting between citizens, youth gangs, riots, looting, returning tribal warfare and huge law and order problems.

The USA and UK have faced increasing nationalisation as a political movement. These are potentially seen in things like the Brexit vote, and election of Trump. Some follow it due to the dilution of their native culture and loss of sovereignty, others due to the low-income and low-level education people in HICs feel as though they have been left out of the benefits of globalisation. While it has the same benefits of protectionism, nationalism can lead to negative impacts, most notably through marginalisation/persecution of ethnic minority groups, ironically emphasising the whole trope and reason for cultural imperialism in the first place.

[fa-cat]

A Boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics Would Work

There is a massive overlap between Western liberal democracies and medal contenders in the Winter Games – enough to gut Beijing’s Olympic dreams.

As China’s dismal human rights record attracts increasing attention abroad, critics have latched on one potential means of giving teeth to the outcry: orchestrating a boycott of the Winter Olympics set to be held in Beijing in 2022.

Last month, an international coalition of human rights organizations wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee, asking it to “reverse its mistake in awarding Beijing the honor of hosting the Winter Olympic Games in 2022.” The activists cited China’s lengthy record of human rights violations and noted that hosting the Summer Games in 2008 did nothing to improve China’s record on that front – quite the opposite, in fact.

Beijing leveraged the 2008 Games to showcase itself as a power on the world stage, and hopes to use the 2022 Games to cement that perception. As it did in 2008, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will use the 2022 Olympic Games for its own propaganda purposes, shoring up its legitimacy at home and abroad. Reacting to China’s successful bid for the Winter Olympics, state news agency Xinhua said, “The glory belongs to China.”

But should an international sporting event be gifting any legitimacy, much less “glory,” to the CCP, which is being accused of crimes against humanity?

The most egregious rights question is China’s mistreatment of the Turkic Muslim population (notably the native Uyghurs) in Xinjiang. After well-documented reports of detention without trial, forced sterilizations, and forced labor – all of which China officially denies – numerous governments have expressed their concerns.

Despite evidence that China’s human rights record has only worsened since it was awarded the Winter Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach has cautioned against an Olympic boycott “because of political background or nationality.” Bach later claimed he was not referring to the 2022 Games, but his comments match the IOC’s refusal to take a stand on rights issues. There is little chance the Olympic governing body would revoke China’s right to host. (In fact, China only won the 2022 Games because there was just one other contender: Kazakhstan.)

However, a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Olympics by individual countries remains a possibility, especially as China’s image continues to deteriorate overseas.

The two most prominent previous Olympics boycotts occurred during the Cold War. In 1980, the United States led its allies to shun the Moscow Summer Olympics in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1984, the Soviet Union returned the favor by leading a boycott of the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. However, the impact was diluted in each case, because a large number of sporting powerhouses were still participating.

Things could be very different should there be an organized boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

The Winter Olympics have far fewer nations in the running for medals than the Summer Olympics – the counties that dominate the medal standings in the winter sports are heavily concentrated in the developed world. Many of them are also liberal democracies, who have been the most vocal about their concerns regarding China’s rights record. That means there’s a massive overlap between the countries that would be expected to perform well in the 2022 Games and the countries that would be most likely to take part in a boycott, if one got off the ground.

In July 2019, 22 countries signed a letter addressed to the U.N. Human Rights Council demanding that China “refrain from the arbitrary detention and restrictions on freedom of movement of Uighurs, and other Muslim and minority communities in Xinjiang.” Since then, reports on the severity of rights abuses in Xinjiang have only escalated, with some critics now unreservedly calling the campaign against the Uyghurs an attempt at genocide.

Let’s take those 22 signatories as the starting point for a potential boycott coalition. Add in the United States, which did not sign the letter (because it has withdrawn from the United Nation’s human rights body under the Trump administration) but has been actively denouncing China over Xinjiang abuses, including enacting sanctions on companies and officials involved. That gives us a list of 23 countries that have gone on record expressing serious concerns over abuses in Xinjiang, and thus could potentially join an Olympic boycott. Our list: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.S., and the U.K.

Countries on that list represented eight of the top 10 medal winners at the last Winter Olympics, the 2018 PyeongChang Games. They represent a whopping nine of the top 10 all-time Winter Olympic medal winners (with the lone exception being Russia).

Overall, the 23 countries mentioned above won 233 of the 307 total medals awarded at the 2018 Winter Olympics, nearly 76 percent. And that was no aberration; these countries combined have won more than 75 percent of Winter Olympic medals all-time.

Simply put, without these 23 countries, the Winter Olympics would be a pale imitation of itself. Based on past results, the athletes sitting out would otherwise have won roughly three-quarters of the medals.

Things become even more interesting if we posit an alternative “boycott Olympics,” as was held in Philadelphia for countries avoiding the 1980 Moscow Olympics. If the 23 countries on our list banded together to host such alternative games, athletes would face the best competition – and thus the most potential glory from a victory – not in Beijing but in the rival host.

Western liberal democracies dominate the Winter Olympics, both in terms of athletic prowess and interest in watching. If these countries put their values first and refuse to participate in an Olympics Games that at best overlooks and at worst normalizes China’s horrific treatment of the Uyghurs, their absence would entirely gut the 2022 Olympics. With athletes, viewers, and advertising dollars turning elsewhere, the Beijing Games could be made into an unprecedented flop, regardless of what impressive displays China has planned as host.

Western democracies have a chance to deny Beijing a PR victory, and instead turn China’s horrific rights record into a national embarrassment on the world stage. If the world is serious about the cry of “never again,” it’s time to start planning for that option.

[randomnessunicorn-imagine]

Hello again! I once got shipped with Norway for Hetalia and I greatly liked it so I was wondering if I may have a dating scenarios if you wouldn't mind? To recap: I'm a tall brown haired female with blue eyes. I'm a very shy and quiet person with some intellect. Even when I open up I'm quiet. But secretly I'm sarcastic with a dark sense of humor. Also I have low self esteem. I love reading and I'm often seen doing that. (And thank you and I'm sorry if I'm being annoying with all the request!)

{ Hello~Sorry if you waited so long, I hope you will like it-! }

@seven116​ x Lukas Bondevik  ( APH Norway )

💙 FIRST MEETING:

It was a serene morning of November, the winter was just around the corner and so many things were going to happen. This year still deserved new surprises that none could even imagine!You were directed to the library, one of your favourite place, since you loved reading so much and you were sad for all those people who were unable to appreciate a magnificent activity like reading. They had only their life to live while a true reader lived million and million lives, all different and fantastic. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” said George Martin and it was the truth. You have lost the count about all the lives you have already lived. It was never enough!The library was a calm and silent place where persons could enjoy the true meaning of the existence. You were exploring, with your vigilant and curious eyes, all the volumes that were exposed on the shelves. You ended up in an area you have never visited and it was very strange, maybe they had only incremented the choice of the books. There were different volumes about Nordic Myths and History, they seemed very interesting, and some of them were illustrated with fascinating and artistic pictures you found so amazing that you were already flipping without realizing. You did not even notice the thin and silent figure next to you since you were so absorbed in your thoughts. This person was so pale and thoughtful; he seemed a young man, he had two pair of glacial eyes, and he wore a weird navy hat on his blonde head. He did not seem a talkative person and he was limited to observe the books with an apathetic expression. You could not say if he was truly interested and bored, or if was able to move because he seemed immobile and static like he was a statue. A frozen statue.You realized you were staring at him a little too much and it was not so polite, so you looked at the same books he was observing. Maybe you should have read one of them so you raised your hand, reaching one of those volumes. In that moment, the time stood still because it seemed the mysterious man has already grabbed your book so you retired your hand. You just wanted to cheek so you did not care, keeping on looking around. You have not found the perfect book today but that desire of curiosity remained in your mind, and it was because of that cold and enigmatic young man.

💚 SECOND MEETING:

Another month was passed and you have never seen that mysterious person in the library as if it was a sort of apparition, a ghost. He was so pale, almost transparent, maybe…Ah, it could not be truth, it was illogical and he was just a normal guy who did not frequent that library very often like you. Anyway, he left you with a bad taste in your mouth you could not explain. It was like… Discontent with an aftertaste of curiosity. You truly desired to know that person, it seemed he came from a romance, he was just one of those sinister character’s books you could never understand or predict. You wanted to read his mind.Christmas was coming and you were doing your shopping in a mall, this place was full of euphoric people. You had to buy some presents for your friends but you were so unsure so you were looking through the storefronts without caring so much until a group of people caught your attention. They were five and they seem so different from each other. There was one who screamed and laughed a little too much, a cold man with glasses who had a scary look on his face next to another euphoric man, a cold teenager and then… Your eyes went wide open when you noticed that he was there. The mysterious person of the library was there but he did not notice you since his stare seemed contemplating another dimension and galaxy. Nevertheless, chasing after people was not so polite so you decided to return to your business, searching for some gifts for your friends. You entered in the supermarket where there were some Christmas sales. While you were looking for decorations and stuff you met them again, and you found the mysterious man that was observing some fairy and troll’s statues with the same indifferent face of every time. Maybe he was not a happy person even if it was almost Christmas and it was a shame someone could be displeased during this period. You got closer pretending to be interested to those statues and you, after taking all your courage, spoke to him, «Oh, you truly like those things, uhm…? ». Actually, you would have never talked with a person so openly but your curiosity won this battle, this time.His only answer was a nod, a simple nod. He was truly a person of few words and you felt embarrassed. It was still an answer, so mute and cold but an answer! You smiled feeling like an idiot and you wanted to disappear, but you had to say something to him. «Those fairies are really beautiful, they seem like the ones I saw in those books…», you took one of those statutes. Being concentrated to something else, and not to his icy eyes, could help you to gain some calm because the temperature was becoming colder. He was like the winter, glacial and impenetrable.When the situation was becoming difficult, luckily one of his friends came to save you from this embarrassment. Another blonde guy (actually, they were all blonde) appeared and, for the first time, you have noticed a hostile glare in his eyes. The new man was a very tall and noisy person, he posed his hand to Norway’s shoulder speaking, «Oh, Loki, who’s this pretty girl? One of your friend? I’m surprised, I didn’t believe a snowman like you could have a friend.», then he started laughing and you presented yourself telling your name and that you were not exactly his friend, you met Norway only one time in the library, and you found him here for a coincidence. «Anyway, my name is not Loki. It’s Lukas! », it was the first time he spoke and his voice was so soft and cold just like a snowflake. He seemed so angry with the other guy for reasons unknown for you. «My name is Mathias, it’s your pleasure. », the other man said and then he turned to Lukas, asking, «Why don’t you invite your special friend at the Christmas Dinner? If she’s free, I think Tino would be happy. More people, more fun~», Mathias declared starting to laugh and you blushed a little for the way he said “special friend” like you and Lukas were dating but this was the second time you saw him.Then, you met all his family and all of them seemed glad Norway found a friend and they were surprised about it. You were right thinking he was so cold and mysterious, he appeared so solitaire and smart and now you were more curious than before and you had no other choice to accept their invitation to join them at Christmas. You could pass to say hello and your parents would have not been so angry if you would have presented a little late to the Christmas Party.

💛 DATE:

After some days, you found Lukas in the library and you were so surprised to see him there. You could not think he was there for you but he approached you. His posture was still rigid and steady. Then, he started spoke with a softer voice than the harsher one he used with Mathias last time and he lost that hostile glare. He returned calm and polite like his usual.«I am mortified for the unappropriated behaviour Mathias got, he’s just a problematic child. », he meant he got some mental problems but it was clear Lukas did not like so much Mathias. «Oh, don’t worry… He was kinda funny, I didn’t feel uncomfortable. », he seemed shocked by your answer and you noticed one of his eyebrows rising for the confusion. He just nodded and maybe it was your time to start a conversation because he was not going to speak again. Then, you asked him some information about those fairies and if he found them interesting or if he believed in them. You said the first thing crossed your mind but it seemed it was an argument he found interesting and he spoke more than his usual, and he was so informed about it so you asked him if he could give you some advices about some books you could read and he suggested you some Nordic’s authors. After some while, you understood that it was not the perfect place to speak, even if you were the one who spoke the most, so you asked to Lukas if he wanted to take a coffee with you to continue the conversation. This person was too elusive and maybe you would not have another occasion to spend some time with him. Like always, he nodded and you felt the luckiest person of the world. It was just a nod but it was something and he appeared to be a sincere guy, he would have said “no” if he did not want to stay with you so you were acting good. You did not know if you should have considered it like a true date since you were not sure about his feelings and it was a miracle if he saw you like a friend and it seemed he did not like having people around and he was too much introvert. Anyway, this almost date went better than you supposed and the two of you talked about so many arguments. Actually, you were the one who communicated the most and he nodded every time, but you found his way to nod so cute so you did not complain.After that day, you met Lukas more often in the library and the two of you keep each other company reading together, it was so funny and relaxing. Sometimes, you lost yourself studying his fascinating and placid form while he read, and you kept having the same sensation in your heart. The same sensation when a person found itself in front of the mystery of the world.

💜 CONFESSION:

This winter brought to you so many new things and surprises and you kept dating Lukas. It seemed he appreciated your company and even his family was surprised seeing him less solitaire and he went outside a little more but the places you and he visited were the calmest and quietest because he did not like noisy and crowed environments so most of your dates took place in the library or in the park. One time, he brought you to skating, you remained enchanted by his talent, and he moved with the same grace and agility of a flying bird. The other guy, the one Norway disliked so much, that Danish man, called you as “Luka’s girlfriend” despite the Norwegian kept defining you like a friend and nothing more but he was not an affectionate guy and he cared a lot to know well a person before he could define someone in an intimate way. Mathias said you have worked a sort of miracle because Lukas was more alive than before and he always appeared like a piece of ice. Despite his coldness, you felt so comfortable with Lukas because he was very polite and respectful. He always treated you with kindness and care in his glacial ways, and it was perfect for your shyness because you were sure he was not going to be rude or weird. Then, he did not speak too much and he was the perfect listener even if he did not give you advises because he thought you had already the solution of your problem but you have not found it yet. Then, you could not live without his nods and you were sure he always paid attention to your discourses and he never lied. He talked not so much, but he always told the truth, and, because of his calm and low voice, even the cruellest truth appeared so harmless and placid if it was pronounced by his mouth.These were all the reasons why you truly loved him but you have never confessed it for not ruining the actual relationship. One day, it was snowing and the atmosphere was so magical and spectacular, you and he was watching this natural show and the snow posed on your nose. It was cold and beautiful just like him, but you preferred to stay in silence. After some while, you felt something. Lukas was holding your hand, this gesture was so sweet and unexpected. Nothing has been told but you already knew. Sometimes, those little gestures told so much more than a thousand mere words.

[lisafromrussia]

Formula Student Germany

TEIL 5

Actually, I should put this song in the beginning of FS East story too, but here is more suitable. :D

Formula Student Germany. I’ve never been there and I always heard that this is the greatest event in Europe.

So here we go. 

In Czech, I saw info that we will live not in campsite near the Hockenheimring and there will live ALL teams)) 

I couldn’t imagine where organizers can host about 100 teams) but ok)

Group of my teammates with me was the first who came to the campsite it was a bit difficult to find the right place but we’ve coped with it) 

When I’ve tried to talk with people that sat near the entrance they asked me if we are from England? :D but finally we could go through the entrance and there weren’t a lot of people. Only guys from DHBW Stuttgart already have started the party at their tents with different nice german songs.

We were alone.. and had only 2 tents and 1 big inflatable mattress :D guys prepared it and from 1pm till ~ 8 pm we were 7 people with nothing. I and Mark have brought food to guys from Burger King (it was the only one place that worked at Sunday) ja,ja in Germany, everything is closed on Sundays. 

Finally, we met our guys with the truck and started detruck. And there was really cold and I’ve decided to sleep in the truck)) 

the next morning was very good I didn’t feel my back :D But I slept in a warm place

because of at Sunday all shops were closed we didn't know what to eat breakfast... and girls immediately have felt instinct of mothers and we started to search for eggs, sugar, etc in campsite :D

My victims were guys from Greenteam I tried to explain to them what I needed I already spoke German (ein bisschen) but they did not understand what the “EI” I wanna from them: D Ok, Endlich we’ve got eggs from them

DANKEEEE GUYS one day I will return you eggs :]

Btw, guys that drove to Hockenheim from Czech by bus had a problem with transfer to the final destination from Meinheim but guys from Fasttube helped to them. That was really nice and then we met Fasttube members in our camping very often :)

If some of you still don’t know I am fan of Mercedes F1 team :P

And I was very happy to see again the silver arrow and make a picture but finally I have pictures with arrow only on my phone because of my teammate is very good person <3

FSG was full of meetings with different people. 

One evening my teammates have sent me to find someone who will help me to make an order on German eBay... and I was in Ka.race.ing t-shirt and asked people to help me with German eBay... it looked weird I guess :D

My good eyesight let me down and I accidentally approached a guy whose shirt from far away looked like a t-shirt of a Ka.race.ing and I was sure that this guy would help me, But it was the guy from Norway team but he agreed to help me and we tried to make an order. So we did it. And btw we didn’t receive it. 

Hmmmmm....

our boys have found cornfield and brought to us corn and cooked it :D and also we made a trip to the nearest shop in Hockenheim and I liked this area too :)

Static day was cold and full of activenesses I had to present cost report and right after that I presented team management report too but there was very cold I’m still wondered how we didn’t get cold :) 

It was unfair: two men with one me therefore Oleg has helped me :D because of it’s difficult to use 2 CRD folders at the same time especially in dress... :D

Team’s photos I like very much. :D 

On FSG have come our alumni but also our sponsors and one day when one of our sponsors came later we couldn’t pass him on territory and one my friend from another team have helped us a lot. And we could pass our sponsor-alumni on event site :D

one of those who very much waited for me on the FSG was Volkswagen. On the picture below you will see why :D

WELCOME LISA! <3 Where is my Tom? :)

One of the things that I enjoyed a lot - photobooth. I tried to make a picture with all my friends there 

Guys from TU Team Delft one of them is Russian and it was very surprising for me when I talked to them in English and suddenly he started to speak Russian...) It’s unbelievable feeling when you meet someone close to you in another country <3 we were at FS East and FSG and it was always nice and funny conversations 

btw these guys are finalists of all Business Plan events :) 

We had girls party with Porsche, VW, MAN etc and they gave us a lot of pink stuff and boys got jealous :D

Endurance day.. wasn’t funny and it was very stressful... I had to stay in the pit with team’s radios and I watched endurance online and... the last lap of last driver, last half of lap I can`t believe my eyes. camera operators change the frame to another car on the track. And At this moment Whatsapp message from my friend “OH NOOOOO” 

and next picture - our car without wheel... Verdammte Scheiße! 

And after we are taking pictures with the car! Just the wheel nut loosened.. btw I’m sitting on that wheel!

Awards ceremony... 

I’ve met Lewis Hamilton hahaha and it’s become the most popular photo in my Instagram :D 

I was cola drinking girl and it was ok for me :D, unfortunately, MAHLE party didn’t last long so we moved to the campsite.

it’s time of Stoff und Schnaps song!

as usual, I decided to spend the last night with my friends from Karlsruhe) and my lovely friend that taught me sing this song told about it to other guys and they asked me to show them if I really can sing this song :D 

and in that evening I’ve found a personal bodyguard :P he was with me from the moment when we drove from Mahle party with crazy Italians in bus and until the morning :D <3 but was very funny when I’ve stood with my friends in the middle of an empty camping and unexpectedly guys from my team break into our conversation and like "Liza are you ok?" :D but they were in the polo of other teams and no one except me understood that it was my teammates.

And finally, when my friend and I tried to take an OK photo it was like we weren’t somewhere except campsite :D AS ALWAYS 

but it’s nice audi behind us :P

Last day.. we had a transfer to Frankfurt from Heidelberg and our friends from FASTTUBE team helped us again... Ohhh. We have ended up in the very stressful situation with that guys but they were very cold and in the end, we got to Heidelberg in time.

it was very nice from the guy who was a driver of this minivan that he was nervous about us he talked with me and we tried to find the right parking place and... ahhhhh. I’m very thankful to this guy for his help.

When we’ve seen presumably our bus he parked right in front of this bus, so that bus could not leave the station.

but fortunately our bus was delayed by an hour :|

What I would like to say..

That’s very good that despite political differences, relations between people have remained the same. And it doesn’t matter who are you russian, german, hungarian, indian etc... 

The Formula Student unites.  The Formula Student is a one big family.

And only formula student guy on any your question can answer #BECAUSERACECAR

I’m very thankful to each of you <3 And miss you all so much!

[shmosnet2]

10 Of The Most Successful People With Down Syndrome

10 Of The Most Successful People With Down Syndrome

It’s no secret that people with Down Syndrome are not always fully embraced by society. Even in the wealthiest, most advanced parts of the world, prejudice of this kind continues to persist, and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. But wherever there is prejudice, there are those who stand up against it, and the following are just 10 examples of people who have torn down barriers and broken glass ceilings for people with Down Syndrome all over the world. See Also: 10 Epic Tales Of Survival Against All Odds 10 Ángela Bachiller—Politician

Ángela Bachiller kicked off her political career in 2011, when she began working at City Hall in the Spanish city of Valladolid. A member of the People’s Party, Bachiller spent over two years working as an administrative assistant in City Hall, before standing for election in 2011. Although Bachiller did not win a seat in that election, placing 18th for 17 available posts, she assumed office two years later when a corruption scandal forced Jesús García Galván to step down. While some may attempt to downplay Bachiller’s success by pointing out that she didn’t win the election outright, it should also be noted that she very well may have, if people with Down Syndrome were allowed to vote in Spain. While there is no outright ban on people with intellectual disabilities voting, Spanish courts usually declare people with Down Syndrome as “incapacitated”. Intended to protect them from fraud and exploitation, such a ruling also revokes their right to vote, making it all the more impressive that Bachiller managed to hold a position when she couldn’t even vote for herself.[1] 9Collette Divitto—Entrepreneur

Even without laws that explicitly forbid them from fully integrating into society, people with Down Syndrome consistently face an uphill battle in trying to do so. Collette Divitto discovered just how true this is when, despite finishing a 3 year cooking course at Clemson University in just two years, job interview after job interview was met with nothing but polite rejection. Hellbent on entering the workforce, Collette took her most popular recipe, “The Amazing Cookie”, and founded Collettey’s Cookies. Initially working with a single grocery store, Collette gradually built up her client base, raising her profile with media appearances on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, GMA, BBC, and more, ultimately leading to a partnership with Lays Potato Chips. Collette now employs 13 people, and hopes to use her platform to reduce unemployment and poverty levels among people with disabilities.[2] 8Jamie Brewer—Actor

Probably the most-famous person on this list, Jamie Brewer is an actor that many of you will recognise from her prominent and recurring roles in the American Horror Story series. Having worked in theatre for over a decade, Brewer skyrocketed to international fame when she made her TV debut portraying Adelaide “Addy” Langdon in the pilot of the hit horror show, and has been a regular fixture ever since. In an interview conducted shortly after season one aired, Brewer said “the most difficult part of playing Adelaide is learning how to portray someone who isn’t always viewed acceptable to her mother and society. This is a new challenge for me”. Since she started on the show, Brewer has worked on a number of TV shows & films, and is currently slated to play Princess Aurora (a.k.a. Sleeping Beauty) in a film series that takes old fairytales and gives a more active role to the leading ladies.[3] 7Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr—Playwright

Born in Norway in 1982, Marte Wexelsen Goksøyr is a public speaker and disability activist, but she is most well-known for her work as a writer—more specifically, a playwright. Her most famous work is her interpretation of Cinderella, which is based on her own life, performed at one of Oslo’s most prestigious theatres, and features live music from the naughties pop band Hellogoodbye. Goksøyr’s work made her the first woman to win The Bjørnson Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression, and her version of Cinderella was even used as the basis of a scientific study that examined the differences in attitudes towards disabled actors between adults and children.[4] 6 Judith Scott—Sculptor

Judith Scott (1943-2005) had exactly the kind of childhood you would expect from someone who became a world renowned artist. Judith’s parents chose not to acknowledge her condition, which was compounded by the fact that she had gone deaf, unbeknownst to anyone in her life. At seven years old, Judith’s twin sister Joyce woke up to find Judith had been taken to a care home, where her undiagnosed deafness meant she failed to qualify for any sort of classes at all. Forbidden by their mother to visit Judith, Joyce spent much of her life working with children in need until, after a 35 year battle, she became Judith’s guardian and moved her to another institution. For years, Judith took almost no interest in any of the creative activities available there, until the day a guest teacher came in to give a class on fiber art. Judith immediately took the the art form, taking all sorts of objects and wrapping them in threads and yarn. It was clear that her work went well beyond pure aesthetics, with the director of the institute saying that Judith was “learning to speak”. Much of her work clearly reflects the loneliness & isolation she experienced in childhood, with twins being a major theme as well. After 10 years, Judith was given her first exhibition which, coupled with a book about her work, caught the attention and acclaim of the international art community. She soon became the subject of 4 documentaries in three languages, and to this day has permanent exhibitions in 12 museums across 6 countries.[5] 5Madeline Stuart—Supermodel

Madeline Stuart is a professional supermodel who was born in Australia in 1996. After attending a Brisbane fashion show in 2014, Stuart decided she wanted to be a model and began training. The following year, her mother launched an online campaign, which quickly gathered steam, resulting in Stuart signing 2 contracts in one week. Stuart’s career didn’t stop there, and she quickly racked up quite the collection of accolades, such as walking the catwalk in New York Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, and various other weeks and shows around the world. Stuart has also been profiled in both Vogue & Forbes, and has completed the Special Olympics triathlon three times.[6] 4Pablo Pineda—DipT BA

Pablo Pineda is an actor and educator most well-known for being the first European with Down Syndrome to obtain a university degree, having completed both a Diploma in Teaching and a BA in Educational Psychology. In 2009, he won the Silver Shell Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for his role in Yo Tambien, a film about a university graduate with Down Syndrome. Despite the name, the Silver Shell award is actually the top acting prize at the festival, which is one of only 14 category A film festivals in the world. Upon returning to his native Malaga, Pineda was also presented with the Shield of the City by the local Mayor. Although he still acts, Pineda wants to build a career in education, and is currently working on implementing an international strategy to increase employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Pineda is a regular guest speaker at universities across the world, has written multiple books, and has a TedTalk available to watch online.[7] 3 Sujeet Desai—Musician

Sujeet Desai is a musician from Buffalo, New York who graduated from high school with a 4.3 GPA before graduating from Berkshire Hills Music Academy two years later. All in all, Desai can play seven instruments: Piano, violin, drums, Bb clarinet, Bass clarinet, trumpet, and saxophone. Two documentaries have been made about his accomplishments, and he has received major media attention throughout the years, featuring on shows such as The View, 20/20, The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as in the Wall Street Journal & New York Times. His greatest accomplishment so far was his 2015 performance at Carnegie Hall, for which he received a standing ovation. Needless to say, Desai has a Pantheon of awards to his name, including a number of Olympic medals. That, along with his musical ability, may be why he was chosen to give a solo performance at the opening ceremony of the 2009 Winter Special Olympics. He currently lives in New York with his wife Carolyn, and is working towards earning a second performance at Carnegie Hall.[8] 2 Karen Gaffney—Athlete

In 1977, Jim Gaffney held his 9 month old daughter Karen, and blew air in her face. Once her lips were closed, he placed her briefly underwater, in the hopes that he could gradually improve her breathing and muscle tone. This unusual idea proved to be a bit of a Moana moment for Karen, who has gone on to enjoy an incredibly successful career as a swimmer. In addition to winning two gold medals in the Special Olympics, Karen was the first person with Down Syndrome to complete the English Channel relay race, but even then her career was just getting started. Since crossing the channel, she has also conquered Boston Harbor, San Francisco bay (16 times and counting), Lake Champlain, Dun Laoghaire Harbor, and the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. In 2007, she was the focus of the Documentary Crossing Tahoe: A Swimmer’s Dream.[9] 1 Isabella Springmuhl Tejada—Designer

From an early age, Isabella Springmuhl Tejada followed in the footsteps of her grandmother, who was also a designer. As a child, Isabella would create clothes for her dolls, but play eventually turned into work when she enrolled in a fashion course, where she began working on clothes inspired by Guatemalan culture, as well as designs aimed specifically at people with Down Syndrome. Springmuhl had her first big showcase in 2015, where she sold her complete collection. The success of her show garnered international attention, and a second exhibit was quickly set up in Panama. Her momentum continued to build, and in 2016 her designs were shown at London Fashion Week, which was followed by another exhibit in Rome. All of this landed her a spot in the BBC’s 100 Women list, an annual collection of the most inspirational and influential women in the world, alongside the likes of Alicia Keys, Simone Biles, and Zoleka Mandela.[10] About The Author: Simon has entered his final lap of being a 20-something year old, but still loves Irish stereotypes and potatoes.

https://ift.tt/340AbFf . Foreign Articles December 06, 2019 at 11:49AM

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/world/united-states-of-america/state-of-the-union-trumps-address-will-be-postponed-claims-pelosi-aide-live/

State of the Union: Trump's address will be postponed, claims Pelosi aide – live

2.59pm EST14:59

Two senators have introduced legislation to require the special counsel to directly submit a report to Congress rather than simply to the attorney general.

Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand)

Dem Sen. Blumenthal and GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley have introduced The Special Counsel Transparency Act, which “requires that a Special Counsel submit a report directly to Congress and the public at the conclusion of an investigation,” or if he/she is fired or resigns. pic.twitter.com/2x1WbC72DL

January 28, 2019

2.17pm EST14:17

Another Democratic presidential candidate will enter the fray tonight.

New Age author Marianne Williamson will announce her bid.

Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson)

Join me tonight as I formally announce my candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. Live in Los Angeles, the Saban Theatre 8440 Wilshire Blvd. 7:30PM, or livestream at https://t.co/zVBvuNdwg8

January 28, 2019

Williamson travelled to Iowa last summer exploring a bid.

1.51pm EST13:51

Gwyneth Paltrow has a podcast?

Allan Smith (@akarl_smith)

Schultz told Gwyneth Paltrow on her podcast there’s “a lack of civility” and “a lack of respect” in the U.S.

“We are imprinting a young generation with a lack of civility and hate and fear – and I don’t think we’re going to know the consequences of that for quite some time.”

January 28, 2019

1.34pm EST13:34

Trump ‘very pissed off’, ‘really hopping mad’

According to Politico he is, anyway – over claims made by former aide Cliff Sims in the new book Team of Vipers.

Sims’ book is due out tomorrow but was scooped up by the Guardian last week. It tells the now familiar tale of White House chaos, bickering and skullduggery. And apparently it has really upset the president.

From Politico:

President Donald Trump is “very pissed off” and “really hopping mad” at former aide Cliff Sims’ new book that reveals firsthand the chaos and infighting that is ever present in his White House, according to several current and former White House officials.

Trump is asking aides: “Who is this guy? Why is he writing this book? He wasn’t even in meetings,” the sources said. He also dismissively refers to Sims – who served until last May as director of White House message strategy and a special assistant to the president —as “the videographer” because he also helped Trump with the weekly video and radio addresses, according to three current and former White House officials.

Trump: mad. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Updated at 1.39pm EST

1.20pm EST13:20

Potential billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has thrown some shade at potential billionaire presidential candidate Howard Schultz, claiming an independent run for president would “end up re-electing” Trump.

Schultz announced this weekend that he is considering running for the White House as a “centrist independent, outside of the two-party system”.

On Monday Bloomberg, who is considering running as a Democrat, said he has crunched the numbers – and all an independent run would do is split the anti-Trump vote.

It’s no secret that I looked at an independent bid in the past. In fact I faced exactly the same decision now facing others who are considering it.

The data was very clear and very consistent. Given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, there is no way an independent can win. That is truer today than ever before.

In 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote and end up re-electing the president. That’s a risk I refused to run in 2016 and we can’t afford to run it now.

Bloomberg: don’t do it, Schultz. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Updated at 1.22pm EST

1.03pm EST13:03

Poll! Poll! Poll!

This one is from Marquette Law School, who have surveyed Wisconsin voters. It seems 42% of Wisconsinites approve of the job Trump is doing, while 52% disapprove.

That approval rating is better than the national average, but it’s down from October, when 47% approved of Trump’s performance.

Worse news for Trump – who narrowly won in Wisconsin in 2016 – is that not many people say they will vote for him in 2020:

Among all registered voters, 27% say they would definitely vote to reelect Trump if the 2020 elections were held today, 12% say they would probably vote to reelect him. Eight per cent would probably vote for someone else and 49% would definitely vote for someone else.

Updated at 1.13pm EST

12.38pm EST12:38

Sanders to give White House briefing

Martin Pengelly

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders is due to give an on-camera press briefing at 3pm ET.

Ordinarily that would not be news but these are not, as many eminently qualified people have observed, normal times. Sanders last briefed the White House press corps on camera on 18 December, Trump recently tweeted that he had told his press secretary “not to bother”, and the general dwindling of this once-glorious illustration of the power of the first amendment/blast of sound and fury signifying nothing has become a story in itself.

Amid the usual economies with the actualité and tetchy exchanges with grandstanding reporters with on-camera presences to think about, Sanders will doubtless be asked whether Trump is going to shut down the government again if he doesn’t get his money for a wall. On Sunday, the president spoke to the Wall Street Journal and said he thought the chances of bipartisan negotiators producing a deal on border security funding he could accept were “less than 50/50”.

The president also said he doubted he would accept less than the demand for $5.7bn for his border wall that caused the last shutdown, and doubted whether he would accept any deal involving a path to citizenship for young undocumented migrants, a Democratic priority.

Earlier the same day, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney went on the talk shows and was duly asked if Trump was prepared to shut down the government again in three weeks’ time, if his prediction proves accurate and no deal is produced.

“Yeah, I think he actually is,” Mulvaney said. “He doesn’t want to shut the government down, let’s make that very clear. He doesn’t want to declare a national emergency.”

Most observers assume Trump will in fact do the latter, in an attempt to bypass Congressional budget control altogether.

“The president’s commitment is to defend the nation, and he will do it either with or without Congress,” Mulvaney told Fox News Sunday.

Acting without Congress would likely trigger both legal challenges and intense political and philosophical debate about the extent and/or abuse of executive power.

So that will be fun.

Updated at 1.16pm EST

12.05pm EST12:05

An early endorsement for Kamala Harris, from Congressman Ted Lieu:

Ted Lieu (@tedlieu)

I endorse @KamalaHarris for President.

Known Kamala for many years & worked together on various issues. She embraces the future, not the past, and is the person we need to move America forward.

Watch the #HarrisTownHall tonight at 7 pm PT / 10 pm ET to learn more about Kamala. https://t.co/P4ywl9U3Op

January 28, 2019

The Iowa caucuses are just 12 months away! Could this be a game-changer?

Updated at 12.07pm EST

11.57am EST11:57

Will Maryland governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, mount a presidential primary challenge against Donald Trump?

Probably not, but it hasn’t stopped news organizations from speculating. CNN is particularly keen on the idea, noting that Hogan “enjoys high approval ratings” in Maryland.

But CNN adds, a little underwhelmingly: “There’s been no indication of any concrete steps toward a primary bid and a spokesperson for Hogan did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.”

Larry Hogan, applauding about something or other. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

11.24am EST11:24

There’s nothing like a bit of Brexit news to make one feel better about US politics.

The latest development in the ongoing shambles is that a top EU official believes the risk of a “no-deal Brexit” – which essentially amounts to the UK crashing out of the EU with no clear plan forward – is now “very high”.

The Guardian’s man in Westminster Andrew Sparrow has the latest developments.

Shakespeare. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

And if you’re still confused – like me – about terms like “backstop”, “Norway plus” and “SuperCanada”, then here’s a handy guide.

Updated at 1.15pm EST

11.17am EST11:17

Shutdown cost the economy $11bn, says Congressional Budget Office

The border wall-inspired government shutdown cost the economy $3bn in the fourth quarter of 2018 and is expected to cost $8bn in the first quarter of 2019, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Some of $11bn that will be recovered once federal workers start getting paid again, the CBO says. But not all:

Although most of the real GDP lost during the fourth quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2019 will eventually be recovered, CBO estimates that about $3bn will not be. That amount equals 0.02% of projected annual GDP in 2019. In other words, the level of GDP for the full calendar year is expected to be 0.02% smaller than it would have been otherwise.

The CBO says the cost to the economy is due mainly to “the loss of furloughed federal workers’ contribution to GDP, the delay in federal spending on goods and services, and the reduction in aggregate demand (which thereby dampened private-sector activity)”.

Trump wanted $5.7bn for the border wall, in exchange for ending the shutdown.

Updated at 11.26am EST

10.46am EST10:46

Pelosi: no State of Union on Tuesday

Donald Trump will not give his State of the Union address on Tuesday, according to an aide to Nancy Pelosi.

CNN reports that the address – Trump’s second – is not going to happen as had been scheduled before the shutdown.

The back-and-forth over Trump giving his State of the Union speech in the House chamber was a running sidenote to the government shutdown.

Pelosi asked Trump to postpone the address until after the shutdown ended, citing security concerns. Trump rejected that, saying he was going to do it anyway. Pelosi again said he would not be allowed to. The master dealmaker then caved, agreeing to postpone the speech.

It’s now unclear when Trump will address the nation.

Updated at 11.59am EST

10.19am EST10:19

There’s more bad news for Trump today – in the form of a Washington Post-ABC poll that finds the president “has largely underperformed the even modest expectations that Americans had for him as he took office”.

Nearly six out of ten Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump as a person, according to the survey. A majority of people also “doubt his empathy, honesty and ability to make political deals”, according to the Post.

The poll compares the expectations people had for Trump in January 2017 to current views of the president.

The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)

Midway through first term, Trump is failing to meet the public’s expectations for his job performance, Post-ABC poll finds https://t.co/ukVYXSIcWc

January 28, 2019

When Trump took office 50% of people thought he would do a good job on reducing the federal deficit, according to the poll. Now only 33% think he is doing well.

The federal deficit was a longtime rallying cry for Republicans under Obama, but McConnell and co were strangely silent as Trump’s tax cuts caused the deficit to balloon to $779bn in 2018 – an increase of 17%.

Updated at 10.20am EST

9.37am EST09:37

Martin Pengelly

Howard Schultz. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Howard Schultz’s announcement that he is considering a run for the White House as an independent has caused consternation among Democrats, who fear a third-party run from a candidate with many of their policies – Schultz himself told CBS he’s a “lifelong Democrat” and listed some progressive-ish policy positions – could split the vote and hand a second term to Trump.

Trump himself duly tweeted about the former Starbucks chief executive on Monday morning, saying that Schultz is not “the smartest person” … because he is. No presidential nickname has yet been coined.

Schultz himself acknowledged that his ambitions are not for everyone, telling the news site Axios he knows he is:

going to create hate, anger, disenfranchisement from friends, from Democrats.

Axios reports that the billionaire businessman is, however, convinced he is doing the right thing. He’s certainly doing the write thing, releasing a campaign-oriented biography today with a launch in his native New York.

It’s called From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America. Before you rush to the store to order it, consider this from the Guardian’s Lloyd Green, on the often (if not always) dubious pedigree of the presidential campaign book:

9.09am EST09:09

Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the day’s political news.

In Washington and around the country, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will return to work for the first time in 2019 as museums and national parks prepare to open. A surprising climb down by Donald Trump ended the longest shutdown in US history on Friday, but it could be a several more days before employees receive their pay.

Congress has less than three weeks to present Trump with a border security plan he likes. A bipartisan group of members were selected to lead the negotiations but Trump has already dismissed the prospect that they will come up with a proposal he would sign. In that case, Trump has vowed to declare a national emergency to build his wall along the south-western border. And on the talk shows on Sunday, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said the president could shut down the government again.

Trump has no public events scheduled today but that doesn’t mean we haven’t heard from him and won’t be hearing more.

Already this morning he has tweeted about tarrifs and bible study classes. He also taunted former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz, saying he doesn’t have the “guts”’to run for president.

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

Howard Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to run for President! Watched him on @60Minutes last night and I agree with him that he is not the “smartest person.” Besides, America already has that! I only hope that Starbucks is still paying me their rent in Trump Tower!

January 28, 2019

[lindawfowler101010]

Can/Will Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Win?

On June 26, 2018, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a landslide democratic primary against the longtime incumbent, Joe Crowley, despite being far behind in the polls. Crowley was seen as the heir apparent to Nancy Pelosi as future Democratic House leader. In November 2018, she'll face off against her Republican counterpart for the Senate seat (New York Congressional District 14). While independent left-wing media outlets have been largely gushing with excitement, right-wing media outlets have been criticizing Cortez nonstop, and her early gaffes have certainly given them some ammunition.

Conventional Political Wisdom suggests Ocasio-Cortez has little/no chance

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is only 28-year-old, has no political experience, and dubs herself a democratic socialist. Furthermore, the word “socialism” carries with it much baggage. While it's true that younger voters understand that its modern usage refers to the sort of economic models we find in Canada, the UK, France, and various Nordic countries, outlets like Fox News will continue to insist that she means Venezuela, and they will continue to pretend that this is what she means (and they'll continue to ignore the ongoing economic sanctions as a potential contributor to Venezuela's economic troubles). These arguments no doubt work with voters within the Republican base, it remains to be seen if they will work with swing and independent voters, who are more likely to understand the difference.

The Changing Political Landscape

There is growing indication that the old political calculus is fast becoming obsolete (if it hasn't already). We saw indications of this with President trump's victory, which flew in the face of contemporary polls, including Nate Silver's model which proved far more effective than traditional polling methods during the 2012 Presidential election. The percentage of disaffected voters continues to grow, and candidates are finding ways to motivate those outside of the “likely voter” pool.

Untapped voters

Why did Ocasio-Cortez win such a landslide victory despite being so far behind in the polls? Simple: The polls measure likely voters. Cortez appealed to, visited and motivated people outside that pool. The effect here cannot be understated. Studies have shown that voters below the poverty line (those more likely to vote for left-leaning policies) are far less likely to vote. Cortez was able to inspire votes from this demographic.

To a certain degree, President Donald Trump was able to do this as well with disaffected voters. While the POTUS' detractors are busy expressing incredulity that so many people could vote for someone with his less-than-appealing qualities, they are missing the point. There are many disaffected voters who voted for him because the ongoing political back-and-forth was still leaving them without work. Trump, for all of his dislikable qualities, represented the chance of something different for people who felt they had nothing to lose at this point. Ocasio-Cortez offers a similar platform.

Socialism isn't such a dirty word anymore

The application of the word socialism has changed over time. While many from older generations still insist that it refers to the actual lack of private sector, younger generations understand in terms of how the word has actually been used in the last decade or so. Industrialized nations have strong social safety nets and public programs, and some of them more than others. Yet, these economies are still capitalist. Socialism, as used in a modern context refers to this model. In this regard, the United States is already socialist (but less so than its Canadian and European counterparts) given programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The use of the word “socialist” by Ocasio-Cortez and other Justice Democrats does seem to further split the Democratic Party.  This is likely due to the historical baggage tied to the word, and the fact that older voters may very well still associate the word with its cold war usage.   On the other hand, the Republican Party and right-wing media outlets have been referring to people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as socialists for years now.  The attack may no longer be very effective (for comparison, many Democrats have accused Republican presidents and other officials of racism for so long, that it no held much weight when they applied to Donald Trump).

Furthermore, Bernie Sanders has openly used the word socialism and he is currently the most popular politician in the United States.

Policy and Platitudes

What Cortez is proposing is a step further in this direction, with programs like Single Payer Healthcare (which is essentially Medicare for everyone), tax-funded college/trade school and more investment in green technologies.

This is where the information silo that not exists results in a rift over how these policies are perceived. Those within the Fox News-to-Info Wars distribution will be sold the idea that these are radical policies that will take the United States into uncharted waters.  These outlets will mostly ignore the actual pertinent economics models (Canada, Scandinavia, Norway, The UK, etc) and constantly mention Venezuela (blaming socialism for its economic troubles and ignoring the effects of US-imposed sanctions).

More informed voters will realize that there is nothing radical about this. The US healthcare industry is already largely socialized. Single payer would simply expand Medicare to all individuals. Taxes would increase to pay for this, but those taxes would simply be replacing premiums being paid to private insurers. Free college sounds radical but it was once free (rising costs have simply outpaced the rise in tax finding). The green new deal is not much different than the federal investment into the auto industry during World War II. Furthermore, we have finally reached the threshold where the green sector is not only a viable job creator, but renewable energy is now on par with fossil fuels.

 The “excellent economy”

There is a growing gap between the published monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics U-6 report, and what many Americans are experiencing in terms of economic hardship. The U-6 measures employment rates among those actively seeking employment, meaning it simply ignores those who've given up looking for work. Furthermore, the jobs being created are increasingly lower paying. This is in part why, despite the twenty months of month-over-month job creation and dropping unemployment rates during Barack Obama's time in office, countless disaffected voters felt disenfranchised.

This schism between the published U-6 numbers (and for that matter, rising stock market and GDP, both of which have also been growing since 2009), and what millions of Americans are experiencing economically make traditional economic indicators less and less effective for predictive models. Furthermore, income inequality has continued to grow.

The point: The fact that traditional metrics are largely positive masks the pain being felt by a large percentage of the population, especially those living in poverty (which, as mentioned earlier, appear to be motivated by the policies being espoused by Ocasio-Cortez).  Hence, don't expect the positive metrics to play the same role they would have in the past when these indicators were more in line with whatever voters were experiencing.

The Israel Occupation statement (”gaffe”)

In a recent interview, Cortex referred to the “Israeli Occupation.” When pressed on what she meant, she mentioned the settlements, backpedaled a bit, then stated that she is not the expert on foreign policy. Right-wing media has had a field day with this. This is an interesting situation because it's clear that she is actually correct, but simply lost confidence in her assertion and backpedaled. Right-wing pundits are essentially criticizing her for her intellectual honesty, and not pretending to be certain on something she wasn't actually certain of (the take-home lesson being, that pretending to know what you don't know is actually a virtue).

Under the traditional political calculus, this is certainly a “mistake” and perhaps it will prove to be even under the new paradigm. However, it may not be. Something has shifted, and it's difficult to describe. Many of the old rules are becoming less pervasive. This may very well be the influence of the Internet and streaming video, where long-form interviews are shedding light on the inadequacy of the old, structured television format, where debates are won by who sounds the more self-assured, and who has the most clever things to say (facts and honesty being a tertiary consideration). Furthermore, the growing distrust of “politics as usual” could mean that the sort of candidness of intellectual honesty is seen as a strength, not a weakness.

At this point, she is running for Senate in NY CD 14, not for POTUS.  Hence, some of her early gaffes may not be so detrimental for this campaign.

We'll know in November.

 The post Can/Will Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Win? appeared first on Fact and Myth.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

White House, Congress agree on $2 trillion virus rescue bill (AP) The White House and Senate leaders of both major political parties announced agreement early Wednesday on an unprecedented $2 trillion emergency bill to rush sweeping aid to businesses, workers and a health care system slammed by the coronavirus pandemic. The urgently needed pandemic response measure is the largest economic rescue measure in history and is intended as a weekslong or monthslong patch for an economy spiraling into recession and a nation facing a potentially ghastly toll. The economic rescue package would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home. (NYT) Americans with direct-deposit bank account information on file with the Internal Revenue Service for tax refunds--about 70 million people--should see their payments arrive within a few weeks of the bill being signed into law. Eligible Americans who do not have such information on file, and thus will be waiting for a check in the mail from the I.R.S., will need to wait up to four months to receive one.

New York is a ‘high-risk area’ (NYT) Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday advised people who have passed through or left the city recently to place themselves in a 14-day quarantine. About 60 percent of the country’s new confirmed cases of the coronavirus were in the New York City metropolitan area, officials said.

Gangs call curfews as coronavirus hits Rio favelas (Reuters) Criminal gangs that have long held sway across Rio’s favelas are taking their own precautions against the virus, according to residents and press reports. The “baile funk” dance parties have been called off. Some open-air drug markets are closed for business. Gangs and militias have imposed strict curfews. Coronavirus is coming, and Rio de Janeiro’s lawless favelas are gearing up for the onslaught.

Prince Charles tests positive for Covid-19 (Telegraph) The Prince of Wales has tested positive for coronavirus and is working from home with mild symptoms. A Clarence House spokesman said he was “displaying mild symptoms but otherwise remains in good health and has been working from home throughout the last few days as usual”. Prince Charles, 71, and the Duchess of Cornwall, 72, are now self-isolating at their home in Scotland.

Coronavirus may have infected far more than estimated (Financial Times) The new coronavirus may already have infected far more people in the UK than scientists had previously estimated--perhaps as much as half the population--according to modeling by researchers at the University of Oxford. If the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in a thousand of those infected with Covid-19 become ill enough to need hospital treatment, said Sunetra Gupta, professor of theoretical epidemiology, who led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or none at all.

Virus Knocks Thousands of Health Workers Out of Action in Europe (NYT) Across Western Europe, health care professionals have used the language of war to describe the struggle against the coronavirus, which has left some hospitals on the brink of collapse. Out of Spain’s 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, 5,400--nearly 14 percent--are medical professionals, the health ministry said on Tuesday. No other country has reported health care staff accounting for a double-digit percentage of total infections. But the problem is widespread throughout Europe. In Italy, France and Spain, more than 30 health care professionals have died of the coronavirus, and thousands of others have had to self-isolate. The same dynamics are starting to take hold in Britain and the United States, where the contagion is bearing down but has yet to fully bite.

Drone surveillance in France (Worldcrunch) The enforcement of countrywide quarantine restrictions in France just got a tad more dystopian, with the use of drones and helicopters to monitor citizen’s movements, Marseille-based daily La Provence reports. With more than 100,000 police deployed to monitor strict restrictions on movement, drones have already been deployed in the southern cities of Nice and Marseille to film public spaces and announce the details of the new measures over their loudspeakers.

German state to release some 1,000 prisoners due to coronavirus (Reuters) Germany’s most populous state North-Rhine Westphalia plans to release as many as 1,000 prisoners in order to free up cells to be used as quarantine rooms out of concern that coronavirus could spread unchecked in jails, its justice minister said.

Greece pushed to help island refugees at risk of coronavirus (Foreign Policy) Heeding calls from members of the European Parliament, the European Union has asked Greece to get those most vulnerable to coronavirus away from its crowded island refugee camps. Home Affairs Commisioner Ylva Johansson said plans are in progress, “We are working together with the Greek government and the Greek authorities to agree on an emergency plan to help reduce the risk as much as possible in the overcrowded hotspots on the islands,” she said. The EU promised to remove 1,600 unaccompanied children from the island camps at the beginning of the month and has yet to do so.

In Russia, facial surveillance and threat of prison being used to make coronavirus quarantines stick (Washington Post) Russian officials are threatening five years in prison to deter possible coronavirus spreaders. Russia has pulled some tools from its authoritarian toolbox to battle the disease, including the use of facial-recognition technology to track people ordered into self-isolation. The government is also developing a system using geolocation data from mobile operators to monitor individuals.

Fears of Imported Coronavirus Cases Rise in China (Foreign Policy) New coronavirus cases are officially nearing zero within China, except for imported infections--those among people traveling from abroad. The rest of the world is now seen as the threat, and foreigners are increasingly facing discrimination, especially in Beijing. Signs on some businesses in the capital forbid foreigners from entry, and many hotels are refusing to accept foreigners--including residents--unless they are mandated as quarantine sites for recent arrivals. Security staff are even turning away foreigners from offices and apartment buildings. As Chinese officials blame the outside world for the coronavirus, this treatment is likely to only get worse--and residing in the country is likely to become more difficult.

Israel’s parliament speaker resigns, but gavels session closed before replacement elected (Washington Post) Israel’s speaker of the parliament abruptly resigned Wednesday, hours before a court-imposed deadline mandated a vote on replacing him. Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein averted one constitutional crisis, but may have sparked another when he immediately gaveled the Knesset out of session until next Monday, infuriating 61 lawmakers who were ready to elect a new speaker. Activists have accused the speaker and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of exercising a power grab in the name of fighting the pandemic. A week ago, Netanyahu’s justice minister abruptly suspended all court activities two days before Netanyahu was scheduled to begin his own trial on corruption charges.

Tripoli officials say clashes escalating over Libyan capital (AP) Clashes between rival Libyan forces for control of Tripoli have escalated as militias allied with the U.N.-supported government based in the country’s capital launched an offensive on a military base held by their rivals.

Islamists ambush Nigerian forces (Foreign Policy) Islamist militants killed 70 Nigerian soldiers in an ambush in the village of Gorgi in the north of the country. According to Reuters sources, the attack involved rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weaponry. Nigerian military spokesman Sagir Musa confirmed the attack, but has disputed the death toll.

Teaching a locked-down world (Worldcrunch) How will today’s children look back on this moment? Beyond the fears about contagion and rumors circulating on social media, many will no doubt remember the coronavirus outbreak with two words: School’s out. With UNESCO estimating at least 130 countries facing nationwide closures, educators are forced to improvise.

In some parts of the world, schools have set up online classes on platforms like Zoom and Skype that have offered the possibility for the learning to continue in ways that wouldn’t have been possible even just a few years ago. Still, as Le Monde reports, even in France’s robust national education system technical glitches have slowed down classes since the country was put on lockdown last week. And of course many students without digital access simply remain shut out from learning for months at a time.

Beyond such digital divides, television and radio (which more families have access to) has come in handy: Argentina’s public television and radio are broadcasting special educational programming, with a website with e-books, interactive tools and other learning materials was set up to complement the broadcast programs. The Czech Republic’s Ministry of Education also instated educational public television programs--in a mere 5 days. TV editors were originally sceptical as many teachers had no experience in front of a camera, yet the first episodes proved successful with high viewership among 4-12 year olds. In Norway, the prime minister herself lent a hand, holding a national press conference for children, explaining the measures put in place to fight the virus and answering questions ranging from “Can I have a birthday party?” to “What can I do to help?”

Meanwhile, China gave us a reminder that no matter how much young people still need to learn, they’re bound to outsmart us. Students in Wuhan flooded their homework app with 1-star reviews in a collective effort to try to get it kicked off the App Store. School’s out!

[palmoilmillmachine-blog]

Noted British environmentalist defends palm oil

13 Apr 2019 (New Straits Times Online) Distinguished environmentalist Sir Jonathon Porritt is more than a little kind to me. That’s saying a lot after I called him a ‘barista’ instead of a ‘barrister’. It’s obvious that he’s not about to serve me a cup of hot coffee at the Sime Darby Plantation in Ara Damansara where we’re ensconced comfortably in a cosy meeting room.

He winces slightly at my mispronunciation and smiles benevolently while I miserably contemplate sinking into the plush sofa. He’s British, of course, and takes my faux pas in his stride. After all, Britain is famed everywhere for her ‘unrelenting politeness’; it’s where the national reputation for good manners is treated as a badge of honour.

But that’s not the only vestige of respectability surrounding UK’s leading sustainability champion. His credentials are impressive. Porritt is an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development and had established Forum for the Future, UK’s leading sustainable development charity in 1996.

The Oxford graduate in modern languages is also an author with eight titles to his name, and is known as an eminent environmental thinker, having spent decades in the environmental field, covering activism, politics, public service, writing and taking on the role of advisor. One such role was advisor to Prince Charles on green issues in his capacity as co-director of the Prince of Wales Business and Environmental Programme.

Porritt is in Kuala Lumpur where he resurfaces every few months or so, serving as an independent sustainability advisor for the board of Sime Darby Plantation Berhad. Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron? For the terms environmentalist or sustainable champion to be bandied together with palm oil which has been pilloried, as recent news would attest?

“Are you a sell-out?” I ask him bluntly. “Well, I’ve been called worse,” he responds, smiling wryly. “Well, I think it’s quite difficult for some people,” he adds, his British politeness surfacing as he tries to make sense of people’s antagonism. “I’ve always been identified with strong radical views about the environment.” So when he speaks up and seeks to represent a critical industry like the oil palm industry, “…well some people don’t like it,” he muses, shrugging his shoulders.

This doesn’t mean he’s selling out, he insists. Is it a sell-out to work with companies producing wheat? Is it a sell-out, he posits, to work with companies working in horticulture? “Palm oil is an important ingredient in thousands of products around the world. Just like any other crop in the world, you can either do it sustainably or you can do it unsustainably.”

FATE OF PALM OIL

The oil palm is blessed with many attributes that have helped it on its path to dominance. Its fruit contains the world’s most versatile vegetable oil. It can handle frying without spoiling, and blends well with other oils. Its combination of different types of fats and its consistency after refining make it a popular ingredient in packaged baked goods.

Its low production costs makes it cheaper than frying oils such as cottonseed or sunflower. It provides the foaming agent in virtually every shampoo, liquid soap or detergent. It’s increasingly used as a cheap raw material for biofuels, especially in the European Union, one of the biggest consumers of palm oil, consuming around 15 per cent of global production every year. Malaysia is the second largest producer of the fuel after Indonesia.

But to produce palm oil in large enough quantities to meet growing demand, farmers across Southeast Asia have been clearing huge swaths of biodiversity-rich tropical rainforest to make room for massive palm plantations. Today, palm oil production is somewhat blamed for being the largest cause of deforestation in Indonesia and other equatorial countries with dwindling expanses of tropical rainforest. With that scenario in mind, the proliferation of oil palm plantations at the expense of the rainforests has aroused the EU’s concern.

In 2015, six EU countries namely Denmark, France, UK, Germany, Netherlands and Norway signed a declaration, stating themselves as supporters for 100 per cent sustainable palm oil in Europe and declared their intention to end illegal logging and deforestation by 2020. On the heels of that declaration, a report was tabled to the members of the European parliament (MEP) recommending a stop to deforestation, singling out oil palm as a major cause and driver of deforestation. The recommendations were passed and was later known as the EU Resolution (2017).

Following the endorsement, several action plans were lined up to stop deforestation. Firstly, they planned and proposed the ban of non-sustainable vegetable oils for biofuel by the year 2020. It was also proposed that only sustainable palm oil certified by a single EU-sustainability certification scheme would be allowed to enter the European Union after 2020. A move to completely ban food-based vegetable oils for biofuels by the year 2030 was proposed.

In January last year, the EU Parliament set to vote again and this time around, the recommendations were clear. Palm oil was singled out and palm oil-based biofuels will be completely banned by 2021. Decisions made by the MEPs in 2018 sent a very strong signal to palm oil producers in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The palm oil industry has a “really bad legacy”, Porritt admits. It has become synonymous with rainforest destruction. But he says the industry has moved a long way to address the issue in the last 10 years. "Palm oil isn’t the principal source of deforestation here. It might well once have been, but it isn't now," he claims.

The controversial decision is a huge concern for people who are working in the industry here. “The thing that irritates me is the fact that no one seems to want to distinguish between palm oil that’s produced well and not causing damage to the environment, and that which is still damaging the environment through deforestation,” he says.

The EU insists that palm oil has got to be produced without damaging the environment, and according to Porritt, most big companies in Malaysia through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – an NGO established to promote the growth and use of sustainable palm oil through credible global standards and engagement of stakeholders – have met those challenges.

WORKING FOR A SOLUTION

It’s a simple choice, he says. “Either we stop this industry altogether and find another alternative for palm oil, which would have massive negative impacts on the economy of palm oil-producing countries or we ensure that this industry meets that demand as responsibly and sustainably as possible.”

That means working with companies that share that vision for producing things sustainably which Porritt hopes would act as an encouragement to the rest of the industry. “This is my rationale, if you like, for continuing to do this kind of work,” he shares.

He reveals that he does similar work with a lot of other sectors that are controversial from a sustainable point of view. “I’ve just returned from New Zealand where we do a lot work with Air New Zealand,” he says, pointing out that the aviation industry has not done well, where evidence has shown that the industry is the most significant contributor to the tourism industry’s increasing impact on environmental sustainability.

“My question for the critics is, “So you’re never going to fly again?”” he asks wryly, adding: “Because if you’re not going to say that, you’re acknowledging that there’ll be planes in the air!” There’s a need to make industries in any sector, as responsible and sustainable as possible, he explains, quipping: “Actually it’s a lot harder with aviation than it is with palm oil!”

JOURNEY TO GREEN KNIGHTHOOD

Coming up with sustainable solutions to the world’s complex environmental concerns remains Porritt’s passion from the get-go but according to the 68-year-old, he never intended to be an environmentalist. “When I left Oxford, I thought I was going to become a lawyer,” he recalls, eyes twinkling. “And my life would’ve been very simple, you know. Make lots of money and do loads of interesting things with it!” So why didn’t he? “I got absolutely crushingly bored by the law!” he replies, chuckling, adding: “I went on to become a teacher.”

Porritt spent 10 years as a teacher but he soon grew concerned about the quality of lives led by his students living in a rather degraded environment back in London. “They lived near a huge motorway which meant that the air quality was poor while there were hardly any green areas about,” he recalls. “I’d take them out to the countryside to teach them about nature. I was an English teacher back then, but it occurred to me that most of these young people needed to be exposed to nature and green areas.”

It was tough for the children, he opines, adding that the conditions they were living in “…weren’t the kind of conditions you’d want your children to be brought up in. This had a big impact on me. How do you improve the local environment just to make for a better place to live in?”

That prompted Porritt to read up on the environment, and caused him to stumble upon a book called Blueprint for Survival that resulted in a pivotal career change. “The book simply said ‘look at where the world’s population is at now, and look at how much damage we’re already doing’” he recounts, before continuing: “I read the book in 1972, about 45 years ago. If we’re still doing the same kind of damage we’ve been doing all along, what will be the future of humankind?”

Porritt realised that the world would be in trouble if things aren’t changed. “So I got involved in green organisations to play a part in helping to protect the environment effectively,” he shares. He joined the Ecology Party (now known as the Green Party of England and Wales) in 1974 back when “…nobody cared enough to listen to green ideas!” he says, laughing heartily. “There weren’t many members back then. We could get together in a pub and set about the party’s business. It was great fun!”

In 1984 Porritt gave up teaching to become director of Friends of the Earth in Britain, which is part of an international network of environmental organisations in 74 countries. “That was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life,” he recollects fondly.

Today, Porritt continues to champion sustainability tirelessly and remains unapologetic about his desire to work with palm oil conglomerates to effect positive changes. “I remain a fierce critic of just how long it took for palm oil giants to sort out some of their legacy issues,” he insists. “But to go on demonising such a critically important industry makes no sense.”

We should work together on solutions that would allow the palm oil-exporting countries to continue thriving while at the same time ensuring that an equilibrium is being found to preserve natural key habitats, he says.

Seeking out solutions and working towards a sustainable future seem to be Porritt’s ‘cup of tea’, or ‘coffee’ I put forward, grinning, in reference to my earlier faux pas. He laughs heartily before sharing: “Scientists are looking at climate change and have noted the pattern of accelerated change that’s taking place all over the world, particularly in the Arctic and Antarctic.”

He explains that these researchers have posited that the window of opportunity to make changes for a more sustainable future is shrinking rapidly. “They’re saying we’ve got to start doing things in the next 10 to 15 years,” says Porritt.

He believes the time has come for industry players to do the same. “Every company in whatever business has to think about innovation and making the necessary changes for a sustainable future – including palm oil conglomerates. And that’s exactly what they’re setting out to do” he notes, before concluding: “Eventually we’ll learn to live sustainably on this planet, one way or the other, as we’re left with no choice.”

[floraexplorer]

Pyramiden, Svalbard: Exploring the Arctic’s Soviet Ghost Town

Welcome to Pyramiden, Svalbard: population 7

High up in the north of Norway in the Svalbard archipelago is a town called Longyearbyen. It’s generally known as the northernmost town in the world: about a thousand people live and work here, despite its remote location above the Arctic Circle.

But there’s actually another place which deserves the ‘northernmost-everything’ accolade – except it’s virtually uninhabited.

This is Pyramiden, a Russian coal-mining settlement which was hastily abandoned by its residents in 1998. Ever since, the streets, buildings and once-loved possessions have been left to the Arctic elements.

And today, I’m paying Pyramiden a visit.

Arriving in Pyramiden, Svalbard

From the deck of our boat, my first glimpse of Pyramiden is like something out of a spy film. Two Russian men in long dark trench coats stand waiting silently on the dock, with rifles slung across their chests. Their stoicism is completely at odds with the pent-up energy of my fellow boat passengers, all itching to explore Pyramiden.

Our boat drops anchor and I watch as the hordes of tourists jump eagerly onto the rickety boardwalk before we’ve even properly docked; cameras out immediately, as soon as their feet touch the creaking wood. I choose to hang back, watching the way they behave while warming my hands, red-raw with the Arctic cold, on the back of my neck.

I’ve long harboured a desire to visit Pyramiden.

Like many would-be urban explorers, the idea of exploring an entire town abandoned to the elements – and one that’s isolated at the very top of the world, no less – gave me goosebumps of the best variety.

So when I realised that my Arctic expedition from Scotland to Svalbard would actually lead me straight to this surreal place, I could barely contain myself.

People seem fascinated by the fact that Pyramiden is a ghost town. I’m more amazed by the handful of men who choose to keep living there still. Amongst the ghosts.

A map of Pyramiden, Svalbard

Meeting Sasha, our Pyramiden tour guide

We stand on the pier as our boat group is split into two. I’m in the second half, watching as the first group sets off towards the Pyramiden settlement in a little minibus with a polar bear crest on its side.

Looking at the Russian cyrillic it’s my first realisation that, although we’re still on Norwegian landmass and I’ve never visited Russia before, we’re very much back in the USSR.

A guide walks over to us and introduces himself as Sasha. He may look slight, but he pulls no punches: as he approaches, a Polish tourist is joking about the safety messages we’d heard on the boat, saying that the danger of polar bears is totally overrated and we could easily walk to Pyramiden instead of waiting for the bus.

Sasha pointedly re-adjusts his rifle and says, “We are not playing around here. This is the Arctic, a wild terrain, and polar bears are a significant danger.”

The same rule applies throughout Svalbard: polar bears can and do attack people, and it’s a legal requirement to carry a rifle at all times.

Our first stop is at the sign which welcomes visitors to Pyramiden in both Russian Cyrillic and English.

As Sasha begins to speak in a soft voice about Pyramiden’s history, I look behind him to the triangular mountain which gives the settlement its name – and which caused the Russians to be here in the first place.

The story behind why Pyramiden was abandoned

This patch of land was first established by Sweden in 1910, but Russia quickly bought it in 1926 in order to mine the pyramid-shaped mountain for its coal deposits. For a period of seventy years, working as a coal miner in Pyramiden was a sought after opportunity: at the height of Soviet Union rule, their sole settlement in the West was a perfect platform to show off their country’s wealth to the rest of the world.

At least 10,000 CVs were submitted each year, and only the best coal miners were eligible to work in Pyramiden. After arriving with their families, they lived at the settlement for a two-year shift and enjoyed a pretty pleasant life: the town had a cinema, sports hall, school, nursery, music hall, library and hospital, and all these services were free of cost to everyone living here.

Unfortunately when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 it meant the coal industry was much less profitable, and Pyramiden quickly became redundant. In 1998 the coal mine closed down and everyone was told to leave – which they did in a hurry, thanks to a Russian boat docking at the harbour along with the announcement that it would leave in just three hours time.

Suddenly this town’s population crashed from 1000 to less than 60, and in just a few months the Russian Arctic settlement quickly became a ghost town.

It’s a sobering story: the idea that a close-knit community had to drop their possessions and leave immediately, cutting their Pyramiden life short.

But the fact that there are still a handful of residents living amongst those abandoned possessions? That’s what gives me chills.

What is life like in Pyramiden now?

As Sasha leads our group up the main street towards the settlement, I ask him questions about how he came to be here.

Sasha is from St Petersburg, but he’s lived in Pyramiden since 2012 along with five other guides who live on this desolate bit of the Svalbard archipelago. They’re all Russian, albeit far away from Russia, and seem staunchly patriotic (a friend on my Quark ship suggested I shouldn’t bring up politics when visiting Pyramiden!)

Yet when he spots my bright yellow Quark-branded jacket, Sasha’s eyes brighten. “I would love to work for Quark!” he says. “Do you know if they need any guides?” He has a PhD in geography and is interested in guiding trips around Antarctica, as an alternative to the Arctic. We chat about travel writing and social media, and Sasha looks contemplative.

Social media isn’t something he uses. There is no internet signal in Pyramiden; no radio and no TV either. They do have a satellite phone for hotel bookings, but there’s only one little patch of signal along the bay which can be picked up thanks to the mountains and the snow reflecting it. Sasha has to be patient, heading up there each day to wait for a text message to see if there are hotel guests coming.

Outside Hotel Tulip in Pyramiden, Svalbard

We’re passing Pyramiden’s Tulip (or Tulpan) Hotel at this point – the only habitable accommodation in the entire town. Sasha explains that this is where he and his fellow guides live, as do the few visitors who decide to spend the night in Pyramiden.

A sleepover in the rural Arctic is not without its dangers, though: only a few months before our visit, a polar bear broke in through the first floor window, beating his way through the beer cans in the bar under the managers desk and promptly licking up the spilled beer.

“I was supposed to be eaten first because I sleep on the second floor and the others sleep on the fourth floor,” Sasha tells us. There’s now a red sheet of dull metal over the window as a rudimentary fix.

Apparently the bear wasn’t shot or killed as punishment for the break-in, which seems to make Sasha happy. I imagine he’s keen to maintain as many lives as possible around here, whether man or beast.

Both sides of the street are lined with brick and wooden houses dating back to 1947 and earlier. With every step, I see further clues to the lifestyles of Pyramiden’s previous inhabitants.

Every building is set on stilts driven deep into the ground. If they weren’t, the interior heating would melt into the ground’s permafrost and force the buildings to sink because of the permafrost. However, that same Arctic climate also means most of the buildings are impervious to rot and decay – or, at least, that decaying happens very slowly.

Although most citizens used to eat in the town canteen, there are iron fridges still hanging from the outsides of windows – although for five months of year they turn into freezers instead as temperatures fall below zero.

There used to be a very good hospital when Pyramiden was ‘alive’, Sasha says. Now, unfortunately, there’s no doctor – which means hitching a ride to the nearby settlement of Barentsberg on a tourist boat whenever there’s a medical issue.

When we pass a single memorial cross standing amongst the stones, Sasha explains that nobody is buried here in Pyramiden – or anywhere else on the Svalbard archipelago. Corpses don’t decompose in a land of permafrost, so the body of anyone who dies on Svalbard has to be shipped back to the Norwegian mainland for burial.

We arrive into Pyramiden’s main square and walk towards a bust of Vladimir Lenin – ‘the grandfather’, as Sasha calls him. His stone profile gazes out towards the Nordenskiöld glacier far off in the distance.

Behind him is Pyramiden’s cultural centre, the hub of all the settlement’s activity.

Exploring Pyramiden’s abandoned buildings

As soon as we step inside the cultural centre it’s all cameras, all action. Everywhere I look, my fellow explorers are busily capturing every detail they can find of the weirdest, most ‘abandoned’ looking scenes.

I stand at the entrance waiting for them to disappear so I can try imagining what this place really feels like without a single soul around.

There are rows of empty coat hooks, with broken light fittings hanging from the ceiling tiles. Photo montages are pinned to a communal notice board: old sports teams, performers on stage, and scenes from a raucous-looking party.

Along the empty corridors, doors are flung wide open for me to peek inside. I see plant pots with dried out stalks; a leather chair facing a wall of windows; framed postcards and a set of neat little drawers overflowing with index cards written in a neat script.

In the empty sports hall, half-deflated basketballs lie beside score cards, maps, and a half-empty bottle of nondescript soda. Hidden at the back is a storage room with broken nets, pommel horses, and weightlifting benches with ripped seats.

My imagination is filling these spaces with the shadowy figures of intrepid Russians from a bygone age. It’s an urban explorer’s paradise, and I love it.

Yet strangely, my impressions start to shift as I explore further.

Some of the scenes which greet me seem almost too ‘abandoned’ and ‘destroyed’ – like the broken floor tiles which look like someone’s taken a large hammer to them, or the musical instruments laid out neatly on a windowsill.

In one room, I see a single chair placed poignantly in front of a wall mural depicting the same glacier outside. There’s a red velvet jacket laid artfully over the back, and I can’t reconcile myself to the idea that this happened accidentally while in a rush to leave Pyramiden twenty years ago.

Surely somebody’s placed this here on purpose?

I want to keep looking for more evidence of abandonment, but I hear Sasha shouting downstairs that we have to leave.

His voice rings out commandingly as I race back down the stairs, dragging at the zip of my jacket to be ready for the chill outside.

We cross the main square on the way to the canteen, our next stop, while taking care not to step on the grass. It was imported by plane from Siberia and still grows pretty well – although the neighbourhood reindeer are like cows, and only graze on the local grass!

Sasha leads us past the school house building, telling us that the younger kids used to study on the second floor because it was a bit warmer for them. The painted fairytale scenes which surround the school are still bright, as is the peeling green fence they’re attached to.

Inside Pyramiden’s canteen

The canteen is a pale lilac colour with reindeer antlers strewn on the straw-dry grass outside. Sasha stands on a concrete plinth just beside the door and explains that the canteen’s ground floor is just a lot of dark, dirty corridors.

“Go up to the second floor,” he advises as we prepare ourselves to enter. “There’s a beautiful dining hall up there, plus some really large kitchens.” He’s clearly aware of the time restraints we have to abide by on this tour.

The canteen in Pyramiden, Svalbard

We flood through the doors and inside the canteen; up the grand staircase on both sides, hands skimming the blue bannister and feet pounding the bright red tiles.

Above our heads is a huge mosaic in blues, whites and pale terracotta. Polar bears look upward towards the blazing round sun, accompanied by large huskies and what looks like a Norse god with white flowing hair and beard and eyebrows, a bear-clawed cloak around his shoulders.

Sudden the rush starts again — and this time I’m part of it!

There’s a sense of urgency as I shove my head around splintered doorways to catch glimpses of big cavernous rooms. I try to move quicker than everyone else so I can take photos without people getting in the way.

The canteen presents its details in fits and starts: mosaic tiling on the pillars; sickly yellow wallpaper peeling from the ceiling; old work benches scattered with debris; rusting taps above huge metal sinks.

Whenever I spot the mountains through the long narrow windows I stop in surprise. It’s a surreal view which keeps reminding me just how isolated this place really is.

The tourists are busy investigating everything they can lay their eager eyes and camera lenses on: the tiling of the columns, inside the giant vents above the ovens, behind the air ducts. It’s a frenzy of photography with little thought behind it.

I find myself snapping without thinking, inadvertently capturing blurred legs of people behind me in rusted mirror reflections. As I head towards a stairwell covered in peeling paint I stop, amazed at the variation of colours on the walls. This little patch of Pyramiden has been redecorated so many times – and suddenly I’m firmly back in the past, when an old metallic bell clanged for dinner time, and dozens of unseen hands glided over this bannister on their way to eat.

I wanted to stop and absorb these thoughts for longer, but there’s no time.

In fact, my entire experience at Pyramiden feels timeless – just not in the way I’d expected.

Meeting the other citizens of Pyramiden

Our third and final stop is at Hotel Tulip. It’s just next door to ‘the crazy house’ – the building where families used to live, which has been overtaken by seagulls. They are absolutely everywhere, sitting like sentries in rows along the top and nesting in the window ledges. There is guano caked as thick as icing all over the walls, and the shrill sound they make is haunting.

Hotel Tulip is the first place which actually shows signs of real life, from the shoe rack at the bottom of the stairs (complete with a few pairs of slippers and boots) to the discernible warmth coming from pipes and radiators.

Upstairs is a small corner bar, manned by an impassive-looking Russian lady. In the fridge behind her are rows of vodka bottles and shelves of cigarette cartons with Russian labels.

While the other tourists are sidling towards the bar for shots of vodka, I head for the rudimentary museum. Its centrepiece is a stuffed polar bear and various sad-looking stuffed Arctic birds, as well as cabinets and cupboards filled with souvenir trinkets: Pyramiden-branded keyrings, china plates and matchboxes.

And just like that, our time in Pyramiden is over. We’re ushered back onto the waiting bus, driven to the dock and placed back on our boat, leaving Sasha and his fellow guide behind.

Maybe the hordes of snap-happy tourists racing through the site for two hours before vanishing again have made Pyramiden feel somewhat less mysterious. But as our boat pulls away from the harbour and I watch Sasha and his friend striding purposefully away from the dock, I can’t shake the feeling that my initial hopes for Pyramiden were different to what I’ve seen.

What had I actually expected from Pyramiden?

The idea of visiting an abandoned town in the middle of the Arctic was immediately mysterious and intriguing to me. I’d wanted it to feel abandoned. I wanted some sense of drama; to see evidence that people had left in a hurry against their will. We want places like Pyramiden to be abandoned – haunted, even – because that makes us question what impact humans have on a landscape. It’s surreal to explore a place which has begun to decay. Which nature has begun to reclaim.

But Pyramiden didn’t used to be an asylum or a prison or the site of multiple murders, like hundreds of the most popular urban exploration sites. Pyramiden doesn’t need to draw on a gory past history because it’s fascinating purely for what it was and still is: an isolated part of the Arctic wilderness which people made into their home.

And yet it makes sense that Pyramiden’s ‘abandonment’ might have been orchestrated to be more photogenic. There’s probably been a group of Russians setting up the site for tourists, rearranging the abandoned elements at the same time as renovating the Tulip Hotel’s rooms, museum and bar in readiness for future guests.

Or perhaps the final residents back in 1998 were responsible. Perhaps they strode between familiar buildings as the boat sat waiting in the dock, knowing even then that Pyramiden was special and bizarre enough to attract others. That one day, their home might be an Arctic tourist attraction.

Is Pyramiden really an abandoned ghost town? 

Seven people live in Pyramiden to carefully maintain its appearance, so it’s not really abandoned; more ‘utterly isolated’. It’s not really left to the elements to reclaim (apart from grazing reindeer and the occasional prowling polar bear). It actually makes sense that the settlement’s Russian caretakers would want it to feel somewhat lived in. For the majority of each year, it’s the place they call home. Regardless of enjoying one’s solitude, this is somewhere where every bit of homeliness helps.

Besides, I think it’s more fascinating that a stalwart group of Russians are living in an abandoned town at the end of the world to guide occasional tourists around the last vestiges of Soviet Russia.

It may be twenty years after that era ended, but Pyramiden will stay frozen in time for decades to come.

Have you ever visited Pyramiden? Would you take a trip to Svalbard or is it too remote for you? 

How to organise a Pyramiden tour:

When to visit: There are daily departures from Longyearbyen to Pyramiden between May and September (the summer season). These departures are dependent on weather and are NOT guaranteed. Check with the company a few days before your booked trip. In the winter season it’s possible to visit Pyramiden on a snowmobile safari.

Which boat company: There are a few different companies operating tours to Pyramiden with differing trip lengths, stops and food. I went with Aurora Explorer, which offers a direct service to the settlement via the Nordenskiöld glacier but only had tea/coffee and snacks on board. Be aware that your visit around Pyramiden will be led by a guide who lives on site, who you’ll only meet on your arrival at the settlement.

Trip length: The direct service takes 6 hours, departing at 12.45pm and returning to Longyearbyen by approx 7pm.

Trip costs: NOK 1800 per adult (£164 or $210) or NOK 850 for those under 13 years (£77.50 or $99.50) This includes pick-up from your guesthouse or hotel, a boat ride to/from Pyramiden, and life jacket. You can also combine the Pyramiden trip in the afternoon with a visit to Barentsberg in the morning, usually on the same boat.

Accommodation: As of 2014, there are two possibilities to stay overnight in Pyramiden: at the Hotel Tulip (from 800 NOK per person) and at the Pier Hostel (300 NOK per person). Both options allow you to dine at Hotel Tulip, where you can eat breakfast (150 NOK) lunch (250 NOK) and dinner (200 NOK). The hotel bar is open until 2am.

Solo travel in Pyramiden: Please be aware that attempting to travel to Pyramiden by yourself is hugely ill-advised and extremely dangerous. The closest inhabited place is Longyearbyen, 31 miles away, and there are stories of people trying and failing to hike to the site. However, if you do choose to travel to Pyramiden on your own, you need to arrange a firearm and necessary equipment for polar bear protection.

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[harryandmeghan0-blog]

ROYAL FEUD: Will Sarah Ferguson be invited to Prince Charles' HUGE 70th birthday party?

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/royal-feud-will-sarah-ferguson-be-invited-to-prince-charles-huge-70th-birthday-party/

ROYAL FEUD: Will Sarah Ferguson be invited to Prince Charles' HUGE 70th birthday party?

The birthday party is shaping up to be something quite special, with the likes of Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle among the first names on the guest list of hundreds joining the celebrations.

In September, it was revealed the Queen, who will deliver a speech at the party, had already started sending out invites.

But the invites don’t stop with the British royal family – with kings, queens, princes and princesses from across the continent set to join in with the celebrations.

According to Royal Central, Denmark’s Crown Princess Mary and Crown Prince Frederik will be attending on behalf of the country’s royal family, while Norway’s Queen Sonja and King Harold could also be travelling to the UK.

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The Serbia Royal Court has suggested its royal family have received an invitation, but have not revealed if they will be attending.

The Spanish royal family have not yet published the agenda for the King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia’s activities for next week.

The Dutch royals were recently in London for an official state visit but Queen Máxima has been forced to cancel a number of upcoming engagements due to a suspected intestinal infection.

The huge celebration will see the hundreds of guests enjoy a reception followed by a lavish reception, possibly in the Palace’s opulent state rooms. But will Sarah Ferguson, who has a chequered past with Prince Charles, be among them?

The Duchess of York only secured a day invite to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in May and was snubbed completely from Prince William and Kate Middleton’s big day in 2011 – instead fleeing the country to spend time at a spa in Thailand.

She has had a well-publicised chequered history with Prince Charles for more than 25 years, after being blacklisted from the Royal Family when shocking ‘toe-sucking’ pictures emerged of her with Texan billionaire, John Bryan, in August 1992.

Will Sarah Ferguson be invited to Prince Charles’ birthday party at Buckingham Palace? (Image: GETTY)

The huge embarrassment came just five months after she and Prince Andrew announced their separation following nearly six years of marriage and the Royal Family and Fergie was made aware of the scandal when they opened the morning papers at the breakfast table at Balmoral.

Despite this, Andrew and the Duchess still live together, but the recent Netflix documentary ‘The Royal House of Windsor’ revealed their close relationship “really riles” Prince Charles.

Speaking on the documentary, Vanity Fair’s royal correspondent Kate Nicholl said: “Andrew has been a liability to the Royal Family.

“His relationship with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson is one of the things, I’m told, that really riles Charles.

“It all contributes together into something that is just not very palatable.”

The relationship between Prince Charles and Prince Andrew has also been particularly fractured over the years, with Charles snubbing his brother during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012 when the Royal Family appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony.

Related articles

Sarah Ferguson appeared to be on good terms at Princess Eugenie’s wedding (Image: GETTY)

Charles appeared alongside the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince William, Prince Harry, Camilla Parker Bowles and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.

Crucially, Prince Andrew, and his daughters Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice were excluded – sparking fury from the Duke of York – as Charles attempted to present a new slimmed-down monarchy of the future.

But it is not just Charles that Sarah Ferguson has a rocky relationship with – his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, snubbed Eugenie’s wedding last month amid a long-running feud with Andrew and Sarah, according to explosive royal claims.

Royal sources even suggested the real reason for the Duchess’ no show was because she would rather host a shooting party at her Scottish home.

Her apparent snub sparked speculation of a royal rift between senior members of the royal family, at a time when the firm, especially the younger members, are riding a wave of popularity.

Clarence House said Camilla had “previous commitments” to attend a local school harvest festival near her home in Balmoral.

Sarah Ferguson was a “bag of nerves” ahead of her showdown with Prince Philip (Image: GETTY)

Sources close to the family said Camilla “hasn’t forgotten” that Prince Andrew failed to speak up as she and Charles struggled with the public accepting relationship following the death of Princess Diana.

Camilla and Sarah Ferguson have also never seen eye-to-eye as the Duchess of York was close friends with Princess Diana.

A royal aide told the Daily Mail: “Camilla has always felt Andrew could have done more.

“The Queen listens to Andrew and he could have helped his brother at a time when he had few allies within the family.

“In fact, I would go so far as to say he was deeply unhelpful when support would have meant a huge amount to her and the Prince.

“Looking back to when there was little public sympathy for Charles and Camilla, if not open hostility, it was a case of Andrew playing politics. Camilla hasn’t forgotten.”

Sarah Ferguson appeared to be on good terms with the Queen at Royal Ascot in July (Image: GETTY)

At Eugenie’s wedding, Fergie’s relationship with Prince Philip – who said was so enraged following the ‘toe-sucking’ pictures he could not be in the same room as her – showed signs of repair, after the Duke of Edinburgh sat directly behind her in St George’s Chapel during the ceremony.

The Duchess of York appeared to let out a huge sigh of relief in a sign their almost-three decade feud was close to ending.

A leading body language expert claimed Philip “took quite a big step” towards reconciling with Fergie, after showing a warm welcome to his former daughter-in-law, approaching her with a smile and the pair also posed in family photos.

Ahead of the big day, a friend of the Duchess of York revealed she was a “bag of nerves” about her showdown with the Duke but despite the tension believed to exist, there appeared to be very few hard feelings between them.

Judi James, who specialises in social behaviour, said: “He smiled at her at least twice, almost as if he had planned to greet her warmly.

“That was quite a big step for the Duke of Edinburgh.”

Fergie also appears to have patched up her relationship with the Queen, after she received an invite to the monarch’s champagne reception after Eugenie’s wedding.

In the run-up to Eugenie’s Windsor wedding, the Duchess of York also spent her third summer in a row holidaying at the Queen’s Balmoral residence, the very location she was at when news of the toe-sucking scandal broke.

She was also invited to Royal Ascot this year, where she took her place proudly on the Queen’s viewing stand.

But a question mark hangs over Fergie’s invite to Charles’ 70th birthday party.

Buckingham Palace told Express.co.uk they do not share details of guest lists for royal events.

[todaynewsstories]

Neo-Nazi background hounds Sweden Democrats | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW

Moments after Jimmie Akesson, the 39-year-old leader of the populist Sweden Democrats (SD), takes the microphone in Malmo, the chants begin to ring out. “No racists on our streets!” There are cardboard banners saying “Shut up, you bloody racist, and “SD: Nazis 1988, Nazis 2018.”

Read more: Sweden: Alexandra Pascalidou meets her neo-Nazi tormentor

The overwhelming majority of those who have turned out to watch Akesson speak are what he would call “helt vanligt folk,” or “completely ordinary people.”

The anti-fascists out today are not alone in calling the party Nazis. Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has described the party as “a neo-fascist single-issue party” with “Nazi and racist roots.” And the party’s supporters admit the stigma is a problem.

“It can be difficult with some people,” said “UC” Nilsson, a 16-year-old supporter who has come along with fellow pupils from his upper secondary school. “You get a very hard backlash because some people don’t like the politics. But I think it’s good for Sweden: we can’t take so many immigrants,” he told DW.

Endorsing ‘cultural nationalism’

Ideologically, the Sweden Democrats party is if anything less extreme than Europe’s other populists, professing a “cultural nationalism” open to everyone, no matter where they are born or the color of their skin, but at the same time calling for heavily restricted immigration. The party wants Sweden to only take refugees from Denmark, Norway and Finland, and also favors a much stricter work permit system.

Read more: Refugee influx weighs on Swedish towns

What makes it stand out is that it does in fact have roots in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement.

Even Mattias Karlsson, the party’s parliamentary leader and ideological mastermind, concedes many founding members were drawn from the openly racist group Keep Sweden Swedish. “But this organization was disbanded in 1986, and SD was formed in 1988,” he stressed, “so SD is not a continuation of that organization.”

The party’s first treasurer, Gustaf Ekstrom, was a former member of the Waffen SS, and its first leader, Anders Klarstrom, had been active in the neo-Nazi Nordic Realm Party, the Nordiska Rikspartiet.

The question is whether these origins still taint the party, despite Akesson’s efforts to reform it since taking over as leader in 2005.

“We are really firm and non-compromising about these issues,” Karlsson told DW. “If there’s any sign of xenophobia and racism, we immediately expel those representatives.”

Julia Kronlid says voters are beginning to appreciate what the Sweden Democrats stand for

Julia Kronlid, the highest-ranking woman in the party’s leadership, says the stigma is less prevalent than when she “came out” as a supporter a decade ago.

“In church, when my husband and I said we were joining SD, people almost choked on their coffee,” she told DW. “But now they appreciate what I’ve done and some of them want to join the party.”

But Cecilia Bladh, another educated middle-class SD politician, complains local campaigners still risk being ostracized by their employers.

“I hope that will change, because if we have one-fifth of the Swedish population [behind us], maybe even one-fourth. It can’t continue like this,” she told DW. “Somewhere it needs to stop.”

Nazi roots haunt Sweden Democrats

Part of the reason that it hasn’t is that many members clearly are still racist.

Last week, the Expressen newspaper revealed that a local SD politician had written about “the Jewish plague” on a closed Facebook group, and argued that “Hitler was not wrong about the Jews.”

David Baas, the story’s author, says it is normal for SD activists to post such racist comments in closed forums and on the Russian social media site VK.

“They’ve got two faces: On their public Facebook profiles they don’t write these things, but on VK they write something very different,” he told DW.

Expressen, together with the anti-extremist magazine Expo, also revealed that at least eight current SD election candidates are former members of neo-Nazi groups, with one paying membership fees to the Nordic Resistance Movement as recently as 2016.

Andreas Olofsson, who is campaigning for the Sweden Democrats in Klippan, a former paper mill town an hour from Malmo, led the local branch of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Front (NSF) in the late 1990s.

“It was a very sad time for me,” Olofsson told DW. “I was young and stupid. I’m a completely different person now.”

Zero tolerance on racism?

The party claims to vet all candidates, but Olofsson’s past is common knowledge in the town, where it is also largely forgiven.

Jonathan Leman, the Expo researcher who worked on the investigations, said his findings were evidence that the zero-tolerance policy is “not rooted in the party.”

“They spend more time telling people like you that they have this policy than reaching out to parts of the party and making sure that it is taught and lived,” he told DW.

Ricky Lowenborg insists the Sweden Democrats are not Nazis

Back in Malmo, Ricky Lowenborg, an SD supporter with a faded neck tattoo and a football shirt, starts to lose patience with the chants drowning out Akesson’s speech.

“Nazis?” he barks, weaving through the crowd toward the protesters. “It’s the Social Democrats who are Nazis!”

Read more: How are Europe’s Social Democrats faring?

A policeman fixes him with a warning stare and he retreats. “My tax money goes to those scum there,” he mutters to DW as he returns. “That’s why I’m pissed.”

In the background, Akesson is talking about immigrants wanting “to build giant mosque complexes with huge minarets everywhere” and when Lowenborg hears that DW’s correspondent is from England he begins to talk about an alt-right Islamophobic film he’s seen.

“It’s really bad with the Muslims over there, I hear. All the Muslims are taking over.”

He checks himself. “We’re not Nazis,” he says firmly. “They think we’re Nazis, but we absolutely are not. I’m not a racist, I hope you write that. I’m married to a Filipina. I love foreign people.”

Read more: AfD in the Bundestag: Can Germany learn from Scandinavia’s far-right problem?

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[theconservativebrief]

As someone who tries to follow progressive policy development trends pretty closely, I was struck to see Thursday morning that Kevin Williamson had an article in National Review describing “Elizabeth Warren’s Batty Plan to Nationalize . . . Everything.”

Williamson turns out to be referring to Warren’s proposed Accountable Capitalism Act, which I wrote about on Wednesday and which does not involve nationalizing anything at all.

Her proposal would, in fact, be a large change in how the American economy works. And the impact of the change would almost certainly be negative for the 10 percent of the population that owns 80 percent of the value of the American stock market. So it’s natural that the plan will provoke intense opposition, and very much worth considering the possibility that it’s a bad idea.

But Williamson, who every conservative I know regards as one of the movement’s top minds, reaches his conclusion based almost entirely on mischaracterizing Warren’s program.

According to Williamson, Warren’s plan would make corporations “accountable to politicians, who desire to put the assets and productivity of private businesses under political discipline for their own selfish ends” in pursuit of “the wholesale expropriation of private enterprise in the United States, and nothing less.”

He means this quite literally.

His view is that Warren’s proposal is to essentially nationalize industry — putting business enterprises under the direct supervision of the federal government — to the extent that he views Donald Trump being in office as a knock-down argument that should convince everyone on the left that Warren’s proposal is bad.

To those on the left who look at Senator Warren’s proposal and think that giving the government a stronger whip hand over American businesses is just the ticket, I would like to present four questions: Who is the president of these United States? Who is the majority leader in the Senate? Who is the speaker of the House? How would you evaluate the composition of the Supreme Court, either as it stands or after President Donald Trump has the opportunity to nominate another justice or two? The power you give the federal government will be there during Republican administrations, too. Any future populist demagogue who finds his way into the White House will have access to the same power. No one should be trusted with that kind of power.

I think this is a reasonable argument against the wholesale nationalization of industry in the United States. It’s true that Norway has had a great deal of success with an economic system in which the state controls an incredibly large share of national wealth, but it seems unwise to me to leave so much up to the vicissitudes of the electoral process.

But conveniently, Warren’s plan does not in any way resemble Williamson’s description.

Under the existing legal status quo, it is already the case that if you want to start a corporation you need to get permission from the government in the form a corporate charter. Currently, charters are issued by state governments, which has tended to lead to a race to the bottom. Delaware ends up being the paper home of a huge share of businesses thanks to its shareholder-friendly laws.

Warren’s proposal is that the federal government should halt that race to the bottom by requiring large businesses with more than $1 billion in revenue to obtain a federal charter. These businesses represent a large chunk of overall economic activity in the United States. But contrary to Williamson’s rhetoric, the vast majority of American businesses are small and would be totally unaffected by anything in her legislation.

The federal charter for large businesses would have the following stipulations:

Company directors would be explicitly instructed to consider the interests of all relevant stakeholders — shareholders, but also customers, employees, and the communities in which the company operates — when making decisions.

40 percent of the directors would be elected by the company’s workforce, with the other 60 percent elected by shareholders.

Corporate executives would be required to hold onto shares of stock granted to them for at least five years after they were received and at least three years after a share buyback.

Corporate political activity would require the specific authorization of both 75 percent of shareholders and 75 percent of board members.

In other words, under this plan no businesses would be nationalized. And neither Donald Trump nor any executive branch official would gain any new discretionary authority over any business. Congress would, of course, be able to change the law in the future, but Congress can already change laws — which is why we are talking about a senator’s proposal to change the law — so there’s no change there either.

Williamson alleges that under this bill “the federal government would then dictate to these businesses the composition of their boards, the details of internal corporate governance, compensation practices, personnel policies, and much more.”

That’s simply not the case. Williamson employs the rhetorical trick of insisting that because Warren is not stupid she must be dishonest to have put forward such a transparently bad idea.

I don’t personally know whether or not Williamson is stupid, so I won’t speculate on why exactly he has misdescribed the proposal so badly, but he has done an extremely poor job of describing the proposal. Then having misdescribed it, he raises a number of practical concerns without any regard for the relevant evidence.

Warren is proposing, essentially, that large American companies adopt an economic system known as “codetermination” in which management of the enterprise is the joint responsibility of workers and shareholders. This is not the historical practice in the United States or in other English speaking countries, but it’s common in continental Europe and often takes forms that are quite a bit stronger than what Warren proposes.

In Denmark, for example, any company with 35 employees needs worker representation on the board. In Germany, any company with more than 2,000 employees needs a board that is half elected by workers.

Reasonable people can disagree about the strength of the Danish or German economy, obviously, but when assessing the likely impact of adopting a codetermination system in the United States, one should start with some awareness of the functioning of comparable systems abroad.

Williamson, who does not seem to realize this, warns that if America adopts codetermination all its companies will leave:

Businesses historically have chosen to locate in the United States for a number of reasons: It was long the world’s largest market, and businesses had faith in American law and the American dollar. It’s still a big market, and the dollar is still the world’s favorite currency. But if American law or American lawmakers are going to treat profit-seeking enterprises as an Enemy of the People — Zurich is pretty nice. Lots of places are. There are a lot of big American businesses with targets painted on their backs, and those that do not already have a Plan B are doing their shareholders a disservice.

The idea that making the US legal system less friendly to shareholders will to an extent deter investment in the United States is not crazy. But it’s also obviously not the case that the entire German corporate sector has departed for Zurich despite it being a German-speaking city that is physically close to Germany and that is part of the same European Common Market as Germany.

One reason this doesn’t happen, as Williamson could probably have figured out for himself, is that since German workers control half the board seats on big German companies, it would be nearly impossible for a German company to gain board approval to abandon Germany.

One underlying issue here is that American conservatives seem hopelessly confused as to what it is that’s happening in Northern Europe and what, if anything, they want to say about it.

For several years now, Bernie Sanders has been prominently describing himself as a “socialist” and more specifically praising the social model of Denmark. Denmark’s prime minister (who leads a conservative political party) stridently disagrees that this social model amounts to “socialism.” And for the specific purposes of dunking on Sanders, most American conservatives are inclined to agree with the prime minister.

Two years ago, for example, Williamson himself praised Denmark, noting that “our friends at the Heritage Foundation rank its economy the eleventh most free in the world, one place ahead of the United States, reflecting Denmark’s strong property rights, relative freedom from corruption, low public debt, freedom of trade and investment, etc.” Sanders and his ilk, according to Williamson, “do not understand Denmark, or America, or much of anything.”

The libertarian Cato Institute agrees with Williamson that Denmark should be understood as a free market success story that happens to have a generous welfare state attached to it.

The claim that Denmark is somehow proof that a gentler socialism is preferable to free-market capitalism simply doesn’t hold water. Denmark has quite a free-market economy, apart from its welfare state transfers and high government consumption. https://t.co/KF1YIcOZws pic.twitter.com/Oghj6QluPf

— Cato Institute (@CatoInstitute) August 14, 2018

But guess what?

Denmark has some of the strongest codetermination laws in the world with employee representation on corporate boards kicking it at a much lower threshold than Warren proposed.

Yet even though Cato regards Denmark as an example of a successful free market economic system, Scott Shackford at the libertarian magazine Reason writes that Warren’s proposal to adopt a version of Danish-style codetermination would “destroy capitalism.”

Williamson, who a few years ago was scornful of Sanders’s lack of appreciation of the high degree of economic freedom in Denmark, now writes scornfully that Warren’s proposal to adopt a version of Danish-style codetermination would destroy the American economy.

There’s a weird quirk in conservative ideology in America: Since it’s knowable from first principles that policy action to create a more egalitarian economic system is undesirable, editors and writers can assign negative takes on something like Warren’s proposal without anyone taking the time to actually assess whether or not it’s a good idea.

But since it’s clear that the people working on this subject so far don’t actually know anything about it, it might be helpful to everyone concerned for Warren critics to slow down and do a little research first.

Warren is proposing a large change, and it might be a bad idea. But it’s simply not the case that codetermination systems lead naturally to tyranny or imminent economic collapse. And it’s simply not the case that she is proposing the nationalization of all American business. (Or of any American business.)

Indeed, a critical part of the appeal of the idea is precisely that it directly empowers middle- and working-class employees without asking them to trust the wisdom or competence of a large new government entity.

Reforming corporate governance is an idea that polls extremely well so it’s probably true that conservatives’ best tactic for defeating it is to wildly mischaracterize it. The audience for conservative media deserves better than this.

Original Source -> Kevin Williamson’s unhinged attack on Elizabeth Warren’s corporate accountability bill, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[sarahh-ahhbroad]

June 19, 2018

I have just finished the first part of my study tour in Norway, and am en route to London for the next few days. Norway was absolutely beautiful, but our 36 hours there were filled with a lot of solemnity as we learned about the events of the 22nd of June in 2011. Before I came on this trip, I had no recollection of hearing about the terror attacks which took place in Oslo and the island of Utoya on that day. Until last week the name Anders Breivik rang only faint bells and I was unsure of why Norway was included on a study trip about terrorism.

Last week I learned about Breivik’s attacks on Oslo and Utoya and was pretty astounded at the amount of damage he caused over the course of just a few hours. When we landed in Oslo yesterday, we retraced his steps in a way. After a quick lunch along one of Oslo’s main roads, we headed to the 22nd of July Learning Center, located at the base of the government buildings where he set his 500-kilo car bomb off on the afternoon of that day. The learning center is built for an international audience, and reminded me of the 9/11 museum in New York. There are four parts to the center; a room with portraits of the seventy-seven victims of that day, a room with the security tapes of the terrorist parking the car, leaving, and the explosion seven minutes later, a large room with a timeline of the events of July 22nd and the remnants of the car, and finally a room with a video of people sharing their stories of that day. We spent quite a bit of time in all the rooms. The room with a timeline has a small window cut with a direct view of where the car sat under the government building which used to house the Prime Ministers office. Today, a large green garbage container sits where the car exploded. That room also included along the timeline various tweets which came out of Norway during the attacks, and it is noteworthy that many people believed the bomb was by al-Qaeda at first, I don’t think it crossed many people’s minds the terrorist would be a Nordic native. The room with the videos of the survivors from that day was also very powerful. It had a few recount the day on the actual island, and when we would visit later that afternoon, we immediately recognized several locations from the video. We concluded our time in the learning center with a Q&A and activity as a group before boarding our bus and beginning the 40-minute journey to Utoya, the same trip the terrorist took after setting off the bombs.

A key theme throughout our learning about the events of July 22nd was that Norwegians make a conscious effort to strip Breivik from as much acknowledgement and attention as possible. In all of the exhibits I saw, he was not mentioned by name, but rather referred to as the terrorist or perpetrator. Those involved in the events of that day want its remembrance to be about Breivik as little as possible. He later explained his motives for the attacks were to draw attention to his manifest, a 1500-page document, which calls for a less-multicultural, anti-Muslim Europe. By not giving him the attention he was seeking, it strips his actions of his intended effects.

When we came close to the island, we had to stop and sit on the bus for a while, as there happened to be a TV crew filming for a series about the events. As a result, when we finally boarded the ferry, the shore was filled with replicas of the emergency vehicles and flower memorial which were there the day after the shooting. As we boarded the boat, you could tell a lot of us were really apprehensive about heading to an island where 69 people were massacred. Many of us, myself included, were even more apprehensive about spending the night on the island.

Once we got on the island, things felt better though. The views were breathtaking and it’s a beautiful piece of land - a lot of us really felt like we were at summer camp. Many of the buildings are brand new or have been redone, so while our bunks were pretty cozy, they were nice. We ate dinner in their new cafe, and then many of us immediately began exploring the island. After spending a large part of the day seeing pictures and video footage of the island it was humbling to actually be on the island, and know this was the actual location all of that took place. I think it’s a lot easier to have a sense of distance from it when your not in the physical space. It was shocking to discover how small the island actually is however, exploring was actually enjoyable. A group of us found a herd of goats, and talked to the man who takes care of them, he was incredibly nice. We then spent an hour or so indoors playing games before heading down to a soccer field where we all played for a long time. In moments like that, with all the laughter and shouting, it was really easy to feel like we were at camp, and not in a place of tragedy. As the sun finally began to set around 11pm, some of us headed up to the memorial to spend a few moments. The memorial is beautiful, with most, soon to be all, of the names engraved in a metallic circle which is suspended as though it is floating in a clearing of trees which overlooks the water. While we talked a little about what had happened there, it did feel very peaceful as we watched the sun go down.

The next morning we had breakfast followed by a tour of the island. We began by walking through a barn which serves as an exhibit to the history of the island dating back to almost a thousand years ago. It was really interesting to hear about the history of it pre-2011. Before it became a symbol of a day of national crisis, it had an inherently political history. Trotsky even spent time on the island while he was a leader in the Bolshevik Revolution. In recent decades, it was a camp for Norwegian youth who were active in politics, most notably obviously it served as the AUF, or Labor Youth Party’s summer camp. After that, we went on a walking tour of the island, walking along the Love Path and through many of the places that acted as both hiding spots and places of death that day.

We then went to the old Cafe, which is the building in which several lost their lives at gunpoint. The camp manager explained there has been a lot of debate over whether or not to keep the building, with survivors and families of victims having contradictory requests. In the end, they decided to preserve the rooms in which people lost their lives, but to build a sort of shell around the building, to give it a new face. The newer part of the structure has 495 boards on the outside, representing the 495 survivors, and its roof is supported by 69 pillars, representing the victims. Going inside was by far the most emotional part of the whole trip for me, as the rooms are filled with small mementos in the exact places where people died and the bullet holes are still visible in the floors and walls. It was very overwhelming being inside.

We finished our tour at the memorial, which I had seen the day before, and then had some time to collect ourselves and our belongings before heading out for Oslo once again. This experience was by far a more moving, and memorable, way to learn about an event like July 22nd than any other way I could imagine. On the bus back to Oslo, I was still feeling the weight of what we had just left.

The last stop of our time in Oslo was at the AUF headquarters, where we talked with a survivor who is now in a senior position in the organization. She did a fantastic job of recounting her own experience and journey during and after that day as well as answering our questions on Nordic politics and the state of parties and the government today. Talking with her was a great conclusion to what we had been learning about for the past 24-hours, and I feel as though I do have the best understanding I really could have about an event I was not in Norway for when it happened.

We then boarded the bus once more to head to the airport. In London, our academic work will focus on the 7/7 bombings, which may be a more familiar kind of terrorist attack for a group of students who grew up post-9/11.

A view of Oslo I took on the last stop of our tour from the headquarters of AUF. 

Building along one of Oslo’s main streets.

Oslo’s Royal Palace.

Pedestrian part of one of Oslo’s main streets. We learned the flower pots are actual counter-terrorism measures installed after the car bombing of July 22nd. 

A preserved newsstand outside of the government offices where the bomb exploded. The newspapers and shattered glass are from that morning of July 22nd. 

22nd of July Center - our first stop in Norway.

Inside the timeline room of the 22nd of July Center, the remains of the exploded car lie in the middle of the room. 

The island of Utoya - our next stop on the trip, located about 40 minutes outside of Oslo. 

We rode on the same ferry that has been taking people to Utoya for decades now. 

The iconic white house which greets you when arriving on the island. 

Our lodging for the night on the island - very small but very cozy!

The brand new cafe and game room that has been built on the island recently.

The old cafe building has been reduced to preserve the rooms in which people died, and covered with a new outside shell which also contains a learning center about the events of the day.

The barn which has been remodeled to serve as a history museum for the island of Utoya. 

Goats we found on the island! They are temporary, but very friendly. 

Walking around the island we found some beautiful views of Norway.

The memorial with the names of the 22nd of July victims on Utoya at dusk (around 11pm).

The sky was absolutely beautiful at dusk.