#my legal government address is my father's house where i have not lived for seven years

[dykeogenes]

“what to tell a doctor to get an autism diagnosis” “here’s what i learned from realizing i was autistic at 40″ “i would never want a professional diagnosis” “person first language is so regressive” “autism symptoms are only a problem because of ableism” “we dont need treatment” “no autistic person wants a cure” “four doctors told me i couldn’t be autistic so i found a fifth” “autism is an invisible disability” “dont disclose your neurodivergency to employers” “i/dd and autism have nothing to do with each other” “nt parents/advocates have no place in autism communities” “of course im autistic have you heard me talk about horror movies” babe i have nothing in common with any of you

[militant-holy-knight]

In the “holy” Islamic month of Ramadan, a 14-year-old Christian girl, Myra Shebaz, was abducted by a group of Muslim men led by a man named Muhammad Naqash in Pakistan’s Faisalabad. The armed abductors fired a round of bullets in the air warning onlookers against any retaliation before forcing Myra into their car. The Movement for Solidarity and Peace, a human rights organization in the country, attests that about 1000 non-Muslim girls aged between 15 and 25 are converted and forcefully married off to Muslim men every year. Back in February, the Pakistani high court determined that the forced conversion and marriage of another 14-year-old Christian girl, Huma Younos, to an older Muslim man was legitimate and permissible. Myra, too, was married to her abductor. These cases have become so commonplace in Pakistan that they fail to shock us now. With girls, minors at that, being regularly terrorized by the hundreds, we wonder where the renowned Pakistani feminist, Malala, is, since otherwise she speaks volumes about the welfare and education of girls.

For years now, she has been brazenly cashing in on that one horrific incident that had befallen her. Several other classmates of hers suffered similar attacks, but didn’t win the benignity of assorted media houses in developed western nations. Malala Yousafzai, the 22-year-old manufactured activist of the liberal ecosystem, has time to visit developed Japan to preach to its civilized leaders about the education and well-being of women. but has no breath to spare on the continual violation of human rights, countless abductions, and forced religious conversion of teenage girls in her country, Pakistan. The very Pakistan that Ms Yousafzai promises is a perfectly safe paradise, while she herself is living in exile, surrounded by the security and liberties offered in a foreign land.

The personification of selective virtue, as I have observed her to be, she didn’t waste a minute before jumping on the bandwagon of fake propaganda after the abrogation of Article 370 by the Indian government back in August 2019. To advance Pakistan’s interest, she peddled fake narratives with all her might on Twitter.

In the past several years, the constant conflict in Balochistan has been the subject of some of the major media coverage; incidents of violence on Balochistanis by the Pakistani army have are frequent. These are all corroborated reports, unlike the claims of brutality against Kashmiris made by keyboard warriors who shy away when interrogated legally. But Malala, the young face of the leftist propaganda machinery, posturing for peace in Kashmir, never addresses the insurgency in her own country and its state-sponsored hostilities on Balochistanis.

“The people of Kashmir have lived in conflict since I was a child, since my mother and father were children, since my grandparents were young. For seven decades the children of Kashmir have grown up amidst violence,” she tweeted. She, however, appears to have zero concern for the persecuted minorities of her country, despite the fact that they have been living under interminable threat since the inception of Pakistan.

An Indian Twitter user sought her help in saving two Hindu teenagers who had been abducted and forcefully converted to Islam on Holi in 2019. Yet this demi-goddess of courage who doesn’t tire of waxing eloquent about women-empowerment could sum up no better response to a call for help than to block the Twitter user immediately.

Sikhs on both sides of the border held protests and demonstrations over the abduction and forced conversion of Jagjit Kaur in Pakistan last year. This heinous incident was followed up by yet another abduction and religious conversion of a Hindu girl by a member of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), Pakistan’s ruling party. Sindh has been infamous since antiquity for its stories of stolen brides. Yet not a word of condemnation or concern flashed out of Malala’s blue-ticked Twitter account against these evil practices that are rampant in her country. This is a Nobel laureate who has been decorated for her struggle against the oppression of children.

Malala once penned an open letter to the 219 Nigerian schoolgirls seized by Boko Haram militants from their boarding school. Why? Did these young girls in terrorists’ captivity have access to her virtual verbosity? It was all about publicity for Malala, if you ask me.

With her proclivity for publishing open letters, why not address one to the government and people of her own country and make an appeal to end this decades-old monstrosity of targeting vulnerable girls of hapless families from the religious minorities in Pakistan – the peaceful and welcoming homeland she keeps selling to her fans in the west? She lends her voice to selective issues that would ingratiate her to the people of Pakistan, and help her pave a smooth way right into the center of Pakistani politics. Such a shame that the United Nations gave her a pedestal to push her fabricated narrative even further!

[texanredrose]

This and That (Day 4: Sharing)

Blake shivered, raising her gaze to scowl at the thick grey clouds overhead, her back pressed against the brick wall of the school as she sat at the far edges of the playground. All she wanted to do for recess was read her book but Vale’s winters happened to be much colder than those in Menagerie and for the sixth time that day she wished they could go back home. She understood Mom and Dad had to come to Vale for their work- as much as a seven year old could understand, anyway- but it still seemed unfair for her to have to be there as well. She could’ve stayed home, gone to school like she was supposed to, and gone down to the docks for food whenever she got hungry. She could definitely take care of herself.

Of course, she was only shivering at present because she’d disagreed with her Mom’s advice to take a coat to school, because the weather was rather nice that morning, if a little chilly. Certainly not as cold as it was now with the wind blowing.

She just wanted to read her book.

“What are you doing?” Amber eyes snapped away from the foreboding clouds overhead to the girl who’d addressed her. They were probably the same age- she’d seen the girl during their lunch period- but they didn’t share the same class. She almost seemed too... bright for her surroundings, and not in the way that some of the other kids were. They wore colorful shirts and jackets and shoes but this girl had nothing but white. White hair, white jacket, white skirt, white boots- it seemed the only color she had was in her blue eyes, which were narrowed in a scowl at present. “Shouldn’t you be playing?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Blake’s feline ears laid back a little and she noticed how the girl’s attention flicked to them briefly.

They both looked towards the playground, where the rest of their classmates were laughing and playing, running around and climbing whatever they could. “They’re too loud.”

“I think so, too,” she said, looking down to her book. “That’s why I’d rather read.”

“Then why aren’t you reading?”

“Because I just sat down.” She frowned, hating how the wind blew at that exact moment and made her shiver again. 

“You’re cold.”

“... maybe.” One day, she might learn to listen to her parents when they told her things. “It wasn’t cold this morning so I didn’t bring a jacket.”

“But it’s not cold. Not really.”

“It’s colder than Menagerie.”

“It’s not as cold as Atlas. That’s where I’m from.”

“You’re not from Vale?”

The girl shook her head, a frown touching her lips. “We moved here for business.” Huh. Seems they had a bit in common. As Blake mulled over that information, the girl took off her jacket and held it out. “Here. I’m not cold.”

A bit of pride shone through; even if she made some miscalculations regarding the weather, she could handle the consequences without help. “I didn’t ask for your jacket.”

“And I didn’t ask you to take it.” The girl frowned. “I’m telling you to so you can be warm and read. That’s what you want, right? So just take it.”

“You’re not very nice, you know.”

“And you’re ungrateful.” The girl snapped back, putting one hand on her hip and shaking her jacket. “I’m not telling you again.”

With an exasperated sigh, Blake reached out and grabbed the garment, leaning away from the wall so she could throw it around her shoulders. It was small, so she didn’t dare risk putting her arms through the sleeves and stretching it out, but it was thick enough that she immediately felt warmer just from having it around her shoulders.

Satisfied she’d finally given in, the girl came and sat beside her, gaze fixed on the playground. 

But Blake didn’t open her book just yet. “How long have you lived here?”

“Only a few days. Today’s my first day at school.”

“Mine was yesterday,” she said, ears falling slightly. “I miss home.”

“I don’t.” The girl shrugged. “There was nothing to miss.”

“Don’t you have friends back home?”

“Not really,” she replied, still staring at the playground. “There were kids I talked to, but... they weren’t my friends.”

Blake frowned. Honestly, that was really the only part of home she missed. Of course she missed her old house and the swing set in the back but all that didn’t matter without her friends to share it all with, and the idea of making new friends made her feel guilty for leaving her old ones behind. But what sort of person didn’t even have friends to miss when they moved?

“My name’s Blake,” she said, holding out her hand. “Blake Belladonna.”

“Weiss,” the girl replied, shaking her hand and pointedly ignoring the way she was being watched expectantly. Finally, she sighed, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, resting her chin on top while muttering the rest. “Weiss Schnee.”

Tilting her head to the side, she narrowed her eyes. The name sounded familiar- maybe her parents had mentioned it before- but she couldn’t really place it. “Does that mean something in Atlas?”

“It means something everywhere.” Weiss sighed and curled in tighter on herself. “It’s why I don’t have any friends. No one wants to be friends with Weiss but everyone wants to be friends with a Schnee.” She paused. “Well... not everyone.”

Blake sat back against the brick wall for a moment, then cracked open her book. But instead of going to the butterfly printed marker her Mom had gotten her, she opened it to the first page. “Do you like stories?”

For a moment, the girl didn’t respond, but when she eventually looked over, her brow pinched in confusion. “There’s no pictures. What’s it about?”

“It’s about a girl who’s very smart and has lots of friends but she has a really bad family.” A frown touched her lips. “My Mom and Dad would never act like this. It’s hard to imagine parents being this mean to their own kid. But I like the main character.” 

Weiss scooted closer to her, trying to get a better look at the words on the page. “Does it have a happy ending?”

“I think so.” But then, Blake had a better idea. “How about I read aloud? Mom says I should practice. I... get nervous speaking in front of the class sometimes.”

“We can take turns.” The girl nodded. “You can go first?”

“Okay.” Blake smiled, ears perking up as they moved a little closer together. And then she began to read aloud, only stumbling over the words every now and again, with Weiss pressed against her side.

“-to be determined by the White Fang Council, henceforth abbreviated WFC, in conjunction with the governing body of Vale, for the betterment of human/Faunus relations, to include but not limited to- how can you read through these things day after day?” Blake lowered her hand, taking the thick stack of papers away so she could blink her eyes clear. “This is my third one and it’s giving me a headache. It’s just a mess of run-on sentences with flowery language thrown in rather than plain words.”

“There’s a world of difference between business contracts and legal proposals, my love,” Weiss replied, setting aside a notepad she’d been using to jot down irregularities in the proposal and turning her head to press a kiss against the Faunus’ cheek. “But I don’t think you’re wrong. Thankfully, Winter is more fond of the minutiae than I am. You’re not as lucky.”

“In some respects.” Taking her father’s place as the leader of the White Fang, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of Faunus all over Remnant, did come with its drawbacks. For one, it didn’t feel right to ask her father for help unless the issue required more critical analysis than just what she could provide herself, because not only did she want anyone accusing her of not doing her fair share in leading the group but she also didn’t want to worry him over every little thing that cropped up- of which there seemed to be a never ending supply. For another, she’d chosen to surround herself with those who hand concrete, firsthand knowledge of the living conditions in the various kingdoms, which meant they didn’t always possess the ability to look at potential proposals objectively. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it kept them keenly aware of any shady wording, but it also brought with it the necessary consequence of never being satisfied, because undoing decades of discrimination simply didn’t happen. It could be overcome but not undone and so many had failed to see that distinction. “But at least I have you.”

“That you do.” Weiss smiled, then reached over and grabbed the proposal, setting it aside with her notepad and grabbing a book from the end table. “How about a break? If you’re starting to go cross eyed, then perhaps a distraction will help you relax. We can come back to this in a bit.”

“You’re just eager to get to the next chapter.” Blake chuckled, wrapping an arm around her wife’s shoulders. “ It’s not a bad idea. I’ll go first-”

“Ah, no.” A light tap against her nose discouraged her from taking the book from the woman’s hands. “You’re supposed to be relaxing, remember? I’ll read.”

Even after twenty years, Weiss’ requests still sounded like demands and Blake had fallen in love with it, a fond smile touching her lips as she settled back, ears tilted forward to soak up every word as her wife began to read aloud.

[qqueenofhades]

So I just read an op-ed in the NYT entitled “Repeal the Second Amendment”, and it begins with the sentence, I have never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.

The article takes a classically liberal tack of arguing with statistics (the numbers of people guns have killed in America, as if anyone doesn’t know) and admits it would be difficult to accomplish. It presents a problem that anyone with eyes and a drop of common sense can see, but doesn’t do anything to address or understand the actual cause at the root of the belief in unlimited gun ownership. Which is, pure and simple, racism, white privilege and White Threat, in response to the changing socio-political environment of America and calls for multiculturalism. The same people who fetishize the Founding Fathers and “Don’t Tread on Me” and right-wing libertarianism and the Second Amendment are attached to their guns because they represent the hypothetical (and often actual) possibility of “defending” themselves against the person-of-color Other. It is their ability to remove this non-white entity from the body politic without recourse to the deeply mistrusted or conspiracy-theory version of the government they believe exists (and yet somehow manages to encompass staunch support for unpunished cop killings and the like). It is personal license to commit (racist) violence at will, whether theoretical or actual, or to feel “safe” from imagined (black/POC) threat.

This is not saying that every single gun owner is racist. This is not saying that every gun owner identifies as right-wing conservative. This is, however, saying that American gun culture and American racism and white privilege intersect toxically and are impossible to extricate from one another, and that the two systems support and perpetuate the other. The Charlottesville Nazis were the ones marching with automatic weapons for a reason, and right-wing boasts that “their side has all the guns” aren’t coincidental. Nobody needs a fully automatic assault rifle to defend their house. A handgun, maybe, sure, if you live in a bad neighborhood and know how to use it. But the ongoing legality of military-grade weapons that have no conceivable self-defense or hunting purpose is not an aberration or an accident. It is tied directly to racism, and American racism in particular.

We’ve all already observed the white privilege that led to Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas killer, immediately being called a “lone wolf” rather than a terrorist, and that his massive purchases of arms and ammunition didn’t raise any red flags, whereas it was merely accepted that a white male had a legitimate “right” to possess these weapons and “nobody could have envisioned” him actually using them. If he had been a Muslim or a black man, good lord, that alone would have served as “justification” for his actions and all kinds of new racist legislation would be enjoying present public support. But because he was a white man, there is a search for “another motive” or something else beyond his identity explaining it, when statistically, white male domestic terrorists are the most deadly and do the most damage (as well as overwhelmingly being responsible for mass shootings.) We claim to be simply helpless to prevent anything like this from happening again, and instead somehow accept that any public space, any time, can become the scene of mass carnage and destruction, rather than unseat the paradigm on which this mindset is, at its heart, based.

It’s also the case that it was called the “worst mass shooting” in American history, when -- as has also been pointed out -- any of the Native American massacres in the nineteenth century were far, far worse, such as Wounded Knee, where 300 Indians (200 of whom were women and children) were shot in December 1890. The United States has always had a gun problem, and it has always had a racism problem. These two things go together.

This is the real reason America cannot enact meaningful gun reform, despite an overwhelming majority of voters in both parties supporting common-sense restrictions. It’s not theoretical vast amounts of NRA cash (as the op-ed does correctly point out, it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things). It’s not a lack of desire for public change, and it’s certainly not not enough tragedies and indiscriminate killings to justify the need. It’s because attempting to dismantle American gun culture would require directly attempting to dismantle American racism and the sense of white America that it “needs its guns” to defend against the ongoing multi-cultural threat. The country is about to celebrate Christopher Columbus Day, aka the man responsible for wholesale genocide of the West Indies and more deaths (at least seven million) than of Jews (six million) during the Holocaust, as well as the ongoing centuries of colonization and extermination of native populations by the Western world. Politicians struggle with the simple and basic (and one would think, self-evident) premise of repudiating Nazism. The sitting president calls them “very fine people.”

This is not an accident, and these things do not exist independent of each other. We cannot have gun reform because white privilege will react to prevent it, just as white privilege and gun culture interact to support and reinforce each other. Until we get anywhere in addressing that (sidenote: I’ve been working my way through Stamped from the Beginning, Dr. Ibram Kendi’s book, the last few nights, and.... yeah), nothing is going to change. 

[sunlitneon]

Gratitude, Pass It on!

Who has given you some assistance on your adventure to progress? How have you said thanks to them? Soni Law Firm

Mentor Wooden stated, "It takes 10 hands to score a bin."

Show Appreciate to Others Who Made You Successful:

"Mentor Wooden demanded that his players consistently recognize the assistance and bolster they got from different individuals from the group. For instance, a player who scored a crate in the wake of getting a go from a colleague was relied upon to recognize the help as he headed back up the court to play safeguard - more often than not by pointing, grinning, winking, or gesturing at the man who had made the scoring opportunity." (From Pat Williams book "How to Be Like Coach Wooden") Soni Law

A few players asked, "Yet Coach, imagine a scenario where he [the colleague who gave the assist] isn't looking.

"Trust me," Wooden answered, "he'll be looking!"

Express appreciation to others for helping you. Indeed, even a gesture or a grin is a decent start.

Mentor Wooden "comprehended that EVERYONE needs acknowledgment and endorsement."

Do it now moto:

As a small kid I took in the estimation of diligent work from my folks, Robert J Frank, the principal college alumni of his family who at that point proceeded to graduate restorative school to turn into a specialist and specialist. Father previously filled in as a server at an eatery close to the University of Virginia to pay for school. Later he was a collaborator to his Professor of Physics showing classes at the college. My momma, Romayne Leader Frank, filled in as a lifeguard and model to put her through school at the University of Michigan to turn into a teacher. In the wake of wedding Dad, she completed her training at the University of Virginia procuring an educators degree. Last Momma attempted to pay for Dad's residency and entry level position in medication at Sears and Roebucks as a sales rep and as an afterthought composed political addresses for government officials at $50 a discourse. A wedded lady in those days was not permitted to instruct school.

As I was growing up my Dad's patients were angler and ranchers who paid for Dad's administrations with fish and vegetables. Cash was rare. We generally had a nursery in the back yard developing vegetables and figured out how to till the dirt with rakes, plant seeds, pull weeds, and pick the harvests for dinners. As a kid each week, my folks gave me a "rundown of errands" to do, including cutting the yard, cutting the shrubberies, and dealing with my more youthful kin. My folks said as an individual from this family you will do these tasks "now"! There were no reasons. The work must be done right away!

What did I gain from the control of doing these tasks, "their do it now" rule?

Regardless of whether it was washing dishes, cutting the yard, doing a schoolwork task that was expected in seven days my folks' moto was "Do it currently!" Do not pause! You will be occupied later.

These errands gave me the control for my future. When I headed off to college and was given a task due a couple of days after, I would do the task right away! Later when something required quick consideration, similar to a door handle would tumble off, I would promptly fix it! Whatever should have been done I would do it "quickly", recollecting my folks' moto, "Do it now!" These errands instructed me to be capable, responsible, deferential to other, and keen to any benevolence given.

Money related achievement:

When I was 8 years of age, Momma, Romayne L. Honest, returned to class to the College of William and Mary to acquire her law degree. She graduated at the highest point of her group and was one of the main ladies to graduate school from William and Mary Law School. Momma as a legal advisor rehearsed family law and land law.

After school one day, Momma grinned at me and said "we are going for another experience to the bank." She took me by the hand and we gladly strolled into the bank, an enormous overwhelming structure. Momma acquainted me with the teller at the bank, Mrs. Jay and requested that I submit the $2, I had been sparing. That day the teller entered my $2 into my new passbook, composed in my name outwardly of the book and clarified, I would get premium consistently for the cash I put in the bank.

Each couple of weeks Momma would bring me into the bank so I could include the cash I had spared from doing my errands. I delighted in viewing the cash develop in that bank account. She showed me not exclusively to place my task cash in yet later my future checks into my record to begin putting something aside for what's to come. When I set off for college, I had spared a decent retirement fund for what's to come. Momma's money related achievement exercises proceeded through school and graduate school. She imparted her money related achievement exercises to her customers, companions, and relatives.

To respect my Momma's monetary achievement exercises, I have imparted Momma's exercises to my kids, relatives, companions, and my understudies in four articles on the net, covering her money related achievement standards to ensure your budgetary achievement.

How could I thank my folks for instructing me to be trained and mindful?

By imparting their life exercises to other people, by composing articles, and radio shows offering their life exercises to other people.

Showing the Discipline of Hard Work:

Meredith Lynn MacRae, on-screen character, credits her folks vocalist/entertainer, Gordon MacRae and on-screen character, Sheila MacRae "with ingraining a legitimate hard working attitude in her and for keeping her feet on the ground."

She stated, "We lived in an unobtrusive home in the San Fernando Valley rather than the trendy Beverly Hills, which the family could have managed. Mother and Dad didn't need us to feel better than different children. I needed to win the things I needed, right from dolls to gathering outfits, by doing tasks around the house and dealing with my more youthful sister and siblings. Bunches of children in my circle consequently got a vehicle when they were 16. Not me. Father said he would get me a vehicle when I got straight A's two years straight in school. I slaved away lastly made it. I got the vehicle with the notice that on the off chance that I didn't proceed with straight A's, it would be removed."

Doing errands, working for the things you need, carries order to your life and shows you duty and responsibility:

The tasks Meredith Lynn MacRae's folks offered her to do, imparted "a legitimate hard working attitude" for her future. These are the most significant exercises a parent can give you.

Specialists have stated, "On the off chance that she or he had not been ruined to death, the individual in question may have turned out in an unexpected way!"

Errands showed Meredith Lynn MacRae and me to be happy to endeavor to make our prospects a specific tee.

Be appreciative for your favors and offer them with others:

A knowledgeable youngster from auxiliary school through post graduate, went to a progression of meetings at an enormous organization and "finished without a hitch". His last meeting was with the chief of the organization.

The chief was intrigued with the youngster's incredible accomplishment in school. He asked, "Did you get grants in school?"

The Youngman replied, "No."

The Director stated, "Did your dad pay for your school charges?"

The Youngman stated, "My dad passed away when I was a year old. It was my mom who paid for my school expenses."

The Director at that point asked, "Where did your mom work?"

The Youngman stated, "My Mother filled in as a garments more clean."

The Director "requested that he demonstrate his hands."

The Youngman demonstrated the Director, "his hands that were smooth and impeccable."

The Director asked, "Have you at any point helped her wash the garments previously?"

Youngman answered, "Never. My Mother constantly needed me to study and understand books. Moreover, my Mother can wash garments quicker than me."

The Director stated, "I have a solicitation. When you return home today, I need you to clean your Mother's hands and see me tomorrow first thing."

"The Youngman felt his opportunity of getting the activity was high."

He showed up home and "joyfully mentioned his Mother let him clean her hands."

"His Mother felt abnormal. With blended sentiments she demonstrated her child her hands. The Youngman just because cleaned his Mother's hands gradually. Tears fell as he did."

His Mother's hands were "wrinkled, callused, with numerous wounds on her hands."

"His Mother's hands were excruciating to such an extent that his mom shuddered as they were cleaned just with water."

The Youngman for "the first run through" understood his Mother's hands had washed garments each day to empower him to pay his school expenses. The wounds on his mom's hands were the value his mom needed to pay for his scholarly greatness for his future."

The Youngman "in the wake of cleaning his Mother's hands, washed all the rest of the garments for his Mother". That night he and his Mother talked for a few hours.

The following morning, he went to the Director's office. "The Director saw the tears in the adolescent's eyes."

Chief, "Would you be able to reveal to me what you have done and adapted yesterday in your home?"

Youngman, "I cleaned my Mother's hands and I likewise wrapped up all the rest of the garments."

Executive, "Educate me concerning your sentiments?"

Youngman: 1) "I know now what gratefulness is. Without my Mother there would not be an effective me today."

2) "By cooperating and helping my Mother, I just currently acknowledged how troublesome and intense it is to accomplish something without anyone else."

3) "I welcome the significance and estimation of family and connections."

The Director stated, "This is the thing that I need in my administrator. I need to procure an individual who acknowledges others, and the enduring of others to complete things, and the individual who might not place cash as his solitary objective throughout everyday life."

The Youngman was contracted by the Director. He "buckled down and got the regard of his colleagues. All colleagues worked constantly and bolstered one another. Therefore, the organization improved essentially." (Darren Hardy, Success Mentor to CEOs and High-Performance Achievers, previous distributer of Success Magazine shared this story.)

Who has helped you in your prosperity and made it workable for you to succeed?

How have you expressed gratitude toward them?

Mentor John Wooden stated, "It takes 10 hands to make a bas

[greaterthannine-blog]

Sai Bu Shan: Another China Story

Roots 07/02/2018

BEHOLD, MY GOOD PEOPLE! The second of my two abnormally long and wordy “Roots” posts! Isn’t this thrilling? (Yes, yes it is. Agree with me). Here in Sai Bu Shan: Another China Story I discuss my time spent in my Tom 譚 village in Toisan. This post is long, though not as lengthy and drawling as the last one (Sui Bo Huey: A China Story), yet that’s because I only visited my Tom village once, rather than twice like I did for Sui Bo Huey. Which, I might add, is a good thing. Because it means my visit to Sai Bu Shan was more than satisfactory and didn’t warrant a revisit. Overall: Snazzy.

Anywhosen, in addition to couple images I managed to shoot myself during this visit (Thank they universe they let me shoot my own photographs!), I also included images shot by our leader Al, which I have again crafted to look like film photographs (because differentiation is key). And while not as lengthy as my last Roots post, there’s still a decent amount of verbiage on this page, so if you actually read my wordy brain vomit, and somewhat begrudgingly enjoy reading it, you might (just might) like this post. Anyway, I have nothing else to add in this little intro-bit, so please continue to the paragraphs directly to the right of this page.

你們謝謝 & Merci

Isabella | Abe | 許綺芳 | Huie Yee-Fong | Xǔ Qǐ-Fāng

●

My Tom/Tan [譚] Village ______________________________________ ___________________________________________________________

YOU WOULD THINK THAT because I am much closer with this side of my Chinese family, that I would know much more information about our heritage, but I didn’t and don’t. In Sui Bo Huey: A China Story I discussed my ancestral village on my maternal grandfather’s side of the family for which we have the paper name Chin (which is actually my legal middle name) but the real surname of Huie/Xu. On my maternal grandmother’s side of the family, we hold the paper name Low, but with a real surname of Tom (Cantonese)/Tan (Mandarin). Now I’ve mentioned the term “paper name” twice; I will explain that later.

Refocus! Despite how I see my Low/Tom family two to three times a year, village and family information was much sparser, so I went to China with very low expectations. Through research I had several photographs of distant family members visiting the village; I had images of the village gate, and entryway to our ancestral home. However, while I knew that the house where my ancestors lived still existed, I didn’t know the address or of anyone who remembered it’s exact whereabouts. I also knew that the entire Tom family immigrated to the United States, so there wouldn’t be any relatives there to greet me like many of my fellow Rooters had. That being said, this visit to Sai Bu Shan was a shocking but pleasant surprise.

●

第六七: 台山

Day Seven: Toisan [Taishan]

07/02/2018

PORTRAIT PHOTOS: Al Cheng

PHOTOGRAPHY, PORTRAIT POST-PROCESSING & COMMENTARY:

Isabella Xu

++

FIRST OFF, I MAY OR MAY NOT have lied to you. Contrary to every title heading on this page, I’ve lied to you in that this story does not quite begin on July 2nd, 2018. Rather the beginning of my Sai Bu Shan story begins three days prior, during our first day in Toisan. Assembled in the bus that morning, we began driving to another rooter’s village. Only around five minutes from the hotel, alongside the road, we passed by an elementary school completely encompassed by walls. Running along this wall and adjacent to the road was a sidewalk. As we slowly puttered by, at the end of the wall and the correspondingly ending sidewalk, there was an old woman squatting and peeling fruit from an enormous blue basket. Directly left of where the sidewalk ended, and set twenty feet back was a tall structure of some sort, but with my gaze so intently set on the woman peeling fruit, I only noticed her immediate vicinity with detail. Still watching her, Sifu continues forth and the bus turns a corner, and the structure, the sidewalk, and the woman peeling fruit disappear. I turn to face forward in my seat and the image I just observed dissipates from my mind.

Three days later, the morning of my rooting, I hopped onto the bus with the lowest of low expectations for my Tom village that day. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, my knowledge of this family line was so limited (and still is limited) that I envisioned this visit to be exceptionally brief and wholly uneventful. My prediction: We’d step off the bus, waddle around for a bit, point at the greater community and exclaim, “Hooray, that’s my village!” shoot a few photographs (because I was finally allowed and given ample time to photograph my own goddamn village) then we’d clamber back on the bus then leave. Well, that prediction was wrong.

As I sat beside Al on the bus, trundling along Toisan city roads, I peered out the window watching passersby and Toisan residents milling about their day. It was a sleepy Monday morning; kids were walking to school, business owners were opening shop, elder folks were chatting in gossip circles, and everything in between. I was so engrossed with examining peoples’ behavior that I was struck when we suddenly came to a halt, the bus doors beeped and squeaked, gaping open to a grey sky.

While everyone streamed off the bus, heavily surprised by our brief five-minute bus journey, I looked out the window again to see where we were, and my brain realized our location. Through the window pane my line of sight instantly laid upon the same wall and sidewalk where the old woman peeling fruit perched just three days prior. That scene with the old woman wasn’t even notably striking (that sounds insensitive lol), but despite that, I instantaneously recognized the area. I turned my gaze to the left and saw that the structure I hazily remembered was actually a village gate, and better yet, I identified it as the village gate in photographs I found in my research. Excited about the trivial connection I made, I turned to Al and exclaimed, “I saw this place the other day! There was an old woman peeling fruit right there, and I remember watching her as we drove by when going to Jeremy’s village! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize it then!” to which I received a grumble equivalent to a, “Oh, neat.” But reveling in my irrelevant realization, I slid off my seat, camera slung around my neck and head over to begin my insignificant rooting.

After jumping off the bus, we assembled to take a group photo with the Sai Bu Shan village gate, and almost immediately afterwards the grey heavens released the floodgates and a downpour ensues. We took shelter underneath the huge awning of a convenience/knick knack store at the front of the village to wait out the rain; hopefully. Al took the documents I had and along with our young whippersnapper government official Ray, began talking with village representatives and residents to see if they could uncover anything that might be useful in our rooting. They sat at a table during these discussions, and I padded around awkwardly until Al waved me over and said,

“You need to be a part of this. There are some important things happening.”

“But I don’t even know what they’re saying.”

“Well, still. You must be here. It’s your rooting.”

He made an excellently fair point, so I sat beside him as phone calls and discussions continued. This whole time, Ray was on the phone, chatting with who knows who, when his face lit up like a full moon. He said something to Al, then hands to phone over. Al and whomever was on the phone have an animated talk, and after it ended he looked apprehensive yet thrilled at the same time; he now knew something I didn’t and didn’t seem inclined to tell me. He then said we must wait for the rain to stop, so I stood to take a few photographs under the cover of the storefront awning.

After ten minutes or so, Al flagged me down again. I walked over to the table and noticed that there was a new face at the table. On Al’s left was a reserved-looking, small old man wearing a thin-striped polo. His hands were clasped together and resting on the table as Al rifled through my documents to show him. I had no idea who this man was, but apparently he was a village historian of sorts and was knowledgeable of the village heritage. I was told that when Al spoke on the phone with him, the man was exceptionally excited by our visit, and came from fifteen minutes away just to meet us. From what I could see, he didn’t look thrilled at all, but suppose the fact he showed up so soon was testament to his excitement.

Anyways, Al handed the man copies of my handwritten ancestral Tom family tree. He explained to the man that my last family member to reside in the village was my mother’s mother’s mother’s father, my great great grandfather Kun Foo 泮盛. The man (I feel bad that I keep calling this guy “the man” but I never learned his name) examined the tree and pointed to Kun Foo’s name on the page. The man explained that he knew this family name, and told us that ages ago, Sai Bu Shan was home to my ancestral line, but in the past few decades the original families which inhabited the area had relocated when the village was absorbed by Toisan city. But furthermore, not only did he tell us that he knew the Tom 譚 name and detailed village information, he claimed something quite shocking. He said he descended from the same family line. He claimed to be the grandson of Kun Foo’s brother. We were from the same family line.

Yes. Outrageous. I know. I was there.

That being said, while this man seemed quite credible, there was still overhanging skepticism of his truthfulness, but to prove his claims he took us to my ancestral home, where he believed the family alter was still intact (and he just, ya know, knows these things). Because my family no longer has ties to the village, and the community was reclaimed by Toisan city, he said the home was divided into two residences and was being rented to families. He told us we would visit both. Winding through the village alleys, with water from the recent deluge streaming from rooftops, our posse arrived at the door of what the man says is the section of the house that holds the altar. Fortunately, the inhabitants of the house graciously permit us to look around, and all twenty of us file through the entryway, past the kitchen and toilet, and into the altar room, and placed high above the floor, on the raised platform common within these houses was the altar, with a vibrantly orange paper family tree shining down.

The man toddled over to a wooden ladder at the base of the altar, and climbed up to examine it while Al and I held the ladder steady. The man read the document, pointed at some characters and beckoned Al to take a peek himself, and lo and behold the characters 泮盛 for Kun Foo were painted there. The man was telling the truth.

After performing the bai san ceremony (I knew what to do this time; failure redeemed!) and having a quiet moment to myself (which in retrospect was kind of bizarre; here I am, standing in some stranger’s home, thanking my ancestors for their hard work), I rejoined the group outside. The man led us to the other side of the building so we could look inside the other half. It was at this point that the man dropped another bomb: I was the first person in my family to return to China and visit this second half of the house. Other family members (whom I actually knew of and had received family/village info from) had visited the altar side of the home, but I was the first of my family to enter the place where Kun Foo was actually born.

+++

Well, how about those for some bucket list items?

Visit ancestral village when you had almost no helpful information: Check.

Visit long lost ancestral altar: Check.

Visit site of my great great grandfather’s birth: Check.

Believe you have no surviving relatives in China, but meet a small old man who just happens to be just that: Check.

China is full of surprises.

●

(1) Sitting around a table examining documents with Al, the man, Long Lǎoshī, and two village representatives ↑↑

(2) Group photo in the altar side of my Tom ancestral home 譚. Top row from left: village representative, the man, Al, Carol, me, Derek, Jeremy, Diann, another village representative, Robyn. Bottom row from left: Nick, Kona, Candace, Amanda, and Ray (our young-whippersnapper PRC official)

↑↑

(1) Having a quiet moment after my bai san ceremony, completely unaware Al was photographing me.

(2) A posed photograph inside the altar side of my ancestral home.

[iprayunceasingly-blog]

Holy See-China agreement draws criticism from US religious freedom advocates

New Post has been published on https://pray-unceasingly.com/catholic-living/catholic-news/holy-see-china-agreement-draws-criticism-from-us-religious-freedom-advocates/

Holy See-China agreement draws criticism from US religious freedom advocates

Washington D.C., Sep 30, 2018 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See’s provisional agreement with China on the appointment of bishops has drawn criticism from some U.S. religious freedom leaders, who contend that it concedes too much to power to the government and undermines efforts to protect other suffering religious groups.

“I confess that I am skeptical, both as a Catholic, and as an advocate for the religious freedom of all religious communities in China,” Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, said Sept. 27.

“Earlier this year the Vatican quite properly expressed grave concerns about China’s comprehensive anti-religion policy, and its apparent goal of altering Catholicism itself.”

Farr is a former American diplomat who was the first director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, from 1999-2003. He spoke before the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. His comments addressed the state of religious freedom in China, especially for Catholics; the potential for further action from Congress and American diplomacy; and the Vatican-China agreement.

On Sept. 22 the Holy See announced that Pope Francis had recognized seven illicitly ordained bishops after the signing of a provisional deal with the Chinese government over the nomination of bishops. Under the deal, the Chinese government can propose candidates as part of the nomination process, but the Pope must give final approval.

The Pope explained his decision in a Sept. 26 letter to China’s Catholics, acknowledging the “deep and painful tensions” centered especially on the figure of the bishop as “the guardian of the authenticity of the faith and as guarantor of ecclesial communion.” He said it was “essential” to deal first with the issue of bishop appointments in order to support the continuation of the Gospel in China and to re-establish “full and visible unity in the Church.”

He acknowledged the different reactions to the provisional agreement, both from those who are hopeful and from those who might feel abandoned by the Holy See and question “the value of their sufferings endured out of fidelity to the Successor of Peter.”

Farr, speaking to the congressional subcommittee, said he is concerned the provisional agreement “will not improve the lot of Catholics in China, much less the status of religious freedom for non-Catholic religious communities.” It risks harming religious freedom and “inadvertently encouraging China’s policy of altering the fundamental nature of Catholic witness.”

“In my humble opinion as a Catholic, and an advocate for religious freedom, the Vatican’s charism is to support that witness, as Pope Saint John Paul II did in Communist Poland,” he said.

Farr thought the process for choosing Catholic bishops was comparable to “the way parliamentary candidates are approved in Iran” where theologians vet prospective candidates for their loyalty to the government.

“Is it likely that the Chinese government would forward to the Vatican the name of a bishop faithful to the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church?” Farr asked. “It seems far more likely that the bishop would be chosen at a minimum for his acquiescence to the regime, if not his fidelity to its anti-Catholic purposes.”

Johnnie Moore, a religious freedom advocate who now serves on the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom, told CNA he entirely supports “direct engagement with governments which have a checkered past when it comes to religious freedom, working together to find a better future.”

However, he thought many people outside of the Catholic community are “entirely confused by the timing and why the Holy Father agreed to – for all intents and purposes – demote faithful, persevering priests who had endured so much for so long.”

Moore, a past vice-president of communications at the evangelical Christian, Virginia-based Liberty University, is now CEO of communications firm The Kairos Company.

“Surely, (Pope Francis) could have found a way to have a meaningful relationship with the Chinese-appointed bishops without picking sides between his flock and those who’ve viciously opposed it for so long,” he said. “I’m also afraid that clever leaders in China will use this deal with the Vatican to distract the world from their resurgent, egregious mistreatment of other religious communities.”

Farr’s remarks tried to place China-Vatican relations in a historical context. In the centuries that Catholics have been in China, beginning even before missionary priest Matteo Ricci’s founding of a Jesuit mission in 1601, they have encountered “the assertion that Catholicism is incompatible with Chinese culture and must either be rooted out or adapted in ways that would change its fundamental nature.”

While Christianity became associated with European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries, against which many Chinese rebelled, it also suffered intense persecution after the Cultural Revolution after communist forces took power in 1949 under Mao Zedong.

China’s government attempted to absorb or destroy all religion. It expelled the papal representative to China and over a decade’s time engaged in “brutal treatment” of Catholics, Protestants and other religious groups, Farr said. This intensified under the Cultural Revolution begun in the 1960s.

“Priests and nuns were tortured, murdered (some were burned alive), and imprisoned in labor camps. Lay Christians were paraded in their towns and villages with cylindrical hats detailing their ‘crimes’,” he said. Catholic clergy and laity were among the tens of millions who died “terrible deaths.”

“While Mao proved that a policy of eliminating religion is unrealistic, his successors have constantly experimented in finding the ‘correct’ way to control, co-opt, and absorb religion into the communist state,” Farr continued. Since the 1970s, China’s religious policies have had “ups and downs as new Chinese leaders adapted policies to achieve the objective of control.”

“Not all Chinese policy involves overt repression of religion,” he said. In recent decades, China’s leaders have at times supported “religious groups perceived to be capable of consolidating Beijing’s absolute power.” According to Farr, this has sometimes meant praise for non-Tibetan Chinese Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism as China’s “traditional cultures.”

“Clearly those three groups pose a lesser threat to Communist rule than do the Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and Christians,” he said. “For the moment at least, it is the latter three religious communities that are the objects of continuing repression, especially the Uighurs.”

Citing State Department estimates of 70 million to 90 million Christians in China, with about 12 million Catholic, he said the growth of Chinese Christianity, especially through conversions to Protestant denominations, is “of great concern to the Chinese.”

Moving the State Administration for Religious Affairs to the United Front Work Department, which historically has been tasked with controlling China’s ethnic minorities, ensures “increased monitoring and control over the perceived threat posed by religion’s growth in China.”

Moore, a commissioner on the U.S. international religious freedom commission, had voiced astonishment that the Vatican would normalize its relationship with China “within one week of China so brazenly closing Beijing’s large Zion Church and just a few weeks after the United Nations, the New York Times and the U.S. State Department all revealed that China has forcibly placed as many as one million Muslims in re-education camps.”

“Honestly, I was in total disbelief. I said to myself, ‘not this, not now’ and then, I just prayed,” he continued.

Following a two-day review of China’s record in August, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has said that up to 1 million Uyghurs may be held against their will and without trial in extra-legal detention, on pretext of countering terrorism and religious extremism.

Farr voiced fear that the agreement reflects a “failed Cold War ‘realpolitik’ diplomacy” of the 1960s Vatican that was changed by St. John Paul II, a failure he blamed on a lack of realism about “the evil of communism.”

“It harmed the Church in parts of Eastern Europe,” he said. “The post-war Vatican was not then, and is not now, a secular power capable of changing the behavior of communist governments by dint of its political diplomacy.”

He contended that the Vatican is “the only authority in the world constituted precisely to address the root causes of totalitarian evil,” citing ST. John Paul II’s cooperation in the 1980s with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“The Holy See’s role should be now, as it was then, to press for human rights and, especially, for religious freedom for all religious communities in China,” he said, arguing that the Vatican’s charism is not diplomacy, but “witness to the truth about God and man.”

“As for China’s Catholics, the Vatican should demand nothing less than libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the Church to witness to its adherents, to the public, and to the regime its teachings on human dignity and the common good.”

Farr suggested to Congress that the U.S. government should make the case to China that the growth of religion and religious communities is natural and inevitable in all societies. Efforts to kill it or blunt its growth are “impractical and self-defeating,” and persecution only slows economic development and increases social instability and violent extremism. Accommodating religious groups, by contrast, will help economic growth, social harmony, and stability.

China is a major force in the world and has enormous influence on global affairs and American interests, he said. U.S. policymakers do not typically address religious freedom in this context. “Far more than a humanitarian issue, the way China handles its internal religious matters is of sufficient importance that the United States should make religious liberty a central element of its relationship with the East Asian nation,” he said.

The agreement between the Holy See and mainland China has met with varied reactions within China.

Bishop Stephen Lee Bun-sang of Macau wrote Sept. 24 that he was pleased to have learned of the agreement: “I thoroughly reckon that both parties have worked towards this provisional agreement after a long period of time with persistent effort of research and dialogue. This agreement is a positive move especially in favour of the communion of the Catholic Church in Chin and the Universal Church.”

Bishop Lee encouraged the faithful “to pray for the progress in Sino-Vatican relationship, with the hope that this provisional agreement may really be implemented, so as to contribute to and benefit the Chinese society and the Church's charitable, pastoral, social, and educational apostolates, striving to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ far and wide.”

But Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, who has long been an opponent of rapprochement with the Chinese government, told Reuters just days before the agreement was reached that “they're giving the flock into the mouths of the wolves. It's an incredible betrayal.”

The Bishop Emeritus of Hong Kong said the consequences of the deal “will be tragic and long lasting, not only for the Church in China but for the whole Church because it damages the credibility.”

  Mary Rezac contributed to this report.

CNA Daily News

[nedsvallesny]

Adrian Lamo, ‘Homeless Hacker’ Who Turned in Chelsea Manning, Dead at 37

Adrian Lamo, the hacker probably best known for breaking into The New York Times‘s network and for reporting Chelsea Manning‘s theft of classified documents to the FBI, was found dead in a Kansas apartment on Wednesday. Lamo was widely reviled and criticized for turning in Manning, but that chapter of his life eclipsed the profile of a complex individual who taught me quite a bit about security over the years.

Adrian Lamo, in 2006. Source: Wikipedia.

I first met Lamo in 2001 when I was a correspondent for Newsbytes.com, a now-defunct tech publication that was owned by The Washington Post at the time. A mutual friend introduced us over AOL Instant Messenger, explaining that Lamo had worked out a simple method allowing him to waltz into the networks of some of the world’s largest media companies using nothing more than a Web browser.

The panoply of alternate nicknames he used on instant messenger in those days shed light on a personality not easily grasped: Protagonist, Bitter Geek, AmINotMerciful, Unperceived, Mythos, Arcane, truefaith, FugitiveGame.

In this, as in so many other ways, Lamo was a study in contradictions: Unlike most other hackers who break into online networks without permission, he didn’t try to hide behind the anonymity of screen names or Internet relay chat networks.

By the time I met him, Adrian had already earned the nickname “the homeless hacker” because he had no fixed address, and found shelter most evenings in abandoned buildings or on friend’s couches. He launched the bulk of his missions from Internet cafes or through the nearest available dial-up connections, using an old Toshiba laptop that was missing seven keys. His method was the same in every case: find security holes; offer to fix them; refuse payment in exchange for help; wait until hole is patched; alert the media.

Lamo had previously hacked into the likes of AOL Time Warner, Comcast, MCI Worldcom, Microsoft, SBC Communications and Yahoo after discovering that these companies had enabled remote access to their internal networks via Web proxies, a kind of security by obscurity that allowed anyone who knew the proxy’s Internet address and port number to browse internal shares and other network resources of the affected companies.

By 2002, Lamo had taken to calling me on the phone frequently to relate his various exploits, often spoofing his phone number to make it look like the call had come from someplace ominous or important, such as The White House or the FBI. At the time, I wasn’t actively taking any measures to encrypt my online communications, or to suggest that my various sources do likewise. After a few weeks of almost daily phone conversations with Lamo, however, it became abundantly clear that this had been a major oversight.

In February 2002, Lamo told me that he’d found an open proxy on the network of The New York Times that allowed him to browse the newsroom’s corporate intranet. A few days after that conversation, Lamo turned up at Washingtonpost.com’s newsroom (then in Arlington, Va.). Just around the corner was a Kinkos, and Adrian insisted that I follow him to the location so he could get online and show me his discovery firsthand.

While inside the Times’ intranet, he downloaded a copy of the Times’ source list, which included phone numbers and contact information for such household names as Yogi Berra, Warren Beatty, and Robert Redford, as well as high-profile political figures – including Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lamo also added his own contact information to the file. My exclusive story in Newsbytes about the Times hack was soon picked up by other news outlets.

In August 2003, federal prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Lamo in connection with the New York Times hack, among other intrusions. The next month, The Washington Post’s attorneys received a letter from the FBI urging them not to destroy any correspondence I might have had with Lamo, and warning that my notes may be subpoenaed.

In response, the Post opted to take my desktop computer at work and place it in storage. We also received a letter from the FBI requesting an interview (that request was summarily denied). In October 2003, the Associated Press ran a story saying the FBI didn’t follow proper procedures when it notified reporters that their notes concerning Lamo might be subpoenaed (the DOJ’s policy was to seek materials from reporters only after all other investigative steps had been exhausted, and then only as a last resort).

In 2004, Lamo pleaded guilty to one felony count of computer crimes against the Times, as well as LexisNexis and Microsoft. He was sentenced to six month’s detention and two years probation, an ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution.

Several months later while attending a formal National Press Foundation dinner at the Washington Hilton, my bulky Palm Treo buzzed in my suit coat pocket, signalling a new incoming email message. The missive was blank save for an unusually large attachment. Normally, I would have ignored such messages as spam, but this one came from a vaguely familiar address: adrian.lamo@us.army.mil. Years before, Lamo had told me he’d devised a method for minting his own .mil email addresses.

The attachment turned out to be the Times’ newsroom source list. The idea of possessing such information was at once overwhelming and terrifying, and for the rest of the evening I felt certain that someone was going to find me out (it didn’t help that I was seated adjacent to a table full of NYT reporters and editors). It was difficult not to stare at the source list and wonder at the possibilities. But ultimately, I decided the right thing to do was to simply delete the email and destroy the file.

EARLY LIFE

Lamo was born in 1981 outside of Boston, Mass. into an educated, bilingual family. Lamo’s parents say from an early age he exhibited an affinity for computers and complex problem solving. In grade school, Lamo cut his teeth on a Commodore64, but his parents soon bought him a more powerful IBM PC when they grasped the extent of his talents.

“Ever since he was very young he has shown a tendency to be a lateral thinker, and any problem you put in front of him with a computer he could solve almost immediately,” Lamo’s mother Mary said in an interview in 2003. “He has a gifted analytical mind and a natural curiosity.”

By the time he got to high school, Lamo had graduated to a laptop computer. During a computer class his junior year, Lamo upstaged his teacher by solving a computer problem the instructor insisted was insurmountable. After an altercation with the teacher, he was expelled. Not long after that incident, Lamo earned his high school equivalency degree and left home for a life on his own.

For many years after that he lived a vagabond’s existence, traveling almost exclusively on foot or by Greyhound bus, favoring the affordable bus line for being the “only remaining form of mass transit that offers some kind of anonymity.” When he wasn’t staying with friends, he passed the night in abandoned buildings or under the stars.

In 1995, Lamo landed contract work at a promising technology upstart called America Online, working on “PlanetOut.com,” an online forum that catered to the gay and lesbian community. At the time, advertisers paid AOL based on the amount of time visitors spent on the site, and Lamo’s job was to keep people glued to the page, chatting them up for hours at a time.

Ira Wing, a security expert at one of the nation’s largest Internet service providers, met Lamo that year at PlanetOut and the two became fast friends. It wasn’t long before he joined in one of Lamo’s favorite distractions, one that would turn out to be an eerie offshoot of the young hacker’s online proclivities: exploring the labyrinth of California’s underground sewage networks and abandoned mines.

Since then, Lamo kept in touch intermittently, popping in and out of Wing’s life at odd intervals. But Wing proved a trustworthy and loyal friend, and Lamo soon granted him power of attorney over his affairs should he run into legal trouble.

In 2002, Wing registered the domain “freeadrian.com,” as a joke. He’d later remark on how prescient a decision that had been.

“Adrian is like a fast moving object that has a heavy affect on anyone’s life he encounters,” Wing told this reporter in 2003. “And then he moves on.”

THE MANNING AFFAIR

In 2010, Lamo was contacted via instant message by Chelsea Manning, a transgender Army private who was then known as Bradley Manning. The Army private confided that she’d leaked a classified video of a helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 12 people (including two Reuters employees) to Wikileaks. Manning also admitted to handing Wikileaks some 260,000 classified diplomatic cables.

Lamo reported the theft to the FBI. In explaining his decision, Lamo told news publications that he was worried the classified data leak could endanger lives.

“He was just grabbing information from where he could get it and trying to leak it,” Mr. Lamo told The Times in 2010.

Manning was later convicted of leaking more than 700,000 government records, and received a 35 year prison sentence. In January 2017, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence after she’d served seven years of it. In January 2018, Manning filed to run for a Senate seat in Maryland.

HOMELESS IN WICHITA

The same month he reported Manning to the feds, Lamo told Wired.com that he’d been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome after being briefly hospitalized in a psychiatric ward. Lamo told Wired that he suspected someone had stolen his backpack, and that paramedics were called when the police responding to reports of the alleged theft observed him acting erratically and perhaps slurring his speech.

Wired later updated the story to note that Lamo’s father had reported him to the Sacramento Sherriff’s office, saying he was worried that his son was over-medicating himself with prescription drugs.

In 2011, Lamo told news outlet Al Jazeera that he was in hiding because he was getting death threats for betraying Manning’s confidence and turning him in to the authorities. In 2013, he told The Guardian that he’d struggled with substance abuse “for a while.”

It’s not yet certain what led to Lamo’s demise. He was found dead in a Wichita apartment on March 14. According to The Wichita Eagle, Lamo had lived in the area for more than a year. The paper quoted local resident Lorraine Murphy, who described herself as a colleague and friend of Lamo’s. When Murphy sent him a message in December 2016 asking him what he was up to, he reportedly replied “homeless in Wichita.”

“Adrian was always homeless or on the verge of it,” Murphy is quoted as saying. “He bounced around a great deal, for no particular reason. He was a believer in the Geographic Cure. Whatever goes wrong in your life, moving will make it better. And he knew people all over the country.”

The Eagle reports that Wichita police found no signs of foul play or anything suspicious about Lamo’s death. A toxicology test was ordered but the results won’t be available for several weeks.

from Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/03/adrian-lamo-homeless-hacker-who-turned-in-chelsea-manning-dead-at-37/

[deniscollins]

Quiet Epidemic of Suicide Claims France’s Farmers

The most recent statistics, made public in 2016 by France’s public health institute, show that 985 farmers killed themselves from 2007 to 2011 — a suicide rate 22 percent higher than that of the general population -- often men ages 45 to 54, working in animal husbandry. If you were a government official overseeing the farming industry, what actions, if any, would you pursue: (1) nothing, (2) establish a hotline and support groups for counseling troubled farmers, (3) something else (if so, what?)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?  

A dairy farmer, Jean-Pierre Le Guelvout, once kept 66 cows at a thriving estate in southern Brittany. But falling milk prices, accumulating debts, depression and worries about his health in middle age became too much to bear.

Just 46, Mr. Le Guelvout shot himself in the heart in a grove behind his house one cold December day last year. “It was a place that he loved, near the fields that he loved,” explained his sister Marie, who said she was “very close” to him but did not see his suicide coming.

The death of Ms. Le Guelvout’s brother was part of a quiet epidemic of suicide among French farmers with which stoical rural families, the authorities, public health officials and researchers are trying to grapple.

Farmers are particularly at risk, they all say, because of the nature of their work, which can be isolating, financially precarious and physically demanding.

For farmers who do not have children to help with the work and eventually take over, the burden is that much greater. Falling prices for milk and meat have also added to debts and stress in recent years.

Researchers and farming organizations agree that the problem has persisted for years, but while they have stepped up efforts to help farmers, the effectiveness of such measures and the toll from suicides remain difficult to quantify.

The most recent statistics, made public in 2016 by France’s public health institute, show that 985 farmers killed themselves from 2007 to 2011 — a suicide rate 22 percent higher than that of the general population.

Even that number of suicides, which increased over time, may be underestimated, say researchers, who add that they fear the problem is not going away, though they are still analyzing more recent data.

“The doctor establishing the death certificate can avoid mentioning suicide,” said Dr. Véronique Maeght-Lenormand, an occupational physician who runs the national suicide prevention plan for the Mutualité Sociale Agricole, a farmers’ association.

The reason? “Some insurance companies won’t allow compensations for spouses after a suicide,” she said. “There’s also the weight of our Judeo-Christian culture.”

Mr. Le Guelvout’s case came to light because he had previously achieved some fame as a participant in a popular television program, “L’Amour Est Dans le Pré” (“Love Is in the Field”), a sort of French version of “The Bachelor” that aimed to help farmers find companionship.

“He was very naïve,” Ms. Le Guelvout said. “He wanted a wife who worked outside the farm, and to become a father.”

But in some ways, he was representative of the farmers who are most likely to kill themselves, according to public health statistics. They are often men ages 45 to 54, working in animal husbandry.

“It is a time when you start having small health issues, when you think about the transfer of your farm,” Dr. Maeght-Lenormand said. “Farmers can start wondering why they’re doing all of this if no one is here to inherit it.”

But that is not the only force that pushes many to despair.

“There’s this financial pressure, this loan pressure,” said Nicolas Deffontaines, a researcher for Cesaer, a center that studies the economy and sociology of rural areas.

The debts, Mr. Deffontaines said, can lead farmers to deepen their investments, both personal and financial, as they immerse themselves in their work and take more loans to pay off previous ones. In doing so, they fuel their isolation and deepen the financial hole they are in, he said.

In recent years, those financial pressures have grown only more onerous. In 2015, the European Union ended quotas for dairy farmers that had been intended to avoid overproduction.

Since then, there has been a glut of some products. Prices for milk have dropped below what farm associations say is needed to run and sustain a farm, let alone to make a profit.

The move to end quotas came on top of the bloc’s imposition of sanctions on Russia in response to its land grab in Ukraine, cutting off a once-robust export market for European dairy farmers in 2014.

Because many milk farms have shut, more cows have been sent for slaughter, in turn leading to lower prices for meat, even as the Frenchlowered their consumption of meat products by 27 percent from 1998 to 2013, by some measures.

Seven years ago, the French government began addressing the rising suicide rate among farmers, and the agriculture minister at the time, Bruno Le Maire, elevated the issue to a national cause.

Since then, multiple steps have been taken in coordination with the Mutualité Sociale Agricole, the farm organization.

In 2014, a hotline called Agri’écoute (Listening to Farmers) was introduced to lend troubled farmers an ear. Multidisciplinary groups were created to help farmers sort out financial, medical, legal or family issues. In 2016, those units followed 1,352 cases across France.

Much of the focus was placed on farmers who were single or widowed, but building trust was not easy, said Dr. Maeght-Lenormand of the farmers’ association.

“For the farmers who pay regular social contributions to us, we’re still seen as the ones claiming money from them,” she said.

But farmers’ organizations, like Solidarité Paysans (Farmers’ Solidarity), have also stepped in.

In 2015, Véronique Louazel, who works for the national bureau of the solidarity association, met with 27 struggling farmers for a study on the crisis the profession faces.

Farmers are often reluctant to talk about their difficulties, and it is hard for them to imagine doing anything else. “They have a strong culture of labor and effort, and they’re not used to complaining,” Ms. Louazel said.

But things are slowly changing, as more farmers speak up.

Cyril Belliard, 52, is among them. One recent day, he told his story to a small support group that had gathered in his tiny house in Vendée, a farming region in western France.

Mr. Belliard had been a farmer since 1996, he told them. But recently, he watched his goats dying day after day of a mysterious illness that neither he nor his veterinarian could figure out. Debts were piling up. Legal procedures began.

“I was living in a mobile home to avoid paying rent,” he recalled. “I moved into this small space of 35 square meters, where the whole family, my wife and children, would live, eat and sleep,” he added, referring to an area of about 375 square feet.

The father of three children, Mr. Belliard depended on charities for food and Solidarité Paysans for support. Finally, in March, he decided to sell his farm to a young farmer.

“I held on thanks to sports, which I’ve been practicing since I was 18,” he said, “and thanks to my kids, who were always my priority.”

Now, he is considering a career change. But leaving farm life is not easy and not always an option.

Since Mr. Le Guelvout’s suicide, his brother André, 52, has taken over the farm in Brittany, and his sister Marie worries about how he will handle all of the work that was previously shared. The family recently decided to stop milk production and to sell part of its livestock.

“André has been a farmer his whole life,” Ms. Le Guelvout said. “All that I want right now is for André to live peacefully on his farm, until he retires.”

[stephaniefchase]

Bajan Newscap 5/27/2017

Good Morning #realdreamchasers Here is your daily news cap for Saturday 26th May 2017. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Saturday Sun Newspaper (SS).

INNISS SHAKY OUTSPOKEN MINISTER LOSING SUPPORT IN ST JAMES SOUTH - He is arguably the most loquacious member of the Freundel Stuart administration, sharing his opinion on virtually everything and never afraid of taking positions foreign to collective responsibility. Member of Parliament for St James South Donville Inniss has already made it clear he would not “bury his head in the sand” to the “element of despair” among Barbadians, a suggestion that this was what his governing Democratic Labour Party (DLP) colleagues had been doing. It was in March that the Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development had said those within the ruling DLP who believed the next general election would be easy must be “smoking something”. There was disquiet among voters, Inniss said then, and the DLP would “pay a heavy price at the polls” if it chose to ignore the signs. In a twist of delicious irony, Inniss appears set to pay a heavy price if the sentiments expressed by voters during a three-hour Pulse of the People random survey of his constituents hold true. Victorious by 770 votes in 2013 over Sandra Husbands of the Opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP), the oft-quoted minister appeared to have a difficult time holding on to his lead. The majority of voters with whom Barbados TODAY spoke, several of whom had voted for Inniss and the DLP in the past, were adamant they would go with Husbands next time round. A few residents said they would not vote at all, and only one person said he was supporting Inniss.  (BT)

DEAL WITH IT - Barbadians are essentially being told to grin and bear the challenges associated with the island’s healthcare system. Director of the Urban Development Commission (UDC) Derek Alleyne made that suggestion today as he contended that just as generations before had sacrificed, Barbadians today may now have to “suck salt” for others to come. Delivering the weekly Astor B Watts lunchtime lecture at the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) headquarters today, Alleyne said despite the challenges, Barbadians were faring far better now than they were two to five decades ago. “Small states like Barbados, we collectively contribute so that the less able can survive, and anytime we want to change that we are no longer the democratic socialist country that we have been for all our lives. “Our parents and grandparents sacrificed much to provide the environment that we live in. We have to accept that things will get difficult now, but 25 to 50 years ago things were worse, and they took less to make sure we have what we have now. We have to learn sometimes to suck a little salt so that the ones that come after us don’t have to suck nipples and so on,” he argued. While stressing that he was not “knocking young people”, Alleyne said many of them do not understand what real hardship is. (BT)

HIGH RATING FOR HEALTH CARE – Barbados is THE third highest ranked Caribbean country for the quality of its health care system. So said Democratic Labour Party candidate for St Thomas and general practitioner Dr Rolerick Hinds. He was delivering the weekly DLP Astor B Watts Lunchtime lecture at DLP headquarters, George Street, yesterday. “We are ranked number 46 in the world as far as health care delivery is concerned. That is out of 197 countries. The only country from this part of the region which comes before us is Dominica,” he said. (SS)

LIVING WITH HIV CHANGES OUTLOOK - Twenty-five-year HIV survivor, Ainsley Reid believes that living with the virus requires a new outlook. This, he said, was why it is important that enabling environments are created for such people. Speaking at the launch of Regional Testing Day (RTD) held at Hilton Barbados in Needham’s Point, St Michael, yesterday, Reid indicated the benefits of Barbados adopting a training programme to help survivors to be better able to manage their new lives. Reid was diagnosed HIV positive in 1992 and he said that today he was able to manage his status well because of several reasons, specifically because of the aforementioned enabling environment and education on the virus and effects. Coordinator of Jamaica’s Greater Involvement of People Living with HIV & AIDS (GIPA), he maintained that sensitising people about the importance of HIV testing is important and necessary but after they are tested, they needed to know what was next. (SS)

LESS PARTYING MORE HELPING - There may be fewer fetes at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) soon, but it will be for a good cause. President of the Guild of Students Kai Bridgewater disclosed today that consideration was being given to diverting funds that would normally be used for entertainment events to help students who are struggling to pay tuition fees. A final decision will not be made, however, until next month’s guild retreat. During a press conference to announce plans to assist Barbadian students in paying for their UWI education, Bridgewater, who was accompanied by his counterparts from the Mona and St Augustine campuses, said the guild would be playing a greater role in helping develop the student population. It is aiming to absorb the impact of tuition costs for at least 100 students, and will also seek to create a “Consolidated Welfare Fund, much larger than ever before” in an effort to help as many students as possible, Bridgewater said. “The last thing we have already pledged to do is create scholarships. So, we will create seven scholarships – one for academic excellence in each faulty, one for excellence in sport, and one for excellence in any extracurricular activity,” he explained. The guild is funded through the annual $120 guild fee each student at the Cave Hill campus is required to pay, along with support and sponsorship received through various partnerships. But Mona campus, Mikiela Gonzales has put Cave Hill students on notice that more assistance would mean less partying. (BT)

LOOSE WOMEN - A local magistrate has lashed out at women who give themselves easily to men whom they know nothing about, often not even their names or where they live. And, said Wanda Blair, when children are born as a result of these easy “favours”, many of these women go to the court seeking child support, but refuse to grant the fathers access to the children. “I am finding more and more, women are sharing their favours . . . too easily, and when they wake up and the children are born they suddenly realize that the man who they shared their favour with, he is a good for nothing,” Blair last night told one of the Man Talk series of panel discussions organized by the Men’s Fellowship of the Cave Hill Wesleyan Holiness Church. “Some of them don’t even know the name of the man . . . don’t know where he lives, so they come to file an application for maintenance, and they don’t even have an address because they do not know. “Some of them know the man by a call name. So how is the [court] marshal going to go in search of this man?” As the only woman on the four-member panel, which was also moderated by a man, the magistrate made no excuses for the behaviour of the women who go before the court demanding child maintenance from men they hardly knew or they sometimes detest. Many of them are vindictive, she said, and seem to view the men as cash machines, and nothing more. “They see the children as their children. It seems as though the man didn’t play any role at all. They see his role as mainly providing money for the child. “They refer to the child as ‘my child, I don’t want my child to go at him,’” Blair told the discussion themed, Is child maintenance a man thing? “I often say to them, ‘if you curse the father of your child, it is a reflection on you, of your poor choice, because you are the person who chose that man to be the father of your child, so don’t waste your time cursing the child about the father’. The child has nothing to do with choosing that man . . . . Therefore it is a reflection of our poor choice.” Blair said many of these women often gave “all sorts of excuses” when fathers demand access to the children, citing an example of a mother giving as a reason, “the house in which the man was living in look as though it would capsize any moment”. “I said, ‘if you knew where he was living before you got the child [but] you went ahead and got the child for this man, he [the child] is going to visit his father at that same house,’” she told the audience. Blair also hit out at women who “feel better than the men” simply because they had found a job, and those who “all of a sudden realize that the man is a drug dealer”. The magistrate said she often explained to the mothers, “That’s not going to help. Maintenance goes hand in hand with access to your child.” (BT)

TRAIC BEACH TRIP – DEZSTON LEGALL kissed his son Nikan goodbye as he left for work on Thursday morning, something he does every day. It would be the last time he would see his nine-year-old boy alive. Nikan, a Class 3 student of Milton Lynch Primary School, lost his life that evening at Maxwell Beach, Christ Church, after getting into difficulty in the water. There was a sombre mood at the school yesterday as students and teachers tried to deal with the death of one of their own. (SS)

JAMAICAN WOMAN NOW FACING MURDER CHARGE - A 26-year-old Jamaican woman who was charged last month in connection with the stabbing death of a fellow countrywoman will spend more time at HMP Dodds after her serious bodily harm charge was upgraded to murder. Tedesha Ann-Juliet Haynes, who resided at Bay Street, St Michael made her second appearance in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court Friday after spending her first 28 days on remand at HMP Dodds. It is now alleged that she murdered Shockaya Boyd on April 28. Boyd, 34, was pronounced dead at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital after being stabbed while on Bay Street, St Michael around 2:30 a.m. Haynes was not required to plead to the indictable charge when it was read to her by Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant. She had made her first court appearance back on April 29, when she was charged with serious bodily harm, to which she was also not required to plead. The Jamaican lost her freedom when the prosecutor, Station Sergeant Neville Reid, objected to bail on the grounds that she is a non-national and that the charge against her was likely to be upgraded, based on the outcome of an autopsy on Boyd’s body. Haynes is expected to make her third appearance in the No. 2 Bridgetown court on June 23. (BT)

LANDSCAPER ACCUSED OF FRAUD – A 49-year-old landscaper is facing fraud charges. It is alleged that on April 2, with intent to defraud, Stephen Christopher Julian Maynard of #13 Chelston Avenue, Culloden Road, St Michael forged a First Citizens Bank (Barbados) Limited cheque payable to Platinum Architectural Inc., for $6,105.25. He is also accused of uttering and obtaining the same cheque. While police prosecutor Sergeant Cameron Gibbons did not object to bail for the accused, he urged that the court impose conditions. Maynard was released on $6,000 bail which he secured with one surety. He must now report to the Hastings Police Station every Monday and Thursday before noon, with valid identification. His second court appearance is on July 14.  (BT)

VENDOR HAS A MONTH TO STAVE OFF PRISON STAY - A 29-year-old vendor has four weeks to pay the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court a $2,000 fine for drug offences. If Hezron Joseph Williams, of Mason Hall Street, St Michael does not pay the money, he will have to spend six months in prison. He pleaded guilty to possession, possession with intent to supply and possession of a trafficable quantity of cannabis Friday, hours after he was caught with the illegal drugs. Police had received information and ventured earlier in the day to Cheapside Market, where Williams was found. Lawmen requested a search, which he agreed to, and the drugs, contained in 80 greaseproof wrappings and 33 transparent Ziploc bags, were found inside the boxer shorts he was wearing. Asked to account for the drugs, Williams simply admitted knowledge and ownership. In the dock Friday, he told Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant: “I have nothing to say.” It was then that she imposed the fine for the trafficking charge. He must pay that by June 28 to avoid the jail term. (BT)

TWO MEN FINED $10,000 FOR DRUGS – Members of the Drug Squad have arrested and jointly charged two men for a number of drug-related offences committed on Wednesday, May 22,  committed off the shores south of Barbados. They are 43-year-old Troy Sylvester King of Douglas Road, Ashton Hall, St Peter and 47-year-old Nicholas Dacosta Squires of Enterprise Main Road, Christ Church. King and Squires were jointly charged with possession of cannabis, trafficking of cannabis and possession with intent to supply cannabis. King faced additional charges of possession of cannabis, trafficking of cannabis and possession with intent to supply cannabis. Both men appeared before Chief Magistrate Christopher Birch in the District ‘C’ Magistrates’ Court today where they pleaded guilty to the joint charges and were fined $10,000 to be paid in six months or face two years in prison. They were both convicted, reprimanded and discharged for the offences of trafficking and possession with intent to supply. For his individual offences, King was sentenced to one year imprisonment; suspended for two years for the offence of possession of cannabis; and reprimanded and discharged for the offences of trafficking and possession with intent to supply. (BT)

BOYCOTT AN “INJUSTICE” - THEY ARE SEEKING justice, but former Barbados cricketer Franklyn Stephenson believes Thursday’s boycott of the Everton Weekes Under-13 final is “an injustice” and a “travesty”. The head coach of the Franklyn Stephenson Cricket Academy also described the decision taken by the Barbados Association of Principals for Public Secondary Schools (BAPPSS) not to allow Combermere and Foundation to contest the title match as “shameful”. Stephenson was among a number of spectators at Empire Club who left disappointed after the scheduled final wasn’t played because of a dispute between BAPPSS and the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) over some aspects of the regulations for the 2017 season involving clubs and schools. “It is very disappointing. I think it is a travesty. It is an injustice to cricket. These kids don’t have any part in the dispute that is . . . going on. (SS)

ILLEGAL SKATING RINK BULLZOED – An illegal skating rink and other obstacles on its lands at Graeme Hall, Christ Church, were destroyed by the Ministry of Agriculture yesterday. The ministry said that the structures were discovered a few weeks ago when officials were touring the lands at Graeme Hall. However, Paul Wilson, who was part of a group of skateboarders, BMXers and roller bladers, who used the skating rink, said they had actually been there for seven years. “We were looking for a safe and secure area where we could skateboard and one day a friend of mine told me about this spot. We went and looked at it and realised that it was being used as a dump. We cleaned it up and started to build and erect obstacles and structures,” he pointed out, adding that over time they built concrete structures as well. (SS)

EASY PICKINGS FOR BLACKBIRDS – The netball action in the University of the West Indies Games began in sweltering heat yesterday morning with favourites Mona and Cave Hill making the conditions ever hotter for Open Campuses and St Augustine, respectively. Playing on their home turf, Cave Hill Blackbirds roasted St Augustine 67-19, while Mona only used UWI Sportswoman Of The Year Shimona Nelson in the final quarter, but still humiliated newcomers Open Campuses 84-4. The Blackbirds were led by Barbados player Shonica Wharton with a game-high 52 goals from 58 attempts.  Best Shooter in the recent test series against Jamaica, Sheniqua Thomas, contributed 13 from 16, while Rieah Holder took the goal attack bib in the final quarter to sink two of five for the Blackbirds. (SS)

HELP AARON MOVE ON – Aaron worrell’s mother is calling on Barbadians to support the boy who brought home gold. The 19-year-old, who captured gold in the eight-event octathlon at last month’s CARIFTA Games in Curacao, is hoping to take on the decathlon at the upcoming NGC NAAA National Junior Championships in Trinidad and Tobago from June 8 to 12. The decathlon, which consists of ten events, will see the student of The St Michael School taking on the pole vault, which would also allow him to qualify for the junior Pan American Games in Peru from July 21 to 23. Sharon Worrell told the SATURDAY SUN that though Aaron was doing pole vaulting for the first time he had adapted quite well. (SS)

BCA HAPPY WITH STAGE – KENSINGTON OVAL Management Inc. (KOMI) isn’t the only happy one. The Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) seems to be just as pleased with KOMI’s acquisition of a new mobile stage following serious concerns over entertainment events damaging the Oval’s multimillion-dollar outfield. BCA chief executive officer Noel Lynch expressed the sentiment after KOMI finally brought in the sleek 40x32-foot automated structure on Wednesday to replace the big and heavy metal stages that were previously dropped on Kensington’s grass. “We really applaud them for getting it here because part of the challenge with the maintenance of the field was erecting these big stages for entertainment events and the time it took not only to assemble the stages, but to have them removed,” said Lynch. (SS)

BASHMENT BOOST – The bashment soca pot just got sweeter for the finalists. But the monarch will have to settle for a little less food on his plate. In the second year of the competition, organisers 4D Entertainment have made some adjustments to both the prizes and the rules. Last month, some of the finalists raised some concerns about the cost of their production and input to enter the competition versus what they got for this Crop Over Festival event. The artistes who spoke to SATURDAY SUN yesterday welcomed the increased appearance fee from $500 to $2 500 for the finalists. Last year, the Yello Bashment Soca Competition was introduced and the show was held at Kensington Oval along with the Sweet Soca and Party Monarch semi-finals, under the banner of Phenomenal Friday. (SS)

PARTY ON WHEELS – There is a new set of wheels in town that are ready for ‘de road’. And its owners are promising once Barbadians board the luxurious cabin they will rethink what they know about the party bus experience. Manager of entertainment and transportation company 30 Sumten, Felicia Vaughan, said that the decked-out freight liner limousine Fete Pon Wheels Party Bus was eight years in the making. She told WEEKEND BUZZ that after seeing what the local entertainment scene had to offer, she wanted  to bring something different to the masses. The 30 Sumten manager also said that there will be strict security measures for patrons to follow. “Our security personnel must be onboard at all times. People will also be searched before boarding and at any party where there are stops when passengers disembark, they are to be searched again,” she said. The party bus seats 26 people who must be 18 years or older, comes equipped with air-conditioning, mirror-ceilings, dinner lights, floor lights, a portable bar, a DJ booth, a television, and bathroom. Packages inclusive of drinks range from $3 700 to $4 600. She said she knew locals will compare their experience to the already established bus crawls but she sought to make a clear distinction. (SS)

PIPING HOT ON THE BOARDWALK – The pied pipers effect was in full swing yesterday as scores of music lovers flocked to the Richard Haynes Boardwalk. The attraction was Pipers on the Boardwalk, the first in a series of musical events that are part of the four-day Celtic Festival Barbados. Yesterday’s musical treat featured pipers from at least six countries who made their way along the South Coast promenade all the while serenading an appreciative audience. (SS)

GOSPELFEST CONCERT FULL OF WORSHIP – The sun had dropped below the horizon, but the spirits were high at the Gospelfest Sunset Concert in Independence Square on Wednesday. Hundreds were present at the event, which attracted gospel acts from Barbados and the region, Canada and the US and was sponsored by the Barbados Public Workers Co-operative Credit Union Limited. American singer Lamont Sanders connected with the crowd as he ministered in songs God Is Able and an original, Forever Mercy. This was followed by Barbados’ Krystal J Paul who in her first song, Thank You For The Cross Lord did justice to the piece. She motivated the crowd into a mood of worship with her passion and sincerity . Youth dancers Inside Out depicted the power of God over evil through their choreography, which was well received. The crowd, however, were in for an awesome experience as a family group called The Chitans – two brothers and three sisters from Canada – thrilled them with their singing. The family, originally from the spice isle of Grenada, left the audience calling for more. Veteran gospel artiste Bridget Blucher took the supportive patrons to another level of worship experience as she reminded them in her preamble that Gospelfest was not about entertainment, but about worship. She sang and commanded the large crowd to worship, raise hands and “give God all the praise that He alone deserves”. She followed up with I’m Still Here. Other performers include Shaquan Griffith, Kianna Flavus, Barbados Public Workers Co-operative Credit Union Choir, Purpose Band and local group Jireh, among others. (SS)

That’s all for today folks. There are 219 days left in the year Shalom! #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #bajannewscaps #newscapsbystephaniefchase

[viralhottopics]

What is Neil Gorsuch’s religion? It’s complicated

WASHINGTON (CNN)Earlier this month, the Trump administration summoned two dozen religious leaders to a private meeting. The mission: to rally support for Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

According to several participants, White House staffers emphasized Gorsuch’s robust defense of religious rights as a judge on the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals. In one prominent decision, Gorsuch argued that the government should rarely, if ever, coerce the consciences of believers.

Eventually, the conversation turned to Gorsuch’s own religious background.

He was raised Catholic but now worships with his wife and two daughters at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. Like the city, the congregation is politically liberal. It bars guns from its campus and installed solar panels; it condemns harsh rhetoric about Muslims and welcomes gays and lesbians. And its rector, the Rev. Susan Springer, attended the Women’s March in Denver, though not as a form of protest but as a sign of support for “the dignity of every human being.”

Springer says St. John’s is carrying out the covenant Episcopalians recite during baptisms: to strive for justice and peace among all people. Her congregation, she added, includes liberals, conservatives and all political points in between.

“What binds us together as one body is a curiosity and longing to encounter and know God,” she wrote in an email to CNN, “a willingness to explore our own interior selves, and a desire to leave the world in some small way better for our having been in it.”

As Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearings approach this week, some hardline conservatives have raised concerns about his choice of church.

“Be advised,” blared a tweet from Bryan Fischer, a host on the American Family Radio Network. “Gorsuch attends a church that is rabidly pro-gay, pro-Muslim, pro-green, and anti-Trump.”

“Is Gorsuch a secret liberal?” asked an op-ed in The Hill, a Washington newspaper.

Another columnist argued that if conservatives complained about Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, shouldn’t they also grumble about Gorsuch’s?

At the meeting in Washington, held in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House, administration officials encouraged the religious leaders to push back against such questions. St. John’s is one of only two Episcopal churches in Boulder, and the other caters to students at the University of Colorado, they said, according to people who attended the meeting. Anyway, Gorsuch should be judged on his judicial opinions, not his pastor’s politics, they argued.

Many Catholics and evangelicals agree, pointing to Gorsuch’s sterling conservative credentials. He is a lifelong Republican and a member of the Federalist Society, a leading conservative legal organization. He has written a scholarly book arguing against assisted suicide and openly admires the late Antonin Scalia, the justice he would replace, a hero to the conservative intellectual elite.

But in the black-and-white world of partisan politics, Gorsuch’s writings and religious life show several strands of gray.

He studied with an eminent Catholic philosopher but attends a progressive Episcopal parish. He has defended the religious rights not only of Christian corporations but also of Muslims and Native Americans. He has thought deeply about morality, but says judges have no right to impose their views on others. He is hailed as the fulfillment of President Trump’s pledge to pick a “pro-life” justice, but has no judicial record on abortion itself.

Even Gorsuch’s own religion is somewhat of a gray area.

If confirmed by the Senate, would Gorsuch be the high court’s only Protestant justice, or its sixth Catholic? His close friends and family offer different answers to that question.

A quiet faith

Gorsuch’s father was not religious, family members say, but his mother, Anne, came from a long line of Irish Catholics.

Rosie Binge, Anne’s sister and Gorsuch’s aunt and godmother, said her parents ferried their seven children to Mass every morning, and dinner was followed by a family recitation of the Rosary.

“I think religion is a big factor in Neil’s life,” Binge said. “When you grow up with someone so devout, it has to rub off on you.”

The three Gorsuch children — Neil, Stephanie and J.J. — attended Mass most Sundays and were enrolled in Catholic schools for much of their early educational lives, family members say.

In his speech accepting Trump’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch briefly alluded to his faith, saying it had lifted him through life’s valleys. That was especially true during the early 2000s, said Gorsuch’s younger brother, J.J., when their father, David, suffered from an aneurysm and later died, closely followed by his twin sister. Their mother, Anne, died in 2004.

“It was a tough time for the family,” said J.J. Gorsuch, who worships at a Catholic church in Denver. “I know that prayer, and group prayer, helped sustain him as well as the rest of us.”

After his parents’ death, Neil Gorsuch grew close to his uncle, the Rev. John Gorsuch, an Episcopal priest, who died February 15. On a group call after Neil’s nomination was announced, family members say, the pastor joked that some of the people on the line were Democrats, but all were proud of his nephew.

When the family moved to Washington, where Anne Gorsuch led the Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1980s, Gorsuch attended Georgetown Prep, a Jesuit school in Maryland.

Michael Trent, who has known Gorsuch since they were 14, remembers his close friend as studious but affable, equally at home in the library stacks and outdoors. He kept most of his opinions, including his religious views, private.

“It’s important to him, but in the times we’ve spent together it has not been a big part of the conversation,” said Trent, who lives in Marietta, Georgia. “It’s just one those quiet things you understand about a person.”

Gorsuch is godfather to Trent’s two sons, whom he spoils with presents on birthdays and Christmas, Trent said.

After college and law school, between stints clerking at the Supreme Court, Gorsuch studied legal philosophy at Oxford University in England, where his dissertation was supervised by John Finnis, a giant in the field and a former member of the Vatican’s prestigious International Theological Commission.

Among laypeople, Finnis may be best known for his expositions on natural law, an often-misunderstood area of legal and moral philosophy.

At its heart, natural law refers to a body of norms that adherents believe are not created by humans, but instead are revealed through the application of reason, said Richard Garnett, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame Law School, where Finnis now teaches.

Because philosophers like Finnis have employed natural law to argue against abortion and same-sex marriage, the field has become controversial, especially among liberals. In 1994, protesters interrupted an address by Finnis at Harvard, calling him a “hatemonger” and “homophobe.”

In a speech at Notre Dame in 2011, Gorsuch spoke fondly of Finnis, saying, “I have encountered few such patient, kind, and truly generous teachers in my life.”

Some conservatives celebrate Finnis’ influence on Gorsuch. But others worry that natural law will become an unwelcome distraction during Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearings, as it was during those of Robert Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas, both of whom expressed their appreciation for the field.

Gorsuch himself drew on natural law while writing his 2006 book “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” In it, he argued that “all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”

Conservatives who have read the book say it not only offers indications of Gorsuch’s views on assisted suicide, but abortion as well.

“It is impossible to come away from this rather remarkable book with any conclusion other than that this is a man who has a very high regard for the sanctity and the dignity of human life,” said Timothy Goeglein, vice president for external relations for the evangelical ministry Focus on the Family.

“I am confident that he will be a pro-life justice,” said Marilyn Musgrave, vice president of government affairs for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group.

Despite Trump’s pledge to pick a “pro-life” justice, Leonard Leo, who advised the president on Supreme Court nominees, said the issue was never explicitly raised during their discussions.

In Green v. Haskell County Board of Commissioners, Gorsuch dissented from a decision that forced an Oklahoma town to remove a 10 Commandments monument from the lawn of its courthouse.

In American Atheists v. Davenport, Gorsuch joined a minority opinion that argued that a “reasonable observer” would not necessarily view crosses erected on public property in honor of Utah state troopers as a government endorsement of religion.

In Abdulhaseeb v. Calbone, Gorsuch argued that a Muslim inmate can claim that his religious rights were violated by an Oklahoma prison that refused to provide halal food.

In Yellowbear v. Lampert, Gorsuch argued that a Wyoming prison violated a Native American prisoner’s religious rights by refusing to grant him access to the prison’s sweat lodge.

In Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius, Gorsuch wrote a lengthy defense of a Christian family business who said the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate impinged on their freedom of religion.

In Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, Gorsuch joined the dissent in siding with an order of nuns who likewise refused to comply with the contraception mandate, arguing that it violated their religious consciences.

“Judge Gorsuch wasn’t asked about it, and he’s not going to make a commitment on it,” said Leo, who has taken a leave from his job heading the Federalist Society while he shepherds Gorsuch’s nomination through the Senate.

Gorsuch himself cautioned senators against reading too much into his work in moral philosophy when he was nominated to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006. “My personal views, as I hope I have made clear, have nothing to do with the case before me in any case,” he said. “The litigants deserve better than that, the law demands more than that.”

In that regard, Gorsuch said he closely follows the man he would replace on the Supreme Court. In a speech shortly after Scalia’s death last year, Gorsuch said the “great project” of the late justice’s life had been to argue for a strict separation of powers between judges and legislators.

Lawmakers may appeal to public and personal morality, Gorsuch said, but judges never should. Their job, he said, is to interpret the law, rendering decisions based on what the text says, not what they believe.

Other legal scholars say that’s unrealistic. No matter how hard judges try, their personal passions and partisan leanings always seep, even unconsciously, into their decisions.

Episcopalian or Catholic?

When Neil Gorsuch returned from his studies in Oxford, he came home a married man. His British-born wife, Louise, was raised in the Church of England. As the new family settled in Vienna, Virginia, they joined Holy Comforter, an Episcopal parish.

According to church records, the Gorsuches were members of Holy Comforter from 2001 to 2006, when they moved to Colorado. But on membership forms, Neil listed his religion as Catholic, and there is no record that he formally joined the Episcopal Church, said the Rev. Lyndon Shakespeare, Holy Comforter’s interim rector.

That’s not unusual, Shakespeare said.

The Catholic and Episcopal churches may differ on politics, but their worship services can be quite similar, and a number of Catholics worship at Episcopal parishes without formally changing their religious identity. The churches recognize each other’s baptisms and marriages, but the Catholic Church does not regard celebrations of Holy Communion at Episcopal services as valid, experts say.

When the Gorsuch family moved to Colorado, they joined St. John’s, where they have been active in Sunday services. Louise is a lay reader, the couple’s two daughters likewise assist in the liturgy as acolytes and Neil has been an usher.

Friends and family say Louise Gorsuch has an affinity for the liturgy and music at St. John’s, finding in it an echo of her upbringing in the Church of England.

“Many of the hymn texts and musical settings are centuries old, some dating to the earliest centuries of Christianity,” said Springer, the church rector. “For people who have been life-long Anglicans, this music ties back to childhood.”

Springer declined to speak in detail about the Gorsuches, but in a recent church newsletter she praised Neil as “a broad-thinking” and thoughtful man.

In a statement, the congregation of St. John’s echoed that sentiment:

“We know Neil as a man of great humility and integrity, one eager to listen and thoughtful in speaking. These qualities are ones we pray all public servants in any leadership role in our country might possess. We care deeply for Louise and the girls and know them as people of solid faith. We give thanks to God for the presence of this family in our midst.”

Springer said she doesn’t know whether Gorsuch considers himself a Catholic or an Episcopalian.

“I have no evidence that Judge Gorsuch considers himself an Episcopalian, and likewise no evidence that he does not.”

Gorsuch’s younger brother, J.J., said he too has “no idea how he would fill out a form. He was raised in the Catholic Church and confirmed in the Catholic Church as an adolescent, but he has been attending Episcopal services for the past 15 or so years.”

Trent, Gorsuch’s close friend, said he believes Gorsuch would consider himself “a Catholic who happens to worship at an Episcopal church.”

Rosie Binge said her family was surprised to see media reports calling her nephew an Episcopalian. “I think once you’re a Catholic, you’re always a Catholic,” she said, before adding with a laugh, “At least he’s going to church!”

Binge is right about the Catholic Church.

Once baptized Catholic, a person enters an unbreakable theological communion, even if he or she later worships in a different church, said William Daniel, a canon law expert at Catholic University in Washington, DC.

“We would say that fundamentally such a person is still Catholic, even if they are living out their life as a Lutheran or Episcopalian. We wouldn’t confront the person, but if they asked, we would say: Yes, you’re still a part of the Catholic Church.”

Daniel emphasized that he was not speaking specifically about Gorsuch.

Gorsuch could also call himself an Episcopalian if he meets the church’s minimum standards for membership: Being baptized Christian, receiving Holy Communion at least three times a year and supporting the church through prayer and financial donations.

“The intent here is key,” said the Rev. Thomas Ferguson, an Episcopal priest and an expert on its relationships with other churches. “If he intends to be an Episcopalian he could certainly be considered one.”

This may seem academic, but the religious composition of the Supreme Court is closely watched by many believers. There has not been a Protestant on the Supreme Court since Justice David Souter, an Episcopalian, retired in 2009, and many Protestants eagerly anticipate Gorsuch’s confirmation as a religious milestone. Currently, there are five Catholics and three Jews on the high court.

“In the interest of pluralism, it’s about time we had a Protestant on the Supreme Court,” said Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board during the campaign. They still advise his administration.

“Would I be happier if he were going to a more traditional Episcopal Church? Yeah, I’d be happier for him,” Land continued.

“But I’m more concerned with his views on the Constitution than where he goes to church.”

Read more: http://ift.tt/2nmuNe7

from What is Neil Gorsuch’s religion? It’s complicated

[jmmgroup-blog]

Will registration at DIFC relieves anxiety for expats with assets

Charlotte Sherwin and her husband Tom are currently in the process of getting their will notarised at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC Courts).

The Dubai residents have drawn up the document to ensure that if Mr Sherwin, a commercial director in the oil industry, were to pass away first, his wife would maintain guardianship of their two teenage children and receive their assets in Dubai, and vice versa.

“We are long-term expats, and it would be very scary if something happened, because we have a lot of money invested in a house, a boat, and cars,” says Ms Sherwin, 49, a PR executive from the UK who lives in Green Community West.

The couple will join the more than 2,000 UAE residents who have already registered wills at the DIFC Wills and Probate Registry (DIFC WPR), since the initiative was first set up almost two years ago in May 2015. It is designed to help ensure non-Muslims with assets in Dubai can bypass Sharia law and instead abide by internationally recognised common law.

“We have already registered over 2,100 wills,” says Sean Hird, the director at DIFC Wills & Probate Registry, adding that the registry offers a “secure gateway for families, business and homeowners to plan ahead while they can”.

Next week the registry is expected to launch an online property will after it noticed an increase in demand for wills governing real estate. Mr Hird says it will be “a digital platform where users can protect their assets through a few simple clicks” adding that it is designed for “rapidity” and will take ” the headache out of securing English language, common law legal protection for real estate assets in Dubai – and soon Ras Al Khaimah.”

But despite the presence of the Dubai registry and talk of an expatriate-only court in Abu Dhabi, many expats are unclear whether getting a will registered is necessary – particularly if they only have a few assets.

James Spence, the assistant vice president of Globaleye says having a will is like climbing with a rope. “If you fall, it may or it may not save you, there’s no guarantee – however, it is far better to go climbing with a rope,” he says.

“From a financial advisory point of view, it is far better to have a will written where you come from, governing your assets in your home country.

“You also have to be aware that writing a last will and testament here can often void your will back in your home country.”

Devanand Mahadeva, a lawyer with Goodwins law firm in Abu Dhabi, says while the DIFC WPR is “good” for those based in Dubai, it ��does not become holistic with regards to people who want to deal with their inheritance to cover the movable and immovable assets elsewhere in the UAE or other parts of the world.

“Furthermore, the execution of the probated document has to be done through the regular courts in Dubai. Another deterrent being the cost of registration at the DIFC WPR which is considered high by people who have a simple inheritable estate like end of service benefits, small deposits or movable assets.”

However, if you have a property or business in Dubai, Cynthia Trench, a principal of Trench & Associates says a DIFC-registered will is “the only valid option” for non-Muslim expatriates as it offers “peace of mind” that their chosen beneficiaries will receive their estate.

This peace of mind is key in a community where many are unclear how their assets would be handled if they died.

If a non-Muslim and their spouse dies without leaving a will in place, any assets they owned in the UAE, and the guardianship of their children, is often dealt with according to the local Sharia law, says Nita Maru, a managing partner at TWS Legal Consultants. The grieving spouse can then face a lengthy legal process, and the decision the court comes to might leave a female spouse feeling short-changed.

“The Sharia system is based on a fixed share allocation system for the disbursement of assets,” says Ms Maru. “A surviving wife who has children qualifies for an eighth of her husband’s estate, and a surviving husband who has children qualifies for one quarter of his wife’s estate. The remainder of the estate is distributed among other family members, depending on who is alive at the date of death.”

But although a DIFC-registered will is currently the closest thing to a guarantee that a Dubai-based non-Muslim’s assets go to chosen loved ones, other options are still available on the market, which are catching expats out unawares.

The Sherwins say they wasted Dh6,000 on a will lodged with Dubai Notary, which they subsequently discovered might not hold up in court. This they said was drafted by a non-legal consulting company referred to them by their house insurance provider.

“I was asked to read and sign each page, and then the back of this document was stamped, stating that it had been filed with Dubai Courts,” explains Ms Sherwin. “I thought ‘this is great, and I’ve got a sticker to prove it’. But a couple of friends kept telling us it wasn’t going to work.”

Ms Sherwin says she then panicked and transferred significant funds offshore. “I felt we were very vulnerable that our money might be frozen. Before DIFC-registered wills became known, people were just grasping at straws to try to protect themselves in some way.”

Ms Trench says over a dozen of her clients have been mis-sold wills by unlicensed providers and have come to her following the death of a loved one. “There are many families affected due to the unclear rules and the Sharia Court’s refusal to accept ‘home’ wills, or any wills for that matter, which are contrary to Sharia. There are still a huge number of unlicensed will writers out there. I hope that further legislation will soon come into effect that will set firm guidelines to protect the public against these unscrupulous unlicensed providers.”

While those without property may think registering their will is unnecessary, the service offered by the DIFC WPR also covers bank accounts, shares in a business, vehicles, end of service benefits or other employee benefits and personal chattels, such as jewellery.

However, the service does not come cheap.

It costs Dh10,000 to register a single will at the DIFC WPR and Dh15,000 for a mirror will for couples. Plus there are lawyer fees ranging from Dh2,800 to Dh3,700. The legal process usually takes about six months and later amendments to the will cost Dh550, and can be done without needing a lawyer.

Ms Trench says it is also very useful in terms of the appointment of interim and permanent guardians. For that purpose, the Dh5,000 “Guardianship Only” will, is designed for those with children residing in Dubai but without assets held here, who still want reassurance that their children will be looked after by a person of their own choosing when they die.

Digital entrepreneur Manisha Dutta and her husband don’t own property in Dubai, but they do have cars, bank accounts, and shares. The couple is about to draw up a DIFC-registered will to cover those assets, as well as guardianship of their son and daughter.

“We want to be very careful with the Sharia law that our children don’t end up going to my husband’s parents,” says Ms Dutta, from India. “In our case this is not a very comfortable option, because our in-laws don’t live in Dubai and they’re always travelling. I would like to have my sister as the guardian.”

So what happens if you die without a DIFC-registered will in place?

The Personal Status Courts of First Instance in the UAE will stick to Sharia law precepts, regardless of whether the deceased is a Muslim or not, says Ms Maru. Under Sharia law, children are given over to a male relative of the husband’s family, rather than their mother. “While a surviving wife may be appointed as a custodian of any children of the marriage, she may not automatically be appointed as the legal guardian,” she says.

Meanwhile, personal assets including bank accounts are frozen until inheritance is determined, and family members are often left without access to money during this period.

Plus the court procedure can be lengthy and expensive, as Dubai resident Delphine, who asked for her name to be changed, has learnt. The death of the Briton’s husband from cancer three years ago was a shock. Although the couple had a will in their home country, covering their assets there, the money, cars and two houses they owned in Dubai were subject to local Sharia law. “We didn’t put a will in place here,” says Dephine, who has two sons ages 15 and 16.

After her husband’s death, she says she emptied most of their accounts, “with a minimum amount left in”, before they were frozen 10 days later. “I prolonged submitting his death certificate for as long as possible, because I knew I wanted to do a few things first,” she admits.

For the next two years, while the court decided her cases, Delphine had no access to the accounts or assets that the couple had jointly held in Dubai. “I was fortunate that I still had my own bank account and car – without those things, I would have had big problems,” says Delphine. The Dubai Courts awarded the majority of the money and assets to her sons, then to her father in law, and one-sixth went to her.

“My father-in-law signed his portion over to me, and was happy to do that, which was a tremendous relief,” she explains. “I know of stories where it hasn’t been amicable between families and has taken seven years to clear through the courts.”

The guardianship of Delphine’s children was awarded to her father-in-law, but Delphine worked amicably with him to get this ruling changed, bringing him over to Dubai three times at various stages from the UK to address the courts. “I also needed to provide a witness, who preferably had to be a male Muslim,” she says. “I got somebody from my husband’s company to do that for me.”

While the courts have ordered for her son’s money to be released to them when they’re 21, Delphine says she is able to access the internet bank account in which the funds are held.

In the end, the two-year process set her back Dh12,000, and involved four separate court cases costing Dh3,000 each. Delphine brought her expenses down by representing herself without a lawyer. “The legal process is do-able, but it depends on the relationship you have with male family members,” she says. “I felt the courts had our best interests at heart. It is frustrating and, of course, as a mum and a wife, you feel the money should all go to you. But in the end, things worked out the way that I wanted.”

pf@thenational.ae

Follow The National’s Business section on Twitter

Source: The National

Will registration at DIFC relieves anxiety for expats with assets was originally published on JMM Group of Companies

[martinfzimmerman]

Will registration at DIFC relieves anxiety for expats with assets

Charlotte Sherwin and her husband Tom are currently in the process of getting their will notarised at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC Courts).

The Dubai residents have drawn up the document to ensure that if Mr Sherwin, a commercial director in the oil industry, were to pass away first, his wife would maintain guardianship of their two teenage children and receive their assets in Dubai, and vice versa.

"We are long-term expats, and it would be very scary if something happened, because we have a lot of money invested in a house, a boat, and cars," says Ms Sherwin, 49, a PR executive from the UK who lives in Green Community West.

The couple will join the more than 2,000 UAE residents who have already registered wills at the DIFC Wills and Probate Registry (DIFC WPR), since the initiative was first set up almost two years ago in May 2015. It is designed to help ensure non-Muslims with assets in Dubai can bypass Sharia law and instead abide by internationally recognised common law.

"We have already registered over 2,100 wills," says Sean Hird, the director at DIFC Wills & Probate Registry, adding that the registry offers a "secure gateway for families, business and homeowners to plan ahead while they can".

Next week the registry is expected to launch an online property will after it noticed an increase in demand for wills governing real estate. Mr Hird says it will be "a digital platform where users can protect their assets through a few simple clicks" adding that it is designed for "rapidity" and will take " the headache out of securing English language, common law legal protection for real estate assets in Dubai - and soon Ras Al Khaimah."

But despite the presence of the Dubai registry and talk of an expatriate-only court in Abu Dhabi, many expats are unclear whether getting a will registered is necessary - particularly if they only have a few assets.

James Spence, the assistant vice president of Globaleye says having a will is like climbing with a rope. "If you fall, it may or it may not save you, there's no guarantee - however, it is far better to go climbing with a rope," he says.

"From a financial advisory point of view, it is far better to have a will written where you come from, governing your assets in your home country.

"You also have to be aware that writing a last will and testament here can often void your will back in your home country."

Devanand Mahadeva, a lawyer with Goodwins law firm in Abu Dhabi, says while the DIFC WPR is "good" for those based in Dubai, it "does not become holistic with regards to people who want to deal with their inheritance to cover the movable and immovable assets elsewhere in the UAE or other parts of the world.

"Furthermore, the execution of the probated document has to be done through the regular courts in Dubai. Another deterrent being the cost of registration at the DIFC WPR which is considered high by people who have a simple inheritable estate like end of service benefits, small deposits or movable assets."

However, if you have a property or business in Dubai, Cynthia Trench, a principal of Trench & Associates says a DIFC-registered will is "the only valid option" for non-Muslim expatriates as it offers "peace of mind" that their chosen beneficiaries will receive their estate.

This peace of mind is key in a community where many are unclear how their assets would be handled if they died.

If a non-Muslim and their spouse dies without leaving a will in place, any assets they owned in the UAE, and the guardianship of their children, is often dealt with according to the local Sharia law, says Nita Maru, a managing partner at TWS Legal Consultants. The grieving spouse can then face a lengthy legal process, and the decision the court comes to might leave a female spouse feeling short-changed.

"The Sharia system is based on a fixed share allocation system for the disbursement of assets," says Ms Maru. "A surviving wife who has children qualifies for an eighth of her husband's estate, and a surviving husband who has children qualifies for one quarter of his wife's estate. The remainder of the estate is distributed among other family members, depending on who is alive at the date of death."

But although a DIFC-registered will is currently the closest thing to a guarantee that a Dubai-based non-Muslim's assets go to chosen loved ones, other options are still available on the market, which are catching expats out unawares.

The Sherwins say they wasted Dh6,000 on a will lodged with Dubai Notary, which they subsequently discovered might not hold up in court. This they said was drafted by a non-legal consulting company referred to them by their house insurance provider.

"I was asked to read and sign each page, and then the back of this document was stamped, stating that it had been filed with Dubai Courts," explains Ms Sherwin. "I thought 'this is great, and I've got a sticker to prove it'. But a couple of friends kept telling us it wasn't going to work."

Ms Sherwin says she then panicked and transferred significant funds offshore. "I felt we were very vulnerable that our money might be frozen. Before DIFC-registered wills became known, people were just grasping at straws to try to protect themselves in some way."

Ms Trench says over a dozen of her clients have been mis-sold wills by unlicensed providers and have come to her following the death of a loved one. "There are many families affected due to the unclear rules and the Sharia Court's refusal to accept 'home' wills, or any wills for that matter, which are contrary to Sharia. There are still a huge number of unlicensed will writers out there. I hope that further legislation will soon come into effect that will set firm guidelines to protect the public against these unscrupulous unlicensed providers."

While those without property may think registering their will is unnecessary, the service offered by the DIFC WPR also covers bank accounts, shares in a business, vehicles, end of service benefits or other employee benefits and personal chattels, such as jewellery.

However, the service does not come cheap.

It costs Dh10,000 to register a single will at the DIFC WPR and Dh15,000 for a mirror will for couples. Plus there are lawyer fees ranging from Dh2,800 to Dh3,700. The legal process usually takes about six months and later amendments to the will cost Dh550, and can be done without needing a lawyer.

Ms Trench says it is also very useful in terms of the appointment of interim and permanent guardians. For that purpose, the Dh5,000 "Guardianship Only" will, is designed for those with children residing in Dubai but without assets held here, who still want reassurance that their children will be looked after by a person of their own choosing when they die.

Digital entrepreneur Manisha Dutta and her husband don't own property in Dubai, but they do have cars, bank accounts, and shares. The couple is about to draw up a DIFC-registered will to cover those assets, as well as guardianship of their son and daughter.

"We want to be very careful with the Sharia law that our children don't end up going to my husband's parents," says Ms Dutta, from India. "In our case this is not a very comfortable option, because our in-laws don't live in Dubai and they're always travelling. I would like to have my sister as the guardian."

So what happens if you die without a DIFC-registered will in place?

The Personal Status Courts of First Instance in the UAE will stick to Sharia law precepts, regardless of whether the deceased is a Muslim or not, says Ms Maru. Under Sharia law, children are given over to a male relative of the husband's family, rather than their mother. "While a surviving wife may be appointed as a custodian of any children of the marriage, she may not automatically be appointed as the legal guardian," she says.

Meanwhile, personal assets including bank accounts are frozen until inheritance is determined, and family members are often left without access to money during this period.

Plus the court procedure can be lengthy and expensive, as Dubai resident Delphine, who asked for her name to be changed, has learnt. The death of the Briton's husband from cancer three years ago was a shock. Although the couple had a will in their home country, covering their assets there, the money, cars and two houses they owned in Dubai were subject to local Sharia law. "We didn't put a will in place here," says Dephine, who has two sons ages 15 and 16.

After her husband's death, she says she emptied most of their accounts, "with a minimum amount left in", before they were frozen 10 days later. "I prolonged submitting his death certificate for as long as possible, because I knew I wanted to do a few things first," she admits.

For the next two years, while the court decided her cases, Delphine had no access to the accounts or assets that the couple had jointly held in Dubai. "I was fortunate that I still had my own bank account and car - without those things, I would have had big problems," says Delphine. The Dubai Courts awarded the majority of the money and assets to her sons, then to her father in law, and one-sixth went to her.

"My father-in-law signed his portion over to me, and was happy to do that, which was a tremendous relief," she explains. "I know of stories where it hasn't been amicable between families and has taken seven years to clear through the courts."

The guardianship of Delphine's children was awarded to her father-in-law, but Delphine worked amicably with him to get this ruling changed, bringing him over to Dubai three times at various stages from the UK to address the courts. "I also needed to provide a witness, who preferably had to be a male Muslim," she says. "I got somebody from my husband's company to do that for me."

While the courts have ordered for her son's money to be released to them when they're 21, Delphine says she is able to access the internet bank account in which the funds are held.

In the end, the two-year process set her back Dh12,000, and involved four separate court cases costing Dh3,000 each. Delphine brought her expenses down by representing herself without a lawyer. "The legal process is do-able, but it depends on the relationship you have with male family members," she says. "I felt the courts had our best interests at heart. It is frustrating and, of course, as a mum and a wife, you feel the money should all go to you. But in the end, things worked out the way that I wanted."

pf@thenational.ae

Follow The National's Business section on Twitter

from Personal Finance RSS feed - The National http://www.thenational.ae/business/personal-finance/will-registration-at-difc-relieves-anxiety-for-expats-with-assets

[ongames]

This Is What Obamacare's Critics Won't Admit Or Simply Don't Understand

THOUSAND OAKS, California ― Maryann Hammers is likely to die from ovarian cancer someday. But she hopes someday won’t come anytime soon.

Hammers, 61, received the diagnosis in late 2013, and doctors told her that it was stage 3-C, which meant that she could live for many years with the right treatment and a little luck. So far, she’s had both. She’s in remission for the second time, and her last course of chemotherapy ended a year and a half ago. But recent blood tests detected elevated levels of a protein associated with tumors, she explained when we met a few weeks ago. “Maybe it’s a fluke,” she said. “I hope so. I kinda feel like the clock is ticking.”

If the cancer is back, Hammers said, she may need surgery similar to her two previous operations — “gigantic surgeries, gutted like a fish and hospitalized for many days.” Chemotherapy would likely come next, plus medication, hospitalization, and home care. But Hammers considers herself lucky because she’s been able to get treatment at City of Hope, a highly respected Southern California cancer research and treatment center, and luckier still that she’s been able to pay for the treatment with insurance — an Anthem Blue Cross policy she bought through Covered California, the exchange her state created under the Affordable Care Act.

To hear President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans tell it, Obamacare has been a disaster, even for those who obtained coverage through the law. Hammers has a very different perspective. She’s a freelance writer and editor, which means she has no employer-provided insurance. In the old days, if she’d gone shopping for a policy with her cancer diagnosis, she would have struggled to find a carrier willing to sell her one.

I'm terrified. ... Do you know how easy it is to use a million dollars when you're getting cancer treatment? Maryann Hammers, Thousand Oaks, California

And it’s not just the pre-existing condition guarantee, which even critics like Trump say they support, that Hammers has found so valuable. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover a wide range of services and treatments — which, in her case, has included multiple shots of Neulasta, a medication that boosts white blood cell counts and typically costs several thousand dollars per injection. The law also prohibits annual or lifetime limits on benefits, which, as a long-term cancer patient, she would be a prime candidate to exceed. 

Policies with such robust coverage inevitably cost thousands of dollars a year, more than Hammers could afford on her own — particularly since battling the disease has cut into her work hours. But the law’s generous tax credits discount the premiums and help with the out-of-pocket costs, too. “Without the Affordable Care Act, I honestly do not know what I would have done,” she said.

The coverage Hammers has today still isn’t as good as what she had years ago, when she worked for a company that provided benefits. But it’s better than what she had in the years right before the cancer diagnosis, when she was buying insurance on her own. The latter plan covered fewer services and came with out-of-pocket costs high enough to discourage her from getting checkups. Obamacare’s introduction of free preventive screenings led her to schedule a long-overdue colonoscopy. During routine preparation for that procedure, a physician first felt a lump in her abdomen.  

Sometimes Hammers wonders whether, with less sporadic doctor visits, the cancer might have been caught a little sooner. “But I couldn’t afford a fat doctor’s bill. And I thought I was super healthy.”

These days, something else looms even larger in her mind — the possibility that Trump and the Republican Congress will repeal the health care law without an adequate replacement, or maybe with no replacement at all.  

“I’m terrified — isn’t that crazy?” Hammers said. “My biggest source of stress right now isn’t the fact that I have incurable cancer. It’s the prospect of losing my insurance.”

What American Health Care Used To Look Like

To appreciate the significance of stories like Hammers’ and what they say about the Affordable Care Act, it helps to remember what used to happen to people like her before the law took effect. By 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, roughly 1 in 6 Americans had no health care insurance, and even the insured could still face crippling medical bills. As a reporter covering health care during those years, I met these people. Some of their stories stand out, even now, because they capture the old system at its callous, capricious worst.

Gary Rotzler, a quality engineer at a defense contractor in upstate New York, lost his family coverage in the early 1990s when he lost his job. He ended up uninsured for two years, while he juggled stints as an independent contractor. His wife, Betsy, made do without doctor visits even after she started feeling some strange pains. By the time she got a checkup, she had advanced breast cancer. Desperate efforts at treatment failed. After she died, Gary, a father of three, had to declare bankruptcy because of all the unpaid medical bills.

Jacqueline Ruess, a widow in south Florida, thought she was insured. But then she needed expensive tests when her physicians suspected she had cancer. Although the tests were negative, the insurer refused to pay the bills because, it said, a brief episode of a routine gynecological problem in her past qualified as a pre-existing condition.

Tony Montenegro, an immigrant from El Salvador living in Los Angeles, was uninsured and working as a security guard, until untreated diabetes left him legally blind.

Marijon Binder, an impoverished former nun in Chicago, was sued by a Catholic hospital over medical expenses she couldn’t pay.

And Russ Doren, a schoolteacher in a Denver suburb, believed he had good insurance until the bills for his wife’s inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital hit the limit for mental health coverage. The hospital released her, despite worries that she was not ready. A few days later, she took her own life.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was an effort to address these kinds of problems — to carry on the crusade for universal coverage that Harry Truman had launched some 60 years before. But precisely because Obama and his allies were determined to succeed where predecessors had failed, they made a series of concessions that necessarily limited the law’s ambition.

They expanded Medicaid and regulated private insurance rather than start a whole new government-run program. They dialed back demands for lower prices from drugmakers, hospitals and other health care industries. And they agreed to tight budget constraints for the program as a whole, rather than risk a revolt among more conservative Democrats. These decisions meant that health insurance would ultimately be more expensive and the new system’s financial assistance would be less generous.

Still, projections showed that the law would bring coverage to millions while giving policymakers tools they could use to reduce medical costs over time. When the Senate passed its version of the legislation in December 2009, then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) described the program as a “starter home” with a solid foundation and room for expansion.

Where Obamacare Failed And Where It Succeeded

Seven years later, Trump and the Affordable Care Act’s other critics insist that the program has been a boondoggle — that the Obamacare starter home needs demolition. Some of their objections are philosophical, and some, like the persistent belief that the law set up “death panels,” are fantastical. But others focus on the law’s actual consequences.

High on that list of consequences are the higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs that some people face. The new rules, like coverage of pre-existing conditions, have made policies more expensive, and Obamacare’s financial aid frequently doesn’t offset the increases. A “rate shock” wave hit suddenly in the fall of 2013, when insurers unveiled their newly upgraded plans and in many cases canceled old ones — infuriating customers who remembered Obama’s promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” while alienating even some of those sympathetic to what Obama and the Democrats were trying to do.

I’ve interviewed plenty of these people, too. A few weeks ago, I spoke with Faisuly Scheurer, a real estate agent from Blowing Rock, North Carolina. She and her husband, who works in the restaurant business, were excited about the health care law because they’d struggled to find decent, affordable insurance. They make about $60,000 a year, before taxes, with two kids and college tuition looming in the not-distant future, she said.

In late 2013, they checked out their options and learned that, after tax credits, coverage would cost $360 a month. Scheurer said she remembers thinking, “OK, that is really tight. But if the benefits are good, we are going to have to skimp on other things to make it work.” Then she learned about the deductible, which was nearly $13,000 per year. “My disappointment was indescribable.”

The Scheurer family ultimately decided to remain uninsured. They’re not the only ones, and that has weakened the system as a whole. The people eschewing coverage tend to be relatively healthy, since they’re most willing to take the risk of no coverage. That’s created big problems for insurers, which need the premiums from healthy folks to offset the high medical bills of people with serious conditions.

Many insurers have reacted by raising premiums or pulling out of some places entirely, leaving dysfunctional markets in North Carolina and a handful of other states. Just this week, Humana, which had already scaled back its offerings, announced that it was pulling out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges altogether. At least for the moment, 16 counties in Tennessee don’t have a single insurer committed to offering coverage in 2018.

Trump, Ryan and other Republicans pounced on the Humana news, citing it as more proof of a “failed system” and the need for repeal. That’s pretty typical of how the political conversation about the Affordable Care Act has proceeded for the last seven years. The focus is on everything that’s gone wrong with Obamacare, with scant attention to what’s gone right.

And yet the list of what’s gone right is long.

In states like California and Michigan, the newly regulated markets appear to be working as the law’s architects intended, except for some rural areas that insurers have never served that well. Middle-class people in those states have better, more affordable options.

It looks like more insurers are figuring out how to make their products work and how to successfully compete for business. Customers have turned out to be more price-sensitive than insurers originally anticipated. In general, the carriers that struggle are large national companies without much experience selling directly to consumers, rather than through employers.

Last year’s big premium increases followed two years in which average premiums were far below projections, a sign that carriers simply started their pricing too low. Even now, on average, the premiums people pay for exchange insurance are on a par with, or even a bit cheaper than, equivalent employer policies — and that’s before the tax credits.

The majority of people who are buying insurance on their own or get their coverage through Medicaid are satisfied with it, according to separate surveys by the Commonwealth Fund and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The level of satisfaction with the new coverage still trails that involving employer-provided insurance, and it has declined over time. But it’s clearly in positive territory 

And then there’s the fact that the number of people without health insurance is the lowest that government or private surveys have ever recorded. When confronted with questions about the people who gained coverage because of the law, Republicans often say something about sparing those people from disruption ― and then argue that even those who obtained insurance through the law are suffering and no better off. This claim is wildly inconsistent with the experience of people like Maryann Hammers ― and, more important, it’s wildly inconsistent with the best available research.

People are struggling less with medical bills, have easier access to primary care and medication, and report that they’re in better health, according to a study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2015. The number of people forgoing care because of costs or being “very worried” about paying for a catastrophic medical bill dropped substantially among the newly insured, Kaiser Foundation researchers found last year when they focused on people in California.

A bunch of other studies have turned up similar evidence, All of them gibe with a landmark report on the effects of Massachusetts’ 2006 insurance expansion, which was a prototype for the national legislation. Residents of that state experienced better health outcomes and less financial stress, according to the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“Though it’s had no shortage of controversies and stumbles, there’s really no denying that the ACA has created historic gains in insurance coverage,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Foundation. “With better coverage that has fewer holes, access to health care has improved and many have better protection from crushing medical bills.”

What Repeal Would Really Mean

Reasonable people can disagree about whether these achievements justify Obamacare’s costs, which include not only higher premiums for the young and healthy but also hefty new taxes on the wealthiest Americans. That’s a debate about values and priorities as much as facts.

What’s not in dispute, or shouldn’t be, is the stark choice on the political agenda right now.

Democratic lawmakers still argue for the principle that Truman laid out in 1948: “health security for all, regardless of residence, station, or race.” They think the Affordable Care Act means the U.S. is closer to that goal and that the next step should be to bolster the law ― by using government power to force down the price of drugs, hospital services and other forms of medical care, while providing more generous government assistance to people who still find premiums and out-of-pocket costs too onerous. Basically, they want people like Faisuly Scheurer to end up with the same security that people like Maryann Hammers already have.

Some Republicans talk as if they share these goals. Trump has probably been the most outspoken on this point, promising to deliver “great health care at lower cost” and vowing that “everybody would be covered.” But other Republicans reject the whole concept of health care as a right. Although it’s theoretically possible to draw up a conservative health plan that would improve access and affordability, these aren’t the kinds of plans that Republicans have in mind. 

There’s a face to this law, there’s a face to people that are going to be affected by it. Angela Eilers, Yorba Linda, California

Their schemes envision substantially less government spending on health care, which would mean lower taxes for the wealthy but also less financial assistance for everybody else. Republicans would make insurance cheaper, but only by allowing it to cover fewer services and saddling beneficiaries with even higher out-of-pocket costs. The result would be some mix of more exposure to medical bills and more people without coverage. If Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act without replacing it ― a real possibility, given profound divisions within the GOP over how to craft a plan ― 32 million more people could go uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That would mean real suffering, primarily among those Americans who benefit most from the law now ― the ones with serious medical problems, or too little income to pay for insurance on their own, or both.

Jay Stout, a 20-year-old in Wilmington, North Carolina, is one of those people. He was in good health until a head-on car collision nearly severed his arm and landed him in the hospital for more than a month. Surgeries and rehabilitation would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars that, as a community college student working part-time as a busboy, he could never have paid — if not for the Blue Cross plan that his mother had bought through the Affordable Care Act. When we spoke a few weeks ago, he told me the insurance has been “irreplaceable” and that losing it “would be totally devastating.”

Meenakshi Bewtra had never had a serious health problem until her first year at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, when she developed severe gastrointestinal problems — the kind that forced her into the hospital for two months and drove her to drop out of school. Her insurance lapsed, which meant that her GI issues became a pre-existing condition. She eventually found coverage and today she’s a professor of medicine at Penn, where she moonlights as an advocate for universal health insurance.

“For the first time, I truly understood what comprehensive health insurance meant,” Bewtra said, remembering what it was like to become fully covered. “I did not have to worry about how many times I saw a doctor, or how many lab tests I had to get, or having to ration out medications.”

Angela Eilers, who lives in Yorba Linda, California, isn’t worrying about her own health. It’s her daughter Myka who has a congenital heart condition called pulmonary stenosis, which makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood to the lungs. The little girl has required multiple surgeries and will need intensive medical treatment throughout her childhood.

In 2012, Angela’s husband, Todd, was laid off from his job at an investment firm. Since going without insurance was not an option, they took advantage of COBRA to stay on his old company’s health plan. It was expensive, and Eilers recalled panicking over the possibility they might not be able to pay the premiums. “I remember sitting at the table, thinking of plans. What would be our plan? One of them was … giving up our parents rights to my mom, because she has really good health insurance.”

Eventually her husband started his own consulting business, and that gave them the income to keep up with premiums until 2014 — when they were able to obtain coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Today they have a gold plan, one of the most generous available, for which they pay around $20,000 a year. Even though they make too much to qualify for financial assistance, they’re grateful for the coverage. Seven-year-old Myka has already run up more than a half-million dollars in medical bills. In the old days, before Obamacare, they would have worried about hitting their plan’s lifetime limit on benefits. 

The family’s coverage has become more expensive over the years. They wish the price were lower, but they’re also not complaining about that. “I’m thankful that the letter was a premium hike, rather than ‘Sorry, we are not going to cover your daughter anymore,’” Angela Eilers said.

When she thinks about the possibility of Obamacare repeal, she wonders if Trump and the Republicans understand what that would really mean. “There’s a face to this law, there’s a face to people that are going to be affected by it,” Eilers said. “It’s not me, it’s not him, it’s her. She’s only 7. And through no fault of her own, why should she suffer? And she’s not the only one.”

Sign up for the HuffPost Must Reads newsletter. Each Sunday, we will bring you the best original reporting, long form writing and breaking news from The Huffington Post and around the web, plus behind-the-scenes looks at how it’s all made. Click here to sign up!

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

This Is What Obamacare's Critics Won't Admit Or Simply Don't Understand published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

[yes-dal456]

This Is What Obamacare's Critics Won't Admit Or Simply Don't Understand

//<![CDATA[ function onPlayerReadyVidible(e){'undefined'!=typeof HPTrack&&HPTrack.Vid.Vidible_track(e)}!function(e,i){if(e.vdb_Player){if('object'==typeof commercial_video){var a='',o='m.fwsitesection='+commercial_video.site_and_category;if(a+=o,commercial_video['package']){var c='&m.fwkeyvalues=sponsorship%3D'+commercial_video['package'];a+=c}e.setAttribute('vdb_params',a)}i(e.vdb_Player)}else{var t=arguments.callee;setTimeout(function(){t(e,i)},0)}}(document.getElementById('vidible_1'),onPlayerReadyVidible); //]]>

THOUSAND OAKS, California ― Maryann Hammers is likely to die from ovarian cancer someday. But she hopes someday won’t come anytime soon.

Hammers, 61, received the diagnosis in late 2013, and doctors told her that it was stage 3-C, which meant that she could live for many years with the right treatment and a little luck. So far, she’s had both. She’s in remission for the second time, and her last course of chemotherapy ended a year and a half ago. But recent blood tests detected elevated levels of a protein associated with tumors, she explained when we met a few weeks ago. “Maybe it’s a fluke,” she said. “I hope so. I kinda feel like the clock is ticking.”

If the cancer is back, Hammers said, she may need surgery similar to her two previous operations — “gigantic surgeries, gutted like a fish and hospitalized for many days.” Chemotherapy would likely come next, plus medication, hospitalization, and home care. But Hammers considers herself lucky because she’s been able to get treatment at City of Hope, a highly respected Southern California cancer research and treatment center, and luckier still that she’s been able to pay for the treatment with insurance — an Anthem Blue Cross policy she bought through Covered California, the exchange her state created under the Affordable Care Act.

To hear President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans tell it, Obamacare has been a disaster, even for those who obtained coverage through the law. Hammers has a very different perspective. She’s a freelance writer and editor, which means she has no employer-provided insurance. In the old days, if she’d gone shopping for a policy with her cancer diagnosis, she would have struggled to find a carrier willing to sell her one.

I'm terrified. ... Do you know how easy it is to use a million dollars when you're getting cancer treatment? Maryann Hammers, Thousand Oaks, California

And it’s not just the pre-existing condition guarantee, which even critics like Trump say they support, that Hammers has found so valuable. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover a wide range of services and treatments — which, in her case, has included multiple shots of Neulasta, a medication that boosts white blood cell counts and typically costs several thousand dollars per injection. The law also prohibits annual or lifetime limits on benefits, which, as a long-term cancer patient, she would be a prime candidate to exceed. 

Policies with such robust coverage inevitably cost thousands of dollars a year, more than Hammers could afford on her own — particularly since battling the disease has cut into her work hours. But the law’s generous tax credits discount the premiums and help with the out-of-pocket costs, too. “Without the Affordable Care Act, I honestly do not know what I would have done,” she said.

The coverage Hammers has today still isn’t as good as what she had years ago, when she worked for a company that provided benefits. But it’s better than what she had in the years right before the cancer diagnosis, when she was buying insurance on her own. The latter plan covered fewer services and came with out-of-pocket costs high enough to discourage her from getting checkups. Obamacare’s introduction of free preventive screenings led her to schedule a long-overdue colonoscopy. During routine preparation for that procedure, a physician first felt a lump in her abdomen.  

Sometimes Hammers wonders whether, with less sporadic doctor visits, the cancer might have been caught a little sooner. “But I couldn’t afford a fat doctor’s bill. And I thought I was super healthy.”

These days, something else looms even larger in her mind — the possibility that Trump and the Republican Congress will repeal the health care law without an adequate replacement, or maybe with no replacement at all.  

“I’m terrified — isn’t that crazy?” Hammers said. “My biggest source of stress right now isn’t the fact that I have incurable cancer. It’s the prospect of losing my insurance.”

What American Health Care Used To Look Like

To appreciate the significance of stories like Hammers’ and what they say about the Affordable Care Act, it helps to remember what used to happen to people like her before the law took effect. By 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, roughly 1 in 6 Americans had no health care insurance, and even the insured could still face crippling medical bills. As a reporter covering health care during those years, I met these people. Some of their stories stand out, even now, because they capture the old system at its callous, capricious worst.

Gary Rotzler, a quality engineer at a defense contractor in upstate New York, lost his family coverage in the early 1990s when he lost his job. He ended up uninsured for two years, while he juggled stints as an independent contractor. His wife, Betsy, made do without doctor visits even after she started feeling some strange pains. By the time she got a checkup, she had advanced breast cancer. Desperate efforts at treatment failed. After she died, Gary, a father of three, had to declare bankruptcy because of all the unpaid medical bills.

Jacqueline Ruess, a widow in south Florida, thought she was insured. But then she needed expensive tests when her physicians suspected she had cancer. Although the tests were negative, the insurer refused to pay the bills because, it said, a brief episode of a routine gynecological problem in her past qualified as a pre-existing condition.

Tony Montenegro, an immigrant from El Salvador living in Los Angeles, was uninsured and working as a security guard, until untreated diabetes left him legally blind.

Marijon Binder, an impoverished former nun in Chicago, was sued by a Catholic hospital over medical expenses she couldn’t pay.

And Russ Doren, a schoolteacher in a Denver suburb, believed he had good insurance until the bills for his wife’s inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital hit the limit for mental health coverage. The hospital released her, despite worries that she was not ready. A few days later, she took her own life.

The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was an effort to address these kinds of problems — to carry on the crusade for universal coverage that Harry Truman had launched some 60 years before. But precisely because Obama and his allies were determined to succeed where predecessors had failed, they made a series of concessions that necessarily limited the law’s ambition.

They expanded Medicaid and regulated private insurance rather than start a whole new government-run program. They dialed back demands for lower prices from drugmakers, hospitals and other health care industries. And they agreed to tight budget constraints for the program as a whole, rather than risk a revolt among more conservative Democrats. These decisions meant that health insurance would ultimately be more expensive and the new system’s financial assistance would be less generous.

Still, projections showed that the law would bring coverage to millions while giving policymakers tools they could use to reduce medical costs over time. When the Senate passed its version of the legislation in December 2009, then-Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) described the program as a “starter home” with a solid foundation and room for expansion.

Where Obamacare Failed And Where It Succeeded

Seven years later, Trump and the Affordable Care Act’s other critics insist that the program has been a boondoggle — that the Obamacare starter home needs demolition. Some of their objections are philosophical, and some, like the persistent belief that the law set up “death panels,” are fantastical. But others focus on the law’s actual consequences.

High on that list of consequences are the higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs that some people face. The new rules, like coverage of pre-existing conditions, have made policies more expensive, and Obamacare’s financial aid frequently doesn’t offset the increases. A “rate shock” wave hit suddenly in the fall of 2013, when insurers unveiled their newly upgraded plans and in many cases canceled old ones — infuriating customers who remembered Obama’s promise that “if you like your plan, you can keep it,” while alienating even some of those sympathetic to what Obama and the Democrats were trying to do.

I’ve interviewed plenty of these people, too. A few weeks ago, I spoke with Faisuly Scheurer, a real estate agent from Blowing Rock, North Carolina. She and her husband, who works in the restaurant business, were excited about the health care law because they’d struggled to find decent, affordable insurance. They make about $60,000 a year, before taxes, with two kids and college tuition looming in the not-distant future, she said.

In late 2013, they checked out their options and learned that, after tax credits, coverage would cost $360 a month. Scheurer said she remembers thinking, “OK, that is really tight. But if the benefits are good, we are going to have to skimp on other things to make it work.” Then she learned about the deductible, which was nearly $13,000 per year. “My disappointment was indescribable.”

The Scheurer family ultimately decided to remain uninsured. They’re not the only ones, and that has weakened the system as a whole. The people eschewing coverage tend to be relatively healthy, since they’re most willing to take the risk of no coverage. That’s created big problems for insurers, which need the premiums from healthy folks to offset the high medical bills of people with serious conditions.

Many insurers have reacted by raising premiums or pulling out of some places entirely, leaving dysfunctional markets in North Carolina and a handful of other states. Just this week, Humana, which had already scaled back its offerings, announced that it was pulling out of the Affordable Care Act exchanges altogether. At least for the moment, 16 counties in Tennessee don’t have a single insurer committed to offering coverage in 2018.

Trump, Ryan and other Republicans pounced on the Humana news, citing it as more proof of a “failed system” and the need for repeal. That’s pretty typical of how the political conversation about the Affordable Care Act has proceeded for the last seven years. The focus is on everything that’s gone wrong with Obamacare, with scant attention to what’s gone right.

And yet the list of what’s gone right is long.

In states like California and Michigan, the newly regulated markets appear to be working as the law’s architects intended, except for some rural areas that insurers have never served that well. Middle-class people in those states have better, more affordable options.

It looks like more insurers are figuring out how to make their products work and how to successfully compete for business. Customers have turned out to be more price-sensitive than insurers originally anticipated. In general, the carriers that struggle are large national companies without much experience selling directly to consumers, rather than through employers.

Last year’s big premium increases followed two years in which average premiums were far below projections, a sign that carriers simply started their pricing too low. Even now, on average, the premiums people pay for exchange insurance are on a par with, or even a bit cheaper than, equivalent employer policies — and that’s before the tax credits.

The majority of people who are buying insurance on their own or get their coverage through Medicaid are satisfied with it, according to separate surveys by the Commonwealth Fund and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The level of satisfaction with the new coverage still trails that involving employer-provided insurance, and it has declined over time. But it’s clearly in positive territory 

And then there’s the fact that the number of people without health insurance is the lowest that government or private surveys have ever recorded. When confronted with questions about the people who gained coverage because of the law, Republicans often say something about sparing those people from disruption ― and then argue that even those who obtained insurance through the law are suffering and no better off. This claim is wildly inconsistent with the experience of people like Maryann Hammers ― and, more important, it’s wildly inconsistent with the best available research.

People are struggling less with medical bills, have easier access to primary care and medication, and report that they’re in better health, according to a study that appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2015. The number of people forgoing care because of costs or being “very worried” about paying for a catastrophic medical bill dropped substantially among the newly insured, Kaiser Foundation researchers found last year when they focused on people in California.

A bunch of other studies have turned up similar evidence, All of them gibe with a landmark report on the effects of Massachusetts’ 2006 insurance expansion, which was a prototype for the national legislation. Residents of that state experienced better health outcomes and less financial stress, according to the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

“Though it’s had no shortage of controversies and stumbles, there’s really no denying that the ACA has created historic gains in insurance coverage,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Foundation. “With better coverage that has fewer holes, access to health care has improved and many have better protection from crushing medical bills.”

What Repeal Would Really Mean

Reasonable people can disagree about whether these achievements justify Obamacare’s costs, which include not only higher premiums for the young and healthy but also hefty new taxes on the wealthiest Americans. That’s a debate about values and priorities as much as facts.

What’s not in dispute, or shouldn’t be, is the stark choice on the political agenda right now.

Democratic lawmakers still argue for the principle that Truman laid out in 1948: “health security for all, regardless of residence, station, or race.” They think the Affordable Care Act means the U.S. is closer to that goal and that the next step should be to bolster the law ― by using government power to force down the price of drugs, hospital services and other forms of medical care, while providing more generous government assistance to people who still find premiums and out-of-pocket costs too onerous. Basically, they want people like Faisuly Scheurer to end up with the same security that people like Maryann Hammers already have.

Some Republicans talk as if they share these goals. Trump has probably been the most outspoken on this point, promising to deliver “great health care at lower cost” and vowing that “everybody would be covered.” But other Republicans reject the whole concept of health care as a right. Although it’s theoretically possible to draw up a conservative health plan that would improve access and affordability, these aren’t the kinds of plans that Republicans have in mind. 

There’s a face to this law, there’s a face to people that are going to be affected by it. Angela Eilers, Yorba Linda, California

Their schemes envision substantially less government spending on health care, which would mean lower taxes for the wealthy but also less financial assistance for everybody else. Republicans would make insurance cheaper, but only by allowing it to cover fewer services and saddling beneficiaries with even higher out-of-pocket costs. The result would be some mix of more exposure to medical bills and more people without coverage. If Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act without replacing it ― a real possibility, given profound divisions within the GOP over how to craft a plan ― 32 million more people could go uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

That would mean real suffering, primarily among those Americans who benefit most from the law now ― the ones with serious medical problems, or too little income to pay for insurance on their own, or both.

Jay Stout, a 20-year-old in Wilmington, North Carolina, is one of those people. He was in good health until a head-on car collision nearly severed his arm and landed him in the hospital for more than a month. Surgeries and rehabilitation would have cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars that, as a community college student working part-time as a busboy, he could never have paid — if not for the Blue Cross plan that his mother had bought through the Affordable Care Act. When we spoke a few weeks ago, he told me the insurance has been “irreplaceable” and that losing it “would be totally devastating.”

Meenakshi Bewtra had never had a serious health problem until her first year at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, when she developed severe gastrointestinal problems — the kind that forced her into the hospital for two months and drove her to drop out of school. Her insurance lapsed, which meant that her GI issues became a pre-existing condition. She eventually found coverage and today she’s a professor of medicine at Penn, where she moonlights as an advocate for universal health insurance.

“For the first time, I truly understood what comprehensive health insurance meant,” Bewtra said, remembering what it was like to become fully covered. “I did not have to worry about how many times I saw a doctor, or how many lab tests I had to get, or having to ration out medications.”

Angela Eilers, who lives in Yorba Linda, California, isn’t worrying about her own health. It’s her daughter Myka who has a congenital heart condition called pulmonary stenosis, which makes it more difficult for the heart to pump blood to the lungs. The little girl has required multiple surgeries and will need intensive medical treatment throughout her childhood.

In 2012, Angela’s husband, Todd, was laid off from his job at an investment firm. Since going without insurance was not an option, they took advantage of COBRA to stay on his old company’s health plan. It was expensive, and Eilers recalled panicking over the possibility they might not be able to pay the premiums. “I remember sitting at the table, thinking of plans. What would be our plan? One of them was … giving up our parents rights to my mom, because she has really good health insurance.”

Eventually her husband started his own consulting business, and that gave them the income to keep up with premiums until 2014 — when they were able to obtain coverage through the Affordable Care Act. Today they have a gold plan, one of the most generous available, for which they pay around $20,000 a year. Even though they make too much to qualify for financial assistance, they’re grateful for the coverage. Seven-year-old Myka has already run up more than a half-million dollars in medical bills. In the old days, before Obamacare, they would have worried about hitting their plan’s lifetime limit on benefits. 

The family’s coverage has become more expensive over the years. They wish the price were lower, but they’re also not complaining about that. “I’m thankful that the letter was a premium hike, rather than ‘Sorry, we are not going to cover your daughter anymore,’” Angela Eilers said.

When she thinks about the possibility of Obamacare repeal, she wonders if Trump and the Republicans understand what that would really mean. “There’s a face to this law, there’s a face to people that are going to be affected by it,” Eilers said. “It’s not me, it’s not him, it’s her. She’s only 7. And through no fault of her own, why should she suffer? And she’s not the only one.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2lhKYWx from Blogger http://ift.tt/2lYrfLJ