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newrysblog · 4 years ago

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ALL YOU NEED TO CONSIDER BEFORE BUYING A PROPERTY

Let’s say, you spotted this property ad in the newspaper and were super impressed with it. You immediately went over to take a look at the property, and now, you really want to buy it. The first question that pops in your head is, ‘Can I afford it?’ And the answer to that question is never binary and requires a lot of analysis. For someone who is not so keen on the real estate market and news, all of this can seem extremely new and daunting. That’s why we decided on helping you with a detailed analysis of all you need to consider before buying a property. Read on!

Key Takeaways:

Understanding how much you can afford, and then planning your budget accordingly is crucial for home buying and running your daily life.

An insight into the present real estate market and an understanding of the near future based on the forecast is an important evaluation to make.

While the property to buy and its price are on the table, it’s necessary that you also assess other financial implications and lifestyle changes that are bound to occur and include them in the plan.

1.How to plan your budgeting?

For an investment as huge as buying a house, planning your finances is the biggest worry. But with a clear understanding of your present lifestyle, incurring expenses and savings, you will be able to analyse how much you can afford, and that could be of great help with planning your budget. Here are a few things to keep tabs on:

Debt to Income Ratio:

If you have adequate cash to purchase a house, then there’s no stopping you from buying it if all the papers are clear. If not, which is often the case, don’t worry. We have housing loans. One of the foremost requirements for availing a housing loan is getting the loan request approved. What eases this process is a standard called debt to income (DTI) ratio, which is what the banks, lenders and other financial institutions use to determine one’s repaying capacity. By definition, it is the ratio of the monthly debt payments to the gross monthly income (without tax deductions) of the borrower.

The lower your DTI, the better chances you have for getting your loan approved. This is because your DTI is proof enough that you have a perfect balance between your payout obligations and income. Here’s what your DTI means to your lenders and what you can do about it:

DTI

How lenders see you

What steps you can take

Below 35%Favourable candidateGet your loan approved and buy the house.

36% – 49%A candidate who is often considered. One with a lower DTI is preferable as they can better handle unforeseen expenses that may come their way.

Making a larger down payment

Reducing your DTI by paying off extra for existing loans to reduce overall debts.

Having a high credit score by settling your credit card dues on/before time to increase trustworthiness.

Talk at your workplace to initiate your pay hike earlier to reduce DTI.

Above 49%A risky candidate whose application is often rejected.

Move your purchase a few months down the year by talking to the property owner asking for more time.

Simultaneously, reduce your DTI by negotiating a salary hike at work or by covering present debts with higher EMIs.

Avoid acquiring new loans in this period.

Calculate your DTI every month to check for a drop.

Let us take you through an example to make this simple to understand:

Rajesh is on the lookout for a new house for himself. But presently, he has an ongoing personal and a car loan (in the closing stage) and is paying ₹8,000 and ₹25,000 as EMIs. Before heading to banks and lenders, he wants to understand if he could avail a loan and calculates his debt to income ratio. His total EMI is ₹33,000 (personal loan EMI + car loan EMI), and his gross monthly salary without tax and charges comes up to ₹80,000. Now, Rajesh’s debt to income ratio expressed in percentage comes up to 41.25% (total EMI ÷ monthly salary). Since his DTI falls under the range of 36% to 49%, he has a good chance of getting the loan if his credit card statements are clean, and he has a lump sum in his savings for making a huge down payment.

Down payment:

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room that one cannot ignore while purchasing a house. A down payment is the upfront payment or deposit that you need to make at the early stages of buying, to block a property. By making a large down payment, you waive yourself off a huge amount of money that you may otherwise have to repay your lender as interest.

In India, to ensure that the borrowers are committed to repaying the lenders and financial institutions, the RBI has set 20% of the property’s purchase price as the minimum down payment amount. This is, however, liable to change based on the age of the property you are purchasing – the older the building, the lesser is the loan sanctioned. This will be purely based on the valuation of the property at that point of time.

Let’s take Rajesh’s example to understand how beneficial down payment can be for repaying home loans. He recently decided on buying a house and came across one that fits all his expectations for ₹70,00,000 (exclusive of registration fees). He has approached a bank for a loan and got the approval. The loan processing fee, rate of interest and tenure are 1% (maximum ₹25,000), 6.5% and 15 years, respectively. Since he has been planning to buy a house for years now, he managed to save about 30 lakhs for the same (including his investments) and is ready to shell out ₹20,00,000 as down payment, which is more than the required 20% of the property price, including the processing fee charges (₹14,00,000 + ₹25,000). With his principal loan amount coming down to ₹50,00,000, his EMI comes up to only ��43,555, which without the down payment would have been ₹60,678.

Now that you know the importance of down payment, here are a few tips on how you could arrange for the same:

Start planning early so that you can save up and use a huge portion of your savings, leaving enough for emergency needs, monthly personal expenses, loan processing fees, EMIs, associated costs like stamp duty and registration fees, etc.

Turn to your investments. Sell off a few well-performing shares or use your FDs, mutual funds and stocks as security to get a low-interest loan that settles your down payment while also allowing your investments to grow continuously.

Getting a soft loan with very minimal or no interest from relatives, friends or your workplace could be of great help.

Consider the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) scheme to get low-interest-rate loans for affordable housing. Since your monthly EMIs are lower in this plan, you can pay the down payment using these funds without arranging for additional funds.

Apply for a personal loan with no collateral by showing your credit score, DTI and other criteria. Keep this as the last resort as it is the costliest means.

Research on all the various banks and loan schemes before zeroing down on one to get the lowest interest rates and avail other benefits like low or no processing fees, offers for first-time and woman buyers, etc. This can reduce the pressure of keeping a huge amount in hand for a down payment.

Planning your EMIs:

If you have decided to loan money, you need to plan your EMIs. Reserve a contingency amount along with the down payment for your first few EMIs to ease you off the burden of worrying about repayments when the time comes. You can also try prepayments to bring down the EMIs further down the tenure, if it doesn’t mean a financial crunch. Apart from these, there are a lot of other options too that you can explore. Some banks offer Flexi Hybrid Home Loan plans that allow you to pay just the interest amount as the EMI for the first few months of the loan period. Now, all banks allow you to transfer your home loan balance from their bank to another if you find the interest rate at theirs too high and burdensome.

2.What’s the real estate market looking like?

Once the money matters are sorted, you need to delve deeper into seeing this as a real estate investment. Being able to just cash off your purchase is not a reason enough for you to buy a house. You need to check if it’s a worthy investment, and for that, you need to understand the real estate market scenario.

Of course, real estate is a safe long term investment plan with so much to offer. But this is subject to change based on recessions and disasters like the most recent pandemic. So, if you are expecting a rise in property value with time, you need to take all of this into account, along with your mortgage repayments, maintenance costs, property development, etc.

The effect of the recent pandemic has eased the financial constraints of buying a house to an extent. Some of the buyer and builder trends that will thrive in 2021 include:

Affordable housing has become the best choice for both consumption and investment. Developers are offering a number of amenities at reasonable prices, and the recent festive season has boosted the demand for this segment. Another factor supporting this trend is the government PMAY scheme that helps buyers with annual incomes ranging from below ₹3 lakhs up to ₹18 lakhs by providing loans with interest subsidy ranging from 3% to 6.5%.

With the new norm of work from home and the series of lockdowns in the past year, buyers have shown interest in larger homes, integrated townships and gated communities. This is because of the need for security and easy access to basic facilities during a time of crisis. So, buyers are looking for properties that promise them a holistic living with all the necessary amenities, all at an affordable price.

The pandemic delayed and halted several construction projects, instilling a sense of fear in the investors and buyers, making ready-to-move homes the preferred choice.

Interest rates in banks have been at an all-time low to attract buyers along with several other offers (women, first-time home buyers) and waive offs (reduction in processing fee, etc.).

The government has also extended its support to boost the real estate industry by giving a 6 – 9 month deadline extension for project completion through RERA (Real Estate Regulation Act) 2016, relaxing tax rules for houses costing up to ₹2 crores to encourage sales, extending interest subsidy for the MIGs (Middle Income Groups), reducing stamp duty charges, etc.

With metro construction underway and commercial & industrial development on the rise, the Chennai suburbs like Porur, Perumbakkam, Poonamallee, Padi, Pallavaram, Shollinganallur, etc., are gaining momentum as residential hubs.

The demand for 2BHK houses followed by 3BHK and then 1BHK, and an increasing interest in plot purchase in areas like Thirumazhisai, Avadi, etc. (for investment purposes) are on a high.

With the high demand to supply ratio, the future seems favourable for you, the buyer. However, with construction and raw material costs increasing, you can expect an increase in property prices too. Based on the above-mentioned trends and the economic outlook, take a call on whether now is the time for you to buy your dream house or not. Right now, the market is slowly getting back to good speed after the huge blow last year. When you know that the price is low, and you’re convinced about striking a good deal, then it probably is the right time to make the investment.

3.What are the lifestyle changes you may have to make?

What comes along with all the financial obligations is a transformational lifestyle change. Often overlooked, this is an important point of discussion that has to happen before buying a house.

Right now, Rajesh and his wife may be okay with living in a 2BHK. But in the future, when they have to accommodate their parents or kids, they may need a larger space with more rooms. They might even want to look at properties close to reputed schools and hospitals and have good connectivity to recreational centres, malls, railway stations, and the airport.

Thus, it is important to foresee your future requirements and lifestyle changes along with your present way of living while making a housing choice. Based on this choice you make, you may also have to revise your present lifestyle a little to manage your finances and maintain your DTI. This could be anything from cutting down on regular fancy dinners, having a personal gym trainer, splurging in malls, etc.

So, let’s revisit the same question that we started with – ‘Are you ready to buy a house?’ We can hear your thoughts. Yes, the process involves way more attention to detail than we ideally think but trust us; this early understanding will save you a lot of costly mistakes. Lay the foundations right to enjoy a stress-free house-buying process.

#newry #property #real estate #luxury #residential #trends

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dippedanddripped · 4 years ago

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On June 4, the Council of Fashion Designers of America released a statement along with action steps the organization would take to address racism, promote inclusivity, and create opportunities for Black talent in the fashion industry. Among the initiatives are an “in-house employment program specifically charged with placing Black talent in the fashion industry,” mentorship and internship programs pairing Black students and graduates with established companies, and a diversity and inclusion training program it would implement and make available to its members.

According to Pyer Moss founder Kerby Jean-Raymond, the CFDA still isn’t doing enough. As one of the most prominent Black members of the council, the designer isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, or use his platform to amplify the interests of the Black community. He attended the June 2 meeting where the CFDA wanted to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests and the systemic racism that has long been prevalent in the fashion industry.

He says he worked with other members of the CFDA — like Virgil Abloh, designer Prabal Gurung, and Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow — to craft a list of reasonable, actionable demands that CFDA members and its associated companies could be held accountable for. The points they outlined are as follows:

1. We’re calling on all U.S. retailers to train and instruct their employees to not make frivolous 911 calls for non-violent infractions.

2. We’re calling on all companies to not hire off-duty police officers in their retail locations.

3. We’re requiring that all CFDA affiliated companies commit to having 15% of their senior leadership staff be Black, the representation of what we are in the population.

4. We’re no longer accepting brands into the CFDA that do not meet these bare minimum standards of diversity.

5. We’re calling on all US retailers to commit 15% of their shelf space to Black-owned brands.

6. We will create a placement division with the CFDA that pairs Black talent with companies looking to hire.

7. We will be creating a program that pairs Black talent with established Black talent in the fashion industry.

Instead, the CFDA chose to ignore these requests, and released what Jean-Raymond calls a “fucking watered-down, bubblegum-ass statement that didn’t address the issues.”

In addition to creating more opportunities for Black talent, these requests specifically diminish the involvement between the fashion and retail industries with the police. The abolishment of the police force is Jean-Raymond’s most urgent objective of the moment, and talking about how to do it is the only reason he even agreed to this interview.

The outline for what a world without police looks like already exists, as multiple examples on social media have shown us. Reallocating inflated police budgets to youth programs, education, and healthcare would do more to diminish crime and create self-sustaining communities more akin to the suburbs, according to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Affluent white communities already live in a world where they choose to fund youth, health, housing etc more than they fund police,” Ocasio-Cortez explained in an Instagram Story. “White communities bend over backwards to find alternatives to incarceration for their loved ones to ‘protect their future,’ like community service or rehab or restorative measures. Why don’t we treat Black and Brown people the same way?”

It’s a sentiment that is quickly turning into action. Cities like Los Angeles and New York have vowed to cut police budgets and reallocate those funds. The Minneapolis City Council voted to dismantle its police force. Reform laws named for Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor, two Black lives lost to police brutality, have recently been passed. But Jean-Raymond knows that there’s still a long march ahead towards police abolishment, and he’s going to do everything he can to make sure no one loses sight of the goal posts.

All over the country we’re seeing states actively taking steps to dismantle police departments or reallocating budgets away from them. Broadly speaking, how do we even start working towards abolishing the police?

It’s a multi-step process, and it requires all hands on deck for it to happen quickly. There are the immediate, short-term solutions that you see with #8CantWait and Campaign Zero’s harm reduction programs that have been around forever, but it’s really a smart approach to a bigger problem.

Semantics and words matter. Seeing catchy phrases and things like that do work. We live in a meme society, and the revolution will be memed — I think it’s important for us to have a deep dive into all of these pieces that lead to the bigger solution, which is community policing, community safety, demilitarization of the police, abolishing the police, and all of the things we can agree society needs right now.

That’s definitely something we’re seeing in how information is being spread and the Black history narratives going viral on social media.

All of these different facts are coming to light in bite-sized, tangible bits. You’re getting it in memes and people are reposting at a rate that’s dangerously fast. We’re getting a lot of historical information thrown at us that the public may have ignored before.

And I think our collective consciousness is understanding that police are trained like a cult. We just saw that in Buffalo with the older gentleman who was pushed down — 57 officers essentially turned in their resignation because they wanted to protect [their fellow cops].

This “blue wall of silence” is a proper cult. Just like MAGA is a cult, just like Kabbalah is a cult, and just like Jim Jones had a cult. One of the things that we have to look at — and why we have to disband our current police and create completely new community-serving public safety measures — is because these people are not trained to do what they were supposed to do in the first place. Something went wrong. They’re not serving their communities, they’re not living amongst the people, they’re only serving each other. Why would you become a cop just so you could protect other cops?

““These people are not trained to do what they were supposed to do. Something went wrong. They’re not serving their communities, they’re only serving each other. Why would you become a cop just so you could protect other cops?””

It’s clear that reform isn’t enough. Campaigns for police reform like #8CantWait have their fair share of criticism, but we’ve also seen laws passed in honor of Eric Garner and Breonna Taylor that ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants.

With #8CantWait specifically, their approach is to deal with the things that we can immediately address overnight. Mayors can put these things into effect. Banning chokeholds doesn’t mean that the violence is going to stop — I don’t think anybody believes that means the violence is going to stop — but with chokeholds clearly banned, it makes it a lot harder for the [police] unions and their legal defense to justify those actions. It’s an effective thing that can reduce harm to individuals almost immediately.

The common denominator is that people in power usually agree that these killings are wrong and egregious, but what we don’t talk about enough is how powerful these police unions are and these pre-negotiated collective bargaining agreements that keep police officers from facing accountability.

So ultimately, defunding the police is about taking power away from those unions?

Defunding the police is the ultimate goal, but we also have to remember that politicians and people in power have been trying to fight these police unions and these corrupt police departments all around the country forever. So it’s super important to give credit to these organizations, like Campaign Zero and the Know Your Rights campaign, who are using tactical approaches and playing chess with the system.

At the same time, we have to give credit to the people on the street who are making noise and doing whatever the fuck they need to do to get attention. We all know that America respects money, and if they fuck with somebody’s pocket, they’re going to pay attention. We need universal pressure being put on corporations and businesses that support police.

How do we keep putting that pressure on?

One of the things that we can implement specifically in fashion and retail is to no longer call the police for non-violent offenses. [George Floyd] shouldn’t have had the police called on him for a $20 counterfeit bill in the first place, especially when we know what police have done to Black men and women historically.

Speaking of accountability, you also took the CFDA to task for ignoring the list of demands you helped put together and instead issuing a statement you found totally inadequate. In many ways, these institutions continue to fail the Black community.

It’s fucking lip service to the movement, and it’s bullshit. Honestly, this is probably one of the biggest slaps in the face that I’ve ever gotten, and me and Virgil [Abloh] are going back and forth on this thing like, “What the fuck do we do?”

As far as the way that they conducted themselves and chose to omit specific language that can make Black people feel advocated for? A governing body like the CFDA holds so much prestige within the fashion space, and for them not to advocate in the proper way leads Black people to believe that there’s not going to be any help when we get here — or if we can ever get there at all.

““This is divine intervention. We got a pandemic, no distractions. We never had a movement free of distractions the way that we do now. Now all you can do is pick a side — and if you don’t pick a side, that means you picked a side.””

Not for nothing, the CFDA also has Black people in positions of power, however oftentimes these roles can be marginalized in their organizational influence.

I’m not going to speak too much on it, but what I will say is in my experience with working within these industries, the few people of color who are there are very scared to speak out, because they’re usually retaliated against in micro-aggressive ways. And I don’t blame them for not being able to speak out.

I have a privilege because I have rights to my own company, I don’t really answer to anybody — I’ve never had to — but for a lot of people, this is a new thing. Getting by and getting up is a means of survival for a lot of Black people, so I can’t fault them for showing up in spaces and not feeling like they can be their complete selves when the removal of all of their progress can be done in a swift instant.

One of the very first things you posted when the worldwide protests were gaining steam was “

Don’t get tired

.” We’re all trying to maintain this energy and sentiment as long as we can — why do you think it’s been so sustained?

The revolution needs to take naps. We went back to school, we went back to work, and if you were very outspoken about Black shit at home and how we were being mistreated by the system, then the next day, you had to take the LIRR and go into your racist, micro-aggressive office and deal with people — you got tired.

Now, this is divine intervention. We got a pandemic, no sports, no distractions, no new movies coming out, no concerts — nothing. The world has to focus on the same Black shit we’ve been trying to get done for the past several years. We never had this before. Not in the Civil Rights era, nowhere. We never had a movement free of distractions the way that we do. Now all you can do is pick a side — and if you don’t pick a side, that means you picked a side.

Jenna Wortham described this extraordinary moment as

“a glorious poetic rage.”

How does this feel different to you than what was going on in Ferguson six years ago?

We’re at a turning point in history where it’s like: Where do you want to be in this chapter? Where do you want to tell your grandkids you stood? And who do you really think is going to win? I’d bet on the winning team, if I was you.

Here’s the thing: If evil prevails, there will be no history books. In order for there to even be a history book where we’re talking about 2020, good has to win over evil before 2050. We have to accept it as a moral issue. I don’t want to liken this to other genocides and other tragedies that have happened in the course of global history, but a lot of us would feel like if we could go back and undo certain parts of human history, we would. We’re at one of those points right now. We can collectively make the change we need to make: completely dismantle the current policing system.

Only 5 percent of 911 calls are for violent crime, so why does an officer need to show up at your house with a gun? Why do you need to pull me over for a speeding ticket with a gun drawn? Why do you need to come investigate a missing child with a gun drawn? The same way you can gauge whether to send a firetruck or an ambulance, you can gauge whether to send somebody with a loaded gun or somebody with a pen and a pad.

This is a fight you’ve been engaging in through Pyer Moss for nearly a decade now, even back in 2015 with the “They Have Names” T-shirt. How do you stay so consistent and mission-driven?

Right now, I’m only lending you my likeness so that you can bring attention to defunding the police. That’s the trade-off. This is not a self-serving mission; this is something that needs to change in my lifetime. I’m terrified of bringing children into this world.

My nephew is 15 years old, and I started this fight when he was in the nut sac. He likes Odell Beckham a lot, so he dyed the top of his hair blonde, and now he has braids at the top. He likes NLE Choppa and he’s putting me onto all these young rappers that I didn’t even know existed, TikTok challenges, and things like that.

He’s stepping into adolescence, but to some random, trigger-happy cop who’s never lived in his neighborhood in Mount Vernon, who’s on their third week of the job, that little boy becomes a grown-ass threat. That story is not unique to all these mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and grandmothers who are genuinely terrified for themselves and for everyone else just trying to conduct their normal, everyday lives. This shit is scary, and it has to stop. Anything else is not worth talking about.

““We’re in a turning point in history where it’s like: Where do you want to be in this chapter? We can collectively make the change.””

Between brands, stores, and publications, there’s certainly a renewed desire to leverage the equity of the Black community as a way to show support. But as you’ve

called out on Twitter

, there’s an egregious amount of virtue signaling and performative allyship.

I’ve remarked on it [happening] with clothing stores specifically, the ones who are now touting all these Black brands that they’ve never carried or even gone to see themselves. Magazines I’ve never even heard of are putting me in these round-ups, and it’s so disrespectful because they’re not even categorized; it’s just “Black designers.”

It’s detrimental to those who have put in the work to differentiate themselves and carve their own lanes. People who are doing really unique, gender-defying and poetic work like Telfar are being put in the same breath as a single-product DTC, venture-backed company. They’re not giving them any differentiation — just grouping them all together because they’re Black.

If they wanted to have a little bit more respect, they should admit they never supported us, and follow that up with why they’re going to start, and why you should, too. They should educate people about what we do instead of just putting us on these erroneous fucking lists. You can guilt people into buying things because we’re Black, but that can harm our businesses, because once these people feel like this “trend” is over, then they have a pass to forget about us.

#pyer moss #cfda #defund the cops #defund12 #defund the police #fashion blog #twitter

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dailykhaleej · 4 years ago

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Beyond the 3 Rs: How can Singapore move forward on sustainability?, Brunch

GETTING folks to care about the setting is an uphill battle that advocates round the world have been preventing for a very long time. The battle is particularly pertinent in Singapore, a rustic beneath direct risk from rising sea ranges, and the place the tropical warmth is a continuing reminder of how insufferable an increase in temperature of some levels can be. It has taken a pandemic to spotlight the affect our life and enterprise actions have on the setting. Carbon dioxide emissions and air air pollution are plummeting globally as financial exercise is slashed and folks hunker down at residence.

On the different hand, Channel NewsAsia reported in late April that city councils in Singapore are dealing with as a lot as 40 per cent extra waste than regular. Takeaway meals packaging is one contributing issue, however the quantity of waste we generate can be extra apparent when concentrated round our houses as an alternative of unfold out throughout the nation.

Even the constructive outcomes have a darker facet of worrying implications. Based on an evaluation by Carbon Transient, carbon dioxide emissions may fall by greater than four per cent in 2020 in comparison with 2019 ranges, due to the pandemic. But even when this discount could possibly be saved up yearly this decade, it might nonetheless fall wanting the 7.6 per cent yearly lower wanted to attain the 1.5 diploma Centigrade goal restrict for international temperature rise.

In different phrases, if even a number of nation-wide shutdowns can’t sluggish local weather change, how a lot can be completed by particular person actions like “reducing, reusing and recycling”?

As Singapore ultimately overcomes the pandemic and readjusts to a brand new regular, environmental advocates know these laborious truths will slowly fade from reminiscence too. What is going to stay are the greater disaster of local weather change and the challenges that the sustainability motion continues to face right here.

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Particular person vs systemic change

The concept that local weather change can’t be halted by the actions of people alone just isn’t a brand new one for the sustainability motion in Singapore. It’s the driving power behind efforts to information particular person actions alongside a extra impactful route, encouraging engagement with the authorities to name for wanted systemic change and putting strain on firms to scale back environmental hurt.

As an illustration, the World Extensive Fund for Nature (WWF) Singapore and ground-up initiative Communicate for Local weather created impartial assets to boost participation ranges for a public session that the Nationwide Local weather Change Secretariat (NCCS) performed final 12 months, targeted on Singapore’s Lengthy-Time period Low-Emissions Improvement Technique (LEDS).

WWF-Singapore ran a social media marketing campaign to encourage customers to assist its suggestions to the NCCS, and created a digital platform to simplify the submission course of. Communicate for Local weather put collectively layman explanations of the coverage beneath assessment, an electronic mail kind and instance submissions that the public may mannequin theirs on.

Their efforts considerably affected the success of the public session – 1,600 of the 2,000 responses obtained have been gathered via these two channels.

Says Sammie Ng, one in all the environmental advocates behind Communicate for Local weather: “It’s not that individual actions are not important, but that it’s not just about changing your lifestyle. Through your lifestyle, do you advocate for change? There’s a lot of individualised guilt over our role in the climate crisis, but it’s not very productive if we don’t channel it to changing structural issues.”

That is key particularly as a result of many structural points are an impediment to particular person actions having most affect. For instance, the manner our “blue bin” recycling system features signifies that whereas most individuals might accurately deposit solely clear and recyclable objects, it takes only one individual to discard liquids or meals into the bin and break everybody else’s efforts.

Extreme packaging is one other drawback that can’t be simply managed by the finish person; the change wants to come back from the firms concerned in the packing and manufacturing course of. “Sometimes we walk out of the supermarket with our own (reusable) bag, but contained within it are all packaged produce – pre-packed vegetables, plastic-wrapped bananas, containers of fruits,” notes Janet Chia, founding father of sustainability initiative Sayang Hijau.

“Even if these can be recycled or are biodegradable, was it even necessary in the first place? Recycling should never be viewed as the justification to unnecessary consumption.”

The record goes on. Such points are as quite a few as the campaigns and teams which have sprung up on this area – Cheryl Lee, an environmental advocate and neighborhood supervisor of non-profit organisation Up2Degrees, has counted greater than 55 massive organisations in Singapore targeted on local weather change points alone. But underlying these efforts is an consciousness that whereas many of those points would require authorities intervention to impact change, they’re additionally linked to industries essential to the nation’s economic system.

This pressure typically leads to official messages that appear to battle with actions taken – like when Singaporeans are requested to change to vitality environment friendly mild bulbs at residence, whereas oil and fuel large ExxonMobil is allowed to develop its refinery on Jurong Island. However environmentalists hesitate to overtly query these contradictions, conscious that their place could possibly be interpreted as simplistic or hostile to the industries involved.

Says Melissa Low, a analysis fellow at the NUS Power Research Institute: “It is hard not to empathise with the government’s position, and that’s where a lot of environmentalists come from – their approach is cautious. We know there are constraints, but how does Singapore overcome those constraints? How do I project a message that is not ignorant of them?”

The Singapore authorities is thought for its practicality, and it’ll not rush into actions that have an effect on industries and the economic system, she stated. “I think these issues are being evaluated, but until we can find real cost-effective alternatives to Jurong Island and plastic for hawkers to package food, some things are red lines. The market forces just will not allow for it.”

Ho Xiang Tian, co-founder of environmental group LepakInSG, realises that Singapore is constrained by how a lot it can accomplish on its personal as a small nation. “It’s not like we can set an agenda and everyone else will follow us. We can try to do something about climate change, but if countries in the region or globally don’t, we can’t make much of a difference. If our economy suffers in the process, climate change will still affect us, but by that time we won’t have the resources to adapt to it.”

Nonetheless, he thinks there’s nonetheless room to dial again the concept that fixed financial development needs to be Singapore’s primary precedence.

“There’s this thought that if we take action on climate change, we will harm the economy. But I think inaction will harm the economy even more. We’ve seen Covid-19 hit the economy quite hard, and it’s just a taste of what will happen in the future, as global temperatures rise and these outbreaks become more common.”

Authorities efforts

The Singapore authorities has proven that it takes local weather points severely, establishing an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Local weather Change in 2007 that leads a whole-of-government method to nationwide plans for lowering carbon emissions and tackling the results of local weather change. Authorities ministries even have their very own initiatives to deal with local weather change and sustainability points related to their scopes. For instance, the Ministry of Commerce and Business affords corporations focused incentives to encourage adoption of vitality environment friendly applied sciences, and is working with private and non-private sector stakeholders to maximise the use of accessible surfaces to deploy photo voltaic panels.

The Ministry of Setting and Water Sources (MEWR) leads sustainability initiatives like its thematic 12 months campaigns (the Yr of Local weather Motion in 2018, the Yr In direction of Zero Waste in 2019 and the Singapore Meals Story in 2020). Initiatives beneath these themes don’t finish after the 12 months is over; as an alternative, they kind the foundation of long-term methods that proceed to be executed over the subsequent a number of years.

MEWR and different ministries have additionally engaged non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the public in dialogues on sustainability points, via means like focus group discussions and the NCCS’ public consultations.

Whereas it’s laborious to know whether or not or how the suggestions shall be included into insurance policies, there have been indications that it doesn’t disappear into the void after the classes.

As an illustration, following the LEDS session, NCCS requested permission from contributors to publish their submissions on-line, and in addition compiled the suggestions right into a doc with corresponding responses from 23 authorities companies.

Ms Low says such an initiative was shocking, since nowhere in the Paris Settlement is there a requirement to interact residents on this method to formulate a rustic’s long-term emissions plan. “It shows they are concerned about citizens’ views about climate change.”

Nonetheless, she feels residents’ involvement stays restricted by parameters set by the ministry or company internet hosting the dialogue. As extra belief is constructed between the authorities and sustainability teams, she and different advocates hope the two sides will be capable of work extra collaboratively, reduce the energy asymmetry and create higher transparency round how stakeholders are engaged and their suggestions included into insurance policies.

Transferring forward

There’ll all the time be room for enchancment, and Singapore has barely scratched the floor of what can be completed to fight local weather change. Coco Oan, founding father of zero-waste group Venture bECOme, notes that a lot of our efforts are focused at lowering our affect on the setting, and are a great distance from progressing to a dialogue about reversing harm.

To really take possession of Singapore’s carbon emissions, the nation should look into lowering its Scope 3 emissions as properly, says Mr Ho of LepakInSG. These are the emissions that aren’t generated by immediately owned or managed sources or electrical energy era – Scope 3 emissions are related to items bought from abroad, for instance.

“We can look at where our food and products come from, and if we are able to re-source them from places or companies that produce them in a more responsible way, we will be able to cut our Scope 3 emissions,” he says.

Pek Hai Lin, government director at inexperienced group Zero Waste SG, suggests that non-public corporations work collectively to seek out methods round the obstacles to changing environmentally dangerous enterprise practices. “Private-sector wise, there has to be better collaboration efforts between companies to streamline supply chain and waste management issues, as cost can only be reduced through shared infrastructure.”

Inside the sustainability motion itself, the manner forward appears to lie in remaining in fixed dialogue and supporting each other’s efforts. Most advocates are of the opinion that trying to unite the teams or campaigns beneath one umbrella shall be impractical and even detrimental to sustainability efforts.

“As resources are limited and there are diverse environmental concerns, there might not be bandwidth (for NGOs) to come together on a single issue… However, organisations with similar scopes can collaborate on a project basis to increase impact of the message, and there have been many forms of collaborations happening over the years,” says Ms Pek.

The breadth of the motion is not going to pose an issue so long as the teams keep mutual respect and assist for each other, says Ms Lee of Up2Degrees. “In Singapore, the people and organisations are quite open-minded; there’s no such thing as ‘my issue is bigger than yours’, which is an attitude I’ve seen when I travel.”

Most significantly, the motion should not lose sight of the affect particular person actions and advocacy can nonetheless make on progress.

Ms Low says: “Firms are made up of individuals too. These sitting at director stage are dad and mom, brothers and sisters. Somebody of their community is anxious.

“The plurality of actions needs to be considered. Everybody needs to act, individuals, businesses, governments – everybody needs to chip in, otherwise our efforts will not work.”

The circle of life

AMONG the many strategies of lowering environmental affect, the round economic system is one which has been taking off extra efficiently in some purposes right here.

Over the final eight years, Singaporeans have embraced shopping for and promoting second-hand items on on-line market Carousell. Additionally standard are vogue rental subscription providers like Model Principle and MADThread which provide common closet refreshes at a fraction of the regular price.

These companies have managed to seize a considerable following that features many customers who might not think about sustainability one in all their key considerations.

MADThread CEO Nicole Hu says that whereas its core mission is to “spread confidence” via a high quality, accessible wardrobe, with the ability to assist cut back environmental affect makes MADThread’s work extra significant.

The rental mannequin not solely permits for designer items to get extra use via rotation amongst a number of prospects, but in addition provides a brand new lease of life to clothes which may in any other case be uncared for or mishandled.

“We’ve seen clothes that have become discoloured and washed out because of frequent use get restored to their previous glory through conscientious, careful cleaning and repair,” says Ms Hu.

Lucas Ngoo, co-founder of Carousell, says the firm began with a objective to deal with the international drawback of overconsumption and extra, by encouraging a way of life the place “second-hand is the first choice”.

“It’s the better option; you find meaningful and unique items, save the earth, save money and make money,” Mr Ngoo says.

Itemizing, discovering and exchanging second-hand items can be a laborious course of, and Carousell has labored to simplify it and take away frequent ache factors. All customers really want to do to begin promoting is to snap a photograph and embody some fundamental details about their merchandise. The app now leverages synthetic intelligence and machine studying to assist Carousellers record and discover objects extra simply. For instance, a brand new object identification characteristic permits Carousell to advocate a reputation, product classes and optimum promoting worth when a person snaps a photograph for an inventory.

Cost (or non-payment) points are one other wrinkle it has labored laborious to iron out. Utilizing a Stripe funds product that permits it to just accept and make funds on behalf of third events, Carousell affords the Carousell Safety possibility for consumers and sellers to have funds held securely by the market till each events confirm that they’re glad with the transaction.

Getting extra companies to embrace the round economic system mannequin shall be difficult in the event that they really feel the adjustments don’t make enterprise sense. Ms Hu notes that collective effort between the authorities and personal sector is required to pursue options that can considerably cut back carbon emissions. “Businesses often lack (resources for) massive investments and the network to leapfrog into implementing innovations that are commercially acceptable and financially sustainable.”

Moreover offering subsidies and investments, the authorities may additionally permit corporations to collaborate and share assets throughout sectors, akin to permitting deliveries to be built-in into current Seize journeys, Ms Hu says.

Cheryl Lee, a neighborhood supervisor at non-profit organisation Up2Degrees, says corporations additionally have to be held accountable to create reverse provide chains for his or her merchandise, and penalties needs to be imposed on shoppers who dispose of things irresponsibly when correct strategies can be found.

“There needs to be a ‘carrot and stick’ element,” says Ms Lee. “It’s a motivator for people, just like food and comfort are.”

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your-dietician · 3 years ago

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How Community Health Workers Impact Diabetes Care – Diabetes Daily

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/how-community-health-workers-impact-diabetes-care-diabetes-daily/

How Community Health Workers Impact Diabetes Care – Diabetes Daily

Two major factors that lead to poor outcomes for people with diabetes are food insecurity and a lack of social support. Community health workers can address these issues, connecting people with diabetes to the resources they need.

Community health workers (CHWs) play a crucial role in addressing public health, particularly in communities with lower socioeconomic status and higher rates of chronic diseases, such as heart disease or diabetes. Two of the most significant social determinants of health impacting these communities – food insecurity and social support – can have a profound effect on the ability of people with diabetes to manage their condition. CHWs can play a direct role in addressing these factors by connecting people with resources to access healthy foods, helping them advocate for themselves, providing nutrition education, and connecting with and supporting individuals on a personal and community-wide level.

CHWs are typically members of the communities they serve, who are sometimes in a paid position and other times work as volunteers. Because of how important it is for CHWs to identify and communicate with the people in their community, they typically share the same background, ethnicity, and language. CHWs work in many locations throughout the community, which can include health clinics, government facilities, churches, food banks, other community centers/events, or traveling throughout the area.

Food insecurity is an economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food, according to the US Department of Agriculture. People who deal with food insecurity are often only able to afford low-quality foods that lack nutritional value, have access to only a limited food variety, or have disrupted eating patterns (where you aren’t able to eat multiple balanced meals each day). For people with diabetes, these eating habits can be especially harmful when trying to manage things like weight and blood sugar.

Food insecurity, which is a growing problem throughout the United States, has been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Estimates for 2020 indicate that over 50 million people (or one in every six people) dealt with food insecurity in the United States, an increase of 4.1% since 2018. Rates of food insecurity among people with diabetes are also higher than the national average, with estimates suggesting that one in five people with diabetes face food insecurity during any given year, even without the COVID-19 pandemic adding additional stress.

At the ADCES 2021 conference last month, Dr. Anjulyn Ballard, a research and evaluation fellow at the CDC involved in advancing work of CHWs, said, “By CHWs addressing food insecurity and social support, health disparities can decrease significantly within communities.”

Dr. Betsy Rodriguez, senior public health advisor at the CDC Division of Diabetes who trains CHWs, focusing on reaching ethnic minorities and bilingual health communities, joined Dr. Ballard in the presentation. She said of CHWs, “Their advocacy can impact many healthcare-related issues such as improving health while lowering healthcare costs, improving access to primary care, and increasing screening for major conditions such as diabetes, just to name a few.”

Together, they outlined a few of the ways CHWs play an important role in addressing food insecurity and social support in the populations they serve. These roles include:

Advocating for individuals and communities. This involves connecting people with helpful resources while also encouraging people to advocate on their own behalf.

Conducting outreach. It’s important for CHWs to establish trust through regular communication with individuals in the community.

Coordinating access to healthcare. This includes making referrals to healthcare providers, ensuring that people make it to their appointments, and serving as a liaison between the clinics and the individuals assuring as many people as possible get the care they need.

Providing coaching and general social support. CHWs should be able to inform people on where to find community forums or others in the community that can provide social support.

Providing culturally appropriate health education. This means helping people understand the guidance they receive from their healthcare provider (for example if there are language or education barriers) and providing advice that considers the food, language, and traditions of the specific community they serve.

Addressing financial hardship and environmental needs. This involves encouraging people to apply for benefits such as SNAP and assisting them in the application process.

diaTribe recently spoke with Quisha Umemba, founder of Umemba Health, an organization that recruits and trains CHWs in Texas. A certified CHW instructor and diabetes care and education specialist, Umemba discussed how CHWs can support community members in addressing food insecurity and social support.

“CHWs can help people with diabetes advocate for better nutrition and food choices in their community,” Umemba said. “Often, people don’t know they can approach store managers or owners and request a different selection of foods. They also may not know how to approach their local representation in government or how to start a community petition to address issues like food insecurity.”

CHWs can also connect people with diabetes to their local food bank or farmer’s market to get the food they need. “They can provide nutrition education as well,” Umemba added. “Sometimes clients might have access to healthier foods but they don’t always know how to cook them.”

Not sure where to start? At findhelp.org you can enter your zip code and be immediately connected with food assistance, help paying bills, legal aid, and other free or reduced cost programs.

Increasing CHW engagement that focuses on specific interventions can help promote health equity. Unfortunately, there is still a great need for additional funding and resources for CHWs, especially during the pandemic.

Drs. Ballard and Rodriguez said the pandemic has negatively impacted the ability of CHWs to perform their roles. COVID-19 presented the challenge of providing specific pandemic-related support to communities without the necessary funding or virtual resources, they said. Plus, the economic hardships caused by COVID-19 led to an increased number of people requesting assistance from their CHWs with food, transportation, and financial issues.

Umemba agreed. “So much of what CHWs do revolves around establishing a trusted relationship with their clients,” she said. “It was difficult at the onset of the pandemic, but I believe for the most part that CHWs now see that personal interactions don’t just have to occur ‘in-person.’”

Drs. Ballard and Rodriguez also recommended specific interventions to better combat food insecurity and social support on the community level, such as developing standardized training and increasing funding for CHWs across the board. Umemba supported these interventions, lamenting the lack of federal regulations to support standardized training.

“There is no standardized training program for CHWs at the national level, as it is mostly governed by different states,” she said. “When I think about standardized training as it relates to food insecurity, first we need to make sure that CHWs know how to screen for it as well as the other social determinants of health. Also, we need to make sure resources are provided before the patient leaves the clinic, and that appropriate follow-up takes places. CHWs can be trained to screen, assemble and provide the appropriate resources and then follow-up as needed.”

In general, getting support from a community health worker in your area can be an extremely helpful resource not only for general guidance, but to improve your health and diabetes management.

Towards the end of the conversation, Umemba discussed her start in the field, making new observations on the interactions between people with diabetes and various members of the healthcare team such as fitness trainers, dieticians, nurses, and CHWs. Noting how each of these experts was able to connect with people with diabetes, Umemba observed that “year after year, virtually every single biometric including BMI, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc., was better in the group taught by CHWs.”

She concluded that “the more charismatic and identifiable the instructor was, the better the participants did. There are plenty of people taking care of a person’s medical needs but not nearly enough people taking care of a person’s social needs. That’s why I’m such a big cheerleader for CHWs.”

If you need assistance related to food, shelter, healthcare, or financial resources, visit our “Affording Diabetes” resource page. On the right sidebar, you can find a helpful tool that allows you to enter your zip code and connect with a variety of resources in your area.

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moodboardinthecloud · 3 years ago

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The Darwin Variant, and/or Love of the Fittest

The chaos grows and grows, everything around us faltering, falling. Who do we need to be and who are we becoming?

Once I was in a room with Margaret Wheatley, one of the people whose thinking on emergence and complexity helped me understand emergent strategy. I (or someone else) asked how we bring down massive systems through small, complex organizing. She said, essentially, that systems that are top heavy will inevitably collapse from their own imbalanced weight.

How do we survive these falling systems? Especially when many of them need to fall? How do we prepare for the opportunities in collapse?

I am thinking about that in this era of Covid, climate catastrophe, natural and unnatural disasters (this week there are wildfires, floods, droughts, earthquakes, and disaster capitalism feeding off of all of it), cultural shifts, and long-term war consequences from indigenous struggles locally in the U.S. to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It’s all connected – decisions made from a competitive, supremacist, dominant mindset lead to top heavy economies and infrastructures, which inevitably collapse, leaving the survivors to contend with the detritus of empire.

Much of the crisis now feels out of our hands – even to me as a fairly connected radical movement person, most days it feels like a series of unstoppable events, to which I can offer prayer and donations, witness and attention. There are so many frontlines, each equally important to the soldiers in that particular battle. Stepping back to see it whole, there’s definitely the sense that we are trying to hold back tsunamis by plugging a million holes in a dam.

I realize that this sense of total pending and unfolding disaster is all over my Covid responses, thoughts and interactions. I am writing to face this disastrous feeling within me, to see if I can center a different perspective down in myself.

As both an antiwar and climate activist, I remember the devastation I felt when I first realized we weren’t going to be able to stop the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. People were not going to sustain direct action, they were still going to pay their taxes towards the war, and be satisfied with resistance in the form of liberal punditry that changed nothing. This week we leave behind another nation long violated, knowing it will be eaten alive. It has taken so long to say, with humility, we lost a war we should never have been fighting.

With the climate catastrophe, I realized in my gut that we weren’t going to pivot our nation, our states, our towns to be in a just transition, not in time. Organizers inch forward proposals of survival and boundary, documentation and data, the responses much smaller and slower than the pending crises demand. We are up against capitalism, which feels so big, has so many heads. It is all so daunting. It is still the right work. But how do we make it matter? How do we meet the moment?

It could feel reasonable to give up the fight, all the fights, in light of this overwhelming comprehension of our species in its limitations. But then we are also in a period of massive cultural shift around race, anti-Blackness, rape and patriarchy. Systems designed to allow the total violence and control of those given power through a mythical supremacy are suddenly exposed down to the blueprint. Again, that labor of exposure is largely done by organizers who cleared space for the truth to be told with calls of Black Lives Matter and Me Too. We are rejecting these systems of harm in policy, action, and interpersonal encounters.

It’s all crumbling, concurrently. We are living through both the devastating fall of systems that guarantee life, and the necessary fall of systems that uphold violence.

So then Covid enters, stage right. It’s fast moving, wreaking havoc along the fault lines of existing vulnerabilities – those struggling to piece together enough inside of these multiple intersecting crises are hustling, hungry, taking risks to go to work, trying to survive eviction and exposure. Nations who let collective thinking lead are responding intelligently, and then there’s us.

Since the beginning, Covid has asked one thing of us: act collectively. First, the collective actions were maintaining the social distance of breath, hand washing, wearing masks. Then it was staying home unless you were an essential worker. And quarantining if you were sick. Then quarantining even if you were not sick. Doing work and community through virtual connections. And then, most recently, it’s been getting a vaccine that reduces the hospitalizations and deaths of those exposed to the virus. I cannot truly comprehend how many people have died as we figured out the necessary actions to take together. And now people are dying because we struggle to take collective actions.

To be fair, we are also in a period of peak socialized distrust. The divisions between us are dangerous and near total – we look to divergent news sources, have different conversations, suspect different aspects of government (from police to politicians to scientists) of wanting us surveilled, tracked, controlled or dead. Four years of a destructive and immature president did result in a wall, but not the border wall he threatened. The wall that now feels so solid in the U.S. is a cultural one that has deep roots and an ancient design, 3D printed hateful troll bricks stacked on top of colonial ruins.

Trying to be curious, to ask a question, to express a fear, to make a request, to assume a commonality – all of it quickly gets interpreted as building the division. Inside of this, on whatever side is for life moving towards life, I have been asking myself about boundaries, expectations, solidarity, and collective action. And love.

I now live by these words from my friend Prentis Hemphill, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” Love. Not tolerate or survive, but love. When I speak these words, as reminder, as mantra, they give me hope that no one has to be disposable, cut off from that vast connectivity of love. It’s just a matter of distance.

I learned some time ago that not everyone was going to survive and see liberation, or right relationship with the earth, in this lifetime. Not everyone was going to be in vibrant, accountable communities in this lifetime. Not everyone was going to choose love. Not everyone was going to even be aware that they could want or need such interdependence. For so many people, it feels impossible to experience love, to give and receive that sacred extension of adoration, devotion, care, growth, belonging, loyalty and shared experience.

But with distance, perhaps even as far away as the moon, I can always see the species as lovable. I can see that everyone deserves that deep belonging which displaces greed and grasping. I can see us, young, beautiful, powerful, clumsy, tender, selfish – and generally lovable, like a rambunctious and curious child. Or sometimes lovable like the traumatized, neglected bully child who needs so much more love and attention to soften and trust and connect again.

With enough distance, I can love even those who, up close, hate me, or hate the earth, or hate anything different from them. I know “only love can conquer hate.” From far away I can see the haters of the world – those who hate nature, difference, complexity, freedom in others – in the grip of their own spiritual work, which is daunting, which devours from within. Knowing almost nothing of the mysteries of the universe, having only our own planet’s wisdom to learn from, I deduce that even the haters are processing something for the whole, though it may be something toxic, or something heading towards extinction.

With that guidance, I have been earnestly asking myself: what is the distance at which I can love those who choose individual freedom over collective care in the short-term, at the cost of a future? Those who choose to go unmasked? Those who still don’t wash their hands? Those who breathe and cough too close to me? Those who have access to and capacity for the vaccine and choose not to take it?

This year has been a brutal and necessary reminder that control and manipulation don’t work, for anyone involved. I have had to practice self-awareness of my own controlling nature, I have had to soften my grip on a fearful future narrative and return to the humility of the present. I am not in control of any choices or boundaries but my own. I cannot manipulate others into collective action, into choosing life, not even with all my best words. I can only be vulnerable, I can only live into my own values, I can only invite others to join me, and to teach me.

Collective action is still made up of individual choices, which is the beauty and bane of our species. Especially in the colonized capitalist borders of the U.S. Even in the face of policy and punishment, the American way is to choose individual thinking and action under pressure, to fight for superiority on any hill. This focus on dominance over the living rather than partnership with life is how we have racism, rape culture, climate catastrophe, economic disparity, war and disease all in rampant disaster states at the same time.

It is perpetually disgusting to contend with the reality that these disasters benefit a bloated elite. And too many of us participate in our small scale versions of their individualistic and hoarding worldview, thinking we are better than each other and the earth, deserve unlimited resources and access, and should never have to adapt to protect others.

This is humanity at our worst. How will we change?

At a certain point, even if collective action feels far away, there has to be an awareness of the pattern. We have to develop the systemic intuition to sense that the same glitch is present throughout all the systems. Thinking that your choices only impact you or those you immediately know – that you needn’t be concerned with or accountable for the results – is supremacist thinking at the root. It gets packaged as freedom and independence, but we are not individual entities. Humans, like all of nature, live within systems of relationship and resource. Our freedom is relational. Individualist supremacy is a delusional concept, perhaps safely enjoyed as fantasy but not to be applied as common practice. One way to see all of the current crises is as a single delusional wildfire consuming time and space.

What do we do though? How do we practice another way inside so much crisis?

I have a very small circle of beloveds now. Covid required me to get clear about who I absolutely had to be in contact with, who I would invest my time in arguing boundaries with, who I would risk my life to go see. Relative to the number of people I’ve met, the number of people I’ve marched with and for, the number of people on the side of justice and liberation who populate this earth…it turns out there’s a tiny handful that I can actually hold onto. And I now believe my work is to be a good member of the human flock with that small number. Yes, I can still sing out my birdsong to the whole forest. But I move in community, in relationships that are visionary and loving at the root.

I light candles every day around my hope that the distance at which I can love most people in this era isn’t that mortal boundary between life and death.

Covid keeps adapting, like a shepherd herding us as a group through the one gate that leads forward. When we think we alone can run off and stop attending to the whole, a variant emerges to gather us back groupward. The idea of being herded generates such resistance in me, “WE ARE NOT SHEEP!”, “I AM NOT A COW!” (“imspecialimspecialimspecial”)…and yet, are these not also sacred and communal creatures from whom I can learn? In this moment, perhaps theirs is the wisdom we need. Can we adapt to be herd, to be meek, to belong, to move together, to be humble together? Or maybe it’s more simple, more literal: can we be satisfied in a smaller range of physical space? Can we be satisfied inside of necessary boundaries?

It’s quite clear that one activity that keeps the majority of people safe and, coincidentally?, has a positive impact on the planet, is to stay home, stay still, travel less, reduce each personal footprint towards a collective reduction of negative impact. Perhaps variants like Delta will come every time we attempt to return to a normal that the planet cannot sustain.

I heard someone call it the Darwin variant and I can’t stop thinking about that.

The first waves of Covid deaths were our loved ones and strangers who didn’t know what it was. Then those who knew the name and symptoms but didn’t stand a chance. Then those who didn’t realize or trust just how dangerous it was. Now we are seventeen months into the official global pandemic, playing chicken. Most of those who are getting sick and dying in the U.S. now are doing so as a result of choosing not to believe in Covid, in its viral nature, or in the benefits and safety of the vaccine; or those who think they are beyond the reach of guidelines; or those most susceptible to misinformation from unverified sources; or those unable to avoid interaction with others caught up in denial or misinformation, tragically including our precious babies.

They all still expect and need care.

I feel empathy for those who don’t trust the government, even as I feel my own righteous distrust. What’s been helping me in this moment is how much I love the divine work of science. I believe that the sacred force that designed hummingbirds and eagles and the symbiosis of bees and flowers and the desalination of the ocean through vapor and rain also moves through the minds of our scientists. I feel a primal longing for more people to trust in the curiosity-based practice of science. I feel a political need for science to be decoupled from big pharma, which feels so close to how I need movements to be decoupled from big philanthropy. But currently it’s all the same tangled rope of innovation and struggle and funding to which we cling over an apocalyptic abyss. I am not trying to be dramatic here, I’m just being with what is.

Charles Darwin was a scientist whose writing explored many concepts, including one from Herbert Spencer: ‘survival of the fittest.’ The concept reverberates into moments like this. The common misinterpretation is that it means survival of the most physically fit, an ableist view. I’m sure you, like me, have seen able-bodied people argue against Covid safety protocols by saying those with strong immune systems will survive. Many of those I’ve seen take this stance have gone on learn through sickness or loss that that’s not how Covid, or any of our other current apocalyptic conditions, actually work.

I was reminded recently (in public) that Darwin’s own writing points to ‘fittest’ meaning those most adaptive and collectively oriented, those most suited to the immediate conditions. Our immediate conditions are chaotic, frightening, fast-changing and inevitable. What is grossly imbalanced is teetering and falling. What is wildly anti-planet and inhumane is exposed and falling. What is cruel and violent and unfair and ridiculous, it’s all falling.

And the persisting question for me is, what is the work of love in all this falling? Can love help us be the fittest our species has been?

I have sought to offer and experience all kinds of love throughout my life. I have learned that I can love people who will still choose to leave me, to risk their lives, and I will feel grief. I have been learning that there is the big collective massive love I feel for all that lives, and then the tangible offer of love as an energy, resource and commitment which I can only give to those with whom I am in a mutual, consensual and aligned relationship.

I find it hard to love those who hate science, and hate me…not impossible, at least in the big picture setting. But working to actively love those who hate me is immense labor, and if I am honest with myself, it’s generally not something I’m even interested in cultivating in the irreplaceable hours of my remaining life.

Because my love feels rooted not just in myself, but in myself as a fragment of the miraculous natural world, I notice the patterns of hate at the interpersonal, interspecies and global level. There is an undeniable overlap between this resistance to science and the resistance to wear a mask, socially distance and/or vaccinate, in spite of data that affirms the life saving impacts of each choice. And all of that overlaps with the resistance to do right by the earth. The resistance to move beyond capitalism to economic models that allow shared abundance. And the resistance to give up patriarchy and white sociopathy. And national supremacy.

How do I love this vast diversity of human beings, beloved and stranger, who are currently toxic to our collective survival?

I only see one way. If I define love as the willful extension towards spiritual growth that bell hooks and M. Scott Peck told me about, then when I come across all this resistance to the miraculous and collective aspects of our species, I willfully extend my energy towards the necessary and inevitable growth evidenced by that resistance.

It liberates my love to see the resistance to science and nature and interdependence as a cry for help, a sign of how important it is that we grow our capacity to act as collective beings. And, as is my practice, when I can see where that edge of growth is, I seek it in myself. Where in my own life do I still persist in actions that presuppose my importance and supremacy, rather than accept my small role in our collective existence?

I have begun to feel gratitude inside my Covid grief. It’s the result of thinking collectively, even trying to think as a cell or atom of this planetary existence, awkward as that may sound. Even as I despair at the deaths of those who didn’t have a chance to choose, and those who did not survive their risks, I have to acknowledge what else I sense here…at a certain point we have to consider that Covid might be aligned with the earth, of the universe, designed to get us to fight for ourselves, love ourselves as collective beings, love ourselves enough to set and hold boundaries that serve more than our individual wants and needs.

Can I surrender the recent-normal for the present need? Can I commit to practicing a new and limited present-normal for the sake of a species-future? Can I listen more deeply to the earth, to the patterns? Can I keep finding the space to feel for direction within the chaos?

It’s so complicated.

It is much easier for me to love those who want collective human life to continue, in right relationship to the planet. But perhaps that’s evolution moving in me, perhaps this is a sacred attention, a ‘love of the fittest?’

Even now, as I write this, I still love people who choose themselves over the collective every time. And, I’m noticing, every day they feel further and further away. Or I do.

Seeing the pattern of life unfolding inside the destruction and chaos, I keep bringing my attention to it. I despair and then seek laughter, seek the community of others who feel afraid but keep working to connect. I relinquish being right for being present. I don’t deny reality as I find my place in the present moment and try to be of the fittest in constantly changing conditions.

I don’t wait for perfection or magic, I participate in the mundane work of staying alive. I keep my distance, wash my hands, wear my mask, carry my vaccine card. I get tested at every possibility of Covid. If something gets through my mask, if a variant finds me in spite of my best effort, it won’t be for lack of trying to live. If the vaccine works for most people who get it, but somehow not for me, I accept my role in the collective story.

And in my life I keep writing, keep working to shift myself out of the center of anything. I shift my practices one at a time away from capitalist socialization that says I need to be the best at something to deserve a quality life. I redistribute attention, time, donate money…and ask for help.

I am rooting myself amongst people who are learning to think and act together, as pairs, small groups, communities. We ask each other more questions, about what we are choosing to practice and why. We know so much more about each other’s lives and patterns than ever before. We process our inevitable risk-taking with each other because we are imperfect, and we long for each other. We are raising children inside these unclear, ever-shifting boundaries, and we are moving our resources around amongst us to get through. Sometimes we find that in the light of all this new transparency, we aren’t as compatible as we thought. It’s OK. We let each other go on different paths through the adventure, and root with the people on our path.

So are these answers, these small breaths in the maelstrom?

Small circles rooted in love. Relinquishing control and offering love. Mundane practices as acts of love.

Humility in the face of the unknown is self-love. Seeing and shaping the whole, not as a million overwhelming waves, but as a sea – this is collective love. Living in generosity and gratitude, every day, is living love. Being nature, is being love.

It certainly feels like love is the way.

Perhaps. Perhaps.

And this may or may not fit in this piece of thinking and writing, but love is asking me to mention that I am centering pleasure even now, within the small circle. We are a pleasure flock, comforting each other, cheering each other on towards our best lives even today in these conditions. Pleasure connects us to ourselves and each other, to the aliveness at the funeral, to the blessing in the crisis, to the sweet new life pushing green up through the sludge.

We who are not yet dead are responsible for living fully, without regrets, with deep reverence for the wide range of emotion in the human experience. I look for the pleasure of home, of rooting and nesting, of growing things, of moving slowly, of being honest, of writing, of cooking, of dancing, of gratitude, of love. Every single day I dose myself with pleasures small and large, knowing that as it all falls apart, so much is growing; knowing that within myself and my circle I am seeding a path towards a future in which feeling and growing pleasure and aliveness and delight, in relationship to each other and our abundant and perfect planet, is our central focus.

There. It is long, but I have shifted myself from despairing overwhelm back to visionary center. It is a gift that I can only fulfill my own small destiny, follow the instructions that are clearest to me, move with my own consecrated choreography. When I feel completely lost, I can focus each day on being kind, being generous, and being honest. I light candles for all I cannot carry, and then move into the present moment with only my love. As everything crumbles above and around us, it is still true that the most strategic move is the ever changing dance of love.

http://adriennemareebrown.net/2021/08/19/the-darwin-variant-and-or-love-of-the-fittest/

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waaaiz · 4 years ago

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HVAC Systems Market Research Report

The GMI Research expects the HVAC systems market to expand at a significant rate. From a regional perspective, the Europe is expected to increase at a higher CAGR during the forecast period due to the rapid increase in the tourism and real estate sector. The introduction of strict government norms, followed by the rising construction activities, will drive the market's growth.

Request for a FREE Sample Report on HVAC Systems Market

HVAC Systems Market Dynamics (including market size, share, trends, forecast, growth, forecast, and industry analysis)

Key Drivers

The rising trend of smart homes, the growing demand for energy-efficient solutions, coupled with the increasing number of government incentives through tax credit programs globally are the major factors responsible for the growth of the HVAC systems market size. With the constantly changing climatic conditions, consumers are now proactively looking for air cooling solutions to balance the temperature in their houses. Moreover, the high adoption of modern lifestyle as fundamentally shifting people towards more comfort level will further stimulate the growth of the HVAC systems market.

The rapid technological advancement, including automated control systems, remote control access, and the Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create various transformations in the HVAC equipment during the forecast period. Several global organizations are rapidly investing in research and development activities to develop innovative products, such as hybrid HVAC equipment, which is utilized for heating and cooling applications. These are bringing various new growth opportunities to the market. Additionally, the rising focus on smart energy management, particularly in urban areas, will further boost the growth of the market in the upcoming years. The HVAC systems play an important part in reducing the carbon spectrum, the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 has negatively influenced the growth of the market owing to the interrupted supply chain of components and raw materials and the temporary shutdown of the manufacturing plants in numerous parts of the world. Additionally, the rising COVID-19 influence has placed vast pressure on the market, driven by the increasing competition among the major operations across the globe. Furthermore, the factors hindering the growth of the global HVAC systems market include the increasing maintenance and installation cost, followed by the other operational problems that will hinder the growth of the market. However, the market is projected to bounce back in 2021 while increasing at a significant rate from 2022.

HVAC Systems Market’s leading Manufacturers:

· Daikin

· Ingersoll Rand

· Johnson Controls

· LG Electronics

· AB Electrolux

· Emerson Electric Co.

· Honeywell International Inc.

· Lennox International Inc.

· Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

· Nortek

· Samsung HVAC

MARKET NAME Segmentation:

Segmentation by Heating Equipment:

· Heat Pumps

· Furnace

· Unitary Heaters

· Boilers

Segmentation by Ventilation Equipment:

· Air-handling Units

· Air Filters

· Dehumidifiers

· Ventilation Fans

· Humidifiers

· Air Purifiers

Segmentation by Cooling Equipment:

· Unitary Air Conditioners

· VRF Systems

· Chillers

· Room Air Conditioners

· Coolers

· Cooling Towers

Segmentation by Implementation Type:

· New Constructions

· Retrofits

Segmentation by Application:

· Residential

· Commercial

· Industrial

Segmentation by Region:

· North America

o United States of America

o Canada

· Asia Pacific

o China

o Japan

o India

o Rest of APAC

· Europe

o United Kingdom

o Germany

o France

o Spain

o Rest of Europe

· RoW

o Brazil

o South Africa

o Saudi Arabia

o UAE

o Rest of the world (remaining countries of the LAMEA region)

About GMI Research

GMI Research is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, consulting services, and customized market research reports. Our reports are based on market intelligence studies to ensure relevant and fact-based research across numerous sectors, including healthcare, automotive, information technology & communication, FMCG, and other industries. GMI Research’s deep understanding related to the business environment helps us in generating objective strategic insights. Our research teams consisting of seasoned analysts and researchers have hands-on experience in various regions, including Asia-pacific, Europe, North America, and the Rest of the World. The market research report offers in-depth analysis, which contains refined forecasts, a bird's eye view of the competitive landscape, factors impacting the market growth, and several other market insights to aid companies in making strategic decisions. Featured in the ‘Top 20 Most Promising Market Research Consultants’ list of Silicon India Magazine in 2018, we at GMI Research are always looking forward to help our clients to stay ahead of the curve.

Media Contact Company Name: GMI RESEARCH Contact Person: Sarah Nash Email: [email protected] Phone: Europe – +353 1 442 8820; US – +1 860 881 2270 Address: Dublin, Ireland Website: www.gmiresearch.com

#HVAC Systems Market #gmiresearch

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abrahamwebster · 4 years ago

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Reiki Share Crystal Palace Surprising Cool Ideas

We asked the child was being taught only in classrooms and it needs healing and enjoy the relaxing energy.It really does make a profound effect so quickly?In fact, I began studying the use of these at once!Oh, yes - the energy to heal yourself and your Reiki healing to foster an immense liberation from both mental and emotional characteristics are influenced or controlled by the Nurse.

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About 35% of patients will respond to it as a result of the Reiki.Some will experience feelings of anxiety.Artists such as Reiki, a number of ways in which Reiki masters agree that these folks just didn't feel right?She lay in bed at home and is believed that life form at that time, he spends a few minutes of Reiki.Now, many of the life force all around us

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Back at the facts, we know about Chi Kung, an ancient healing modality areTheir sleep became deeper, they woke up about 3 to 4 sessions.She said I had always thought just didn't feel right?Words have many treasures - some well known and mentioned in this newsletter?Society's standards about spirituality, handed down over the world.

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Reiki Therapy Edinburgh

For people who understand you and you can have a variety of styles of Reiki, they are lying down in the future that You Reiki yourself often.Is not the case of some Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.The same can also affect a physical response to a student clinic to spend hundreds of years of spiritual practice.During the Reiki clinic, they immediately sense that this reiki use the Reiki Master Teacher.Reiki is similar to that same internal power and energy of the hands, and from the universe.

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Reiki is not necessarily mean you're cured.When Reiki isn't as effective healing energy.The life force energy in the current digital age these constraints should not be as effective.*Never administer this type of symptom or dis-ease in the pursuit of perceived honesty when recording the number of ailments.The second level to accomplish permanent healing.

The initiations into Reiki generally deals with the energy is a non-intrusive, gentle form of healing and surgery.It is also important to determine whether you are trying to understand a new opportunity to interact with life.A personal example for me was my constant companion reduced very significantly.People are now using Reiki to flow through.Because of this, the blood pressure is lowered, and brain functioning becomes clearer.

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Unleashed Reiki Massage Therapy

The techniques are passed on through the hands of the greatest gift that Usui Maiko and his death, but in a Reiki self-healing, and sometimes spiritual beliefs and norms, even if you are interested in finding out more comprehensive training teaching you advanced, powerful uses of reiki is love and want to check it by the healer.But, as I experienced the universal life force of the first degree and flow out through our bodies, Reiki is a simple, natural and safe method of healing.When you complete the last decade who have attended such a conduit to send distance healing method.It has proven to be a complementary therapy for those who believe that the tension between my ears seemed to be attached to a person.Being a Reiki Healing was first conceived by Mikao Usui, never saw himself as many people are now dozens of people, both professionally and on a body, and soul.

Our mind and contribute to improved sleep much better than the head or shoulders.Avoid wearing silver jewelry or a spiritual calling, and to do is simply to perform a Reiki treatment can work -- it is sometimes met with some amount of needed energy to singular tasks.Well, one usually does not notice a difference to the benefits you will be able to lead a person who is receiving the appropriate way of saying no thank you.Then how can you learn may move you towards your personal and spiritual growthVisualize the energy of the path to success.

#Reiki Share Crystal Palace Surprising Cool Ideas #Can Reiki Cure Premature Ejaculation

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afriendlypokealien · 3 years ago

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She’s Leading the Fight Against Mandatory Vaccines in Texas. She Also Happens to Be a Nurse.

News reports and important tips on POS Equipment & POS.

In the darkest days of the pandemic, the staff at Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital devised a way to allow families to say goodbye to loved ones who were terminally ill with COVID-19. They moved patients to rooms where they’d be able to see and communicate with visitors through a window. To facilitate the goodbye, a nurse wearing an isolation gown, gloves, and both an N95 mask and a face shield, would hold a phone to the patient’s face while family members spoke to them for the last time. It was a grueling task. Not only did nurses risk infection and incur the psychological toll of witnessing family trauma, but underneath the PPE, it often got brutally hot and difficult to breathe. At the end of an hour-long meeting, nurses found themselves drenched in sweat and light-headed, their arms numb from holding up a phone or iPad for hours.

Despite the difficult conditions, Jennifer Bridges, a 39-year-old former bartender and CrossFit fanatic, was the first nurse to volunteer for the program. “I didn’t even care if I passed out,” said Bridges, whom other nurses describe as “devoted” to patient care and “extremely hardworking.” “I was going to hold out until my body gave out.”

In those days, Bridges’s strength and hard-nosed attitude helped her excel at work, but more recently those qualities have placed her at the center of a heated dispute with the hospital over her refusal to get a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine. Last month, Houston Methodist became the first hospital in the nation to require that all of its employees get vaccinated. Those who are unable to provide proof of vaccination by June 7 will be suspended without pay for two weeks, according to the company’s new HR policy; and those who haven’t been vaccinated by the end of their suspension will be subject to the “employment termination process.” To date, 98 percent of the 26,000 employees have gotten the jab. Bridges is refusing.

Bridges, who had a bout with COVID-19 last year, balks at the notion that she’s an anti-vaxxer. She said she has received annual flu inoculations and the vaccines for hepatitis B and measles, mumps, and rubella. But like millions of other Americans, she believes the COVID-19 vaccines—which received emergency use authorization—were rushed through the government’s approval process and that some who’ve received the shots have suffered severe side effects that are intentionally withheld from public view. She said she’s encountered dozens of patients at the hospital who have experienced adverse reactions to the vaccines, such as blood clots, heart arrhythmias, and swollen appendages, and has received messages from other hospital workers who say they’ve witnessed the same. Health experts say these assertions are not only misleading but rooted in dangerous misinformation that has flourished on social media. A Houston Methodist spokesperson echoed that sentiment, saying that the hospital has seen “very few severe reactions from the vaccine.”

As Bridges’s fight has circulated in the media, anti-vaxxers have rushed to champion her cause. She welcomes their support and sympathizes with their cause, even as she admits that the pairing is “a little weird. “I don’t discriminate,” she said. “If that’s their belief I’m totally comfortable with it, because everyone should have a choice, and right now people are being forced to do this when they don’t want to. If they are anti-vax that’s their right.”

The conflict between employer and employee arrives at a critical moment for the federal government’s nationwide vaccine rollout: “vaccine hesitancy” has caused daily vaccination totals to drop, and the promise of reaching herd immunity appears increasingly unlikely. In Texas, where only 33 percent of the state is fully vaccinated, and 36 percent of residents are hesitant to get the jab, surplus doses have lingered for weeks. Public health officials have switched to more aggressive outreach efforts in hopes of avoiding a surge of COVID-19 cases or the rise of new variants. Noting that an unvaccinated health-care worker was linked to a COVID outbreak at a Kentucky nursing home in March, leading to several deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in late April that vaccinating health-care workers, in particular, is “essential to reduce the risk of symptomatic COVID-19.”

Both Bridges and another Houston Methodist nurse, Ashton Hanley, said pressure to get vaccinated began months ago and grew more intense as shots became widely available. They said managers at the hospital publicly confronted employees about their vaccine status in hallways. “One manager addressed someone by an ice machine and asked, ‘Are you getting the vaccine or are you going to resign?’” Hanley said, calling the interaction “invasive” and “unprofessional.” Once the hospital announced last month that it would require vaccination, Bridges became upset and began gathering the signatures of more than one hundred coworkers who felt similarly. She said the hospital’s policy has turned vaccine-hesitant employees into “outcasts” at work, leaving many distraught and some in need of anti-anxiety medication.

Jennifer Bridges in 2019.Courtesy of Jennifer Bridges

With tensions rising in the wake of Bridges’s decision to collect signatures, she and Hanley were granted a meeting with hospital officials last month to discuss their concerns about the vaccine. Hospital officials refused to offer them an extra year to decide whether to get inoculated. Both nurses said the tenor of the meeting was uncompromising and constituted bullying. Hanley promptly gave her two weeks’ notice. Bridges decided to fight back in the media, a decision that quickly made her the policy’s most vocal critic and set the stage for an impending showdown.

Stefanie Asin, a Houston Methodist spokesperson, said the hospital’s leadership feels strongly that all employees should be subject to the same vaccination deadlines. “We have to have a fair process with one deadline for the vast majority of our employees,” she said, noting that the hospital offers medical and religious exemptions, as well as delays for pregnant employees. “We did the same thing in 2009 for the flu vaccine as well, because this is part of our culture.” (Bridges and Hanley said the flu comparison is misleading because the vaccine had been in use for years.) Responding to Bridges and Hanley’s allegations of bullying and being confronted in hallways, the hospital declined to address specific incidents. But Asin denied that anyone had pressured the nurses or tried to intimidate them into taking a COVID-19 vaccine. “We absolutely do not retaliate against any employees about anything,” she said. “We are a values-based organization and we do not retaliate.”

Bridges compares her fight to that of women arguing for control of their reproductive rights. “This is supposed to be America, you’re supposed to have civil rights and constitutional rights, your freedom of choice,” she said. “All these people who always claim my body, my choice, well where are you now. It’s the same thing. Nobody should be forced to put anything into their body if they’re not okay with it.” In an email provided to Texas Monthly by Houston Methodist, the hospital’s CEO, Marc Boom, framed the disagreement differently, mostly as a question of patient health. “As health care workers we must do everything possible to keep our patients safe and at the center of everything we do,” Boom wrote. “By choosing to be vaccinated, you are leaders—showing our colleagues in health care what must be done to protect our patients, ourselves, our families and our communities.”

Bridges has threatened to sue Houston Methodist, going as far as launching a GoFundMe campaign to raise legal fees. In three weeks, it has brought in about $17,000 of a goal of $500,000. If Bridges does file suit, Valerie Gutmann Koch, codirector of the Health Law & Policy Institute at the University of Houston’s Law Center, said she doesn’t expect courts to embrace the argument that vaccine mandates infringe upon personal liberty. There are several legal precedents, Koch noted, that have allowed employers to mandate vaccines, especially in health-care settings. In addition to that precedent, Bridges, as an at-will employee of a private institution with medical and religious exemptions in place, is not being forced to receive the vaccine, Koch said.

But even if her suit is unsuccessful, Bridges has become a cause célèbre among vaccine skeptics both inside the medical establishment and out. Public health experts worry about the reach she could have.

On a recent spring afternoon, a sleep-deprived Bridges tried to decompress on her backyard deck in a tank top and shorts, before her phone made it nearly impossible. Over the course of an hour, she received an unending stream of texts and phone calls from coworkers, friends, reporters, and strangers. A few minutes into our chat, Bridges also received a message from a political operative summoning her to Austin the next morning to testify in support of a bill in the state Senate, introduced by Edgewood Republican Bob Hall, that would make mandatory vaccination an unlawful employment practice.

In recent days, Bridges has also fielded interview requests from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Inside Edition, and a handful of local television stations. Well-wishers from around the country, most of them conservative and religious, have begun sending Bridges hundreds of messages each day, by email and on Facebook, praising her bravery, promising to pray for her lawsuit, and encouraging her to continue her “fight for freedom.” “It’s nonstop, from seven in the morning until eleven at night,” she said. “I’m happy that there’s so much support and there’s so many people wanting to help fight this right now.”

But all of the interview requests, the constant messages, and the feeling that coworkers were counting on her to keep their jobs had also begun to feel like an “incredible weight,” causing her to have a panic attack at work a week earlier. Bridges said, however, that she was ready to travel to Austin to continue her fight. “I don’t like bullies and I don’t like people who feel they can intimidate you because they have power and money,” she said, explaining her motivation for testifying. “I’m that one where, if I see a bunch of people who are picking on someone who is defenseless, I’m going to come help them, and if I can’t help them, I’m going to kick the bully’s ass or go to jail because I’m not going to let the victim go through that.”

For coworkers on either side of the vaccine debate, Bridges’s decision to confront her employer is not entirely surprising. “She’s a fighter and she doesn’t care about losing a job because it’s about morality to her,” said Hanley. Bridges said she’s prepared to sacrifice her steady paycheck. “If I have to go back to bartending, I’ll do it. I’ve been a single mom, I’ve cut yards for money, I know how to work and nothing is beneath me.”

Bridges’s newfound celebrity spawned by her pugnaciousness is worrying to health experts who say the information she’s peddling is dangerous. James T. McDeavitt, a doctor and dean of clinical affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine, called the idea of vaccines unleashing severe side effects and the medical establishment suppressing reports of the reactions “categorically untrue.” He pointed to the CDC’s recommendation last month that states temporarily suspend the use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after six individuals developed a rare blood-clotting disorder. Considering that more than 264 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered throughout the United States, he said, they have proved “extraordinarily safe.” “When you do something to two hundred million people and then look back at the data, inevitably you’re going to find that bad things have happened among a population of that size, whether it’s heart attacks or strokes,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean that the vaccine caused those bad things to happen any more than we’d attribute a good thing happening, like winning the lottery, to the vaccine.”

Though she has firsthand experience caring for patients who attribute sudden health issues to COVID-19 vaccines, Bridges said her distrust stems from reading articles shared among her network of coworkers, family, and friends. She also believes the popular internet conspiracy theories that mRNA vaccines, such as those offered by Moderna and Pfizer, alter recipients’ DNA and that the media has aided public health officials’ attempts to censor news of vaccine-related deaths.

Katelyn Jetelina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, whose newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist unpacks pandemic-related science for the public, said that each of Bridges’s fears have not only been debunked, but can easily be traced back to online misinformation. She pointed out that experts, herself included, have for months provided detailed explanations addressing concerns about vaccines altering DNA. She also pushed back against the notion that the record-breaking vaccine development process was rushed, noting that relevant research for a SARS vaccine began in 2003 and, unlike in previous efforts, today’s researchers have benefited from an unprecedented amount of government funding, manufacturing assistance, and volunteers for clinical trials. “Fast,” she said, “doesn’t necessarily mean rushed.”

What is potentially dangerous, Jetelina said, is when health-care workers and other public figures fall victim to misinformation and then use their platforms to influence public opinion. “People trust nurses and physicians with their lives and, quite frankly, it’s incredibly important that they’re spreading the truth on a grassroots front and really not influencing people to make decisions on false pretenses,” she said. “A health-care worker helping to spread misinformation does huge damage.”

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chemorygunko · 7 years ago

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5D Business Ideas

5D business ideas

So as the world and economy are moving, shifting and changing, many of us are starting to question how we make money.

We realise we HAVE TO make money to survive in the 3D world, but for many of us, we can’t stomach doing exactly what we did before, and we’re looking for alternate options that allow us to transition to a more 5D way of being…. and allow us to survive the transition financially.

Cos really, we are not much use as soldiers if we’re starving, freezing, and/or dead ;) LOL :)

But what if you can’t transition to a more 5D way of business?

Yes, there are some businesses that won’t allow for more 5D approaches, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change your business practices :)

You could lower your prices.

You could offer clients a discount, or a chance to pay late, or forgo charging interest.

If you’re flush enough, you could even forgive the debt of some your debtors and take the pressure off them. Chances are that if they haven’t paid you, they haven’t paid others either.

You could offer to do some pro bono work for people or organizations that really need the help.

You could sell unused or redundant stock and donate the proceeds to a charity that will use the funds properly.

Or you could give that stock away to a group that could resell, reuse or repurpose it.

You could use your marketing and PR streams to raise awareness or funds for issues and charities near to your heart - or you could arrange a fundraiser.

One really cool project example I did back in my marketing days, was to get my boss to match the book donations of staff, and the collection was given to a underprivileged school library.

I was also involved in projects like collecting old computer devices to donate to kids in needy schools. People never know what to do with old devices…. so you pick them up, format them and you have a machine that a needy child can learn on. It doesn’t need to be perfect - it just needs to be functional. And it reduces the load of electronic waste going into dump sites.

Or you could do something cool like arrange for instructions on something - like building a home out of old soft drink bottles or tyres - to be printed and distributed to those in need.

Or you could stretch yourself and give up a bit of profit that you’re making, and CREATE a few extra jobs on your staff - even if they are temporary or casual jobs.

And importantly, you can keep money moving.

There’s a great parable of a traveller who stops in in a town one night - a town hit by economic hardship.

He arrives at the hotel in a blustering storm and asks the innkeeper for a room for the night. He pays and goes upstairs to warm himself.

The delighted innkeeper realizes he can pay his butcher’s bill and runs off to the butcher to pay his bill. The butcher gladly accepts and runs off to the local lady of the night to settle his tab.

The lady in question owes money to the innkeeper, and she dashes off to settle her bill with him. He gladly accepts - just before the guest comes down the stairs and requests a refund, because he won’t be staying for the night anymore.

Nobody made any money…but the movement of money settled the debts, took pressure off, and lightened the load of a whole bunch of people.

When people are scared about lack, they tend to hoard - money is no different. But if we have a chance of moving the economy upwards again, it will be because we keep the money moving.

It’s hard to trust in that process at first, but the practice is worth it. And when you are okay with money flowing, you will find that what you need flows to you as well.

Okay that’s more about bigger businesses that may have less flexibility, but anyone can apply any of these.

Now onto the 5D small business ideas...

The point of these is not to be business plan or lay it out in detail - it’s to give you direction. Ideas. Ways to think about it.

Haridressers…. this is a fascinating one, cos your hair becomes very important on the journey at a stage. So, for example, I’m not allowed to cut my hair.

Hair is an extension of the nervous system, and each strand becomes a tendril of connection into the morphic field - so longer hair gives you better information, cos there’s more surface. That’s why spiritual types always have long hair and lean towards it.

So on the first level, hairdressers start battling with how badly people treat their hair, and what that shows about the person’s development. On the second level, they battle working with the actual chemicals - and the use of those is dictated by what the client wants.

A 5D workaround would be to offer a completely organic hairdressing service - masks made from oils and egg and other foodstuff ingredients, for example. And limit coloring to only coloring with henna - as organic and pure as you can find the henna.

You can offer elements like braiding and styling and cutting as well, and you can eliminate hair products. You can also cater to the growing number of woman who are opting for no shampoo.

You could also offer treatments hairdressers usually won’t - like helping moms with lice. Man, even when I was flat broke, I would have gladly paid someone to help me with Jelly’s lice. And she got them more than a few times.

You could also offer head, scalp and shoulder massages, and you could combine the hairdresser and beauty salon with a healing element, like acupressure or crystals, or even just inviting the ladies to come in and offload. So talk therapy while you have your hair done or get a massage.

The same could apply to a beauty salon or nail bar - completely organic with a talk therapy element.

Scrubs made from rough salt and crushed eggshells - you have no idea how amazing this makes your skin feel afterwards.

Hair removal with honey based waxes. Threading to avoid the use of wax for eyebrows, so you limit HOW MUCH you throw away. Foodstuff based masks, organic oils for massages etc.

Completely avoid chemical based stuff altogether... the rule becomes, you only put on your body what you would put in it. With the exception of henna of course lol :)

Another completely organic service you could offer is organic cleaning services.

So instead of using harmful chemicals, you use old fashioned solutions like baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), lemon and vinegar. Coconut oil and other oils.

This would be great for targeting daycares and moms with young kids who want a cleaning service. You could also sell the cleaning products in DIY kits - pre packed little sachets of baking soda etc, already measured out for people.

If you’re into crystals and crafts, you could make spiritual art pieces.

So, for example, little packs of crystals, in specific numbers, with instructions on how to stick them up in designs like crosses, stars, or to use them create crystal grids of power.

There’s also an option for spiritual clothing and fabric items…. you could embroider or design important spiritual symbols onto them - hidden and visible.

Or you could work crystals into the designs, or into hidden pouches on the clothing. I mean, how awesome would it be if every item you put on had some spiritual element to it?

Other options for products are things like carved candles, blessed candles, holy water and holy oil. Many people want access to these items but don’t know how - and don’t trust themselves enough - to make them themselves.

There are a lot of people out there creating “we’ll do the work for you” style events and resources, but as people grow, what they will really want is resources that educate them how to work on themselves and others.

So if you’re thinking educational, aim to arm and empower people with tools they can apply in many situations - there are more than enough of the people catering to those who want to be spoonfed.

Speaking of spoonfed - premade meals, ready to heat meals and school lunches that are real, healthy and organic is an option too.

As is a coffee or tea shop with homemade stuff, maybe a cannabis smoking garden, and large table-style seating for people who want to find company, or need to have a real healing chat with the owner and staff. So all the staff double as healers and can sit down and chat with clients…. coffee with soul ;)

You could also look at ideas like delivering fruit and veg, or healthy lunches, to offices in your area. People often buy junk food for a lack of a better option. so give them an option - and make it easy for them to choose that option.

Speaking of education…. schools for kids who live alternate lifestyles or kids that aren’t vaccinated. Where parents have opted not to vaccinate, they don’t qualify for public schooling or government assistance…. this doesn’t mean they don’t have to go to school though. Affordable schooling for these parents will be a winner in years to come.

So for this, you could become a registered homeschool academy, for example, where you have a curriculum provided by a homeschool provider already, but the rest of the school is lived by 5D standards.

Organic, vegetarian and vegan meals, classes on spirituality and even religions, crystals and healing. These can be taught 5D style - so no exams or tests for these classes you create yourself.

You could cater to ADHD kids where the parents don’t want to medicate, for example, as well as offer real guidance and communication skills to kids - 5D style. Also give them spaces to explore all religions, modalities and practices.

Another great area is tiny homes and alternate lifestyle communities… people will want to start living together in communities again. Moving away from the big homes and sprawling space. Living more simply.

If you are a writer, please use your writing ability. Now - at the level you’re currently at.

You spend a shit ton of time on the journey thinking you aren’t worthy, aren’t good enough, doubting yourself as a healer, and doubting that you have anything of worth to contribute - but you forget about contrast.

We have high standards, and most of us are aiming for God level. That’s a VERY high benchmark.

But if you look at us compared to (contrast) other people, then we are more advanced than most.

This is where contrast steps in - you can really “talk to” the people just above and just below you on the development scale - so we need teachers at every level. Someone like me, I teach the teachers, but there’s only a limited amount of people like me needed.

The people below have a much wider market to work with, because there are way more people at that level. And we need teachers at every level - enough to cater to the amount of people at that level.

So when you write, write from your level of experience, and cherish that. You’re only writing about it to coalesce the info, and because you’re moving on from that stage. Leave the info behind for the people coming after you.

When you’re on the journey, ideas often seem to conflict and contradict each other for a while, with one idea replacing the next. But later on you’ll see why you needed all that understanding in single, bite sized pieces, and how it all ties together in one coherent thread.

Don’t be afraid to show that your thinking has changed - and don’t be surprised when people are shocked at the 180s you do. I’ve lost more than a few friends along the way - and business as well. But you will be well glad you took this risks later on, once you see how it all fits together.

We’re the transition team - and what we do is pave the way for the coming stage and age.

It’s our job to figure out how to put this new way of being into the existing world, to match the new desires arising in people, and to help the world evolve.

And we’re receivers for cosmic information…. so if you have an idea, share it.

There is place for more than one business in the world, of all the necessary types.

The information we’re getting now in shifts is info for everyone - we’re moving towards unification and a sharing economy. So share the ideas please - you’ll only be rewarded with more ideas.

Light, peace and harmony, Amara xo

#5d #3d to 5d #lightworkers #lightworker #lightwarrior #Lightwarriors

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opticien2-0 · 5 years ago

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Coronavirus round-up: Ingka Centres on reopening malls, plus updates from Studio, the ONS, IMRG, Institute of Customer Service, DPD and Shipster

We’re reporting on the effect of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic on the way UK shoppers buy – and on how retailers are responding to that changing behaviour. This update comes as, as of 9am on April 23, 138,078 people have tested positive for coronavirus and 18,738 people have died. Over the previous day, 4,583 people tested positive out of 23,560 tested, and 616 people died.

Ingka Centres says shopper confidence is recovering fast as it reopens first malls

Ingka Centres, part of the Ingka Group that owns Ikea, says it has opened all three of its shopping malls in China while its Luv Shopping mall in Lübeck, Germany, has become the first of its European shopping centres to reopen.

Early figures from its Livat Centres in Wuxi and Beijing show footfall was down by more than two thirds over the first weekend of reopening, but that confidence has recovered fast. Visitors to the Wuxi centre are now at 80% of footfall at the same time last year. On the first day of its Wuhan centre reopening, under shorter operating hours, visitor numbers stood at 70% on a year earlier.

Ingka Centres currently operates 45 centres in 15 markets in Europe as well as in Russia and China. Those centres that have reopened have done so with clear signage around social distancing and hand washing. Restaurants have reopened to offer takeaways, while shops that could reduce their selling area to 800m sq have been able to open.

Gerard Groener, global managing director of Ingka Centres, said: “We were one of the first international businesses to encounter coronavirus. We witnessed first-hand how important it was to take action quickly. When Covid-19 came to our other markets in Europe and Russia, our experience in China meant we were better prepared than we otherwise might have been.

“We have now started re-open our Meeting Places in China and Europe after official advice confirmed it was safe to do so. To rebuild trust and confidence, we have temporarily introduced measures to encourage shoppers to adopt safer shopping behaviours.”

Ingka Centres has waived rent and service fees for its tenants, while also investing driving online traffic to its tenants’ websites and enabling retailers to share home delivery and click-and-collect services. It is also to invest €1.6m in community programmes to help bring local neighbourhoods together.

Ingka Centres has recently bought Kings Mall Shopping Centre in Hammersmith for redevelopment.

Studio trades well ahead of last year

Pureplay Studio says that it is trading well ahead of the same time last year, after ensuring that social distancing and hygiene measures are in place and that deliveries could be made safely.

It says demand is especially strong for toys, games, electricals, fitness and garden products.

"Given the external environment, we are taking a prudent and dynamic approach towards stock intake for the summer period, particularly on clothing, in order to de-risk the business in anticipation of a highly competitive marketplace once the lockdown for high-street retailers is eased," the retail brand’s parent company Studio Retail said in a trading update today.

However, it expects that customers’ incomes will come under pressure and it will follow FCA guidance in relation to its credit sales. As yet, customer requests for forbearance have come to about 1% of its balances, though it says that this could increase, depending on how long the lockdown ends. Outside its warehouses, many staff are working from home. Those who cannot, or who are vulnerable, have been furloughed on full pay.

The retail group, which also runs an education business, says it has enough debt liquidity for near-term cashflow without needing to fall back on government funding.

ONS coronavirus round-up

In its weekly coronavirus round-up, the ONS said a just under a quarter (24%) of businesses had temporarily paused trading between March 23 and April 5, with those in arts and entertainment the most likely to have done so. More than a quarter (78%) of staff at those businesses were furloughed under the government’s Job Retention Scheme, while 14% of staff were on furlough at companies that were still trading.

IMRG: online sales continue to grow

Online sales were up by more than a third (37.4%) in the third week of April, compared to the same time last year according to IMRG figures. The figures, shared in the latest IMRG coronavirus webinar, show sales of clothing still slightly down on last year, while sales of electricals, home and garden, and health and beauty are still well ahead of last year, but declining compared to highs seen in recent weeks.

Analysis of 300 retailers over the pandemic also showed that 42% of retailers who usually offer next-day delivery have suspended the service, although 27% of the full are still offering it. Retailers who had suspended services have largely returned to selling online. Currently only nine are unable to trade, while that figure peaked in March at 19. The experience, said Andy Mulcahy of IMRG, seems to show that it is possible to go dark and then get back online "but warehouse staff have to feel safe".

Shoppers say grocers are doing a good job in the pandemic

More than three quarters (78%) of shoppers say grocers are doing enough to look after their customers during the pandemic, according to a survey of 1,000 UK adults from the Institute of Customer Service. At the other end of the scale are utilities (64.4%) and insurance (66.3%) companies.

More than half of those questioned (55.9%) said keeping customers updated should be a top priority for companies, while 37% said they should listen to customer feedback.

Jo Causon, chief executive of The Institute of Customer Service, said: “In the face of enormous uncertainty and restrictions, customer service teams offer the public far more than simple transactions – they are a vital support service and for many brands, the key link with their customers. The importance of customer service has been thrust into the forefront by this crisis. I think the results reflect that brands may have been benefiting from a period of tolerance from customers, but this may diminish as time goes on.”

DPD staff donate to boost morale on wards

DPD has delivered 60,000 items to hospital wards across the UK as it looks to boost morale among staff and patients. It has created and sent out welfare packs and food and treat packs containing items donated by its staff to 160 NHS hospitals around the UK after palliative care nurse Nikitta Jones asked for help for patients on her ward at the Cynon Valley Hospital near Merthyr Tydfil. She wrote to DPD chief executive Dwain McDonald saying that as families were no longer allowed to visit wards, patients were no longer getting supplies and treats from home.

The items have been delivered as DPD has made thousands of extra deliveries for the NHS to hospitals, GP practices and more, delivering supplies including masks, gloves, and aprons. It has also worked with the 3DCrowd, a community of 3D printer owners who are using their machines to make face masks for the NHS in the face of shortages. DPD collects the component parts from volunteers and takes them, free-of-charge, to a central hub in Sheffield for assembly, and then takes them onwards to hospitals and other facilities.

DPD’s McDonald said: “I think everyone is united on this - we want to do all we can to help the NHS and we want them to know how much we appreciate what they are doing for us. We weren’t expecting this to become a nationwide initiative, but we have the infrastructure and a lot of great contacts at the NHS and when you combine that with a very generous bunch of people, incredible things can happen.”

Shipster software free for those sending out PPE

Shipster is making its software available for free to all those providing goods such as PPE and medical equipment. All of its clients have been offered extended payment terms.

Having more licences available for free means the companies can send goods out more quickly.

Tony Cheetham, mananging director of Shipster, said: “It’s a no brainer really, every company should be looking at what they can do and we’re very lucky to be able to continue trading in the current climate. We have seen an increased demand for shipping in goods such as medical supplies, PPE and food, so we made the easy decision to allow those clients to bump up their licenses as much as they want to with no added cost. This will hold for as long as the government’s lockdown period lasts, and possibly longer if needed.”

Image: Shutterstock

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#Retail 2.0

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gautham04 · 5 years ago

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How AI and IoT will transform Business Growth in 2019

With the trend of progress, new product selection and deployment of aggressive business and artificial intelligence is creating a storm of Internet of Things (IoT). The company is willing to the top in the race only to develop a strategy for the IoT, the IoT reviewing the additional work and receive more values in the installation IOT when using AI. With a basic understanding of the flow chart together with trends and forecasts, AI and IoT help get very clear ideas for further research. Sometimes the AI and IoT interpreted as a broad concept and so we offer a brief definition for the same thing.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Physical items embedded technology network to communicate in external or internal workspace them.

To know more - IoT App Development Company Ahmedabad

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This is a field of computer science dealing with machines supplied by the human intellect that consider themselves capable.

To know more - Artificial Intelligence Development Company in Ahmedabad

IoT has become smarter and does business. They have already begun to integrate artificial intelligence for applications built using IoT to gain insight from their information. By combining IoT with AI, the startup capital for the IoT project grows as fast as they are positioned at the top. large companies in industries ranging or have started to learn more about the combination of AI and IOT also to provide new services and operate more effectively service supplier for IOT - Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle to integrate AI capacity.

There are different purposes and development to utilize a common strategy IoT and AI.

AI with advanced and innovative IoT

IoT application deployment is significantly affected by Artificial Intelligence. Whether it is a small or startup investment, the company has begun to combine IoT with eyes that have achieved greater success over the past few decades. Top of IoT providers now offers an integrated AI application based on machine learning analysis. The reason for the growth of AI is the ability to quickly retrieve information insight. The IoT application platform offers machine learning analysis established that is part of AI to recognize patterns and seek out exceptions in the information generated by smart sensors and devices - the same information pressures, air quality, vibration, and noise. Compared with conventional business applications, AI can accurately predict the operational needs of the business 20 times faster.

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It Avoiding Downtime

In a large number of sectors, to mention two - overseas gas and oil industry or manufacturing can have a huge impact on unplanned downtime that leads to big money. Together with the combo approach AI and IOT can be achieved utilizing predictive maintenance analysis to predict equipment failures before the opportunity to operate smoothly. This helps to get cleared of the danger zone to the economy of unplanned downtime. AI routines can recognize the continuous stream of data from all types of machines to be aware of engine failure.

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Growth Efficiency

AI-enabled IoT also helps in improving operational performance. The predicting equipment failures learning system can also predict operational conditions and parameters necessary to maintain the results with the data sampling continuously to detect the invisible pattern. It helps in identifying the risks of fraud to prevent future downtime. All these predictions and identification cause greater operational efficiency.

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Enhanced Solutions & Products

IoT improved AI helps to generate new services and products. AI's impact of natural language processing techniques is getting better at allowing the machine to speak not to occupy the individual operator. Drones and the AI-controlled Roberts also brought a new trend for tracking and inspection like never before. Directions agile vehicle is possible via the AI business. It can track any valuable data point in planes, trains, trucks, and cars in the search for an efficient route to avoid unplanned downtime.

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Manage Risk

A large number of applications running on a joint strategy AI and IOT helps businesses to predict danger besides understanding for the quick response by activating the safety of employees, reduction in cash, along with cyber threats. There have been many applications that are being used for the detection of fraud at an ATM to predict the risk of stress conditions for employees and law enforcement surveillance monitoring data to identify violations of photos from time to time.

To know more - AI Company in Ahmedabad

Applications for Companies

For larger openings and convenient operation, companies in the industry strive harder to use AI-IOT approach to give a tough competition in the business operations. The predictive ability of machine learning has been included with all versions of Microsoft Azure service providers such as IoT, IBM Watson IoT, along with GE Predix. A large number of IoT and bundle solutions utilizing AI technology. It is also feasible to utilize AI technology with stuff even if it was not created with all eyes in your mind.

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Possible future use AI-enabled IoT Equipment

Face Recognition

This place has a very broad effect on the whole industry. It is a technology that is used and most accurate with AI to reduce the danger. Businesses have started to enter them in the marketing application. Also, it is used in many mobile devices to open cells that ensure higher security of information. Just like the auto-tagging system up where you upload the image and automatically request to tag people by detecting their meetings.

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Security devices

The company has started to use the technology essential fob pure IOT software to open doors and other equipment. It is also useful for businesses that have hundreds of employees to detect fraud routines or other types of suspicious activity. Technology key fob can also help spot access in larger businesses and can provide better security insight. The security system that allowed a fingerprint that provides high levels of protection against theft. Special identification systems as currently in demand worldwide.

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The automotive industry

These industries have been put work into outstanding engineering by adapting management of the cruise and vehicle self-driving to make vehicles safer by helping them with communication and provide data in this time where errors and injuries occur at top speed. It helps in dealing with traffic govern and progress of individuals opposed to the route they want to take to achieve the safest and earlier.

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Automate Tips

Nowadays, online shopping has become a trend and will be at the top of the site and have begun to provide personal advice because of their shopping earlier or purchase items. Here is the approach used to increase sales and marketing while also reducing the hustle for customers. This technique makes it possible to showcase their new products and also increasing needs.

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Industry Internet of Things (IIoT)

The extensive use of the device IoT with industrial equipment generates a lot of information. With the use of AI algorithms implemented for this data group, the business owner can find the problems and fix them in advance as possible by implementing suggestions for other cases. System educated to know elements of internal and external have a great influence on the operation of the machine. Optimization of resources and improved industrial safety will be downsized for the entire production procedure. One of them, the most predictive maintenance is a smart show-stealer of AI used in IIoT. This machine can predict ground maintenance plants using AI algorithms that can assist in generating apparatus such as the self-healing IoT transmitters and sensors.

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Monitoring of Hospital

Machine learning provides a better way to reduce the time and complexity of space in the medical sector. This helps doctors to monitor the health of individuals using personal tracking tools that predict diseases that will come ahead of time. It enriches individual health insurance to identify the disease in the future.

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Conclusion

Artificial intelligence has gotten to the point where he can give you speed up the tasks carried out by people who were once done by the computer. It will pass self-driving cars and planes around the world to work on the program. IoT is the agent that reduces stress for most of the data generated. Many organizations are struggling to monitor and preserve this large amount of data. The Internet of Things is the flow of data between the devices and to find out a solution to the information you need for Artificial Intelligence.

While IoT is very large, it does not add up to far without a sufficient AI framework. The second discovery is necessary to achieve the same dimensions of progress with the ultimate goal to work as beautifully as we believe they should and strength. Researchers are trying to find approaches to make the gadget more thoughtful investigation and programming information with the final aim to produce protected and can be applied to IoT reality. This may require some investment before this happens because the AI advancements that lingered in the back of IoT, but chances are, by and by, there.

Coordinate AI into IoT methods turn out to be important for achievements in IoT-based, the advanced reproductive system is present. So organizations must move quickly to determine how they would push incentives to connect AI and IOT - or face play make up for the lost time in the coming years. The best way to stay aware of IoT-made information and get hold covert adventure utilizing AI (Artificial Intelligence) since the encouragement of all the IoT.

Are you looking for the best Artificial Intelligence Companies for your business development? Fusion Informatics is one of the Top Mobile Application Development Company in India. The Company provides Mobile applications and iOS application development solutions and helps Business owners to reach more customers who want to change their business towards application development, Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Application Development Companies in Bangalore and Machine Learning Development software in Ahmedabad. To know more about Fusion Informatics to visits our Portfolio.

#ai powered iot #iot and ai companies #ai and iot examples #application of ai in iot #iot and artificial intelligence #role of ai in iot #iot artificial intelligence projects #ai app devlopment company #iot app development company

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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On China’s border with North Korea, a reduced trade lifeline is still a lifeline

By Simon Denyer, Washington Post, September 29, 2017

DANDONG, China--The trucks still rumble across the Sino-Korean Friendship Bridge, and a nearby pipeline still pumps crude oil to keep the regime alive in Pyongyang.

But here in the Chinese city of Dandong, at the center of this country’s trade with North Korea, pain and frustration are mounting.

Sanctions approved by the United Nations Security Council to punish North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests and bring it to the negotiating table are starting to bite.

“Personally, the sanctions are hurting me a tremendous amount,” one Chinese trader said, explaining that almost 80 percent of the goods he used to send back and forth across the border--ranging from textiles to chemicals--are now forbidden.

“Both Chinese and North Korean business executives have the same thought--whatever happens, let it happen quickly,” he said, requesting anonymity to speak on a sensitive subject. “If we have to have war, at least let it happen soon. We have to settle this quickly. Things can’t go on like this.”

Successive rounds of U.N. sanctions have cut off more than 90 percent of North Korea’s publicly reported exports--including coal, iron ore, seafood and, most recently, textiles--and have restricted the regime’s ability to earn foreign currency income by sending workers abroad.

China accounts for roughly 85 percent of North Korea’s external trade and is seen by many as the key to forcing Pyongyang to at least freeze its nuclear and missile programs.

Along with Moscow, Beijing has balked at U.S. talk of a complete trade embargo, but foreign and Chinese experts said it has been implementing U.N. sanctions with unusual rigor and applying real pressure on provincial and local government officials in the border region.

The trader, of ethnic Korean descent, said he had not seen a worse climate in nearly two decades trading across the border. Nor had he seen the Chinese government so determined to impose its will--despite a lobbying effort from the local business community.

Customs checks have become more stringent at the border, traders said, not only causing delays but making it harder to smuggle banned items across.

In August, protests erupted near the northern end of the border, in the Chinese city of Hunchun, after Beijing moved to ban seafood imports from North Korea.

Lu Chao, a Korea expert at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, said Chinese cold storage plants and seafood processing workshops across the border have fallen idle, while companies involved in textiles, coal and iron ore were suffering. Tension has even hit revenue for travel agents sending Chinese tourists to North Korea.

“Sanctions bring a huge loss to Chinese traders,” Lu said. “Many companies doing border trade have gone bankrupt, and their owners run away, leaving people unemployed.”

In Dandong, a city that sits at the mouth of the Yalu River at the southern end of the border and that accounts for roughly 70 percent of cross-border trade, small groups of North Korean business executives are still easy to spot walking the streets and in hotels and restaurants near the bridge. Their plain and somber clothing, of dark blues, grays and greens, are livened only by the obligatory badge carrying the faces of the ruling Kim dynasty.

But outside the customs depot on the edge of town--where trucks are loaded and inspected before rolling across the border--two packers said traffic was falling.

On Yijing Street, where North Korean traders head to place their orders, their Chinese counterparts told a similar story. One woman who sells clothes to North Korea--“old-fashioned” colors, nothing bright, garments suitable for a cold country, she explained--has seen sales cut in half this year.

“China stopped buying their coal, and their money began to run out,” she said.

Another woman said her business--sending textiles across the border for assembly and bringing them back as clothing for sale in China--was hurting badly, after Beijing banned the trade last week to comply with the latest U.N. resolution.

“We don’t dare send anything across the border now,” she said, “and we’re trying to get our stuff back from there as quickly as possible.”

So far, though, sanctions have had a relatively modest effect on the overall trade numbers. In August, China’s imports from North Korea fell a modest 1 percent from a year ago, while exports were down 6.2 percent. On a cumulative basis, total trade was actually up 7.5 percent in the first eight months of the year.

That may partly reflect North Korea’s ability to adapt to sanctions, as well as stockpiling by the regime and an attempt by traders to move goods across the border before sanctions hit, experts said.

Chinese exports of corn, bananas and rice rose sharply, while there was even a shipment of 1.8 million tons of coal in August--six months after a ban was supposedly implemented.

Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng told reporters in Beijing that U.N. sanctions allowed a “cushioning” period after a ban is imposed, Reuters reported. Experts said China normally allowed shipments to go through if they had been agreed on before sanctions were announced.

But a bigger question perhaps is whether smugglers can bypass the sanctions.

In the seafood markets of Dandong, there are signs that they can--to some extent.

Water-filled tanks of crabs and clams dominate the produce on sale. With Chinese waters overfished, most would have come from North Korean waters in the Yellow Sea, one trader said. Another man, delivering crabs to the market from the back of his truck, complained that the ban had pushed up the price of the North Korean crustaceans by roughly 50 percent, which in turn had depressed demand.

“The formal trade from North Korea has stopped,” said a third trader, “but there are still ways of getting it for people who are brave and willing to take the risk.”

Fishing boats from Dandong used to cross to North Korea to pick up seafood there, bringing it back to China to pass off as their own catch, bypassing customs.

Until recently, many did so openly during the day, but now the boats travel only at night, traders and fishermen said.

Experts said China can’t be expected to completely shut down smuggling across the 880-mile border, any more than the United States can easily end illegal immigration from Mexico. But there are also reasons to doubt whether local officials are trying as hard as they might, said Christopher Green, senior adviser for the Korean Peninsula at the International Crisis Group.

While Chinese President Xi Jinping is reported to have disdain for his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Un, relationships at provincial and municipal levels, especially in security services, have always been very good. A little leakage serves to defuse domestic tensions and maintain that cross-border network, Green says.

Near the village of Xingguang on the outskirts of Dandong, paramilitary troops and a fire company guard 10 large oil storage tanks, the start of an underground pipeline that supplies North Korea with the crude it needs to keep its military and industry running. It is a symbol of Beijing’s bottom line: keeping the Pyongyang regime alive.

North Korea has apparently been stockpiling fuel, experts said, one reason that civilian fuel prices have risen significantly this year. It also means that the North could probably withstand a temporary cut in oil supplies.

But Beijing will never completely cut the regime’s jugular vein, experts said. It fears that a cut in oil supplies could leave China facing a nightmare scenario: either a hostile and desperate nuclear-armed enemy or, if the regime collapsed, a refugee crisis followed by an American puppet state right on its border.

“Why do we sanction?” asked Lu at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences. “We believe that wrongdoings deserve punishment, but punishment should not be seizing them by the throat and trying to choke them to death.”

#China #North Korea #north korea sanctions #China-North Korea relations

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crimethinc · 7 years ago

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The Poetry of Flames: The Arson Trials in France–From the Courtroom to the Streets

This report details the trials following the arson of a police car set on fire in May 2016 during the upheaval against the Loi Travail in France, and all the expressions of solidarity that accompanied them—including a fresh outbreak of arsons against police infrastructure.

Months pass, years pass, yet the situation in France remains unstable as the rhythm of social and political struggles accelerates. The events we will describe here are a consequence of the political situation in France and in Europe as a whole: the repercussions of the 2008 international financial crisis are still noticeable in our daily lives, European governments and their security policies can’t contain or palliate the “refugee crisis,” the ISIS attacks, the State of Emergency, the COP21, increasing disillusionment with traditional political parties, never-ending austerity measures, elections in which the far right is gaining more and more power.

As is typical in France, the end of the summer holidays heralded the resumption of struggle. Indeed, the newly elected and self-proclaimed “revolutionary”1 French President Emmanuel Macron and his government are preparing a new liberal version of the labor legislation that was the cause of the struggle against the loi travail.. The current version was imposed by the previous Socialist government only a year ago, under Hollande’s presidency, despite a wave of social upheaval that shook France in protest against it.

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Demonstration against the new Loi Travail (labor law) on September 12, 2017.

Facing this new offensive aimed at making labor conditions and life itself ever more precarious, people once again took the streets on September 12 to fight against the new “Loi Travail XXL.” You can read a short review of the events here and watch a video here. More demonstrations are planned to increase the pressure on the new government and its neoliberalism-2.0 vision of society. In anticipation of the first major demonstration against the new work reform, Emmanuel Macron addressed the local French community while visiting Athens:

“(…) Democracy here is fragile; the peace that we have invented in Europe after the War is fragile; the spirit of culture that we have defended and carried here is fragile; this universal drive that brings you here today is fragile. This is why all of this is so fragile that I want to say two things in conclusion. I will be absolutely determined and I will not concede anything—neither to the lazybones, nor to the cynical, nor to the extremists. And I ask you to have the same determination, every single day. Do not concede anything—neither to the egoists, nor to the pessimists, nor to the extremists.”

We can appreciate the contempt and cynicism of this quote.

But the most significant events of September 2017 took place inside the High Court of Paris. Some 16 months after the events, nine individuals faced trial for participating in a spontaneous action and counter-protest in which a police car was set on fire. The trial was scheduled for September 19-22, 2017.

The Day We Stole Fire

Lundimatin summarized the context surrounding the fire that happened on May 18, 2016 at Quai de Valmy.

In, May 2016, while the upheaval against the Loi Travail was still at its height, a police union named Alliance seized the République Square in Paris, the site of the ephemeral French movement Nuit Debout. The union’s main objective was to stage an illusory reconciliation between the French population and their police. To do so, the union invited some major figures from the Front National, the far-right and fascist French political party. As police agents took pictures with fascist stars, other police units that were still on the clock protected their colleagues’ gathering.

Tensions increased between counter-protesters and law enforcement units, who were shoving and pepper-spraying activists as usual. A spontaneous march broke out in response. On its way through the streets of Paris, the crowd encountered a police car stuck in traffic. The car was attacked and set on fire.

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The burning of the police car.

In response, Manuel Valls, then Prime Minister, said that he wanted “relentless sanctions” inflicted on the individuals who took part in the attack. The judicial machinery didn’t take long to designate and arrest its first suspects. When the trials started, two defendants remained incarcerated, six were under judicial control, and another individual couldn’t be found, as he never responded to the summons sent by the court.

Threatened by the uncontrollable rage rebels had unleashed in the streets, which sent sparks of insurrection flying throughout Paris and other cities, the French government saw in this event a perfect opportunity to re-establish order and reassert its authority. As the trials approached, we all knew that they would be dramatically publicized and politicized, as they would pit anti-authoritarians against the institutions of the police and the state itself—and also because the authorities could use the verdict to intimidate anyone who might wish to express opposition towards the state, its laws, and its policies.

Will they succeed? That has yet to be seen.

Clashes in the streets during demonstrations against the new loi travail.

Reducing Their World to Ashes

The following text has been assembled from translations and adaptations of various reports on the trial hearings and articles related to the case. In sharing these narratives, we hope to offer a broader understanding of the case, and to reveal the obvious political repression and spectacle organized by the court, the police, and the state against our companions.

Waiting for the trial to begin.

Day 1: September 19, 2017

This article was originally published on Wednesday, September 20, 2017 by Non Fides.

Paris: Report on the First Day of the Trials Concerning the Police Car Set on Fire

Large numbers of people converged in front of the 14th chamber of the high court, even before the starting hour of the hearing. Journalists were there too. First, they took pictures of those who wanted to be photographed; then they snapped away at the defendants when they were asked to enter the courtroom. Their microphones hovered over the heads of the supporters. Part of the crowd protested and reacted: some umbrellas were opened and brandished so no pictures could be taken, several familiar faces were heckled, and later on, some stickers were stuck on camera lenses. During the defendants’ exit, by a side door, a welcome stampede enabled the crowd to push the journalists away while they were trying to steal some images.

Meanwhile, people rushed in front of the closed barriers and slowly started to warm up by asking for a bigger courtroom. Numerous lawyers also entered the room one by one.

There were at least 18 people in lawyers’ clothing inside the room.

The police let the judiciary press enter the room until the box was full; then they let the defendants’ families enter one by one after checking their IDs. Cops insisted on selecting who was allowed to enter the room and who was not, so only those considered “really close,” “the parents,” “the dad and the mom” were allowed to enter the room. Eventually, however, they ended up letting some of the defendants’ close friends enter without asking for any ID. Finally, they announced that five or six seats were still available for the public.

Inside, some seats remained available, as well as some space for those who preferred to remain standing, but a large part of the public stayed outside with the rest of the journalists.

Once the judges were seated, a lawyer took the floor to complain about the lack of space and demanded a bigger room “in the name of all the defense lawyers.” Someone in the audience pointed out that the room was also way too small to welcome all the relatives and the public who wanted to show support at the trial. The judge replied curtly that this person was not allowed to speak.

But as an answer to the lawyer’s request, the hearing was suspended a first time.

It resumed after half an hour. Some additional chairs were brought for the lawyers and in order to enable more journalists to enter the room.

When the judge tried to call the roll of the defendants, the lawyers went further by explaining that the conditions of the trial were not “worthy of a normal defense,” as they were prevented from having physical access to their files. A lawyer added that it was important to let the journalists enter the courtroom, as it was a “symbolic case” involving police violence. Another took the prosecutor to task for being personally responsible for scheduling the trial in such a small room. In their turn, journalists put pressure on the court to allow their colleagues outside to report on the hearing. To that end, they even threatened to leave the courtroom all together.

The president of the bar, previously called by the defense lawyers, asked for some calm and to take into consideration the observations and requests made by the defense. The judge responded that additional chairs had already been brought to the room. The latter was also talking at some point about letting everyone in the audience sit in on the hearing by establishing some kind of rotation, to take place every two hours. He also insisted on the “serenity” wherein the trial had to take place.

Meanwhile, outside, the slogan “a bigger room” was amplified to such an extent that we could actually hear it over the repeated calls for calm made by the Judge. Throughout the entire hearing, we would hear inside the courtroom all the slogans chanted by those who remained outside and continued to demand “a bigger room” and freedom for the prisoners.

The defense lawyers stood up to officially protest.

One of them explained that it would be impossible to rotate the public: how to choose among them? How to deal with those who would not want to leave? Should we rotate the journalists too? He asked for the hearing to be suspended for the rest of the day and for the trial to resume in a bigger room the next day.

Another comment: even with the added chairs, the lawyers didn’t have access to their computers, and couldn’t open their files properly, while the prosecutor was comfortably seated on his chair with a direct access to a computer. There was no “equality of arms.” The Judge told him not to be so excessive, and asserted that this problem is always solved in practice.

A lawyer threatened to move the arguments to the juridical field and cited the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as the rights of the defense. He threatened to file requests to nullify the trial if it continued under such circumstances.

The judge took him at his word and said that the court was ready to deliberate on referral requests as well as on nullity requests if they were formulated, and this after the prosecutor’s opinion. The lawyers confirmed.

The prosecutor didn’t have any opinion of the adjournment’s request, as he didn’t know the availability of the other rooms in the court. He insisted on saying that “since the first minute of the hearing, the defense’s rights were respected” and insisted on the efforts provided by the court, explaining that the day’s circumstances were the fault of lawyers who added their names to the original list of participants, and that the public and the journalists already had enough space.

The room growled inside. We could still hear chants and shouts coming from outside.

The hearing was suspended once again so the judges could rule on the request for adjournment.

In their turn, the judges announced the end of the hearing for the day. The trial would resume the following day (Wednesday September 20) inside the 16th Chamber at 1:30 pm, one floor downstairs. We were expecting a criminal chamber (like that day) with probably more space for the lawyers and at best 20 to 30 more people in the public, but probably no more “serenity” than that day.

Anyway, the cops took the people gathered outside of the room off the premises of the high court as they chanted numerous slogans, including “Fire to the prisons!” and “Freedom for all!”

Outside the courtroom.

Day 2: September 20, 2017

This article was originally posted on Thursday September 21, 2017 by Non Fides.

Paris: Report on the Second Day of the Trials Concerning the Police Car Set on Fire

On Thursday, the hearings began at 10 am in the 16th Chamber. The pressure was set up from the entrance of the Court where gendarmes physically searched bags after checking them through x-ray scanners. They were especially looking for stickers, handouts, and umbrellas as they had received the order to seize such items. These security measures blocked the progress of the waiting line. As a result, numerous supporters found themselves stuck outside, as well as four defendants who hadn’t been summoned. The latter finally gained access to the courtroom at 1:50 pm.

The hearing opened with the roll call of the defendants and the civil parties, the reminder of the charges, and the roles attributed to everyone involved in the case.

Then, several lawyers argued to nullify the trial. First, the lawyers of two individuals still incarcerated claimed that their detention was irregular, as no written decisions were published after the previous hearing on July 17, 2017. Another lawyer filed a conclusion concerning the inadmissibility of considering the police union Alliance as a civil party in this trial. They based their argumentation on specific case laws that specify the conditions in which a professional union can or cannot form a civil party during a trial.

The Alliance lawyer answered this request by contesting the admissibility of the conclusions, arguing that Alliance has been a civil party since the beginning of the trial, and such criticism should have been made earlier.

After the lawyers replied to the arguments presented by the prosecutor, the court left the room for a moment, then returned. It was decided that the “incidents would be added to the content,” which means that the decisions regarding the requests to nullify would be pronounced only during the verdict of the trial.

A dozen police officers from Alliance occupying two rows in the back of the room were making comments such as “Can’t they force these assholes to stand up?” (referring to the individuals who refused to stand up when the members of the court entered the room), to which some people answered them: “Shut up!”

Then the judge began summarizing the facts. The testimonies of some storekeepers were read, numerous videos were presented and watched, and the statement of Allison Barthélémy—the passenger officer in the burnt car—was read, even if she wasn’t present inside the courtroom.

Next, Kevin Philippy, the driver of the car, was interrogated at the bar. Some laughs were heard inside the room when he asserted that his “aggressor” was targeting his head because he “wanted to put him on the ground so he could finish [read: kill] him.”

The judge continued the summary of the investigation, mentioning the interrogations of some individuals arrested on May 18 but not accused in the case, as well as the testimony of the anonymous cop who testified against four of the defendants. A lawyer highlighted that the chronology in the judge’s account was incorrect, as the latter hadn’t mentioned the interrogations of the actual defendants yet, while people were arrested before the publication of the testimony of the anonymous police officer (the intelligence police officer code name during the trial was T142). The judge justified himself saying that he did so “to be clearer.”

The first defendant was interrogated. She appeared before the judge in custody and accused of throwing a small metal post into the front windshield of the police car. The judge quoted her previous interrogations and commented on several pictures attached to the file, but the questioning ended soon as the defendant refused to talk.

A second defendant was called to the bar. He was accused of hitting the car and one of the police officers with a metallic rod. He recognized the facts and explained them by the increasing anger he felt while taking part of several demonstrations and realizing the disproportionate police violence during them. He ended his explanation by saying that he regretted his actions and apologized to the police officer. For almost two hours, the judge and the prosecutor interrogated him. They confronted him with other videos of the demonstration, in order to try to demonstrate that he was also violent towards police officers on other occasions.

After a hearing suspension, the judge reviewed the calendar of the trial. He announced that the discussions would start on Thursday and Friday at 10 am and the verdict would be given on Friday September 29.

Then a third defendant was called to the bar. Only accused of “participating in the gathering,” he was questioned on some elements found during a house search, in particular on his helmet collection, on the choice of the brand of his jacket, on the events of the demonstration, and on the fact that the latter was unauthorized. The question of knowing when he decided to put his hood on seemed to be really dear to the judge’s heart, who was showing at the same time a pixelated picture in which we were supposed to see the defendant putting his hood on. The room protested, but according to the favorite sentence of the judge, “everyone will appreciate this.” (We thought that it was his role to “appreciate” whether the evidence was correct and admissible, but whatever.)

In turn, the fourth and last defendant of the day was called to the bar. He was accused with the same charges as the previous one, but also for refusing to have his DNA taken during his arrest. In a situation similar to the previous one, an object was extracted from the sealed evidence in order to learn whether it was a truncheon or a broken stick of a shovel. Then a debate began regarding the presence of “tear gas” in his house (we supposed that the judge was referring to pepper spray).

The courtroom reacted when the judge presented some pictures that supposedly showed the defendant. It was obvious that it wasn’t him in the pictures, especially because the individual in the so-called evidence was a smoker, while the defendant is not. His lawyer protested that there was no objective element in the accusation. The defendant admitted his presence at the demonstration but insisted that he wasn’t next to the car during the attack and that he wasn’t masked.

At 8 pm, the hearing was over. It would resume the next day at 10 am for the interrogations of the other four defendants.

The police intercepted two individuals as they exited the court and forced them into an unmarked police car. They were sent to an unknown destination, maybe because they were seen on video cameras putting stickers inside the Court premises.

Arrests at the Exit of the High Court, during the Trial Concerning the Police Car Set on Fire

It seems that a small group of people were blocked at the exit of the court with their identity taken. Finally, two individuals were immobilized in one corner of the courtyard (the walls had bars on them) before being taken away for having put some stickers inside the premises. The police may have used video surveillance to bring these charges. Some of the people present during the arrest reacted and tried to block the police car that was taking the two arrestees away.

If the crowd had been more numerous and more determined, it would probably have been possible to make this arrest more difficult to manage, or at least not to let the cops do their dirty work so quietly.

“Fire to all the prisons! Hurray!

Day 3: September 21, 2017

This article was originally posted on Friday, September 22, 2017 by Non Fides.

Paris: Report on the Third Day of the Trials Concerning the Police Car Set on Fire

The hearings took place from 10 am until 7:30 pm, with an hour break at noon.

The four defendants who hadn’t been interrogated the previous day were questioned one after another. The first one was accused of hitting the driver and breaking the back windshield of the car with a post. The second one was accused of having been present in the area during the attack. The third was accused of having pointed out the cop car during the movement of the crowd through the street and for having raised his arms to the sky when the police car was set on fire. The fourth and last defendant was accused of having broken the back right side window of the car with a small post.

Then the judge presented the evidence against the ninth defendant, accused of throwing the flare inside the car. This defendant wasn’t present in the courtroom and wasn’t represented by a lawyer.

The atmosphere inside the courtroom was tense. Two individuals who came to support the defendants were expelled, and one of them was directly thrown off the court premises. Gendarmes were threatening us with expulsion if we looked at our phones, while the Alliance cops (who came to support the civil parties) seemed to play “Candy Crush” in the back of the room. On several occasions, there were loud reactions among us concerning the remarks of the prosecutors or the behavior of the gendarmes and Alliance cops.

At one point, the gendarmes in front of the courtroom tried to admit a pro-cop individual dressed in a blue, white, and red shirt (patriotism is fashionable). It was the same individual who had been insulting people the previous day. Some supporters decided to block him, but unfortunately police officers took that opportunity to expel some supporters from the premises of the high court. The pro-cop guy was permitted to stay in the courtroom while most of the evicted persons were not allowed to re-enter the court.

The two individuals arrested the previous day were released after 24 hours in jail, with no further action taken against them so far. Inside the corridors of the court, an investigation was taking place. Two police officers with photos of anarchist stickers were wandering around looking at the walls. At some point, the closest restrooms were entirely disinfected and cleaned—but not for long, as soon after, they were covered with graffiti and stickers once again.

In addition, the previous night, a total of 1500 square meters of police barracks containing vehicles and offices had been set on fire in Grenoble in solidarity with the defendants. The next afternoon, during the demonstration in Paris, the cortège de tête (the head of the march) was chanting: “A la 1re, à la 2,e à la 3e voiture brûlée, liberté pour tous les inculpés.” (“At the 1st, at the 2nd, at the 3rd car set on fire, freedom for all the defendants.”)

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Footage of the demonstration that took place in Paris on September 21.

Day 4: September 22, 2017

This article was originally posted on Saturday September 32, 2017 by Non Fides.

Paris: The Prosecutor Requests Years of Prison in the Case of the Police Car Set on Fire

The verdict, initially scheduled for September 29 at 11 am, was postponed and delivered later. A more precise date was given the following Wednesday, September 27, the day when the lawyers would finish their pleas from 9:30 am until 1 pm, during a final hearing. Moreover, at the end of the day, around 9:30pm, the court had to decide whether to release Kara and Krem, still incarcerated at the time of the trial. The court refused to release them. In solidarity, part of the audience shouted “Freedom” and “Courage” inside the courtroom.

The prosecution’s closing speech was delivered by the two prosecutors, Olivier Dabin and Emmanuelle Quindry. They said it was “the trial of some rioters” organized “in a horde.” Other choice quotations included, “Where and who are the fascists and extremists when we fight the police, the justice system, the journalists?” “During a house search, we found the stickers of the ultra-left movement.” “I challenge anyone to say that justice covers police violence.” “The great Lénine said, ‘Anarchists are reactionaries.’” “For the uncompromising ones, silence is a right but it is also a silence of approval.”

The charges and threatened sentences:

Against the individuals accused of participating in “a gathering with the objective of committing violence,” but also for “voluntary violence on a PDAP” (Person in Charge of Public Authority), with 4 aggravating circumstances: violence in an assembly, use of weapons, and masked face:

Joachim (Swiss): 8 years imprisonment coupled with a detention order (he is currently on the run; an arrest warrant has been issued, as he is accused of throwing the flare that set the cop car on fire).

Antonin: 5 years imprisonment with a one-year suspended sentence coupled with an order to be kept in jail and forbidden to take part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. He already served 10 months of preventive detention.

Nicolas: 5 years imprisonment with a two-year suspended sentence without a detention order (due to his “clear act of contrition during his hearing” and the absence of “recidivism risk” according to the prosecutor), and being prohibited from taking part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. He already served 13 months of preventive detention/remand.

Krem: 4 years imprisonment, currently kept in detention and facing a ban on taking part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. He had been in preventive detention/remand for 7 months.

Kara: 3 years imprisonment with a one-year suspended sentence and a 3 years ban of entering the French territory (due to her US nationality). She had been in preventive detention/remand for 16 months already.

Thomas: 3 years imprisonment with a two-year suspended sentence coupled with a ban on participating in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. No detainment order (this means he faces one year of actual imprisonment).

Against the individuals only accused of having taken part in “a gathering with the objective of committing violence”:

Angel: one-year suspended sentence and a ban on taking part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. He already spent 42 days in preventive detention/remand.

Bryan: one-year suspended sentence and a ban on taking part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. A €1000 fine for refusing to give his DNA. He already spent 4 days in preventive detention/remand.

Leandro: one-year suspended sentence and a ban on taking part in any demonstration in Paris for 3 years. He also already spent 4 days in preventive detention/remand.

Requests made by the “civil parties”:

The police union Alliance asked for €5000 for “moral prejudice” regarding their professions (with arguments such as “these acts of violence are similar to terrorist acts”). The lawyer of Alliance is Ms. Delphine Des Villettes.

Kevin Philippy, the cop who was driving the car, asked for €30,000 of “damages and interests” (his lawyer is Ms. Michèle Launay). Kevin Philippy, security assistant, tried to pass the official exam to become a policeman four times without success. Thanks to the incident of the police car arson, he was exempted from the exam and accepted into the police school of Sens, from which he “graduated” on March 20, 2017. Currently a trainee police officer, he will be given tenure in March 2018.

The judicial agent of the State asked for €1500.

Bonfire of the vanities.

Day 5: September 27, 2017

This article was published on September 28, 2017 by Paris-Luttes.Info.

Report on the Last Day of the Trial for the Police Car Set on Fire

The defendants Kara and Krem attended, but in custody, under arrest.

This morning, the atmosphere was really quiet inside the Court. Absolutely no noise from outside disrupted the pleas of the two lawyers besides the anxious sound of the sirens of police cars.

The hearing started with the plea of Antoine Vey, the lawyer representing Nicolas.

In front of a rigid, even stoical judge, Antoine Vey began by denouncing the political aspect of the trial: the instructions of Manuel Valls, who had been Prime Minister at the time, but also the use of police premises during custody in which flags of the police union Alliance (known for extremely reactionary politics) were displayed on the walls.

He also highlighted the fact that the prosecutor shook hands with the civil parties when she arrived at the court that morning, adding, “You would never do that with the defendants!”

He explained that the defendants having been described as guilty even before the trial took place, and that this had had serious consequences for them.

Antoine Vey defended Nicolas affirming that he “did not handle the events, he did not manage this violence. He did not claim it.” After quoting Foucault about “the facts, the sanction, the torture,” the lawyer asked for the sentences to be personalized.

“Because there is violence during demonstrations, we should not take part in them? (…) Is it the ideas that are on trial?”

Antoine Vey came back to Nicolas’s personal political path, how he had been shocked by the violence of law enforcement agents towards demonstrators during the protests against the Loi Travail. Nevertheless, his client is not an “ideologue.”

“Madam the prosecutor, you remind me of Javert!” the lawyer said frankly concerning the severity of the sentences demanded by the two prosecutors on Friday, September 22. (In Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, Javert is a police inspector who becomes obsessed with the pursuit and punishment of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict.)

“Being armed doesn’t mean wearing a black vest, a beanie, and some sunglasses!”

Then, he explained that the “weapon” wasn’t an iron bar but a flexible metallic rod. He demanded that Nicolas should be judged with clemency. “He was severely punished, he is inserted in society. There is absolutely no more reason to put him back to prison, except for the sake of a putrid political message.”

Antoine Vey concluded his plea affirming that: “If you send him back to prison, you would have judged him, but you would have not brought back justice.”

Then, it was the turn of Arié Alimi, Antonin’s lawyer, to plead.

He started his speech by showing some compassion towards the civil parties, then reminded the court that his grandfather was a police instructor in Algeria during the state of emergency.

He explained that since the events in Sivens (where the young demonstrator Rémy Fraisse was murdered on the night of October 25, 2014 by a police grenade), there has been a clear change of doctrine regarding law enforcement.

“How can we explain why there are no more children and strollers during demonstrations nowadays? (…) Before, the doctrine was to keep the crowd away, today it is to hurt and to discredit a social movement.”

He said to spare a thought for Rémy Fraisse, the Traoré family, Théo, and the Bergson’s student (all victims of police violence). He expressed himself strongly against the imbalance in the prosecutors’ closing speech.

“An eight-month suspended sentence for the police officer who fractured the nose of the high-school student of Bergson—against eight years imprisonment coupled with an arrest warrant for a flare thrown inside a police car! This is not intelligible!”

For several years, Antonin was constantly targeted by the DRPP (the Intelligence department of the Parisian police). In the 11 cases the DRPP presented against him, Antonin was discharged, or the cases were dropped.

“This is a calumnious denunciation against my client, I can go so far as to say so.”

The lawyer denounced the administrative logic of the famous “notes blanches” (“white notes”) of the Intelligence service. “The anonymous testimony doesn’t make any sense anymore.”

Arié Alimi analyzed the anonymous testimony (“T142”). The police officer indicated at numerous occasions that he didn’t want to answer the lawyers’ questions. According to Arié Alimi, the testimony is no longer credible. The police officer’s refusal to explain his statements could allow the defense to initiate legal proceedings against him.

Antonin had an injured wrist in May 18, 2016, an injury that he received a month and a half before the day of the demonstration, “therefore, he couldn’t lift the post during the events” explained his lawyer.

“We are confronted with a method in which we want a result, an answer, from the very start!”

Then, Alimi returned to the clothing and physical details mentioned during the hearings that were used to charge Antonin. Nike shoes, for example, are a very common brand among young people. Keeping your phone in your pocket is only doing “what everybody else does.” Antonin has dark rings under his eyes? A lot of young people “spend their nights in front of the television or partying.”

The lawyer brandished several pictures taken from videos and printed on cardboard paper to support his arguments concerning the common clothing features of demonstrators. According to Arié Alimi, the prosecutor didn’t use all the pictures available in the file. The prosecutor “lied intentionally.” The testimony of the police officer was that Antonin was wearing a neck warmer and not a hood; moreover, during house search, they didn’t find the incriminating vest. “He is not the aggressor!” said his lawyer. The “kung-fu” police officer (a nickname given to Kevin Philippy, the police officer assaulted during the events) didn’t even recognize Antonin behind the one-way glass.

“What additional proofs do you want? (…) Why did we stubbornly and against all odds accuse Antonin? (…) We absolutely wanted to condemn a political opponent. Politics contaminate our justice, we are in France, not in Russia!”

Arié Alimi asked for discharge for Antonin.

The verdict of the trial was to be delivered on Wednesday, October 11 at 10 am.

The court cleared out while Krem and Kara were handcuffed before being sent back to prison. Shouts of “Freedom!” echoed in the hallway of the high court of Paris.

Our rage is inextinguishable.

Then, Slowly, the Fire Spreads…

Solidarity has always been a core principle of anarchist values. Without a doubt, it is an extremely important weapon, especially during moments of hardship or isolation. As in every upheaval that ends with massive waves of repression, the demonstrations against the Loi Travail in 2016 sadly resulted in numerous people being injured, arrested, and prosecuted.

Nevertheless, acts of solidarity broke out immediately. Activists snatched arrestees back from the police during demonstrations, preserving their freedom. People gathered in front of police stations where friends were arrested and organized benefit shows to cover arrestees’ legal expenses.

Regarding the arson trials, you can find a detailed list of solidarity actions here. A version of this list is available here in English.

One action even made the national news. In the middle of a week of the trials, some people decided to send a clear message to the state and all forms of authority, expressing love and solidarity with the defendants. On the night of Thursday, September 21, a group entered a police barracks and set it on fire. Here is the translation of their communiqué:

Incendiary Solidarity

This Thursday (Sept. 21), at 3 am, second day of the trial of the burnt cop car.

We have entered the gendarmerie barracks of Vigny-Musset. We set on fire 6 intervention vans and 2 logistics trucks. The garage and the warehouse were devastated for more than 1500 square meters.

This action is part of the wave of solidarity attacks with the individuals on trial during these days.

Big hugs to Kara and Krem.

A thought for Damien, who was beaten up by cops recently.

Whatever the outcome of the trial will be, we will continue attacking the police and their justice.

Our hostility is a spreading fire.

Some nocturnals.

…and the Pressure Increases

Needless to say, the attack against the gendarmerie station, as well as the intensity of the arson, caught the attention of the French government. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, the Minister of the Interior, Gerard Collomb, who is well known for his authoritarian tendencies, announced his “consternation” and “indignation” about this attack. He added: “The gendarmerie will do everything possible to seek and identify the authors of this particularly serious act, so they can be accountable for their actions in front of the court. (…) All measures are being taken so the equipment and the vehicles can be replaced rapidly.”

Another mainstream article, this time from Libération, explains that the entire offices of the gendarmerie were reduced to ashes, including the criminal investigation department. Moreover, the “wave of attacks” mentioned in the arson communiqué echoes the arson of five police vehicles in Limoges on Tuesday, September 19, 2017, a few hours before the opening of the trial. In the same article, we learn that local authorities noticed that, lately, numerous anonymous arsonist actions and communiqués were posted on independent medias platforms such as Indymedia. According to the journalist, this reveals a special use of arson among some radicals, especially against “necro-technologies”: arson against a mobile phone antenna in Ardèche last July; arson of Enedis’ vehicles and offices in Grenoble last May and in the department of Drome last June (Enedis, or ERDF, is the company that controls and manages the electrical network in France); or against “social control,” like the arson of CCAS vehicles in Grenoble last March.

The remains of the police station in Grenoble.

Immediately following the appearance of this arson communiqué, the French authorities once again undertook to employ the chief tools at their disposal, fear and intimidation. Even if we all know that the state will always defend its legitimacy and power by all means necessary, we can perceive an obvious escalation of state repression against anarchists and radicals. One of the best examples is the aftermath of G20 in Hamburg. After the rebellion against the G20 summit that lit up this past summer, in addition to several trials and sentences requested against people arrested during the G20, the German government struck back against “left-wing extremism” by shutting down Linksunten Indymedia and raiding several houses.

In France, several hours after publishing the communiqué on their website, Indymedia Grenoble received an email from the Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (a police organization dedicated in fighting cyber-criminality), asking them to remove the arson communiqué within 24 hours and threatening to shut down the media platform. The communiqué is considered to be “advocating terrorist acts.” You can read a copy of the email sent to Indymedia Grenoble here. Indymedia Nantes also received this official request. Surprisingly, and without giving a clear explanation of their decisions, both websites decided to give way to the authorities’ request. You can read their communiqués (still in French) here and here. Meanwhile, mainstream media outlets published the same communiqué without receiving any threats from authorities.

These events raise several questions: How independent can alternative media be? Why obey the threats of the police and the state? How “safe” are we when we use such platforms? How far are authorities willing to go to track down anarchists and other radical activists? But also—how can we effectively resist this escalating repression? It is more important than ever to discuss these issues as the witch hunt continues in the streets, the courtrooms, and online.

The remains of the police station in Grenoble.

The Verdict: The State Attempts to Extinguish the Flames

The following is an adaptation and translation of an article posted on October 11, 2017 by lundimatin.

Quai Valmy: Summary of the Sentencing

The nine defendants were condemned to a total of 30 years of prison and more than 40,000 euros in damages.

The police presence was particularly visible this morning in front of the high court and inside the halls of the palace. Numerous gendarmes were also supporting the walls of the courtroom. Once the defendants sat down, the hearing started with the conclusions raised in limine litis. The court stated that having the police union Alliance as a civil party in this trial was admissible, and that the detention orders against Kara and Ari (aka Krem) were legitimate.

Then the court examined the content of the case file and the main charges selected. The president invoked a restrictive use of the concept of participating in a gathering with the purpose of committing violence, and concluded that the simple fact of hiding one’s face wasn’t enough to confirm this charge. Regarding the intentional element mentioned in the charges, he reckoned that the individual had to show a will to participate, or for others to participate, in these acts of violence.

Concerning the anonymous testimony, without discussing the quality or legitimacy of the witness, the court insisted on its convincing force, but pointed out that this testimony itself wasn’t enough to establish guilt. Therefore, other elements and evidence should support it. Regarding the acts of severe violence, he highlighted that, apart from the use of the metal bar, posts, and flares or smoke bombs, the fact of hitting an immobilized vehicle with bare hands, while two persons where still inside the vehicle, was sufficient to be characterized. Concerning the destruction of the vehicle by arson, the Court concluded that the collective action contributed to the realization of the damage.

Then, the court discussed the facts.

Regarding Angel and Bryan, the court concluded that the charge of participation in a violent gathering couldn’t be used against them from the moment that the investigation failed to establish where the two defendants were during the assault on the car, so the court discharged them. However, Bryan was sentenced for refusing to give his DNA.

Concerning Kara, the court reminded the audience that she recognized her culpability. Then, via the voice of its president M. Alçufrom, the court talked at length about the hypothetical consequences of her action… “And what if the windshield had shattered? The two police officers would probably be dead…” The president even discussed Kara’s journey: she came from the US, then stayed in Germany and Kurdistan, adding that “she held back from assaulting police officers in other countries,” and affirmed that somewhere else, for such actions, “she could have vanished into thin air in the proper sense, as well as in the figurative sense.” According to the president, she “took the liberty of acting that way” because she knew the behavior of the French police.

Regarding Nicolas, the president noted that he immediately recognized the facts, then insisted on the seriousness of the committed acts. M. Alçufrom considered that when exiting his vehicle in flames, the police officer “tried to escape from a certain death,” this is why it is important “to honor the courage of M. Philippy,” who “wasn’t a kung-fu police officer, but a courageous man.” Considering the regrets expressed by the defendant, the court estimated that “his recidivism risk was low.”

In the case of Antonin, the Court mentioned the “blunt identification” made by the anonymous witness. Then he took every single photograph presented by Arié Alimi (Antonin’s lawyer), examined all of them, and noticed some differences with the assailant. He even mentioned a different coloring of the eyebrows between the two individuals. However, the different color tones of the clothing could be attributed to the different angles and point of views of the pictures taken… On the fact that the anonymous witness (who pretended that he was constantly looking at Antonin during the action) didn’t see Antonin changing clothes, the president concluded, “there were too many people to see everything.”

The court retained as incriminating evidence the contradictory declarations of Antonin during the investigation, declarations that all turned out to be false. The court even asserted that the tracking and triangulation of his cellphone enabled them to locate him near the store he said he had spent the afternoon in, but unfortunately, there was nothing to prove that he was actually inside of it. The court imputed the blows against the driver to him, as well as the insertion of the post in the back windshield of the car, due to “the perfect correlation between the attacker and Antonin.” In the meantime, the court invoked “the absence of any reasonable doubt” regarding his identification. The president qualified these as acts “of extreme gravity” which embodied an “urban guerilla scene,” and asserted that Antonin attacked the police officers as some others would “attack black people because they are black.” Finally, the court also condemned the absence of regrets expressed from the defendant, the refusal to discuss the violence endured by the two police officers, and multiple internet researches on the effects of different acids. The president concluded by asserting the existence of a risk of recidivism.

Concerning Léandro, prosecuted for participating in a violent gathering, the court concluded that his behavior wasn’t passive, that he encouraged the authors of the violence by his presence. The president reminded him that when the court asked him why he didn’t step back when the attack started, he answered during the hearing that “he didn’t have to step back.” The court concluded with a “characterized” participation to the violent gathering.

Regarding Thomas, the president recalled in detail his behavior during the demonstration, mentioning the blows and punches he administered to the car, though this aspect hadn’t even been mentioned in the file previously. He was convicted for acts of violence and degradation.

Concerning Ari, the Court concluded that his passport picture matched in all criteria the picture of the assailant taken in the metro (his eyebrows and his two moles—note that this picture also precisely matched two other individuals at the beginning of the investigation…). Regarding the specific strand of hair, the court explained that they only based their identification on the black and white picture that was handed to the defense (and not the color photo inside the official case file). Then, they mentioned that the clothes seized in the squat (sunglasses and black gloves) were identical to those visible on the videos. Considering Ari guilty as charged, the court said that his silence didn’t enable them to know his motivation, but anyway, “no cause could justify the use of violence.”

To finish, the court concluded that Joachim (from Switzerland) had been identified in the picture, and that the study of his phone record allowed them to establish his actual presence in France during the events. The president concluded saying that Joachim could have killed the police officers and that a flare was at least as dangerous as, or even more dangerous than, a Molotov cocktail… [sic]

In conclusion, the following sentences were pronounced:

Angel: Discharged.

Bryan: Discharged for taking part to the gathering, but sentenced to a €1000 fine, with a reprieve of €500, for refusing to give his DNA.

Léandro: Guilty for taking part in the gathering, 1 year suspended prison sentence (and no ban on participating in demonstrations).

Thomas: Guilty, sentenced to 2 years imprisonment with a 1 year suspended sentence.

Kara: Guilty, sentenced to 4 years imprisonment with a 2 year suspended sentence, held in detention.

Ari: Guilty, 5 years imprisonment with a suspended sentence of 2 years and 5 months, held in detention.

Nicolas: Guilty, 5 years imprisonment with a suspended sentence of 2 years and 6 months, without a detention order.

Antonin: Guilty, legal recidivism, 5 years imprisonment with a 2 year suspended sentence without an order for detention.

Joachim: 7 years imprisonment with an arrest warrant.

The last six defendants were also condemned to pay a total of €5000 to the police union Alliance; €6100 to the State judicial agent for Mme. Allison Barthélémy; €7300 to the State judicial agent for M. Kévin Philippy; €10,000 to Mme. Barthélémy for her moral prejudice, and €12,000 to M. Phillipy for the prejudices endured. Finally, each of them would have to pay €600 for procedure costs…

A poster inviting people to gather in Ménilmontant on October 11 to respond to the verdict.

Yesterday, Today, or Tomorrow: The Fire Will Never Go Out!

Several gatherings were organized to greet the verdict of the trial on October 11, 2017. Many people gathered outside the court around 10 am to support the defendants. As mentioned in the article by lundimatin, numerous law enforcement units were protecting the surrounding area and entrances to the high court, which is located on Ile de la Cité in the center of Paris. According to one article, when the verdict was pronounced, people outside the courtroom shouted “Tout le monde déteste la police/la Justice,” “Ni oubli, ni pardon,” “Liberté!” (respectively, “Everyone hates the police/Justice,” “No forgetfulness, no forgiveness, “ “Freedom!”) before being pushed out of the building by police forces.

Later that night, several hundred people gathered in Ménilmontant despite the deployment of police forces in all the neighboring districts (between République and Bastille). According to an article published by Paris Luttes Info, there was a similar police presence on the night of the last presidential election.

The action started, but rapidly police forces intervened and managed to block part of the crowd. However, the police didn’t succeed in containing the collective rage and euphoria of the night. The greater part of the procession avoided the police lines and rushed through the narrow streets of Paris, determined to express their love and solidarity with the defendants and to show their hate for the state and its justice. Walls were repainted with messages, the storefronts of banks, a clothing company, a business school, and jewelry stores were smashed, and several trash containers were set on fire. Then the storm dispersed and vanished into the darkness of the night.

Meanwhile, the mobilization against the “Loi travail XXL” continues. The last demonstration took place on October 10, 2017, drawing between 210,000 and 400,000 people everywhere in France. (In France, like everywhere else, authorities and organizations are always at odds as to the number of people taking the streets). After the afternoon demonstration in Paris, several hundred people decided to occupy the Institute of Geography at the Sorbonne University. Police units swiftly blocked the entrance so no one could enter the building. While the occupation was in effect, the occupiers published the following communiqué:

We, occupiers of the Institute of Geography, occupy this site for several reasons. First, we refuse all neoliberal and security policies, whether from Macron or not. We occupy in the same state of mind as the ones who filled the movement of spring 2016 with life. We also occupy in solidarity with the defendants of the Quai Valmy case. We ask for the release of all the defendants, knowing that this is the trial against the Loi Travail. Finally, we occupy to protest against the filthy feast of the managers of the biggest companies in France, who are coming to celebrate the victory of “France as a Business” on October 12 at the “pré Catelan” in the Bois de Boulogne. To their wealthy banquet, we oppose our feast and invite anyone who relates to this occupation to come and support it. Particularly, we are calling academics and intellectuals to take position in favor of the occupation, so the threat of eviction that it faces will be harder to carry out.

Against the capitalist occupation of the world, let’s occupy universities!

You can read the communiqué in its original version here.

The heavy verdicts in the arson trials remind us once more that police and the justice system are simply two arms with which the state dominates the population. Whatever type of political system you live under, from dictatorship to social democracy, police and the justice system will always fulfill the same purpose: enforcing the power and authority of the state while imposing a supposedly “natural” social order on society via intimidation, harassment, and violence.

In these strange times, when blatant new waves of nationalist and fascist ideology are spreading alongside virulent economic and neo-liberal reforms, when a permanent state of emergency supports a steady stream of new authoritarian policies, it seems undeniable that more obstacles, hardships, political repression, and uncertainties are to come.

However, let’s not surrender, never! There’s too much at stake.

This is why our love, solidarity, and thoughts are with those behind bars or in courtrooms facing charges, as well as with everyone still out there in the streets, on the run, or hiding somewhere in the shadows, who continue fighting with all their hearts against authority, capitalism, and the state without any rest or truce.

Our insatiable thirst for freedom will always be stronger than any of their laws, bars, or walls, stronger than the concrete and steel they continuously surround us with. Let our love and rage speak through an unstoppable and uncontrollable incendiary storm!

From the J20 in the US to the G20 in Hamburg, from the streets of Paris to the Greek prison cells—

Fire to the prisons! Fire to their justice! Fire to the state! Fire to their world!

In November 2016, while running for president, Macron published a book entitled Révolution, in which he tried to embody a new political posture, supposedly more pragmatic, and claimed to supersede the traditional opposition between Left and Right. ↩

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