#of conflicts between individual nations and the greater benefits and costs of being a part of a bigger union | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

prosemist11 · 4 years ago

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Sarms Are This Year's Big Muscular Tissue Drug However Are They Risk-free?

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Is Ostarine a drug?

Enobosarm, also known as ostarine or MK-2866, is an investigational selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) developed by GTx, Inc. Enobosarm.Clinical dataLegal statusUS : Investigational New DrugPharmacokinetic dataElimination half-life24 hoursIdentifiers20 more rows

It is alluring to believe outcomes for clients with cardiac arrest might be improved by titrating therapy to BNP degrees. Trials were performed in professional clinics, made use of a selection of BNP monitoring approaches, and also did not determine a BNP target to deal with. This research study is appealing, however further examination of which people with cardiac arrest may benefit is probably required prior to this ends up being basic technique. BNP surveillance might be reliable for younger individuals with minimized ventricular ejection fraction. However, the populace with heart failure that is challenging to manage is often older and also commonly have various other illness besides cardiac arrest.

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The 2010 National Cardiac arrest Audit approximated that one in 100 people in the UK has heart failure. It has a poor prognosis; around a third of people confessed to health center with heart failure pass away within one year. Monitoring presently costs the NHS around ₤ 625 million a year.

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The study does not appear to sustain a change to clinical practice. The 2010 NICE standard on the administration of chronic cardiac arrest suggests that BNP (or its derivative N-terminal pro-Btype natriuretic peptide, NTproBNP) is gauged in individuals with suspected heart failure that have no history of cardiac arrest. Urgent reference and echocardiogram evaluation are advised for those with a BNP level above 400pg/ml. Levels listed below 100pg/ml are claimed to make the diagnosis of cardiac arrest not likely. In the friend study, the overall death price was 142 people per 1,000 per year.

This does highlight the demand for many years complete of competition testing.

I assume in pharmaceutical terms the concept is to utilize SARMS rather than androgens sometimes, as you point out they can be selectively adapted to create tasks in a different way to androgens.

Though there's no way to recognize just the amount of people are acquiring them, analysis of London's well-known "fatberg"-- the mass of oil and organic matter found in the funding's sewers-- located SARMs existing in greater amounts than both MDMA as well as cocaine.

I would certainly suggest that anabolics aren't observable for months however, lots of will certainly have a really comparable time training course to ostarine, depending on the dosage and also approach of administration.

Over the past 5 years, on the internet look for SARMs (or "discerning androgen receptor modulators", including andarine as well as ostarine) have actually been rising gradually.

It has been reported that Andarine is no more a target medication.

The variety of instances is anticipated to increase with the aging populace. The research was limited by the high quality of the previous tests, the schedule of data and the shortage of monitored individuals generally method. Additionally, there was no evident system found that might discuss the tiny benefit. So, these findings need to be regarded as tentative and are not conclusive enough to sustain an adjustment in technique. Various other study is underway that might much better define the location for this test. The relevance of over expression at the mRNA degree is verified by redetection of picked TUMAPs from action 3 on tumour cells and optionally by quantification of the TUMAPs themselves.

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Absorption enhancers are the components which temporarily disrupt the intestinal barrier to improve the medicine permeabilization. https://spain.direct-peptides.com/ of peptide is due to the proteolytic bosom of the peptide backbone. NIHR is the country's largest funder of wellness as well as care research as well as supplies individuals, centers and also modern technology that makes it possible for research to thrive. NICE guidance suggests the dimension of BNP in people with new-suspected cardiac arrest; even more, plasma NP degrees typically fall after therapy.

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Ostarine (MK-2866) (Enobosarm) This selective androgen receptor modulator (SARM) has been studied and proven to improve lean body mass and physical function. It also increases tendon strength, ligament health, bone density and encourages collagen turn-over.

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Long-distance runner Kiranjeet Kaur fails dope test - Sportstar

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Fatality rates were higher in the BNP-monitoring group than in the BNP-testing and also never-tested groups. This most likely shows that this little group were sicker than various other individuals. BNP-guided treatment had no overall result on risk of fatality from any kind of cause (hazard ratio 0.87, 95% confidence period 0.73 to 1.04). Sub-group evaluation found it decreased mortality for individuals aged less than 75 years (Human Resources 0.70, 95% CI 0.53 to 0.92) yet except older people.

This program of job set out to assess the scientific as well as cost-effectiveness of BNP-guided therapy for people with a brand-new medical diagnosis of heart failure between January 2007 and March 2013. Cardiac arrest is a condition where the heart can not pump blood efficiently sufficient to satisfy the demands of the body. It has many causes, typically, previous cardiac arrest or high blood pressure.

RMTC Publishes Research On Ethylphenidate, Announces Funding For EPO, SARM Studies - Horse Racing News - Paulick Report

RMTC Publishes Research On Ethylphenidate, Announces Funding For EPO, SARM Studies - Horse Racing News.

Posted: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 07:00:00 GMT [source]

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warsofasoiaf · 5 years ago

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Geopolitics for Writers and Worldbuilders Part 2: My Friend to the End

Once you have the strategic objectives for the nations determined, it is much easier to determine where they align and where they conflict. These will be the foundations for building the geopolitical relationships within your world. As circumstances arise in your writing, examine them and how they might cause a reassessment of national objectives. A country that acquires territory, for example, might devote resources to securing and integrating the territory into its lands, while neighboring countries might devote more effort to their defenses in an attempt to secure themselves against this expansion, or attempt an invasion while armies are in the new territories, taking advantage of the situation for their own gain.

International relationships don’t have to be antagonistic, and neither do nations have to be in conflict to generate a fascinating story. Alliances shape much of geopolitics, and so writing out a believable, well-considered alliance can be a great boon to worldbuilding. The formation of an alliance can be its own story, and the dissolution of an alliance can be the focal point of a great tragedy, but even as a background element an alliance should be sensible and well-considered, to give depth to the world.

Why Go Separate When We Can Go Together? The Dimensions of Alliances

A military alliance is at its base an arrangement of the national securities of two or more nations where there is no clearly defined crisis or war when it is enacted. This does not mean that there is no clearly defined enemy, but rather that the structure of a military conflict is not identified in advance. This is the main difference between a military alliance and a military coalition, where the conflict and the belligerent parties are clearly identified with the pact entered into with the understanding that it will not persist past the current strategic mission.

When it comes to a military alliance, working out the expected gains from the national perspective is critical to making the alliance believable. Alliances often are established with a specific goal in mind, such as a military alliance to conquer a territory and split it between the alliance partners, this was a secret provision of the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Defensive alliances might arise against a specific threat such as the anti-Napoleonic Grand Alliance of 1814, or a lingering mission against a threat such as the NATO military alliance tasked with a defensive mission of Western Europe against Soviet aggression. The contributions to these alliances and the terms required to invoke them are often specific and outlined by treaty to avoid being entangled in a matter that isn’t strategically advisable, or having one alliance partner utilize the alliance for singular benefit. In practice, one of the key features to help constrain this is to limit help to defensive wars: the defensive pact. A defensive pact states that when one member is attacked, the other members will enter into the war automatically on the side of the defender. The Triple Alliance of 1882, for example, between the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German Empire, and Italy, stipulated in its provisions that in the event of a French attack on Italy, Germany and Austria-Hungary would enter into the war as allies of Italy, and Italy would do the same for a French attack on the German Empire. With the outbreak of World War I, the Triple Alliance was still in force, but as the German Empire was the aggressor, the automatic entry clause did not apply. Similarly, the pact stipulated that Austria-Hungary and Italy were to discuss any expansionism into the Balkans, which was not done. The terms not complied with, Italy was not compelled to join the Central Powers in their war against the Triple Entente, and ultimately joined the Allies in spring 1915. In writing terms, the benefits and constraints of an alliance can form a dramatic chapter for a nation when deciding whether or not to fulfill it or break it, weighing the costs and benefits of each decision, permitting the writer to naturally communicate the strategic objectives to the reader in the voice of the character.

Alliances throughout history have attempted to use broader contexts to create long-lasting alliances along cultural or political commonalities. The Holy Alliance of 1815 attempted to use European heritage and Christianity as foundational guidelines for the preservation of European peace, though this ultimately failed. The 20th century saw alliances founded based on systems of government, such as the Sino-Soviet alliance which was united in their models of a centralized revolutionary vanguard party-directed Communism under a single dictator, which lasted until the Sino-Soviet split that began with the ascension of Khruschev and doctrinal disputes with Mao. In practice, the strategic objectives of the various parties usually differ so substantially enough that most of the alliances either have no effective power or fall apart quickly. Even NATO, a long-enduring military alliance consisting primarily of alliances in North America and Europe, faced difficulties when senior alliance partner France under Charles de Gaulle left the integrated military command structure in 1966 over issues of military independence and questions of France’s influence relative to the United States’s and the United Kingdom’s; de Gaulle’s perception of France as third fiddle to both of these powers would shape a great deal of French foreign policy during his tenure as President of the French Fifth Republic. Today, NATO struggles with political tensions amid the expansion of the alliance as well as Internal struggles between alliance members. For writers, the idea of building a broad-based alliance could be an entire novel in itself for idealistic characters or nations, with efforts and setbacks forming the basis for the dramatic beats of the story, or the breaking of an alliance can form the background for a world of conflict that could provide a worldbuilder a setting where conflict could come from unexpected angles when former friends turn into enemies.

The symmetry of a military alliance typically gives great operational latitude to each individual partner. Symmetry, in the context of an alliance, suggests a relatively equal contribution and benefit among the component members. Strictly speaking, contribution does not necessarily have to be perfectly equivalent, as nations will differ in their capacity to contribute, but the benefit typically consist of joint military aid, intelligence sharing, and other methods to improve the military power of the component nations. The deterrent effect of attacking an alliance is theoretically greater than attacking a single nation, so smaller nations can exhibit a deterrent effect far larger than they can provide on their own. From a worldbuilding perspective, the different aspects that each alliance partner brings to an alliance can demonstrate different aspects of the world and its culture, the example being the different species in the Mass Effect series and their contributions to warfare. These differences can even form points of contention and thus, a good writer can pull out points of conflict to create drama and tension between ostensible allies in a story, to set up a conflict for politically or diplomatically-minded protagonists to show their strengths.

Huge Tracts of Land - Dynastic Alliances and Feudal Overlordship

In a world where dynastic succession determines government, marriage and adoption are used as tools of alliance. If the bloodline is what rules a nation, entering into a bloodline is a political statement, hence why marriages in monarchies were designed not for personal affection, but for strategic matters of state. Marrying into the royal family of a neighboring kingdom can secure a border, two powerful duchies could marry to establish a powerful domestic power bloc within a kingdom, or two kingdoms can unite against a common foe, sealing the alliance with a marriage. From a writing perspective, this is a natural place for writers to explore the depths of an alliance, as the relationship between the respective dynasties can inform the interplay between the two nations, and character writing can be more comfortable than writing for an impersonal nation. Good relationships could translate into a domestic golden age, or an age of expansionism as the secure alliance allows military resources to be driven elsewhere.

However, there is a risk in marriages, the progeny of this new marriage may become a new rival for power for one or both of the thrones. Any member of a dynasty can eventually inherit a throne in a dynastic succession; this could open any monarch or heir up to a political threat from an ambitious family member looking to inherit the throne and the power that comes with it. Mixing two dynasties and two monarchies offers an even more tempting prize, bringing both monarchies under the control of one dynasty, or even more tempting, under one single monarch, is a very tempting prize: the personal union of two monarchies. A monarch in control of two countries in a personal union has tremendous ability to set the domestic and foreign policy of both. However, personal unions often deal with sectarian and partisan conflict between their member nations if they feel ruled by a foreign power, ethnic and cultural conflict was very common throughout human history. Personal unions are not equitable alliances typically, one monarchy is the senior partner and the monarchy joined becomes the junior. A junior partner in a personal union might feel ruled by a foreign power, not capable of influencing their own foreign policy, and agitate against such rule the same any conquered power might act against a foreign overlord. From a writing perspective, this is a natural conflict point, where different factions could be arrayed against each other for the writer to use as potential problems for the protagonists to handle.

Juniors in a personal union aren’t the only inherently asymmetrical alliance, plenty of foreign policy partnerships place one party in a significant position of power over the other. In a medieval setting, the relationship between a feudal overlord and a vassal is inherently unequal, with the vassal providing a term of military service in exchange for military protection from a feudal overlord. Other states may establish a relationship of suzerainty, where the overlord controls the foreign policy of the weaker state while permitting autonomy over internal policy, usually with obligations in the form of regular tribute payments. Usually, the overlord had so much more relative power than the vassal that vassalization was considered preferable to subjugation via aggressive expansion; a threatened province may decide the loss of autonomy is inevitable and worth settling on its terms rather than at the point of a sword. This was certainly the case with the European great power struggles from the establishment of Roman client-states to Ottoman suzerainty in the Balkans. In this sense, the conflict is natural, the loss of independence against the threat of invasion and annihilation, with variances in power possibly changing the strategic situation or provoking unrest and rebellion. A writer can tie this onto another conflict, where a large nation facing a difficult structure must either deal with opportunistic rebels, or weigh the options of granting more autonomy and other privileges in exchange for support to crush a greater threat.

The More Things Change...

Even in the modern times, inherently unequal political alliances can be used to safeguard the interest of the larger nation. For example, during the Cold War, the asymmetrical shape of the United States’s alliances with South Korea and Taiwan were far different than the symmetrical alliance of NATO. The United States feared that Kai-Shek or Syngman Rhee, both hardline anti-communists, would engage in an aggressive war against Mao Zedong that would have brought the Soviet Union into the conflict and precipitated a general nuclear war. To prevent this, the United States instituted bilateral relations with each nation instead of a multilateral alliance network. This theory, dubbed powerplay, offers an alternate system of alliances for writers than the classic institutional model. For writers, exploring and illustrating power dynamics can offer enough substance to establish the plot of an entire novel, and for worldbuilders this can easily form a cornerstone of core objectives for characters and factions.

This isn’t to say that all asymmetrical political arrangements between large and small nations are inherently exploitative. Larger nations can offer tremendous boons to smaller nations in the military sphere, providing equipment, facilities, and training that the smaller nation simply cannot achieve on its own with its limited resources. It is entirely likely that larger nations often serve their own benefit by partnering with smaller nations to build up themselves. Friendly smaller nations can often act as regional partners as well as provide lucrative trade arrangements or hedge out other large nations from establishing themselves in the same region.

There is a drawback to establishing these types of arrangements, aside from the normal cost of implementing them; a key problem in international relations as it pertains to security and military is the security dilemma. The security dilemma, or spiral model, is the idea that actions taken by a state that increase its defense also contribute to tension as the same actions can be taken as offense. These actions taken, other states perform similar actions to increase their own defense, creating a spiral effect that constantly escalates in a spiral, hence the name. Without the ability to know another state’s objectives, nations feel the need to continually ensure the state’s defense, potentially leading to a war no participant wants, all out of a desire to ensure that the nation is well-defended and secure, which as stated, is the natural, rational desire of any nation as it exists.

Arms control agreement have often formed a cornerstone of defensive arrangements between powers who are unfriendly or hostile. While the modern conception of arms control typically relates to nuclear technology and proliferation, examples including the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty and the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, arms control agreements have a long history even before the concept of modern nation-states; the ultimate goal is a restriction on the use of military force, typically by restricting the conduct in warfare, restricting the territory where war can be waged such as establishing demilitarized zones or forbidding certain targets, or restricting the technology used in warfare. There are two primary goals with arms control arrangements of any type: to make a war less devastating and thus easier to recover from, and to solve the security dilemma by producing methods of trust and communication that signal actions of a defensive nature, avoiding the escalation spiral that could potentially lead to pre-emptive strikes, or causing a regional conflict to escalate far beyond that which the original participants originally intended.

Arms control, however, has its own dilemma, in enforcing the provisions of the contract. Nations might be inclined to cheat the provisions of the deal, allowing them the benefits of compliance without the drawbacks. The strategic decision-making that usually factors into this depend primarily on the strength of the restriction and enforcement clauses, with loose enforcement and easy methods to co-opt the process, either through bribery or self-enforcement. These dimensions apply to most if not all matters within the regulatory sphere.

Conclusion

Alliances are a complicated and meddlesome beast; but a well-crafted, multi-faceted alliance can offer a rich and engaging multiplicity of stories. Writers can explore different facets of a story with an alliance that offer conflicts that can’t be resolved with a contest of wills and a brawl, and a worldbuilder can build out a rich and engaging world for others to play in, whether that be tabletop gamers, other writers, or other creative excursions. As with all things, practice will hone the skills of worldbuilding to a razor’s edge, and a well-crafted world will be the result.

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azureflight · 7 years ago

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Geopolitics of the Faction War: Why do Horde and Alliance Really Fight?

TL,DR: Lacking the safety nets available to the Alliance, the poor lands and systemic shortcomings of the Horde condemns its population to chronic poverty, which brings constant social unrest with it. In order to cling onto their power, the Horde leaders fall into a populist and accusatory rhetoric targeting the Alliance, which eventually forces them to start wars due to public pressure.

Unwilling to help the Horde with its economic problems and unable to form a united front in international relations bar warfare, the wealth of the Alliance is virtually worthless in times of peace. Once the wars start, it is used to hold onto whatever Alliance already had, wasted to not lose wars that it could have prevented in the first place. At the end of the war, the Alliance is spent, once again unable and uninterested in helping the Horde. Thus the cycle continues.

When it comes to the reasons behind the perpetual faction war between the Alliance and the Horde, unfortunately the conversation usually devolves into a blame game of “who started it”. Regardless of one's opinion on the matter, however, two facts remain: Neither side is supposed to be bad. Neither side is made up of evil people doing evil for the sake of evil. And both sides manage to drop their quarrels and come together to fight greater foes.

With these in mind, our question is then transformed: If neither side is evil, and both sides manage to work together, build bonds of camaraderie and come to understand one another, why do they keep falling back to killing each other? And the answer to that question lies in the political and economic structures and behaviors of these two factions.

When the First Horde came to Azeroth, it was more than just a plot by the Burning Legion. Beyond their schemes, there were two reasons compelling the Horde: Orcish homeworld Draenor was dying. They were suffering from a scarcity of basic necessities required to sustain their population. They were also in constant infighting. There was a need for an outside enemy to unite against. Much has changed about the Horde since those days, but these two aspects didn't really go away. Today, the Horde remains a faction suffering from chronic abject poverty and social unrest. The reasons behind these conditions have several layers:

The lands the Horde had settled on is mostly barren or very limited in resources required to sustain life. They are either really infertile or corrupted by the Scourge and/or other usage of weapons of bio-chemical warfare.

Majority of Horde's population is made up of hunter-gatherer societies, not agricultural ones. Agriculture is the most crucial step in a society's survival and advancement, because it largely solves the greatest and the most basic problem for all living creatures: Food security. Agriculture means a community can produce its own food, in much greater abundance, in rather protected areas without a need to compete with other predators, and can do this reliably. Agriculture uses land, in terms of food production, much more efficiently and allows societies to store excess food for down times and potential future scarcities. Majority of Horde's population lack this basic safety.

Combined with the already poor lands, this causes most of the Horde's population to live under a constant threat of famine. Their control over their own food supply is limited. Even if they have it good one year, they have no guarantees for the next year and even those who have it better than the others on average, still have no safety. This creates a permanent fear of starvation, a very real and core fear of death. This fear then turns into frustration and anger, bringing social unrest with it, creating a volatile political atmosphere.

These problems can actually be solved by enacting large scale reforms regarding core cultural attitudes and traditions of the Horde societies, along with major environmental remediation projects that could tansform the poor Horde lands into cultivable soil. However, such fundamental changes to the way of life and expensive, long term projects require a great amount of political capital. The type of political capital the Horde leaders simply do not have. Their power and control over their people is so lacking, it can almost only be used to keep themselves in charge and nothing more:

Baine Bloodhoof had to fight a civil war to succeed his own father, less than 5 years ago. He had to get financial aid from an Alliance leader, Jaina Proudmoore, in order to rally an army.

Lor'themar Theron is just a regent, appointed by the last monarch of a now extintc dynasty who turned traitor. He doesn't have the 7000 year old tradition of Sunstriders to support him and within 10 years, he was forced to order two pogroms, of High Elves and later Void Elves, in an already decimated society, simply because he cannot handle internal divisions.

Orcs went through 3 leadership changes in the last 5 years and it looks like they will go through a 4th one in BFA.

The major Troll leader who was also the Warchief of the Horde, Vol'jin, died after just one year in charge, current leadership is in limbo.

Gallywix is a major uncertainty himself. His power relies on deciet, fear and money. He could rule for decades unchallenged or could go down in an assassination the next week.

Sylvanas, who seem to be the safest in her position due to her almost deified cult personality among the Forsaken, still faced an open rebellion just 5-6 years ago. Furthermore, just a year after her appointment as Warchief, she is already facing political opposition within the Forsaken, in the form of an organization called the Desolate Council. And she was not a popular choice for Warchief among the Horde leadership in the first place.

This insufficiency of power limits the options for the Horde leaders. Unable to provide real solutions to real problems, instead the leaders resort to populist rhetoric in order to consolidate teir control and divert public frustration away from themselves onto other parties, often onto the Alliance. This diversion, however, boomerangs onto the Horde leadership, in the form of a massive public pressure to wage war against the Alliance.

So far, Thrall, who probably had the highest amount of public credit within the entire leadership circle, is the only Horde leader to attempt a substantial change in the way of life within the Horde, and it cost him. He also tried to turn the Barrens into a more cultivable land, but it took too long to get tangible returns. As a result, when Cataclysm hit right after the Northrend campaign, taking the already stretched resources of the Horde to new lows, he faced the very real threat of an uprising, eventually forced to semi-abdicate. This situation set a dangerous precedent: Long term plans and challenges to Horde societies' way of life are deemed as political suicide. Instead, it seemed better to shoot for short term glory and promise of wealth and victory through conquest. And it appears, after Garrosh, Sylvanas is adopting this approach as well, with the hopes that this time, the conquest will succeed and it will actually solve the economic problems the Horde faces. However, history suggests it is very unlikely to work:

War is an expensive endeavor. Horde is already suffering from a scarcity of essential goods, and warfare only exacerbates this situation.

The way Horde wages war often destroys the very lands they are trying to take over, diminishing the returns they were supposed to get. Burning of forests, Blight bombing, mana bombing pretty much always renders the environment uninhabitable, nullifying all of their gains.

Even when the Horde has short term victories, their systemic shortcomings that cause them to use land inefficiently mean they are unable to reap the benefits they need.

Longer the war lasts, greater the toll it takes on its participants, both in terms of resources and in terms of psychology. Horde, being the side that is plagued by internal divisions and scarcity, often unravels as conflicts drag, its members turning against one another as their war effort collapse in on itself.

With too much spent and not much gained, end of the wars sees the Horde population exhausted. This exhaustion brings a short lived peace as people try to rebuild. However, with the problems that started the previous wars still unresolved, tensions begin to rise once more, perpetuating the cycle.

At this point, even if the Horde were to have all of Azeroth to themselves unchallenged, they would still face widespread famine and internal turmoil within a few decades. The core of the Horde's problems lies withing itself, as well as its solution, however, the political willpower needed is nowhere to be found.

On the other side of the medallion, we have the Alliance. The problems they face are completely different from the Horde, yet they have no smaller part in the seemingly endless cycle of war between factions. Because if the Horde is the side starting all the wars, the Alliance is the side failing to keep the peace.

As an institution and a society, the Alliance is as stable as stable gets in a world like Azeroth:

Wrynn dynasty has been ruling Stormwind for centuries and are quite popular.

Prophet Velen is the unquestioned religious and political leader of the Draenei, who just recently managed to deliver the victory over the Burning Legion.

Gelbin Mekkatorque has been ruling over Gnomes in what is an elected position at least for decades.

Council of Three Hammers itself may be a new and shaky organization, but the individual leaders and their control over their respective tribes are mostly unchallenged.

Tyrande Whisperwind has been ruling Night Elf nation for over 10000 years, lead them through several global and interdimensional wars, winning all of them. Her political capital is so much that she managed to force several fundamental changes to extremely rigid Night Elf society just within the last decade and bar for a personal vendetta from Maiev Shadowsong, she is practically unopposed.

Genn Greymane is the only one who can be said to have a weak position, due to the civil war his nation had just 5 years ago. However, that war ended with the rebels rejoining him and his current rule has the support of both Stormwind and Night Elves.

From an economic standpoint, average Alliance citizens have a much better living standard than their Horde counterparts. The lands the Alliance controls are made up of mostly lush forests and fertile fields. Pretty much all Alliance societies are agricultural ones, providing greater food supply and food security. Along with the magics available to them, they are able to use the land much more efficiently and preserve it for a long time, achieving vital sustainability. Not everything is peachy, as proven by the crippling poverty in Westfall, yet even with one of its former breadbaskets rendered fallow, neither the kingdom of Stormwind nor the greater Alliance suffers any overreaching effects. Yet for all of its wealth, for all of its political stability, Alliance projects amost no soft power:

The past pains weight heavily on the Alliance nations. Distrust and even outright enmity towards the Horde is in abundance. This makes the Alliance unwilling to extend a helping hand to the Horde, even though doing so would be of greater benefit in the long term.

As a military alliance of independent nations, the Alliance lacks unity and coordination in all forms of policy other than warfare. Unable to put forth a united front in trade and other international relations, all of its power is divided, often used in unrelated areas and sometimes on opposing ends.

The lack of coordination combined with the lack of willingness, means that the times of peace are times of inaction for the Alliance. The inaction means they are unable to affect the Horde and its politics in any shape or form, as a result, all of the decision making lies in the hands of the Horde.

With decision making ceded to the Horde, the Alliance loses the initiative to them in every single conflict. Forced into a reactive role due its own lack of direction and will, the Alliance starts every war on the back foot. As a result, all of its accumulated wealth is used to catch up to the Horde, dissolving the advantages the Alliance had on paper.

With its wealth used up to not lose wars, the Alliance is unable to bring decisive ends to conflicts. When it all ends, they focus on rebuilding themselves and regress back to a state of international inaction. Once again unable and unwilling to help the Horde solve its chronic problems, the Alliance loses the opportunity to eradicate the very core reasons of the faction war, continuing the tragic cycle.

When she was the Lady of Theramore, Jaina Proudmoore did try to use soft power in order to establish a lasting peace between the Alliance and the Horde. Her city was open to trade and transport for Horde merchants and other non-military Horde citizens. She acted as an intermediary between the fledgeling Kalimdor Horde and the Night Elves, helping the Horde secure trade deals essential for its survival. She secretly provided monetary funds to Baine Bloodhoof in order to secure and stabilize the Tauren nation. She acted as a guarantor between two factions in order to preserve the trade between the Horde and the Night Elves as well as the old peace deal. However, since she was the only one taking these steps, in the end her efforts were insufficient. So far, no other Alliance leader showed anything close to her cooperative attitude.

With all of these in mind, we can come up with a road map for long lasting peace between the Alliance and the Horde:

The Horde leadership needs to bite the bullet and push for the systemic reforms and soil remediation projects.

The Alliance leadership needs to move past its old grudges and support the Horde leadership, both financially and politically, in these endeavors.

Leaders on both sides need to avoid giving into populist and inflammatory rhetoric, and instead actively push against such movements, by force if necessary.

Mutual partial demilitarization is essential to both reducing tensions and relieving funds for the Horde to use on social security policies.

Whether these strategies will ever be applied or not, we cannot know. With a known advocate of peace as the High King of the Alliance, end of this coming war in BFA could see a break from the cycle for the better. Or the situation could escalate to the point where devastating magics and weapons bring about the danger of mutually assured destruction, forcing a regressive stalemate where both sides spend all of their resources to upkeep ever-hungering war machines. Or, one side does win and utter devastation follows for the other, leaving Azeroth in ruins. Or they repeat what they had already done after all the former wars, and fall back into the same habits and brew in their frustrations and grudges until it is time clash once more. We shall see.

Sources: Chronicle Volume 2, Cycle of Hatred, The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, Wolfheart, Tides of War, World of Warcraft (game), World of Warcraft (comics), Before the Storm (sample chapter), Battle for Azeroth Alpha and datamined content.

#World of Warcraft #Horde #Alliance #azeroth #battle for azeroth

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Official Review Exposes How US Reconstruction of Afghanistan was Built on Death, Fraud and Lies

— 19 August, 2021 | RT

— By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg

FILE PHOTO. American soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division deploy to fight Taliban fighters as part of Operation Mountain Thrust to a U.S. base near the village of Deh Afghan in the Zabul province of Afghanistan. © Getty Images / John Moore

The shocking extent of America’s failure to build a safe and secure Afghanistan is laid bare in a newly published report. It spells out in explicit detail the mind-boggling corruption and incompetence that doomed the mission.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has issued a withering review of American reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, outlining several “lessons learned” from the calamity.

In all, Washington spent two decades and $145 billion attempting to westernize the country, while struggling to maintain a corrupt, unpopular and illegitimate government in power, and battling an ongoing insurgency against the Taliban and a constellation of armed militias. The report pulls absolutely no punches, finding that almost every US-bankrolled project in Afghanistan was subject to industrial scale grift, delivered wildly over budget, failed in its objectives, and strengthened the Taliban. In far too many cases, these efforts led to people being killed.

References to corruption run rampant throughout – yet, somewhat unbelievably, Washington was said to have “initially failed to recognize the existential threat that corruption posed to the reconstruction effort.” Planners reportedly assumed fraud could only ever be the “deviant criminal behavior of individual Afghan officials,” and concluded that extensive use of contractors would ensure reconstruction endeavors remained above board and on budget.

In reality, this reliance precipitated a veritable feeding frenzy of “virtually unchecked” waste and fraud, enabled in part by an almost total lack of oversight over how funds were spent. Numerous examples of rank incompetence on the part of contractors are also documented – a military compound constructed for $2.4 million being completely unusable as it was carelessly built outside the security perimeter of the base for which it was commissioned is perhaps the most farcical.

In another instance, bogus humanitarian agency USAID awarded a contract for the design and construction of two vast new hospitals, at a combined cost of $18.5 million, without consulting local officials, or considering whether the government could actually foot the annual operating and maintenance bills, which would be up to six times that of the hospitals they replaced. By the time the Afghan Ministry of Public Health learned of the project, construction had been ongoing for a year.

Despite such embarrassments, the dollars kept flowing in ever-greater volumes over the years. As it was the easiest thing to monitor, funds being spent on programs “perversely” became “the most important measure of success,” and the best, if not only, way of demonstrating to an increasingly skeptical US Congress, and the American public, that reconstruction wasn’t a total failure.

With a combination of “overoptimism, an institutional drive to produce good news stories, and the imperative to show progress in time to serve the ends of various political timetables,” producing a situation in which Washington was spending money “faster than it could be accounted for,” the primary goal of reconstruction became “producing good news…as quickly as possible,” and there was “little appetite for honest assessments of what worked and what did not.”

In turn, this created an incentive structure that greatly encouraged officials not to report abuse or fraud, while contractors benefiting from the gravy train were likewise unwilling to speak up about problems. Complicating the issue further, USAID officials were frequently “bulldozed” by the military into implementing projects in places “far too dangerous for them to have a stabilizing effect.”

After Afghan defeat, West must realize that not everyone wants democracy with ‘Netflix & LGBT marches’ – senior Ukrainian official. 18 August, 2021

In these cases, USAID depended on contractors, who could visit locations too risky for US government employees to tread. This meant, though, that monitoring a project’s implementation was extremely difficult, with the agency’s staff “sometimes unable to establish with confidence even the most basic information.” On occasion, what could be verified was in fact bogus – the review records how a Kandahar-based business would for a fee provide contractors with generic photographs of completed projects, replete with fake geotags, to defraud USAID.

Over and over again, US officials completely misjudged whether particular initiatives would be remotely appropriate for the Afghan context. For instance, between 2003 and 2015, Washington spent over $1 billion on rule of law operations in the country, with around 90% invested in developing a formal, Western-style legal system.

The set-up was, however, alien to most Afghans, who favored “informal, community-level traditional dispute resolution mechanisms,” and believed the new system to be impractical and ineffective. In turn, the Taliban created a parallel structure along traditional lines, providing citizens with “a semblance of security and justice.” Their role in maintaining and managing this in turn “generated at least a modicum of legitimacy for the group” among locals, and reinforced the notion they were a credible governance actor.

Other security drives were similarly counter-productive. In 2000, the Taliban collaborated with the United Nations to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan, resulting in one of the most successful anti-drug campaigns in history, with a 99% reduction in poppy farming in areas controlled by the group, which had accounted for roughly three-quarters of the world’s supply of heroin. The US invasion ended this, and despite spending $9 billion on counternarcotics efforts since 2002, the cultivation of opium in Afghanistan has trended upward ever since.

The explosion of the opium trade funded the Taliban insurgency, meaning poppy fields were heavily defended, and many security services operatives, civilians, US Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and contractors were killed or severely wounded on counternarcotics missions. Even successful incursions were “often only possible under the protection of significant coalition and Afghan security forces,” who couldn’t stay indefinitely in target areas as a deterrent. As a result, these wins were “temporary and unsustainable,” and became ever-shorter lived as coalition forces began to retreat.

Then again, Afghan security forces were typically ill-equipped to deal with any serious security issue. After levels of insurgent violence “skyrocketed” in 2006, Washington attempted to fill the ranks of the Afghan army as quickly as possible, and duly reduced training to just 10 weeks.

This produced a largely inexperienced and unqualified military, with a huge level of turnover – by 2020, the need to replace roughly a quarter of the force each and every year was considered ‘normal’. Untold numbers of Afghan soldiers moreover went AWOL over the years, including hundreds who were being trained in the US.

Poor training likewise hampered development of the Afghan National Police, resulting in the force being “largely unaware of their responsibilities and defendants’ rights under the law,” and “routinely [engaging] in torture and abuse,” destroying their credibility with the public. Meanwhile, recruits for the Afghan Local Police, informal militias charged with keeping the peace in conflict-scarred areas that have likewise been accused of human rights violations, were often Taliban fighters, who’d been allowed to keep their weapons and join if they agreed to stop undermining the government.

This dire security situation only enriched militia groups, as private security firms paid to protect US government officials and projects resorted to spending a “substantial” portion of their budgets on bribing insurgents to “refrain from attacking convoys and project sites” – making them “in effect unofficial subcontractors” to Washington.

US government funds also reached the pockets of violent extremists “through a web of corruption that encompassed Afghan officials, drug traffickers, transnational criminals, and insurgent and terrorist groups.” However, “prosecuting these officials, or even removing them from office, proved extremely difficult,” since it would entail “dismantling major pillars of support for the government itself,” including its electoral institutions, in the process severely undermining its public legitimacy.

“When you look at how much we spent and what we got for it, it’s mind boggling,” a senior Department of Defense official is quoted as saying – and it’s just as mind boggling that the report makes repeated reference to “future reconstruction missions elsewhere around the world.”

Clearly, the most obvious lesson of the review – that never again should the US undertake nation building efforts in far-flung states its imperial interventions and meddling have comprehensively destroyed, of which its leaders know nothing – doesn’t feature on the syllabus. Citizens of countries the world over, particularly those living under US-mandated ‘enemy’ regimes, are surely desperately hoping they’re not next in the reconstruction firing line.

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jmaria200 · 4 years ago

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American expectations

Americans traditionally expect that their lives will progressively get better, that where they currently are is just a stop along the way to more money, career success, recognition, and happiness. This is part of the great “American dream” that has fueled the goals of so many people. And if someone doesn’t achieve these? Well, they must’ve been lazy, not worked hard in school, etc. But is this really how the world works or just what we’re told? Does the American dream apply to everyone? Or rather was it the White Man’s American dream all along? It’s this look at the flip side of the American dream that discredits it in my opinion.

I recently read a article entitled “The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness” by Finnish writer Jukka Savolainen that caught my attention. Briefly the article discusses possible reasons why Nordic countries including Finland, Denmark, Iceland etc. often top the rankings of the annual World Happiness Report that measures each country’s overall happiness. The report relies on Gallup polls that ask participants to rank their best potential life based on an fictitious ladder where rungs are numbered 1 to 10. The higher the rung the better the life. Then they are asked to compare this potential happiness to where they currently stand on the ladder. Given such a no frills definition of happiness, Savolainen surmises that it is no wonder his fellow country man and other Nordic people rank high on what he labels “average life expectation” (Savolainen). On objective measures of life Finland has very low poverty levels, top notch universal healthcare and education, and bountiful vacation and parental leave. In addition to this, the egalitarian nature of Scandinavian people is often traced to their Lutheran roots and Janteloven or the Law of Jante, a social code that dictates “ emphasis on collective accomplishments and well-being, and disdains focus on individual achievements.” (Scandinavia Standard). The idea of Janteloven found it’s beginnings in the works of author Askel Sandemose and his 1933 book A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. In Sandemose’s work, the individuals of fictional town of Jante are expected to assimilate to the group. The laws of Jante speak to people not thinking their are smarter, anything special, etc. Today this code is often reflected in the way the people of Scandinavian countries celebrate their strong social welfare systems as opposed to the individual achievements and celebrity of countries like the United States.

In the Eastern practice of Buddhism seeing oneself as interconnected with the world around one is seen as the more natural way of being. When one let’s go of the “self” as a separate, isolated entity and comes to terms with the universality of human existence, one can feel less alone and more joy and desire to reach out to others. Anger, greed, and delusion arise from over investment in the self, also known as the ego in Western psychology. Even small threats can make the self lash out in defense leading to conflict and pain.

I bring these examples up to highlight ways of considering human relations differently from Western culture, especially American culture. I’ll focus specifically on American culture in this blog entry as I’m convinced that we are on a down slope and it is not a failure of individual striving, but a failure to be egalitarian, to understand our connections, and work for the greater good. I’m not saying that we all need adopt Scandinavian culture or become Buddhist, but what if we were to embrace more modesty and let go of personal striving for the empty promises of materialism and instead put that money towards the greater social good. Yes, this country has wealth but much of it gets funneled into military spending on weapons, debt, and the pockets of a handful of the super rich. I believe daily people get put through the shredder of this culture in the name of the American dream: long work hours or no work, a broken healthcare system that leaves millions uninsured, stagnant wages, excessive cost of living, etc. When it seems that one just being human is not enough to earn respect and a decent way of life there is something wrong. How does this happen? That is a complex question to answer, but I will attempt to address some of it here.

Fear and Anxiety

If there was any place to start with America’s woes I would say it is fear, or fear mixed with uncertainty also known as anxiety. Fear was useful for us as humans. It helps keep us alive and learning what is dangerous but when we become afraid and we don’t have enough information or the wrong kind of information, we become debilitated. People who are in a state of worry can be swayed to believe ideas without evidence or that contradicts reality because they’re world is being filtered through their worry. Anxiety causes people’s worlds to contract and creates distance from our fellow men and women and fosters a sense loneliness. Anxiety seeps into our culture in many ways. There is the worry of personal lacking generated by a continuous bombardment of messages convincing people they’re insecure and need the right hair shampoo, the right clothing, the right exercise equipment, and the list goes on. There is the anxiety of not being the right skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. There is the concern of being a victim of “the system” instead of being able to trust it. A culture where trust and connection have given way to mistrust and disconnection is not healthy culture.

Cultural Values

As individuals we each put greater importance on certain values. We also do this collectively including values of family, kindness, respect, financial success, materialism, modesty etc. As Jukka Savolainen highlights in the article “The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness” Finnish, as well as their fellow Scandinavians, often focus on modesty, sensibility, and egalitarianism while it’s is no secret Americans put more value on personal achievement, materialism, and financial success. Values are not problematic in and of themselves. It is when people become personally attached and competitive that values in a culture can become unhealthy. Americans tend to believe that acquiring more the means to a satisfying life and that sacred word “happiness”. This is just not the case. Buddism, like many of the world’s religions, teaches that attachment to objects leads to suffering. We work long hours to have our big televisions, closets of cloths, and luxury vehicles, but we still feel empty and ready for the next “dose”. This effect is often called the hedonistic treadmill. As mentioned int the previous paragraph, fear creates disconnection and increases self involvement. We can’t worry about the other person when we aren’t okay. This is communicated in our values as well. Civil service, community, and generosity get pushed aside for individual success, competition, and greed.

Intolerance

The tendencies for humans to divide into groups or tribes, into us and them, is part of human nature and it takes real effort to overcome these tendencies. As humans we seek easily distinguished patterns and categories that we use to identify someone as part of the in group. People in our group are people we know; we believe we can trust them. Group selection helps to build communities churches, and national identities, however, the stronger in group identification leads to greater unity against other groups. When we take more of a individualistic stance and work to understand our commonalities through education, communication, and exposure to those who are different can alleviate fears and build bridges between different groups. See they are just like us. Religion, skin color, ethnicity all serve as markers of in groups and out groups. Group dynamics are exacerbated by stress often leading to expressions of racism, xenophobia, etc. Such dynamics have had a strong presence in our culture since the founding of this country. The subordination of black men and women by enslavement was a part of this country’s foundation. States were admitted to the Union as either slave states or free states. Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington espoused life and liberty for all but were both slave owners. Slavery was normalized in parts of this country until the adoption of the 13th amendment in December of 1865 and, despite this measure, the ideologies behind slavery and intolerance have cast a long shadow still present today. Intolerance is part of our culture. The first step would be to come to terms with this concept and discuss it openly in a way that is productive; but, facing our darker sides is painful and messy so people are more likely to look the other way or rationalize their bias in some way.

Leadership

One of the main reasons intolerance and fear remain strong in this country is that hateful, scared people more than often elect leaders who continue to propagate fear and hatred and greed as well. Recently leaders and their followers have tried to “make America great again” and “stop the fall of the Western world”. The basic problem is that great public leadership does not coincide with intolerance. In general leadership takes qualities of compassion, humility, and courage that such people often don’t exhibit. Also people who run on a platform of intolerance will most likely resist aiding the public at large as it would potentially benefit those they fear and hate. They might not even help the people who elected them. Consider the recent example of Donald Trump’s election and four years in office. He made promises he never kept like creating jobs, bullied people when they didn’t do what he wanted, and slandered people of various ethnic backgrounds, yet Congress members protected him and he was nearly re-elected. On the way out of office Trump helped orchestrate the January sixth insurrection. He convinced people to turn against their own government then left them to face the consequences. The Congressional leaders with ideologies similar to Trump continue such machinations in more subtle ways. They manipulate their supporters to some extent to stay in office while dragging down the ability of the United States government to effectively meet the needs of it’s people.

Many business leaders are culpable in this country’s current situation. They have helped fuel the culture war to hinder much needed much needed reform in oversight and regulation that allows them to advantage of loop holes in taxation, damaged the environment, and exploited workers with often legal but unethical business practices. Ill informed people being preyed upon by those in media and faith based organizations who are spreading misinformation and lies. Government is suppose to help balance to influence of negative capitalism and corporate influence, but this is near impossible when the government itself has been gridlocked.

Conclusion

Along the way I’ve mentioned potential solutions to these problems, but where we start is trust. Trust in each other. I’m not saying this will be easy. America is a nation that aspires for people of various cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs can live together peacefully. It was dream of our founding fathers that their newly found country wasn’t ready for even back then, but my bet is they hoped it would be someday. Unfortunately, this has not been the way of human beings throughout history so far. We unite against common enemies, but otherwise we tend to fight among ourselves. But humans have and can evolve. Moral evolution is a big part of what has allowed us to survive. At one time we were slaughtering other tribes and having world wars between countries. Today such things sound like fiction and with good reason. In psychology human beings are seen as having three layers of personality: our traits, our beliefs, and our story. When these are in balance, a person can be more authentic and less conflicted. The same goes for our culture. When our traits, beliefs, and story as a culture fall into alignment we can be more authentic as a nation. Balance is key between opposing ideologies too. Those who believe strongly in individual rights and those who stand more with group identity can learn from each other. Corporate and government interests can balance each other out. Conservatives and liberals can learn from each other. It really just comes down to we have to trust each other enough to agree to this. The culture war in this country is similar to physical war in that each side must put down their weapons and start an honest discussion about what common goals they share rather than what divides them. Americans can leave behind chasing shallow expectations of big houses and big vacations and instead expect more important things like equal treatment, guaranteed health care, and fair wages. Then maybe we can be more content with our lives as they are like the Scandinavian countries and less attachments in the spirit of Buddism.

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trenton-woodcox · 5 years ago

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Despair, Decay, and the Death of Democracy

Among the ever-growing list of alarming and perplexing phenomena that plague our world, none are so disturbing to me as the act of the individual voting against their own interests.

Exploring that sentence requires some groundwork; for the purposes of this post, I’ll be restricting my speech to the United States. I should also come clean and admit, I’m as Democrat as they come, and gaped in horror watching the results flood in that night in 2016. If you yourself are relatively Left, you may understand where I’m coming from when I refer to contemporary Republican voters as “voting against their own interests”; if you find yourself more to the Right, have mercy, and bear with me for a bit.

Understanding an “interest” is foundational to this discussion. In his work Democratic Voting and the Mixed-Motivation Problem, Jonathan Wolff distinguishes interests from what he calls the “common good”, the moral. For Wolffe, issues in Democracy arise from this conflict between those voters who vote in their own interests—those outcomes that they stand to personally gain from—and voters who vote for the sake of the common good, regardless of whether they stand to individually gain from such an outcome themselves[1].

Wolffe’s analysis is important in the light it sheds by simultaneously being a perfectly accurate descriptor of electoral politics, despite being foundationally wrong. Normatively, the conflict Wolffe describes relies on their being a divergence between that which is in the interest of the individual and that which is the common good; or, to simplify, that which is the interest of the many. I reject this distinction; I challenge Wolffe to show me a scenario in which the interests of the many does not, with consideration of time and under the proper application of logic, coincide with the interests of the individual.

The truth of this assertion is evident in modern America; neighborhoods with fewer evictions see lower crime rates, for example. Even if I myself may never be under threat of eviction, an additional tax levied on me by my tenant’s union that contributes to a fund for those residents experiencing financial trouble is in my interest, despite the upfront cost to my person, as it everts a greater cost down the line (crime). One could analyze healthcare, an outstanding example of this principal at work; one pays into a collective, despite potentially never reaping direct benefits from the fund that payment goes towards. Even if one never leans on that fund to assist with sickness or injury, however, indirect benefits are experienced in the form of a healthier, more stable community. This assumption rests at the core of our theory of economics, even; the more people in an economy are succeeding, the stronger that economy is, and thus the greater benefits reaped by all those who participate.

In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, later rephrased by economist Joseph Stiglitz, this concept of “self-interest, rightly understood” means “appreciating that paying attention to everyone’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being.”

My normative gripes with Wolffe are not to discredit his descriptive claims, however; we know full well that this conflict between the perceived-self-interest and the common good occurs. One need only look at Louisiana, where voters time and gain elect officials and vote for polices that sabotage the very programs and land citizens depend on for their livelihood [2]. The descriptive truth of Wolffe’s analysis relies upon the same logical error he makes in not considering “self-interest, rightly understood”, but on the part of the electorate; I assert that individual voters do not rightly understand their self-interest, as evident by Bobby Jindal’s repeated reign over Louisiana, among prominent policy issues; from climate change, to healthcare, to—of course—the election of Donald Trump, who preyed upon not just this lack of understanding by voters, but on a perfect storm of despair that made them uniquely vulnerable to a populist demagogue promising quick and simple solutions to immediate problems.

Thanks to economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, we know that white, working class Americans have seen dramatic falls in wellbeing relative to historical levels for their demographic [4]. Globalization, despite its many boons, brought with it a flight of jobs and a stagnation of wages, who in turn bring about social decay and chronic despair. In lieu of these falls, we have implemented little in the way of social programs to act as nets. We also know from Monnat & Brown that those communities that saw such staggering decreases correlated with support for Trump in 2016, as illustrated in the figure attached.

Both pairs of researchers offer us some explanation as to why these groups have such strong correlation with support for Trump, despite him and his polices being (objectively, in my view, thought that’s a post for another time) against their interests. For one, such profound place-level despair can make one proportionally desperate for solutions. A candidate like Donald Trump, with his clear and digestible message explaining away decades of social and industrial decay as a consequence of immigration and globalization—paired with equally succinct solutions such as “better trade deals” and “building the wall”—can resonate with that fear and desperation, prey upon it, even for traditionally Democratic voters. This effect is compounded for voters who feel the Democratic party has not articulated an adequate pro-working-class message, or has passed policies meant to help the poor at the expense of the working class. Add in perceived arrogance at the impregnability of the Democrats “Big Blue Wall” in the Midwest, and it’s not so hard to understand so many voted Red at the ballot box in 2016, against their own interests or not [3].

In the words of Monnat & Brown themselves: “When you’re driving by shuttered factories with boarded up windows, watching nightly news reports about drug overdoses, and seeing more of your neighbors sign up for disability instead of working, the message that “America is great already” simply does not jibe with your own reality.”

Understanding what an interest is, how we define our interests, and why people vote against their interests is tempting to view as purely academic; I encourage readers who feel this way to look again toward “self-interest, rightly understood”. That so many vote against their interests is not merely a problem for them, but for the rest of us as well; we share this nation, this economy, this society. With the advent of the internet and ongoing globalization, our interconnectedness will only grow with time. The interests of our neighbor are more relevant to our own than ever before.

That said, what can we do? What does all this mean for Democracy, the vehicle by which we satisfy ours and our neighbor's interests?

On this, I can only speak so much. The prescription is bleak; the root of the problem lies in the individual’s inability to rightly understand their own interests. This seems an unsolvable problem; perhaps education can address it, but that education can only be delivered if constituents recognize its value and elect to pass such reforms—despite the inevitable monetary costs. This problem persists for programs that one could implement to address despair, as well; wage hikes, healthcare reform, environmental protection—each of these polices would make headway against the despair that makes these communities so vulnerable to manipulation, and each would meet significant resistance on account of that manipulation. This is not conjecture, but evident; time and time again Republican emissaries have influenced these communities to vote against such policies (again, see Louisiana) [4].

Equally worrying is the prospect that these the rest of us are one despair-inducing recession away from finding ourselves equally ripe for manipulation voting against our own interests, with little recourse.

The picture we are left with is one of a sickening feedback loop; communities suffer some unforeseen economic disaster, find themselves in despair and vulnerability, and have that experience preyed upon such that they become yet more vulnerable.

It’s still unclear to me whether this represents a fundamental failing of Democracy, a phenomenon our system of governance is simply unequipped to control for, or if some alteration to current systems could break this loop. Perhaps single transferrable vote, a more proportional system of representation, could mitigate the impacts of entities like the Republican party such that despair-remedying policies could be pushed through. This, of course, relies on the assumption that whatever parties may come to life with proportional representation do not ally themselves with the Right—a gamble if there ever was one.

It's also possible the answer lies outside our current system of governance; perhaps in some more Technocratic alternative. If so, we must place out hopes in miracles and revolutions.

Works Cited:

Wolff, J. (1994). Democratic voting and the mixed-motivation problem. Analysis, 54(4), 193–196. doi: 10.1093/analys/54.4.193

Hochschild, A. R. (2016). Strangers in their own land: anger and mourning on the American right. New York: The New Press.

Monnat, S. M., & Brown, D. L. (2017). More than a Rural Revolt: Landscapes of Despair and the 2016 Presidential Election. Journal of rural studies, 55, 227–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.08.010

Gawande, A., Tolentino, J., & Heller, N. (2020, March 16). Why Americans Are Dying from Despair. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans-are-dying-from-despair

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moneimdigitalworld · 6 years ago

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Ending Child Recruitment in Darfur

Abdelmounem Babiker

Johns Hopkins University

Introduction:

The incomprehensiveness life of child soldiers is a serious misfortune that leads to death, sexual assault, and more violence.

Working for U.S Darfur Radio for nine years, I unfortunately personally know hundreds of Darfurian children joining armed groups due to their atmosphere. The United Nation documented 105 cases of children recruited in armed groups in Darfur from March 2011 to December 2015 (Report of The Secretary-General 2017).

This campaign aims to help solve this problem by persuading parents/guardians of the children of Darfur, in Internal Displaced Persons (IDPs) and other refugees camps, to stop their children from becoming soldiers, hoping to identify a peaceful and happy future for them.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), that work in protecting children in war zones, can benefit from this research, its settings, procedures and findings. I have produced appropriate and low-cost procedures to reach the children and their parents, and to offer alternatives to military and violent solutions.

I believe that this research is extremely important because it paves the way towards better lives for hundreds of thousands of children. The research, also, provides important details about the Darfur crisis, the target audience and the attitudes and behavior that I would like to change.

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Darfur:

Darfur is a region in western Sudan, on of the Horn of Africa countries, and connects Egypt and other Arab countries with Africa south of the Sahara.

A Sudanese myself, I, as a journalist, have covered the Darfur conflict since it started in 2003. During the last nine years, I was the editor of Washington-based Darfur Radio which is funded by the U.S Government to cover the conflict and related humanitarian issues of IDPs, the refugees, and the overall security situations.

On one side, there has been Sudan central government and its supporters, and on the other side, rebel groups that accuse the government of injustice towards Darfur ethnically non-Arab tribes, and of launching an ethnic-cleansing war against them. (Jumbert 2014)

But, the government accuses the rebel groups of being proxies of foreign powers that want to exploit Sudan’s natural resources and threatened Sudan’s unity and stability.

I have interviewed, during these years, hundreds of leaders and individuals from both sides, and have heard, repeatedly, the above claims.

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Target audience:

The target audiences are the parents, guardians, and children from Darfur who live in IDPs and refugee camps, and villages -- and have smartphones.

I have targeted the parents to, both: (a) change their own support of, or sympathy towards, military solutions; and (b) influence their children accordingly.

Based on the Theory of Nomadic Social Behavior, social pressures mostly lead to injunctive norms, or what ought to be (Rimal & Real 2005).

Social norms tend to influence self-concept or beliefs that one holds about oneself, so that when parents changed their attitude of trying to achieve military victory, children would adopt the new attitudes and change their own ideas about joining armed groups. I target, also, the children themselves

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Attitudes and behavior:

I want to change the attitude of the parents and the guardians who are allowing the children to be soldiers; also, the attitude of the children themselves. I believe that is possible because attitude is a learning tendency when responding to some object positively or negatively (Gass 2010).

I will use social expectation model for behavior change. The model explains that an individual decision could be a social behavior as well (Hornik 1990).

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Setting:

I use digital communication to reach parents who live in camps, villages, and some cities. From my experience, I know that about half of them have smartphones, but not TVs nor do they read newspapers.

Communication technologies are powerful in persuasion because devices such as smartphones serve persuasive message effectively (Sundar 2012).

NGOs could use social sites such as WhatsApp to execute interpersonal and group settings. The idea is to create groups to serve as a discussion board. And to show them how other ethnic conflicts in other parts of the world were solved peacefully.

Furthermore, networking sites, like Telegram, offer an opportunity to reach parents and children individually.

Dillard (2013), concludes that technology and research can persuade people in five ways: (1) triggers cognitive methods about the contents; (2) enables the receiver to be the source; (3) creates more engagement; (4) constructs alternatives; and (5) enables easier access to information.

This process is easy to be executed through social and digital media. And is doable because it doesn’t cost much money. Also, the NGOs personals need not risk their life by traveling to conflict areas.

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Design Features:

Credibility:

The first design feature that will be used to deliver messages to the targets is credibility. This feature is very important when dealing with people in conflict zones who may lose trust of each other because of the atrocities of the war. I found this myself when I was the editor of Darfur Radio. Credibility sometimes was the only factor that determines whether our messages will be exposed or not. We had classified some people and institutions as credible sources to focus on them when covering serious issues such as fighting and peace talks process. When the source is a government-affiliated, we had to find another credible source. Thus, trustworthiness and expertise are the most important factors, as I have learned from my experience with the radio station; they determine, in many cases, the credibility of the source, as Stiff and Mongeau 2103 conclude. Therefore, the mostly-trustworthy international organizations which devote themselves to protect children in war situations are the only parties that can implement this strategic plan. And with less cooperation with Sudan government.

Additionally, other international child protection organizations have had enjoyed a great deal of credibility. For example, those in fields of education and sports (with the popularity of soccer and soccer stars in many Third World countries).

So, it depends on organs that are more trustworthy and, therefore, more effective (Aronson, 2012).

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Self-efficacy:

Self-efficacy, or the beliefs about the personal ability to perform behaviors that bring desired outcomes (McAlister et al., 2008).

Through this design feature, the children will be able to figure out that they are able to succeed in local fields of education and sports. Again, soccer, because of its popularity, and the excitement of a child to play so as to become a famous star in African or in Europe.

Soccer doesn’t cost a lot of money in Africa most of the time. It would raise the pride, the self-confidence and the aspirations among the children of Darfur. And it would encourage them to abandon the lives of children-soldiers and adopt peaceful lives.

The digital and social media platforms could contribute a lot to this feature to be effective. Cites and applications like WhatsApp and Facebook are appropriate channels for messages that contain visual elements.

This could include images of successful individuals from war-torn zones in Africa. This will inspire the children of Darfur and convince them and their parents and guardians that there is a bright future achieved by similar individuals and the children of Darfur are capable of accomplishing that as well.

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Education:

Education is available almost all over the Sudan. Although there are many hurdles and challenges, still there is a school in most of the villages in the country. Displaced families can live in camps near cities to let their kids go to schools.

In Darfur, hundreds of camps are closed to the cities like Alfashir, Algenaina, and Nyala. I saw many of them and I saw children from these camps going to schools in these cities. Moreover, humanitarian organizations, like UNICEF, can make plans to spread digital education too since there is an access to the Internet in the most areas of the country.

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Fear Appeal:

The situation of children carrying guns and fighting in real combats is dangerous enough. This makes using fear appropriate in this campaign.

The campaign will send messages showing the consequences of this behavior and how this put these children in a grave danger. Fear drives people to get information on a protective act and anxiety generates motivates greater than this. (So, Kuang & Cho, 2016).

This contributes to the campaign because the target audiences, especially the parents and guardians, will expect more fear messages. Additionally, when arousing fear, the target audience will think about the alternatives to avoid the atrocities of the war and to find a better future and present for the children and the society.

There is a negative relationship between fear appeal and the message’s effectiveness ( Gass & Sitter, 2010). When you arouse more fear, you increase more effectiveness. Thus, the fear appeal is appropriate and will be effective in ending child-soldier behavior in Darfur. This appeal will be more effective when utilizing with pity and guilt appeal, like what I will explain next.

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Appeal to Guilt and Pity:

Appeal to guilt and pity would most likely respond positively to the message and comply with the request when invoking feelings of guilt. (Gass & Sitter, 2010). Evoking guilt feeling is doable and will be effective when the parents and guardians exposed to visual messages showing them how the children are being killed, injured, and jailed because they are allowed to enlist in the armed groups rather than enrolling in school.

Gass & Sitter explain how pity is effective when it comes to the children’s issues. Showing these young and innocent children carrying guns instead of textbooks and get them killed, injured, or jailed without a shadow of a doubt evokes feelings of sorrow and motivate the entire society to end child soldier’s behavior and encourage them to involve in peaceful activities like education or being soccer players.

Therefore, applying guilt and pity appeal will be useful in persuading the parents, guardians, and the children--- who will be parents someday -- to end this child-soldier behavior.

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Rational Appeal:

It is not enough for the target audience to be exposed to credibility, self-efficacy, fear appeal, guilt, and pity appalls only. They have to understand rationally that there is another way to solve the conflict peacefully and to enroll the children in school as an alternative to the child soldier’s behavior.

When people of Darfur agree with this message, they will be more complying with the ultimate goal of ending child-soldier behavior.

Gass & Sitter conclude that when people agree with a message, they will be more logical. So, the rational appeal will be stronger when work together cohesively with the other design features to increase the impact of the campaign to end child-solder behavior in Darfur, encourage them to choose another behavior, and change the attitude of accepting the children to be part of the war machine.

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Modern Technology:

Since credibility and trust are a very important factor for the messages to be decoded, individuals who supposed to execute the plan should be chosen carefully. And these individuals have to think about crafting the messages using modern technology.

Modern technology has proven to be powerful, not only in its ability to send out volumes of information but, also, to reach, geographically, any place.

I am talking here about smartphones inside a cottage, under a tree, by a water stream, and on back of a camel, a donkey or an ox. The process of utilizing visual elements such as images, videos, and infographics should proceed accordingly. And technology can persuade people in many ways such as triggering cognitive methods about the contents, enabling the receiver to be the source, creating more engagement, constructing alternatives and enabling easier access to information.

Applying that to my project, this means the target audience should: (a) starts questioning the behavior of child soldier from the beginning; (b) becomes a source when engaging in the discussion about the problem; (c) looks for peaceful alternatives; (d) and constructs new attitude and behaviors to avoid children carrying guns and becoming soldier.

The language issue is complicated and the organization that will execute this strategic plan should be aware of that. As a Sudanese originally, I know illiteracy is widespread among the Darfurians, who mainly use their native unwritten languages. Most of them understand Arabic, the national and regional main language, or speak broken versions of it.

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Language:

That is why I resorted to plain language (PL) method. PL, according to Green (2012), is when an audience find the information they are looking for, understand it the first time, and use it to perform a specific task.

Green explains several benefits of PL: (a) users understand and find information easier; (b) users prefer it: users locate information quickly; (c) PL documents are easier to update; (d) PL principles can be used to train employees to write more clearly and concisely; and (e) PL documents are more cost-effective.

Therefore, parents, guardians, relatives and friends of children of Darfur could understand the textual and visual design elements of the persuasive messages easily. They would prefer it to classical Arabic.

On the other hand, and according to my long-experience as a media man with this target audience, many of non-Arab Darfurians thinks they are endangering by Arab groups and culture. So, the team who is going to operate the campaign have to be fully aware of that to avoid any backlash due to cultural sensitivities. Moreover, it is highly recommended to recruit Sudanese individuals who know that carefully to be part of the team. And the visual media elements should be gathered earnestly, especially the images.

I would recommend hiring freelancer photographers who are able to take pictures that visualize the dangers surrounding child soldiers, and show how other similar children are able to succeed at other fields like education and soccer.

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Conclusion:

Utilizing this plan with its five design features via the settings of the digital and social media, will be effective in persuading the children of Darfur with their guardians to change the behavior and attitude of joining armed group and achieving a military solution. When adopting alternatives like education and other civilian activates, they will be safe and have a better future as well.

The international community, especially the organizations that work in child protection, must deal with this problem, and help to end the sad situation of hundreds of thousands of children learning how to use guns and then use them to fight. If this situation is not corrected in places like Darfur, it may spread killing violence across the globe.

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References

Dillard, J. P. (2013). Affect and Persuasion. The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice, 150-166. doi:10.4135/9781452218410.n10

Gass, R. H., & Seiter, J. S. (2010). Persuasion and Compliance Gaining. 21st Century Communication: A Reference Handbook 21st century communication: A reference handbook, 156-164. doi:10.4135/9781412964005.n18

Jumbert, M. G. (2014). How Sudan’s ‘rogue�� state label shaped US responses to the Darfur conflict: what’s the problem and who’s in charge? Third World Quarterly, 35(2), 284-299. doi:10.1080/01436597.2014.878490

Hornik, R. (1990, January 01). Alternative models of behavior change. Retrieved February 05, 2018, from https://www.popline.org/node/377759

Report of the Secretary-General on children and armed conflict in the Sudan (S/2017/191) [EN/AR]. (2017). Retrieved February 05, 2018, fromhttps://reliefweb.int/report/sudan/report-secretary-general-children-and-armed-conflict-sudan-s2017191-enar

Rimal, R. N., & Real, K. (2005). How Behaviors are Influenced by Perceived Norms. Communication Research, 32(3), 389-414. doi:10.1177/0093650205275385

Sundar, S. S. (2012). How Does Technology Persuade?: Theoretical Mechanisms for Persuasive Technologies. The SAGE Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice, 388-404. doi:10.4135/9781452218410.n23

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thunderlummox · 8 years ago

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The New “Slavery”

Let me diffuse the click-bait-y title; there is nothing going on right now directly the same as slavery, as it existed in the past or as it exists now. The reason I use quotation marks is to hint at the fact that much like in the mid 1800s there has grown a divide of class and ideology so great in our political lives at the moment that I believe we have the makings of a new Civil War in America, and much like the original flavor the New and Improved Version is a fight against the ever ripening upper class and the vast population of people it is determined to shove down.

The first US Civil War (officially; it may be noted at different times in our history parts of the country were in open revolt in all but name) coalesced around one stark line: slavery. The optimists will want to believe it was one side of the country wishing to eliminate injustice and one side who wanted to continue it, the pessimist will tell you it was all about economy, but the pragmatist (Hello!) will say it was about politics, which is probably the most accurate.

The North as we know it was full of people crying for the plight of the slave while still benefiting from the economic advantage cheap production labor (sound familiar?). Full of factories building and assembling things for export, the economic boon came directly from the readily available materials at low prices. The manufacturies were stocked to the brim with immigrant labor (the North was actually just ahead of the times swapping out slave labor, which was actually quite expensive to house, maintain and guard, for cheaper immigrants who worked for pennies and still got to call themselves “free” as they struggled to feed and house their families) and this gave the industrialists and futurists a warm fuzzy feeling about how much “opportunity” they were providing for people. Very romantic. But the rub was as the industrial and political hub of the nation they also had to dead diplomatically with the rest of the developed world, most of whom had abolished slavery already and took it as a sign that the US wasn’t ready to be a “Great Nation” yet. This rankles the hoi polloi of the time, and if we’re being honest that’s really where the indignation came from with slavery in the US. Most of the rich white people in the North probably couldn’t have given two shits about the life of the average slave, but to be thought of as barbaric or lesser by the European powers that we fought so valiantly to rid ourselves of is too much to bear.

The majority of the South was as it is now; rural farmland run by individual landowners no different from feudal lords. Beholden to federal power only in name they operated independently of state and federal authority most of the time and the separateness allowed their deeply held beliefs and culture to take root and thrive. This meant the idea that slaves were not humans as the lords were, that they were inferior in some way because they were allowing themselves to be chattel instead of fighting and dying to be free (fun fact: the electoral college system that so many populists defend as the best way to avoid despotic overlords in our government was created so that southern slave-owning landlords could count their slaves as population but not allow them to vote. Oh southern irony, there is nothing better) and the belief that the states should have power to rule as they felt without interference from an overarching governing body. Their fight to keep slavery alive was deeply rooted in these beliefs, ignoring the fact that economically speaking the practice of slave holding as a source of labor had been proven inferior to merely paying people a wage they couldn’t possibly live off of and letting them deal with their own protections and feeding.

The two sides are not so different really; the North believed that they needed to join the rest of the civilized world as a nation and the thing keeping them out was the practice of slavery in many of it’s provinces, the South believing their sovereignity was more important than the liberty and rights of a huge segment of their populace and the desire for their northern brethren to be thought of well by foreign dignitaries. Both really didn’t care so much about the details of what it was to be black in America at that time, free or slave, and that’s the closest to the truth of the matter that anyone can claim.

Why do I bring this up? Because we are at this point again in our nation that there is a clear dividing line between our populace and it has become so polarized along that line that it’s almost unreconcilable. We’ve been building towards this for decades now, beginning in the 60′s, and only getting about a decade of stalling from 9/11 (an event that galvanized the nation in the short term but ultimately showed more of our weakness and hate).

The linchpin of the next conflict I believe is rooted in the attitudes we are seeing towards health care. There is no clearer defining indication of social standing right now than the ability to afford health insurance. Those that have it are either wealthy enough to afford it privately or work in professions that offer it regularly, usually skilled positions that require some form of apprenticeship and specialized training or full college degrees. Those that don’t are the people either economically, socially, or educationally impoverished, sometimes all three, and unfortunately this segment of our populace includes many immigrants and people much darker than me, but increasingly over the decades many middle class white people who were comfortably living through 50′s, 60′s, and 70′s are now sliding down the economic ladder as cost of living goes higher and wages stay static, even for educationally demanding jobs. Add to this the skyrocketing cost of attending institutes of higher learning and the striking fall in quality at the K-12 levels has aggravated the divide, leaving many people despairing of ever improving their lives even one rung up on the ladder. The old dream of “work hard and you can be successful” in this country is no more; you now need to work hard AND have some sort of wealth and/or credit to bolster you into the ranks of the middle class, which means if you inherit no wealth from your parents in any way you might as well give up after high school or resign yourself to struggling to pay student loans for an education that doesn’t pay you enough to cover the interest.

The Conservative power base has slowly built a new aristocracy around capitalist dogma and have labeld it “Meritocracy” indicating they deserve the wealth because they are smarter/faster/stronger or some such nonsense. They erected measures under the cover of ignorance to ensure their continued presence in the halls of power and leveraged that power to enact transparently self-serving policies designed to hoard wealth and power of even greater magnitude while leaving the world and society a smoking ruin. And worst of all the Liberal power base has been allowing it to happen for years because they continue to try and play by a civilized set of rules while the Conservatives have blatantly turned off all pretense of ever doing so. To use a pop culture analogy: the Liberals are the Northmen and Riverlords of Westeros, Starks and Tully’s, dedicated to civility, honor and cooperation, and caring for all peoples in their realms. The Conservatives are acting like the Lannisters; accumulating all power and wealth using barbaric, underhanded tactics designed to take advantage of the rule of law while flouting it blatantly for all to see. The end result will likely be similar; despots are always thrown down into the fire eventually, but the wreck and ruin they leave behind to clean up is a devastation that so many people will not survive.

This is why we can’t be patient, those of us who see the writing on the wall, why we can’t “see how it goes”; we KNOW how it goes, and it’s going poorly. The longer Trump and his Conservative “allies” are allowed to stay in power the more of a mess it will be to clean up after. That mess can take many forms but I think the most likely is Civil War. We may be able to survive one Trump term, but I have a hard time believing a second will be met with anything but open warfare. The short-sightedness of the political pundits on Fox News and the Conservative “law” makers in Congress to not see what is barreling down on them is idiocy that should be punishable on its face by impeachment.

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khalilhumam · 5 years ago

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COVID-19 and Trinidad and Tobago education's digital divide

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/covid-19-and-trinidad-and-tobago-educations-digital-divide/

COVID-19 and Trinidad and Tobago education's digital divide

“Classroom of the future.” Photo by Chris Gebert (CC-BY-NC-2.0)

On March 16, 2020, a week before the country went into its version of lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19, the Trinidad and Tobago government ordered the closure of all educational institutions. For the most part, universities and other tertiary educational institutions have been able to transition to online teaching, learning and assessment. In many primary and secondary schools, however, the shift has exposed the severity of the country’s digital divide and the need to address digital illiteracy in Trinidad and Tobago. In comparison to a number of CARICOM members states, the digital landscape in Trinidad and Tobago would appear to provide a ready environment for online learning. Internet penetration was reported to be 77.3% in December 2018, and for almost two decades there has been significant state investment and support from development agencies for the development of digital infrastructure and e-services in the public sector. Yet our education system has lagged behind. In June 2019, the Minister of Education, Anthony Garcia, announced that Trinidad and Tobago would inform the Caribbean Examinations Council, CARICOM’s central examinations board, that the country’s schools would not ready for the planned shift to in 2020. The aim was to have the public education system prepared to make this transition by 2021. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has since accelerated these efforts and the urgency of moving teaching, learning and assessment online. The thing that does not transition as smoothly, however, are the socio-spatial inequalities that exist in Trinidad and Tobago, and the corresponding digital divide—the term used by social scientists and others to refer to uneven access to basic information and communication technologies. The concept of a digital divide seems abstract until we examine the realities faced by both teachers and students. I have been interviewing secondary school teachers who teach fifth form (15-16-year-old) students. In one secondary school in the Caroni district in central Trinidad, out of the 15 students in the English A classroom, eight students neither have access to a laptop or the internet. The teacher has created a WhatsApp group to engage with the students. She e-mailed the group an exam revision exercise, and after one week, received responses from only two students. Similarly, a teacher in a secondary school in Port of Spain, Trinidad’s capital, reported being in regular contact with only four out of the 20 students in her class. The participation rate has been low and engagement with students difficult in schools that have large student populations from under-resourced communities. Some teachers have nevertheless created vibrant online communities for the teaching and learning of English and Math, but appear to be exceptions to the rule. Navigating online technologies for education presents many challenges, besides the obvious concerns about students’ ability to access the necessary tools and technologies. The interaction between teachers and students in the digital space is different from face-to-face engagement and depends on the level of digital literacy possessed by both parties. To carry out “formal” educational processes online requires both competence and confidence. For evidence of this, just ask any of the many members of parliament or local government councillors who have assisted members of the public with submitting online applications for social services. To make up for the lack of comprehensive pedagogical training in this area, teachers in Trinidad and Tobago’s public education system are being trained to make the transition through piecemeal “emergency” online workshops and tutorials. As tracking student participation in online classes is difficult, a significant portion of teaching and communication with students has moved to mobile phone communications. “Online classes” have in some cases become “mobile phone classes,” as teachers use WhatsApp groups and personal phone calls to reach out to students. This has implications for what we think of as effective online teaching, in addition to the added labour teachers are required to perform to engage students. Consecutive Trinidad and Tobago governments have sung the gospel of technology in schools. The Ministry of Education’s Laptops in Schools programme, initiated in 2010 by the People’s Partnership administration, did not bring about the major pedagogical and attitudinal shifts it declared it would. Studies evaluating the programme have shown that teachers and students had different expectations of the use of laptops in classrooms, and the success of the programme relied more on the culture of individual schools than on any benefits derived from individual ownership. The scope of the programme did, however, bring into focus the limited ICT capacity available in secondary schools, and the need to direct resources to improve it. By 2016, the People’s National Movement administration discontinued the distribution of personal laptops to students in favour of an approach intended to build schools’ ICT capacity. In the past I have publicly criticised the implementation of the Laptop in Schools programme both for its failure to confront issues of digital literacy and to create content suitable for digital modes of learning. My position has since changed. I am in favour of a comprehensive ICT in education overhaul that also delivers laptops in the hands of students. Will COVID-19 also shift the political positions of the current regime in power? Teachers and school administrators have also pointed out the need for support services for students with physical and learning impairments and interventions into households with heightened parent-child conflicts. Many students in Trinidad and Tobago already contend with a high level of stress in their homes and communities, and with the new arrangements, many young people now find themselves burdened with the care of younger siblings, including managing their educational needs. The unequal division of labour often means that these tasks fall to young women and girls. To say that the state has been negligent in their duty to educate the public during this crisis would be to disregard the significant emergency response and relief they have offered since the closure of schools. The fairly quick transfer of the meals from the School Nutrition Programme to parents’ short-term “food cards” on a needs basis was impressive. But the ministers of government and public servants in the Ministry of Education have a difficult task in front of them. A press conference on April 14, 2020, offered a picture of the challenging context in which they have to work in order for “the core business of education” to continue. It also showed their openness to responding to questions about pertinent issues such as examination dates at the local and regional levels. But what I did not hear was an acknowledgement of the importance of students as stakeholders and decision-makers. Student government leaders, student clubs and digital student “users” need to be a part of the decisions being made on their behalf and that will shape their futures.

Screenshot of the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of Education's recently launched online learning platform.

Whether we call the thing we’re experiencing a crisis or a disaster, what will need to follow is a recovery, and a reimagining of education, and to leave students out is to leave them behind. The experiences and perspectives of students at all levels of the education system should influence the response and “way out” for the education system. What we do not want is a situation where the exclusion of students is a threat greater than COVID-19 to our education. As the Guyanese poet Martin Carter declared, “all are involved! all are consumed!” Immediately after the Ministry of Education’s April 14 press conference, I received two phone calls. The second was from a parent who was trying to decide whether to invest in private lessons being offered by their child’s primary school teacher at a cost of three hundred dollars ($US45) per week. The deal being offered included two WhatsApp video calls. The first call was a sixth form student who offered me a review of the School Learning Management System (SLMS), the online platform recently launched by the Ministry, on the basis of user-friendliness and content. People who have accepted politicians’ assessment of the platform should sign up themselves and draw their own conclusions. Maybe they could then begin to distinguish between public relations and reality.

Written by Amilcar Sanatan · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

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shyearthquakedaze · 5 years ago

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The Swedish welfare state has often been praised by the left in the United States. After the migration crisis of 2015, however, when Sweden was flooded by Syrian refugee claimants, Sweden is now facing a welfare crisis that threatens the entire Swedish welfare state model.

Sweden had 9.7 million inhabitants in 2015, before it received 162,000 asylum seekers. 70% of those asylum seekers came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. 70% of those asylum seekers were also men. The migration crisis created an unsustainable financial and social situation that caused the Swedish political establishment to rethink its stance on asylum migration, which, until then, had been extremely liberal.

Asylum migration has continued, nevertheless. Between 2016 and 2018, more than 70,000 additional migrants have applied for asylum in Sweden, and more than 105,000 asylum migrants have been granted asylum.

There is a demographic impact from migration that affects Sweden's national and cultural identity, as well as the crushing economic impact on Sweden's welfare state.

The demographic impact can be seen in cities such as Sweden's third-largest city, Malmö, where people of foreign background (foreign-born or both parents born abroad) have increased from 31.9% of the population in 2002, to 45.9% of the population in 2018. There are already three Swedish municipalities where the majority of the population has a foreign background: Botkyrka, Södertälje and Haparanda. The question then becomes how to integrate foreigners if the majority of the people in a city are of a foreign background. 51% of the elementary school students in Malmö are either foreign born or both of whose parents are foreign born. Within a generation, Sweden's third-largest city will have a population in which the majority of people are of foreign background. How will integrating immigrants take place then, and which group will be integrated into which?

Integrating migrants into Swedish society has been a failure, a situation that both experts and politicians agree on. In March 2018, 58% of registered unemployed persons were born outside Sweden, even though the group's share of the population is only 23%. In 2018, the unemployment rate for foreign-born Swedes was 15.4%, while unemployment for Swedes born in Sweden was 3.8%.

The EBO Law (Lagen om eget boende - "Independent Living Act") permits asylum seekers to settle anywhere in the country. Migrants often settle in areas where other migrants already have settled, partly because of the low housing prices in those areas and partly because it is easier for migrants to network there. This process both reinforces segregation and creates migrant enclaves in Sweden.

A large influx of migrants combined with a failed integration policy has created cultural consequences in which Swedish culture is both undergoing rapid change and having its identity challenged. In many areas where migrants are in the majority, there is no way to maintain Swedish culture because the population has a culture distinctly different from Sweden's culture. This results, among other things, in changes in the language and in which holidays are publicly observed.

Several established Swedish media outlets published articles in June glorifying Eid-al-fitr, the holiday that ends the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. Well-known companies in Sweden, such as Arla Foods, ICA and COOP, published recipes on their websites for the holiday. Several voices have already suggested that Eid-al-fitr, a Muslim holiday, should be a national holiday in Sweden. These voices have come from the Social Democrats and the Church of Sweden, two institutions that have great influence in Swedish society. Even though Eid-al-fitr has not become a national holiday, yet, several municipalities choose to celebrate it.

As long as Sweden has existed as a nation, the bond to its ancestral neighbor, Finland, has been strong and Finnish has been the second most popular language here. In 2018, the linguist Mikael Parkvall noted that Arabic is now the second most popular language in Sweden. At the same time, many children born in Sweden learn Swedish so poorly that they cannot speak it properly, because there is not enough Swedish spoken in some preschools and grade schools. This change is unfolding at a rapid pace.

It is not just Swedish society that will look radically different within a decade. The Swedish welfare state, which has been the hallmark of the Swedish state known around the world, is also changing or possibly even being phased out.

The calculations underpinning Sweden's welfare state are based on the assumption of a majority of adults employed full-time, who pay income tax to the state. What the state receives needs to be greater than what it pays out in the form of various welfare benefits and transfer payments. When a large number of people who receive welfare benefits cannot find employment or are not willing to work, there is a crisis. This is exactly what has happened in Sweden with its liberal immigration policy.

An example highlighted in Swedish media is Filipstad, a municipality with more than 10,000 inhabitants. There, the proportion of residents with a foreign background has increased from 8.5 % in 2002 to 22.7 % in 2018. Between 2012 and 2018, the domestic-born group decreased by 640 individuals, while the foreign-born group increased by 963. Those who move out of Filipstad are Swedish-born and of working age. At the same time, Filipstad's City Manager, Claes Hultgren, is concerned that the newly arrived migrants do not have the necessary skills to enter the labor market. The consequence for municipalities such as Filipstad, is that they then must make cutbacks in the welfare services that the municipality has a responsibility to supply.

Filipstad is not the only municipality to suffer from cutbacks. According to a report from the association Sweden's Municipalities and Regions (SKR), in 2023, there will be a deficit of 43 billion Swedish kronor (approximately $4.6 billion) in municipal and regional operations if costs increase in line with the population growth and the state does not add more resources than already planned.

The Social Democratic municipal commissioner in Strömsund, a Swedish municipality with 11,699 inhabitants, warned:

"All costs are borne by the municipalities. We have never had such low unemployment in the municipality among native-born, yet, we are on our knees, and the explanation is that we also never had such high unemployment among foreign-born. And they end up in welfare, which in practice is now, for many, life-long support."

Charlotta Mellander, Professor of Economics at Jönköping International Business School, noted the following about the municipalities' economic crisis:

"This is not something that happened overnight, but the municipalities' finances have been eroded for a long time. But something that has affected the situation is the refugee reception in 2015, where, from the beginning, the municipalities that received the most had poor conditions in terms of a labor market and integration. And that has made the situation even tougher."

At the beginning of this new decade, because of excessive migration and failed integration policies, Sweden faces radical cultural and economic changes that will fundamentally change the country.

There is ongoing Islamization in parts of Sweden and how much this Islamization will affect Swedish society is something that is influenced by the political decisions that will be made during the 2020s.

Will asylum immigration to Sweden from Muslim countries continue? Will Swedish authorities continue to support Islamic culture with tax funds? Will the immigrants adopt Swedish culture, or will the failed integration approach continue and the Swedes increasingly adopt the Islamic culture?

There are major conflicts between these two cultures, so the expansion of the Islamic culture in Sweden will doubtless create unrest of various kinds. Today, there are more contradictions between Islamic culture and Swedish culture than commonalities. Segregation is strong and mosques have been involved in scandals several times due to cultural conflicts between Islam and Swedish values.

The new decade will therefore be both unstable and decisive for Sweden, and contain major political, cultural and economic changes inescapably taking place.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour is policy advisor for the Sweden Democrats in the Swedish municipality of Malmö. He is author of the Swedish books "Därför är mångkultur förtryck" ("Why multiculturalism is oppression") and "Allah bestämmer inte i Sverige" ("Allah does not decide in Sweden").

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thechasefiles · 5 years ago

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The Chase Files Daily Newscap 10/11/2019

Good Morning #realdreamchasers. Here is your daily news cap for Sunday, November 10th, 2019. There is a lot to read and digest so take your time. Remember you can read full articles via Barbados Government Information Service (BGIS), Barbados Today (BT), or by purchasing a Sunday Sun Nation Newspaper (SS).

A CRISIS OF VIOLENCE HAS REACHED OUR SCHOOLS - Today is a tragic day in Barbados.For, in effect, not one but two young lives have been lost.When news initially broke that two teenagers had been involved in a stabbing incident at the Frederick Smith Secondary School, no one was prepared for what followed soon after.The nation was plunged into mourning upon learning that a 16-year-old boy was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old fellow student.It is tragic enough that this horrific death should add to the already grim statistic of 42 homicides for the year. What is particularly heartbreaking and even more ominous is that this sweeping wave of violence appears to have finally found its way into our schools, more than 30 years after the last such incident.Few if any parents, whose child leaves them for school on any given morning, contemplate that anything so shattering could befall them.Schools in most instances are deemed safe havens, as places where discipline and order are kept. Much has been invested to make schools child-friendly, reinforcing positive behaviours and the power of choice.But as one family is left to grieve the death of their beloved son, another family is similarly heartbroken, uncertain of what the future holds for their child, now accused of the most serious crime there is.This latest murder leaves several unanswered questions. Did these students carry to school the weapon used or was it stashed on the premises? What could have occurred to merit such a violent response? Why are our young people so angry?This tragedy will no doubt reignite the call for greater security measures to be put in place at the 26 public secondary schools across the island.But we submit that this is not the solution to a growing problem.This problem has developed in our homes and communities.In years gone by, communities were closely knit and it literally took a village to raise our children.Somehow along the way this community-minded spirit, this notion of being our brother’s and sister’s keeper, has been lost.Almost on a daily basis, our young people are appearing before the courts charged with serious crimes, including murder.This is reflected in the prison population. HM Prison Dodds is flooded with young people between the ages of 17 and 30.We consider this to be our young people’s cry for help.Minister of Education Santia Bradshaw summed it up with searing philosophical truth when she spoke to the media shortly after meeting with the school’s management team and teachers following the incident.She said: “I believe the reflection is on society, not just on parents who are perhaps sometimes not as vigilant in these times, in terms of checking to see what children are taking to school, but also this is a reflection of society at large.“A school is a small environment, but it is also a reflection of what is happening in society.“We can never see these things coming, but the reality is these are problems that are confronting this institution. It is certainly confronting other institutions.“And this is really a call to the wider society to take stock of what is happening and to be able to get on board to be able to assist not just families but certainly to be able to support the institutions as well.”Now the question still remains to be answered: How will schools respond?There is no magic wand that can be waved to end this apparent uptick in violence?Metal detectors are not a plausible fix, and it is almost impossible to individually search the bags of over 800 students on a daily basis multiplied by 26 high schools alone.But if it has taken this horrendous day of days to bring us to the realisation that we have reached a crisis of violence, in thought, word and deeds, so be it. Now is the opportunity for all of us to join together to fix this, or be condemned to a permanent state of failure. (BT)

CRIME STOPPERS RESPONDS TO SCHOOL STABBING - “This is a tragedy of mammoth proportions that no parent should have to deal with when sending their child to school.”This is the sentiment expressed by Sherie Holder-Olutayo, Programme Director of Crime Stoppers Barbados, in response to Friday’s incident at the Frederick Smith Secondary School that resulted in the death of a 16-year-old student.“We at Crime Stoppers Barbados are incredibly saddened and horrified to hear of the stabbing incident on Friday at Frederick Smith Secondary School. Our heartfelt prayers and deepest sympathies go out to the parents and families of both these young boys. This incident underscores the importance of our anger management conflict resolution programme, “Cool Yuh Head” in the island’s secondary schools.”Over the past seven years, the team of counsellors of Crime Stoppers Barbados has worked in several of the island’s 21 secondary schools to engage students in our “Cool Yuh Head” Programme.Our experience is that both male and female students are finding it increasingly difficult to keep a tight rein on their emotions especially in potentially volatile situations.“Cool Yuh Head is designed to provide students with the tools needed to apply reason and navigate difficult situations. Crime Stoppers Barbados is persuaded that anger management and conflict resolution programmes are vital to stemming the violent behavoiur exhibited by students at this time.No Government can sustain the task of changing this trend towards a culture of anger and retaliatory behavior alone. Corporate funding remains critical. Crime Stoppers Barbados believes that training in conflict resolution is key and must be sustained to realize long term benefits. We therefore redouble our efforts to establish and maintain partnerships with Principals, Corporate Sponsors and our team of highly skilled Counsellors in the various primary and secondary schools in Barbados. (BT)

OPTIMISTS INTERNATIONAL RESPONDS TO SCHOOL STABBING - Optimist International has issued the following statement in response to Friday’s incident at the Frederick Smith Secondary School that resulted in the death of a 16-year-old student.Full StatementA society that has reached the point where disputes of any type, but particularly disputes among our youth, are being resolved through aggressive postures is a society that needs intervention.A society that has reached the point where a human life has little value, is a society that is losing its soul.A society that is constantly hearing the cries from Educators that school environments are no longer safe havens, is a society that is losing its sense of place.Successive Governments have tried various tools and strategies to address these concerns; however, my concern is that these tools and strategies never appear holistic and strategic but rather they appear ad hoc and reactive.Our society requires an intervention where each of us plays a role in restoring a culture of discipline and inculcating positive values throughout our population.We cannot simply cry out that “we need to find the Lord” because we are all not believers. So although this can help, we must also embrace a system of participation by all, where we are each responsible for deploying and committing to a National narrative which is shaped by our leaders, while using our innate common sense to enforce or embolden acceptable norms of positive behavior by both adults and youth.A National narrative must focus on revamping our educational system; strengthening dysfunctional family units; managing cost of living; mandatory voluntary service; effective control of the drugs and gun trades; substance abuse; better employment opportunities; and a recommitment to set of cultural mores that once helped Barbados to be recognized as a civil society. This narrative but be set from the top and committed to by all of our Nation’s leaders. There must be outreach to NGOs, Religious Groups, and Educators to help shape and to support the narrative. It must be a national initiative led by the Government and managed in a non-partisan manner. These elements are done in some form or fashion but my point is that there needs to be cohesion and a clear outcome that is defined and desired.There are some who may say these comments are reactionary and they are right. There is always that moment that flicks the switch in ourselves that we must become part of the solution. Each of us need to have that moment. It is my intention to convene a meeting with local club and district leaders to determine how Optimist Clubs can work with Government, Educators, and other community leaders.This senseless act has left a family grieving, students shocked, and a Nation in disbelief. We can only imagine how the families of the victim and the perpetrator must feel. I am Christian so I will turn to prayers to support them. But I am also Bajan and I am a human being, so my commitment must extend beyond prayers, as must yours.Let’s use our hearts, voices, and hands to create a civil society that protects our youth, our people, and that embraces positive human and social values.Adrian M. ElcockPresident – Optimist InternationalBT)

CHILDREN CALLING HOTLINE TOO – Children are calling the Faith Marshall-Harris Sandy Lane Charitable Trust Helpline to ask mostly about abuse. Faith Marshall-Harris, UNICEF’s Barbados Champion for Children and founder of the helpline, said that while the helpline received all types of calls, many were “mainly . . . for help with real issues, mostly abuse”. “For the children, it is often when they have a sense of not being understood . . . they’re being disciplined too much or they’re being prevented from doing whatever. These are mainly children over a certain age. “The helpline grew out of the idea that you want to give children an opportunity, a voice.” (SS)

EDEN LODGE “NOT THTAT BAD” –Eden Lodge is not as bad as people are making it seem, say residents. They were responding to the Fear Of Crime survey, presented by criminologist and senior research officer at the Criminal Justice Research and Planning Unit, Kim Ramsay, which reported that shots were fired almost everyday and some residents didn’t leave home after 6 p.m. When a Sunday Sun team visited the densely populated community, several residents spoke but declined to give their names. Most said the St Michael community was much safer than it was before. “One time it used to happen (shooting) regularly, but where I am, I don’t hear gunshots everyday. But coming into this time of the year, there could be a possibility that it could pop back up,” a middle-aged woman said. (SS)

WOMAN FREED AFTER FIVE YEARS ON REMAND – More than five years after she made headlines, the woman who had been charged with two counts of rape and two counts of serious indecency towards two teenaged girls walked free from the High Court on Friday. And her attorney is asking for cases involving sexual offences to be fast-tracked so that other accused do not spend five years on remand awaiting the disposition of their cases like his client Lisa Lynton did. Lynton, now 42, of Foul Bay, St Philip, was indicted with committing an act of serious indecency on a 13-year-old girl, sometime between December 25, 2013, and April 30, 2014. She was also charged with raping the 13-year-old girl and her sister, as well as indecently assaulting the girl’s sister between the same dates. (SS)

ST. LUCY HARD HIT BY HEAVY RAINS – Less than two hours after the rain started to fall this morning, chairman of the St Lucy District Emergency Organisation, Rontae Johnson-Annius, was receiving calls about flooding in the parish. Johnson-Annius said the rain started around 6 a.m. and by 7:45 she was getting a picture of what was going on in Barbados’ northern-most parish. Just before midday, she told Nation News “basically every place is flooded”, but there are no injuries. There are reports of flooding across St Lucy, pools of water around homes, some homes have been breached by flood water and roads are impassable. The district chair said her team of between 60 to 70 people were on the ground providing reports. She can be reached at 439-8169. Johnson-Annius gave a snap shot of some of the damage in her parish. Many of the gullies are full to the brim and water has flooded surrounding areas. Water is making its way to the sea, but it will take some time given the volume of rain. The road from Northumberland to Hope Road is impassable because the gully there is at its limit, with water from Harris and Bridge Road also using that channel.From St Lucy Church to Crab Hill Police Station was impassable, but the road is now open. From Crab Hill Police Station to Greenidges, the road is impassable because the pump house is flooded and the water there is very high. Homes in Alexandria and Mount Gay are flooded. The water was high at Alleyndale, but that flowed off. Benthams and Colleton are impassable. The Met Office says a westward-moving tropical wave and an upper-level trough have been generating pockets of moderate to heavy showers, thunderstorms and occasional gusty winds over some sections of Barbados for several hours. A flash flood warning is in effect until 5 p.m. and director of the Department of Emergency Management, Kerry Hinds, has urged residents to remain indoors. (SS)

FLASH FLOOD WARNING EXTENDED – The Barbados Meteorological Service has extended the flash flood warning from 5 p.m. today to 6 a.m. tomorrow. The latest satellite and radar imagery suggest that clouds and showers associated with the tail-end of a tropical wave and an upper-level trough will continue to generate pockets of moderate to heavy showers, thunderstorms and occasional gusty winds over Barbados for at least another six to 12 hours, the Met office said. A flash flood warning means, in this case, that flooding due to heavy or excessive rainfall in a short period of time (generally less than six hours) is already occurring within the warning area. Residents in flood-prone areas are asked to remain on the alert and take the necessary precautions. This warning may be up-dated if conditions warrant. (SS)

WRIGHT AFTER GREAT RETURNS - Olympic hopeful Matthew Wright remains steadfast in his quest to collect enough points to qualify for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. Last week, he competed in the Lima ITU Triathlon World Cup, which was staged along the same course as for this year’s Pan American Games. However, he told Sunsport yesterday that he decided to drop out after challenges in the 5K event. “I actually didn’t finish. I had a best swim for the season, coming out in the Top 15 feeling really good and I had a really strong ride, riding in the front and staying out of trouble and not using much effort. Then I got on to the 5K run. It was one big group of about 50 guys coming off the bike and I was running probably as fast I have run for the entire season, but, you know, the 5K is just not really my specialty, I guess,” he said. (SS)

CRUNCH TIME FOR BIG BOYS – The fates of four of the “big clubs” of Barbadian football will hang in the balance tonight, as Empire take on University of the West Indies (UWI) Blackbirds and Weymouth Wales battle Paradise in the Capelli Super Cup quarter-finals at the Wildey Turf. Empire are one of four clubs with a 100 per cent record and were particularly impressive in the Championship stage where they scored six goals and kept two clean sheets. UWI have stumbled into the last eight, with their only positive result in the last round being a draw, or two dropped points, against Notre Dame. UWI still advanced ahead of Dames by virtue of losing only 3-0 to Wales, whereas Dames lost 6-0 a week prior. (SS)

There are 52 days left in the year Shalom! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for your daily news. #thechasefiles #dailynewscaps #bajannewscaps #newsinanutshell

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marymosley · 6 years ago

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Human Rights and Intellectual Property Rights

The Intellectual Property Rights, as the name suggests, are the rights given to an inventor or the creator as a reward

· For creating or inventing something new as a result of his own intellect and importantly

· To benefit the Society out of that invention.

The Human Rights are the rights which are given to the Human Beings, not as a matter of chance or choice but as a matter of his being a human. They are the rights ensuring the basic survival of the Human Beings.

Now, if we consider out the nature of Intellectual Property Rights with reference to the Human Rights then we found that:

· Intellectual Property Rights are non-fundamental Human Rights,

· Open to State interference to fulfill Human Rights obligations.

Thus, after these definitions, we can easily progress forward in understanding the conflicts between the two as well as the resolution of the conflicts between the Human Rights and the Intellectual Property Rights.

The Human Rights and the Intellectual Property Rights are the two domains of Law that have evolved independently. Intellectual Property Rights consist of statutorily recognized Rights, providing incentives for the participation of the private sector in various fields and seek to contribute to technological development. On the other hand, Human Rights are the Basic Rights, which are recognized by the State, and are inherent Rights linked to human dignity.

The Globalization of the Intellectual Property Rights triggered the debate on the relationship between the Human Rights and the Intellectual Property Rights, because many developing countries, particularly the least developed countries, are not in a position to implement the TRIPS standards in their jurisdiction without further compromising their development at the cost of Human Rights.

The indigenous communities state that the Government should recognize their claim over their traditional knowledge matter, which is related to the agriculture, biodiversity, etc. According to the Intellectual Property Rights regime, the traditional knowledge is considered to be a part of the public domain, since it does not meet the established criteria for protection or private ownership. Since this traditional knowledge is ownerless, various private enterprises utilize this knowledge for further inventions, and thereafter protect their inventions by means of patents, copyrights, etc. and the indigenous communities are deprived of their Lawful share.

Thus, the existing flaw in the Intellectual Property Rights regime leads to the exploitation of the indigenous communities by various enterprises, which leads to the violation of the Human Rights of the indigenous communities. In this respect, Intellectual Property Rights Law infringes on the domain of Human Rights Law. The Government should enact Legislations, where the indigenous communities can seek damages for unauthorized usage of their traditional knowledge. The Government can also protect the traditional knowledge by denying patents, copyrights, etc. for the objects, which have been derived from the traditional knowledge.

The main justification which is given in support of Intellectual Property Rights is stated to be that these incentives and rewards to inventors and the creators’ results in the benefits for the society.

The correlation between the Human Rights and the Intellectual Property is intriguing, because it transcends different levels and aspects of each of the Legal fields respectively. However, it seems as though that the relationship between the two is primitively due to the fact that Intellectual Property Rights imposed limitations on the accessibility and realisation of Human Rights by broadening its scope of protection.

THE OVERLAP OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Today Human Rights Law and Intellectual Property Law overlap to an extent far greater than initially envisaged. The Intellectual Property has already found its way into the Human Rights. The Right to Intellectual Property is inserted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the United Nations Declaration for the Right of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).

The UDHR is probably the most prominent International document to be said to annotate the Human Rights regime, which effectively annotates the Intellectual Property Rights on an International scale. Although not expressly mentioned, Article 27 (2) UDHR states that “… everyone has the Right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”

UDHR (UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS) AND THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

The UDHR Article 27.1, clearly states that “everyone has the Right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits,” and Article 27.2 of the UDHR, states that “everyone has the Right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” These two paragraphs of the same provision of the UDHR illustrate the complex and sometimes ambiguous relationship, which may give rise to contradictions, between the Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights.

AGREEMENT ON TRADE RELATED ASPECTS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS

Human Rights and Intellectual Property Laws are two distinct fields that have largely evolved separately. The adoption of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and its implications for developing countries have fundamentally changed the nature of the debate concerning Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights. Their relationship needs to be re-examined for a number of reasons. This is demonstrated in two ways:

Firstly, the impacts of Intellectual Property Rights on the realization of Human Rights such as the Right to Health have become much more visible after the adoption of the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement.

Secondly, the increasing scope of Human Rights provisions in protecting individual contributions to knowledge in the field of medical patents is due to the rise in Intellectual Property Rights.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND REALISATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS (PATENT RIGHTS vs. RIGHT TO HEALTH AND RIGHT TO FOOD)

Regarding the Human Right to Health, the link between Intellectual Property Rights and the Human Rights has become apparent in the relationship between medical patents and the Right to Health, particularly in reference to the HIV/AIDS epidemics. This is due to the fact that a number of drugs used to alleviate HIV/AIDS are protected by patents. Hence, there is a direct link between patents, the price of drugs, and access to drugs.

Regarding the Right to Food, there are links between patents in the field of genetic engineering, the limitation of farmers’ Rights, and access to food. While the link between Intellectual Property Rights and Human Rights has been made, it has been discussed almost exclusively in Human Rights forums. In other words, there remains a visible imbalance insofar as the language of Human Rights has not penetrated Intellectual Property Rights institutions, whereas the language of Intellectual Property Rights is now regularly addressed in Human Rights institutions.

INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON ECONOMIC, CULTURAL AND SOCIAL RIGHTS (ICESCR) AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

The Right to the “enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” is specifically protected under the International Convention on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights (ICESCR). Core obligations of member States include the necessity to ensure the Right of access to health facilities, especially for vulnerable or marginalized groups. In the case of primary health care, this includes the provision of essential drugs. In the case of HIV/AIDS, more clear elaborations of these obligations have been given. The UN Human Rights Commission adopted resolutions indicating that access to medication in the context of HIV/AIDS is one fundamental element for achieving the full realization of the Right to Health. In other words, accessibility of medicines and their affordability are two main components of the Right to Health. Medical Patents have direct impacts on accessibility and affordability. They have the potential to promote access by providing incentives for the development of new drugs and also to restrict the access because of the comparatively higher prices of patented drugs. The fact that patented drugs are repeatedly more expensive than generic drugs is a relevant consideration. Other factors that influence access include situations where there is only limited competition between generic producers, local taxes, and mark-ups for wholesaling, distribution, and dispensing. Improving access can thus not be limited to bringing prices down through competition but must also include further measures such as public subsidies, or price control measures. Better access to drugs can be approached from the point of view of medical patents or the Right to Health. The dichotomy is unavoidable insofar as each relevant legal framework is largely insulated from the other, but both need to be considered jointly because, in practice, a solution focusing on medical patents that ends up constituting a denial of the Right to Health would not be acceptable.

RESOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT

Thus, the very basic debate is that how a balance to be maintained between the Intellectual Property Rights and the Human Rights because the smooth existence of both is required for the appropriate and rich economic and the social development of the society as a whole.

For resolving the conflict between Human Rights and Intellectual Property Rights, the precise Rights which are being undermined should be identified. The Human Rights Organizations should develop specific interpretations of the ambiguous Rights (mainly economic, social and cultural rights) in order to comply with the terms of the TRIPS Agreement. Secondly, if the TRIPS Agreement is seen from the Human Rights perspective, then the consumers of Intellectual Property products will be on an equal stage with the owners of Intellectual Property Rights. The agreement regards the consumers of these products inferior to the owners. But if the Human Rights purview is added to the agreement, then the consumers will also be the holders of these internationally guaranteed Rights. Thirdly, rather than advocating minimum standards for Intellectual Property Rights protection, the Government should impose maximum standards for Intellectual Property Rights protections. This would act as a limit for the multiplying standards of Intellectual Property Rights protection. It is also suggested for better protection of the Human Rights if a minimum required standard of the protection of the Human Rights is to be maintained while realizing any kind of Intellectual Property Rights. Lastly, the international forums on Intellectual Property Rights, such as the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), etc., while making new Laws on Intellectual Property Rights, should analyse the Laws with a Human Rights perspective. It is only in such circumstances that the Human Rights Law and Intellectual Property Rights Law will be able to co-exist with one another properly.

Navin Kumar Jaggi

Aashna Suri

The post Human Rights and Intellectual Property Rights appeared first on Legal Desire.

Human Rights and Intellectual Property Rights published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

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christineamccalla · 6 years ago

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Psychological torture to Northcentral University Students via forums including NCU Community Forum, by McCalla, Christine Ann

From: McCalla, Christine Ann and all variations thereof

To: Interpol and all variations thereof, et al

Date: Friday, June 22, 2018

Re: Psychological torture to Northcentral University Students via forums including NCU Community Forum

A central communications link is Northcentral University’s Commons where there are numerous forums facilitating communications between students, an essential part of distance education connection. Archer (1999) argue that the age of the internet facilitates distance education as an attractive and appealing option for individuals wishing to pursue university-level education.

Archer (1999) argues distance education as being of three (3) generations, print package afforded to students, audio-teleconferences, and face to face group sessions. As such, the forums afforded to students can be deemed as print packages, and audio teleconferencing available through web-based sessions including tutorials as well as dropbox options. One advantage of distance education is the students’ comfort and agility in which they pursue academic activities regardless of geographical locations (Archer, 1999) at their convenience.

In providing these forums and student communication links / outlets, Northcentral University has complied with statute,

U.S. Code, Title 20, Chapter 31, § 1221–1, 20 U.S. Code § 1221–1 - National policy with respect to equal educational opportunity - Recognizing that the Nation’s economic, political, and social security require a well-educated citizenry, the Congress (1) reaffirms, as a matter of high priority, the Nation’s goal of equal educational opportunity, and (2) declares it to be the policy of the United States of America that every citizen is entitled to an education to meet his or her full potential without financial barriers. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1221%E2%80%931

In review of exhibit A (below / enclosed below), Northcentral University’s students has not seen fit to apply statute TITLE 17. COPYRIGHTS CHAPTER 1. SUBJECT MATTER AND SCOPE OF COPYRIGHT 17 USCS § 101, definitions,

-A "collective work" is a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology, or encyclopedia, in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. -A "compilation" is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term "compilation" includes collective works.

-To perform or display a work "publicly" means-- (1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or (2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.

Thereby the benefits, gains, appreciations, and accolades brought on by statutes,

(1) TITLE 17. COPYRIGHTS CHAPTER 1. SUBJECT MATTER AND SCOPE OF COPYRIGHT 17 USCS § 101, definitions,

An "international agreement" is-- (1) the Universal Copyright Convention; (2) the Geneva Phonograms Convention; (3) the Berne Convention; (4) the WTO Agreement; (5) the WIPO Copyright Treaty; (6) the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty; and (7) any other copyright treaty to which the United States is a party.

(2) TITLE 22 - FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE

(3) TITLE 15 - COMMERCE AND TRADE

(4) TITLE 12 - BANKS AND BANKING

(5) TITLE 26 - INTERNAL REVENUE CODE

(6) TITLE 31 - MONEY AND FINANCE

(7) TITLE 41 - PUBLIC CONTRACTS

(8) TITLE 42 - THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE

(9) TITLE 29 - LABOR

(10) United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods and Services

Given that I participate in the doctoral school, the name of the game is competition as governed by statutes U.C.C. - ARTICLE 2 PART 2. FORM, FORMATION AND READJUSTMENT OF CONTRACT § 2-205. Firm Offers, § 2-206. Offer and Acceptance in Formation of Contract, § 2-207. Additional Terms in Acceptance or Confirmation, and, § 2-210. Delegation of Performance; Assignment of Rights. Lucrativity is expected as well as protection by the brand that is my university, Northcentral University. In the competition process, I will encounter international denizenry of equally or greater measures as I, and I must prevail.

The communciations listed below is of a subpar, illiterate, and substandard nature, such as the no longer disabled student considering Northcentral University elite based on her opportunity to participate in statute TITLE 26 - INTERNAL REVENUE CODE. Be able to earn a living, something I have been denied by the Department of Labor to whom my certified public accountancy licensure, designated certified public bookkeeping was presented by email, with numerous responses resulting in violation of the US Constitution’s woman’s suffrage, the fucking bitch, the fucking whore, the fucking slut, financed battery and assaults including the fucking bitch sits by the side of the road 4.5 hours day. I have sued said agency for the use of my name as prostitute, for murder, and violation of statute government records; copies in which it is alleged the personnel receiving my license by email responded, I am expected to find her a job; the license is fraudulent. As you can see, I have a conflict as I am unemployed and in my 5th year of such trauma, despite my accolades, MBA, MS, BS, CBME, CBDE, CAHR, CTW, CPB. My point, I have complied substantially with no reward with statute U.S. Code, Title 20, Chapter 48, Subchapter I › § 3401 20 U.S. Code § 3401 - Congressional findings The Congress finds that— (1) education is fundamental to the development of individual citizens and the progress of the Nation; (2) there is a continuing need to ensure equal access for all Americans to educational opportunities of a high quality, and such educational opportunities should not be denied because of race, creed, color, national origin, or sex; (4) in our Federal system, the primary public responsibility for education is reserved respectively to the States and the local school systems and other instrumentalities of the States; (5) the American people benefit from a diversity of educational settings, including public and private schools, libraries, museums and other institutions, the workplace, the community, and the home; (6) the importance of education is increasing as new technologies and alternative approaches to traditional education are considered, as society becomes more complex, and as equal opportunities in education and employment are promoted;

Although unemployed for over 4 years, I must continue to pursue opportuntiies. With the cohort such as this listed below, it will not be found.opportunities

EXHIBIT A

Americans with Disabilities Accomodation re-evaluation for a documented PERMANENT disability or is there any other way to get extended time to complete studies for those of us who work for minimum wage?

So, if I am no longer disabled because my dr says it's not his place to sign the paper work and I work 2 jobs -55 hours a week to keep a roof over my head and eat and sleep 3 hours a night - I guess I am not good enough to attend NCU because there is NO way I can keep up with assignments. Is this just a school for the elite? What options do I have? Say I am suicidal so I can get a diagnosis and then submit new forms? Help me under stand this cuz I cannot see any lights at the end of my tunnel for completing my schooling. Nobody said life was fair. I put so much into my studies only to be turned away. Sadly, Susie

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Linda Bloomberg added a Forum in NCU Community Forum Diversity InSight – Dissertation Spotlight follow up: Dr. Alethea Henry, ... On June 4, 2018 UDC hosted a Dissertation Spotlight on Dr. Alethea Henry’s dissertation, which she recently completed, Exploring minority teachers’ experiences pertaining to their value in education: A single case study of teachers In New York City. This presentation was co- facilitated by Dr. Alethea Henry and Dr. Linda Bloomberg. This discussion forum is to support further discussion around the themes, reflections, and questions that arose from this presentation. A recording of this presentation will be available in the future for those of you who are interested and were not able to attend.

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I solicit the prayers of each of you. I took my ... I solicit the prayers of each of you. I took my father to the hospital Tuesday. On Wednesday while talking to my sister, he had a stroke and coded. They were able to bring him back but he remains in critical condition. He has made some gain today but is not out of the water. I believe in the power of prayer and pray that you will stand in agreement with me for his total healing and recuperation. Exhausted, Darlett Lucy-Gulley

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Grandma Ann is asking for a pat on the back. I am... Grandma Ann is asking for a pat on the back. I am taking Stats. II and due to some glitches the class ends a week after my pre-scheduled major surgery, instead of the week before it. So, I had the surgery, gulped down my pain pills, & turned in the Week 11 assignment. Today I got it back with a 98% on it (-: Week 12 is nearly done, too. During this class my husband had a stroke, I turned 70-oh no-a child moved back home, and we visited another child.10 hrs. away. With 1 assignment to go, I have 92.5%.

Added by Ann Stressman

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Archer, W. (1999). Delivering university-level communications programs at a distance: Benefits, costs and disruptions. Canadian Journal of Communication, 24(3), 367. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/219607528?accountid=28180

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rolandfontana · 6 years ago

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Racial Gap in Juvenile Arrests Continues to Grow, Despite Reforms

When Sonny Lara was 12 years old, growing up in San Jose, Ca., he decided to make a name for himself. He started selling drugs and committing street crimes with other adolescents in his neighborhood.

That decision — paired with an unstable home life — led him down a path of gangs, drug trafficking and addiction.

“You’d go in to juvenile hall and all the kids wanted to fight you,” said Lara. “You’d have to be ready to bite their nose off, their ear off — whatever you gotta do to survive

“I grew up when there were still Black Panthers, Brown Berets, Black Berets. It was a lot of racial wars then.”

Lara, now 63, spent four years in prison and eight months in the Elmwood County Jail for drug trafficking—one of many kids swept up in the criminal justice system. His incarceration preceded the juvenile crime wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s that spurred cries of “super predators” by politicians — the fear that ultra-violent young people would wreak havoc all over American cities.

“Super-predators” turned out to be a myth, but it left young minorities as the principal victims. It also fueled tough-on-crime laws, and triggered a massive expansion of juvenile detention centers at taxpayers’ expense.

Over the past 20 years, tireless work from criminal justice reform advocates and organizations, backed with scientific data about youth brain development and the negative impacts of jailing young people, persuaded lawmakers to finally began making changes.

New laws were passed aimed at correcting punitive sentencing for youth in favor of rehabilitation and diversion programs.

In California, the population of children and young adults, aged 12 to 25, in the correctional system has dropped from 10,000 in 1996 to 627 as of June, 2018. County-run juvenile halls and camps also emptied out over the time- period.

However, the work is far from over.

Despite the decline in juvenile arrests, California’s racial gap has continued to grow. A recent report by an Oakland-based research and advocacy organization, Human Impact Partners, titled “Juvenile Injustice: Charging Youth as Adults is Ineffective, Biased, and Harmful,” found that black and Hispanic children are “overrepresented at every stage of the criminal justice system.”

The racial disparities are equally apparent nationally. A study by The W. Haywood Burns Institute found that while just 14 percent of all youths under 18 in the U.S. are black, 43 percent of boys and 34 percent of girls in juvenile facilities are black.

Probation

While incarceration is one part of the system and is the most expensive and harmful by far, most youths are not locked up after being arrested, but placed on probation. This form of oversight was supposed to be an alternative, but in many cases, it’s proved a gateway to incarceration. There are now over 39,000 youth on probation statewide.

Involvement in the juvenile justice system itself is harmful to young people. Probation can be a source of support and positive engagement, but too often it is the cause of young people getting locked up. Many youths are locked up over violations of probation for small infractions and can be further impacted by individual decisions made by probation officers who don’t have the best interest of youth in mind.

“Probation is a hidden secret of the juvenile justice system,” said Nate Balis, Director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group for The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

“The proportion of kids put in probation remains the same year after year. It is quite similar to what it looked like with the overall approach in the 1990s. One thing to change is dramatically narrowing who ends up on probation. Kids with first offenses like shoplifting can end up on probation. We must be more discerning and divert far more youth from juvenile justice system.”

Balis says the research points to a focus on incentives rather than sanctions with individual plans for probation having a more positive effect overall. Probation remains the main sentence and response for youth in the juvenile justice system. In a 2017 study, eight out of 10 juveniles arrested were referred to county juvenile probation departments.

Balis notes there are different factors that contribute to youth of color being locked up at higher rates than their white counterparts.

“What we see when we’re working is that there’s some reaction that says the reason why it’s higher for youth of color is because of the offenses such as a youth locked up for carrying a handgun. We haven’t found that specifically; it could be part of it,” said Balis.

“It doesn’t explain the entirety of disparity. We know that policing patterns are vastly different from one jurisdiction to the next with different rates of arrest for the same crimes of selling drugs. Plus, there’s implicit bias. It’s not an easy answer on how to resolve it.”

Balis stressed that just because the work is hard doesn’t mean systems should stop trying to eradicate inequality. There’s not one quick, easy fix.

For David Muhammad, Executive Director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, the work comes down to three things: Reduce, improve and reinvest.

“Reduce has been the important piece for a long time,” Muhammad said. “I thought improvement was the most important, but now I realize that the best people at the head of these systems are not enough.

“The systems themselves have an extraordinary ability to cause harm to young people.”

“The systems themselves have an extraordinary ability to cause harm to young people, bounce back from reform and go back to tradition correctional based system. What I’ve found is reduction is the best thing — keeping people out and away from the system.”

While Muhammad acknowledged the amount of progress made in reduction of young people coming into the juvenile justice system, there is still much to be desired when it comes to reinvestment in programs to steer youth in a positive direction. While juvenile hall populations have plummeted, leaving most facilities more than half empty, counties have been unable or unwilling to reduce spending on lockup facilities, according to a recent Chronicle report.

As a result, the annual cost to detain a youth has skyrocketed, reaching more than $500,000 in some Bay Area counties. The same trend is playing out in state-run youth prisons.

“California Youth Authority had 10,000 youth and now there’s less than 700,” Muhammad said.

“However, the money hasn’t been reinvested in the communities that these youth come from. We can’t be willing to pay between $200,000 to $300,000 per year per youth and be unwilling to invest that level of resource into youth, the families and the communities they live in.”

While a small fraction of youth pose a danger to society, Muhammad maintains that trained professionals should engage them positively and build on their strengths and assets.

With juvenile crime and arrests at record lows, now would be the perfect opportunity to revamp the juvenile justice system — from prevention to probation — in a way that truly benefits juveniles.

The collection of scientific studies and data that points to the adverse effects of incarceration as well as the recommendations from activists and former juvenile offenders alike should serve as the framework for building an equitable system.

Legislation

The road to juvenile justice reform has been a long journey. There have been several bills passed in recent years aimed at further reducing the juvenile population. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other lawmakers shifted the focus to rehabilitation in 2005 by reorganizing the California Youth Authority, which had been mired in lawsuits over physical assaults by staff on youth and long periods of lockdowns.

Eight of 11 youth facilities were closed, programming was changed to reflect efforts at conflict resolution, and scientific studies on neuroscience and adolescents offered a roadmap to reforms.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown signed bills that will prevent the transfer of 14- and 15-year-olds into adult criminal court. Senate Bill 1391 and Senate Bill 439 have banned counties from handling children who are arrested under the age of 12 in the juvenile justice system.

“It’s an endless problem with 50,000 kids or more in foster care system and they don’t have a great result in high school graduation rates,” said Brown in one of his last weeks as governor.

“Much of this is associated with poor economic situations and it’s a larger context from global capitalism. How we deal with that in the long term is of grave importance. The greater challenge is how do we bolster families in terms of legislation. Altering that big system is something we need to ponder while we look at discrete programs and interventions.”

David Steinhart has been the Director of the Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program since 1992 and has seen many positive changes in attitudes toward juvenile justice reform.

“We advocated in the 1990s and we got nowhere at the time,” Steinhart recalled. “The governor and legislators were against it. We didn’t have leadership from legislators and governors until mid-2000s.”

In 2007, Steinhart’s organization had a heavy hand in crafting legislation that brought the youth population down by 90 percent. Steinhart was one of the main designers of California Senate Bill 81, also known as the “Juvenile Justice Realignment” bill.

The law moved juvenile offenders from state youth prisons to county facilities. To handle the influx, local probation departments received hundreds of millions of dollars to offer services and expand juvenile halls and camps.

What has made a big difference is scientific research on adolescent brain development, which has been reflected in U.S. Supreme Court rulings, along with federal government and state reform laws. Among the cases that have shaped juvenile justice in the U.S. Supreme Court:

Beginning with the “In re Gault” (387 U.S. 1) decision in 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that children facing juvenile prosecution have the majority of the same legal rights as adults in criminal court, including the right to an attorney.

Roper v Simmons in 2005 cited the death penalty as cruel and unusual for crimes committed by youth. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion that, based on neuroscience research, youth are more likely to be susceptible to peer pressure, haven’t matured fully and have more potential for rehabilitation.

The Miller v. Alabama ruling in 2012 made it unconstitutional to sentence someone who was under the age of 18 at the time of the crime to mandatory life without parole.

“The youthful brain does not mature into the mid-20s,” Steinhart said. “That gives acknowledgment to the idea that the difference between kids and adults is not that strong when it comes to being locked up. It also gives programs availability to access to young adults that are over 18 to use youth programs.”

Antiquated Data

One area that has hampered research and reporting is the antiquated state data system that tracks reform. Having a robust system in place would allow for local government to be able to monitor and track kids under the new laws along with performance outcome measures.

“Without good data you can’t inform good state policy,” Steinhart said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in January as part of his budget that he intends to move control of the state’s juvenile justice system from correctional administrators to the Health and Human Services Agency that would oversee over 600 incarcerated youth.

While some advocates see the move as a necessary shift in culture for the state’s juvenile justice system, other community organizers and activists aren’t sold that the change will make things better for youth.

Frankie Guzman, an attorney and Director of California Youth Justice Initiative for National Center for Youth Law, says a big part of the problem is at the state level, which operates in isolation from other systems without coordination or providing assistance.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan proposes to go to health and human services in an effort to rehabilitate them but does little to prevent them from being there in the first place,” said Frankie Guzman.

“We can continue to shift the safety net from one division to another, but this is no safety net. When the systems fail young people, they end up incarcerated and monitored and treated in juvenile justice system. It’s a band aid approach to a serious issue.”

Guzman is no stranger to the juvenile justice system. In 1995, he was arrested for armed robbery at age 15. He spent the next six years in and out of the system. Guzman was able to turn his life around, later graduating from UCLA School of Law in 2012 and dedicating himself to helping youth through legislation, mentoring and research.

Guzman worked with former Gov. Brown’s office on Proposition 57, which incentivized rehabilitation for inmates with credit-earning opportunities as well as moving up parole consideration for nonviolent offenders who’ve served the full term of the sentence for their primary offense. The law also prohibits prosecutors from charging youth in adult court without approval from a judge.

“I came out far worse than I came in.”

“I came out far worse than I came in and needed to get out of that system to get the help I needed,” Guzman said.

“Between the judge and the prosecutor, all I heard was negative things about me. I was painted as a menace to society who was irredeemable. Pain abuse and intolerance — that’s what I learned in the juvenile justice system in both the county and state.”

Guzman thinks having a state agency that oversees child welfare in a health and human services lens is a much better investment and strategy for the state. The state agency could distribute funding to community-based organizations that have direct service to youth.

Diversion Programs

Other organizations work to address gang intervention, crisis response, and mentoring/teaching at-risk youth. One of them is the Firehouse Community Development Corporation, founded by

Pastor Sonny Lara over 25 years ago.

By assessing at-risk youth and offenders using evidence-based principles, the Firehouse has been a successful part of the San Jose Mayor’s Gang Task Force and features an outreach team contracted with the city.

Pastor Lara and his team specialize in creating individual Transformational Care Plans for each youth, establishing goals, meeting with probation officers and teaching life skills focused on everything from peer pressure to anger management.

“These guys like going into juvenile institutions,” Lara said. “A few weeks ago, there was a gang-related riot in one of the juvenile halls and my guys were called in to calm the situation down. You’ve got to stay cool, calm and collected, otherwise you’ll just be throwing wood on the fire.”

The Firehouse also operates a leadership program within San Jose schools that works with students who have had four or more “F” grades on a semester report card.

Lara understands the importance of giving people a second chance by providing them with opportunities to help others and leave their criminal past behind them. Many of his employees were former incarcerated youth, who now spend their time trying to help young people to stay on the right path.

“When I was in juvenile hall, it was maximum security and had 23-hour lockdown,” said Beto Chavez, who works with Lara. “You had one hour to be on the outside and it was a fort wall with a caged top, so it was really like you never went outside. We were like animals in a cage.”

Chavez remembers everyone had their own cell with one window that the staff would periodically look through. From the ages of 11 to 18, he was in and out of juvenile hall and was bounced around to different group homes. Chavez now has an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts and a trucking license.

“When we go to the juvenile halls and speak it’s to give them hope,” said Lamont Warren, a Firehouse Community Outreach member.

“I remember when I was kid that I just wanted an opportunity. The love that Pastor Lara has for helping others is evident. If you’re willing to help yourself, he’ll help you.”

Keeping youth out of the juvenile justice system benefits everyone. By focusing on diversion programs, rehabilitative care and job opportunities for youth as well as legislative/culture changes in policy, the population of incarcerated youth will continue to decline in California.

Spencer Whitney

California can serve as a prime example of the powerful impact that researchers, lawmakers and advocates and counselors can have when they all work together to reform the juvenile justice system.

Spencer Whitney, assistant opinion editor for The San Francisco Chronicle, is a John Jay/Tow Juvenile Justice Reporting Fellow. This is a slightly condensed version of an article written as part of his fellowship project. Read the full version here. Spencer can be reached at [email protected] or Twitter: @spencewhitney.

Racial Gap in Juvenile Arrests Continues to Grow, Despite Reforms syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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epchapman89 · 7 years ago

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Intellectual Property In Coffee: A Global Game Of Clones

I remember when I visited my extended family in Taiwan in 1998. Lining the streets were vendors doling out the latest movie on DVD, before it even left the theater. A few years later, the girls around school were all sporting bags with the Chanel-style C patterned around them. I bought a pair of C-patterned heels for NT$100 (US$3 at that time). They were such a steal and people fawned all over them.

What I didn’t know was that pirated movies and counterfeit products were intellectual property rights violations, and that I was enabling the market.

When I first decided to write this feature series [READ PART ONE HERE] I had wanted to explore cultural influences in intellectual property (IP). Instead, it evolved into also looking at how developing countries manage IP and how the internet influences global coffee culture. Every country has a different approach to IP laws, and social media only makes access to other people’s ideas easier.

IP cases in coffee that play out on the international stage tend to be dominated by large corporations—that is, those entities that have the resources to take things worldwide. Patent registrations protect companies, but they also expire after a set number of years. In 1976, Nestlé filed its first patent for its single-pod Nespresso system and subsequently filed at least 1700 more patents. In the US, Keurig Green Mountain filed its first patent for K-Cup pods in 1992. For both companies, the patents began to expire in 2012, opening the doors to new companies and cheaper pods.

Most specialty coffee companies don’t seem to care much about patent wars, despite some having been recently purchased by larger entities like JAB Holding Company or Nestlé. But as specialty coffee—and its accoutrement—continues to be a growing industry, new coffee equipment is constantly being invented. Having ready access to social media only means the newest ideas can get knocked off easier than ever.

The PUSH tamper, created by UK-based Clockwork Espresso, is one example of new coffee equipment that’s been duplicated around the world. In 2015, when soon-to-be United Kingdom Barista champion Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood pulled out a strange, hockey-puck-like tamper on the world competition stage, the audience was buzzing. The shape was unlike any tamper on the market and could conceivably solve pressure consistency issues that occur from one tamp to the next. As expected, similar products began appearing on the world market soon after. When asked about them, the founder of Clockwork Espresso’s Pete Southern confirmed that they were unauthorized copies. “Yes, there are several replica products on the market that are produced without our permission,” he said via email.

Southern’s background is in biotech, where IP protections are common and respected, giving him a leg up on protecting his new product. “Working in this field means that I have direct experience of working with patents, litigation, enforcement, action, etc,” he said. “The coffee industry currently lacks this understanding of IP, but I think this will change over time.”

Southern plans on building an IP portfolio, which is a collection of IP registrations and assets that a company manages. He elaborated, “We will use this portfolio to protect our investment, in a strategic rather than reactive way.”

One common misconception he points out is that “people also don’t seem to realize that selling/distributing/marketing an infringing product without permission is just as illegal as manufacturing it.” On the flip side, patent owners are also able to license their technology, which can benefit the creation of new products without worrying about infringements.

In his paper “Intellectual Property Challenges for Developing Countries: An Economic Perspective,” Keith E. Markus, Professor of Economics at University of Colorado, Boulder, writes, “The costs of developing a system adequate for handling mere counterfeiting cases, let alone complicated patent disputes, can be substantial.” So while a developing country’s economy could be open to stronger IP laws, those laws lack teeth if no one is able to enforce them.

Furthermore, technology licenses are expensive and benefit those who hold the copyrights, mostly companies based in the US. Markus estimated a net inflow of $5.8 billion per year in licensing fees paid to US companies.

At the time of this writing, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Chinese goods, which is in response to “alleged policies that help its native companies acquire the technology of US firms.” Tariffs are predicted to harm relations between the two countries, beginning with China imposing its own tariffs on US goods. To expand into the Chinese market, where specialty coffee is poised to grow in both consuming and producing sectors, some sharing of technology information is needed.

Barb and Doug Garrott are co-owners of Orphan Espresso, a Troy, Idaho company that designs and sells coffee grinders and accessories. They’ve had their “products directly purchased, and copied, sold on Amazon, and on eBay,” the Garrotts told Sprudge via email. Orphan Espresso’s OE Lower Bearing Upgrade Kit (for use with the Hario Skerton grinder), Ipanema Dosing Cylinder, and standard dosing funnels are all products they’ve seen directly copied by both small and large, multinational companies.

When the company was first starting out, applying for design patents was too costly for them. Reaching out to the companies that were copying its products only produced responses that pointed out the lack of a patent. The Garrotts learned that “the more successful, the faster it will be copied and if your R&D costs, or tooling costs are quite high, you may be copied before those costs are fully recovered.”

And if companies use overseas manufacturers, IP protection is key. The biggest mistake that the Garrotts have seen peers make, though not made themselves, is “collaborative manufacturing, where the overseas partner became a seller of the design, to the detriment of the original manufacturer—it was a costly mistake.”

Through a Western lens, it is easy to criticize some of this as outright stealing. In his book, “Trouble in the Middle: American-Chinese Business Relations, Culture, Conflict, and Ethics,” author Steven P. Feldman, Professor of Business Ethics at Case Western Reserve University, puts the viewpoint into perspective. In a Confucian society, value is placed in the collective rather than in the individual.

Feldman writes, “Rather than regarding invention as a private right, the Chinese regard public duplication of creative objects as the proper approach to the value of such objects because all creativity comes from a public repository and should contribute back to it.”

This belief in collectivism vs. individualism is at direct odds with IP, where assets and ideas are registered and fought over. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 meant that it had to agree to some basic IP laws. WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) establishes “minimum standards of protection and enforcement that each government has to give to the intellectual property held by nationals of fellow WTO members.”

Feldman says that market protection and stability is far more important to the Chinese government than IP enforcement. He writes: “The Chinese government is concerned that enforcement of IP could hinder economic development by blocking access to information and technology, allowing foreign firms who own the IP to dominate the China market and creating a trade imbalance that favors the West.”

International accords were written by developed nations and have been criticized as being a barrier for developing nations’ growth. Feldman concludes, “The fact is that developing nations cannot compete with developed nations in most areas of IP.”

Technology’s Influences on Coffee Culture

In Vietnam, where Confucianism has a long history, coffee is both grown and consumed. Because the specialty coffee industry is newer, the values may not be as impactful as in other industries.

Sarah G. Grant, Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at California State University, Fullerton, studies Vietnam’s cultural and economic policies in relation to the commodity coffee industry. In a written interview, Grant says the internet played a greater role in the industry than Confucianism. “The Vietnamese specialty coffee industry developed quite rapidly and I think the relative age, education level, and English language fluency has significantly shaped it,” she says. At the moment, Vietnamese specialty coffee professionals are collaborative and supportive of each other.

Social media has certainly played a role in intellectual property and design concepts. Being able to see what a well-known cafe abroad looks like without ever leaving your country offers up an opportunity to spark ideas close to home. Grant says, “A lot of these models put cafe design first—some of the best-known specialty cafes in Vietnam feel like walking into a cafe in LA, Berlin, or San Francisco and I think there’s something to be said for that design influence.”

Interior design inspiration is one thing, but images, logos, and other such copyrighted or trademarked materials can be found floating across international waters. Brian W. Jones, a designer and brand consultant to coffee companies, shared a few examples of this with Sprudge via email.

“Poster designs that I’ve made have been turned into stamps that people use like a logo on their takeaway cups, paintings on their walls, [designs on] their own t-shirts,” Jones says. Most of the violators are small businesses in faraway countries, and pursuing action is often expensive.

When designing for a client, Jones retains only the right to display work in a portfolio. However, he’s observed a client’s branding pirated to a country distant from the original business. “I worked on a [cafe] branding project in London that had [the company’s] entire name and logo ripped off in Seoul,” Jones says. “There was signage and printed cups and engraved tables, all with this logo I designed for a different company.”

What is more concerning—and why many of these protections exist in the first place—is when a stolen name or trademark begins to be confused with the original holder. This tends to dilute the brand and can be damaging to the company. Jones says, “People who would travel to Seoul began to think the London-based company had expanded to South Korea.”

UK-based shop Kaffeine is no stranger to having its designs and name used outside of its home country. Peter Dore-Smith, founder and director of Kaffeine, wrote via email that despite having the logo and name registered across the EU, “We now have ‘branches in Russia, Jakarta, Texas, Budapest, Penkridge (UK) and the latest is in Crete. There may be even one in Sydney.’”

For Dore-Smith, a friendly reach out comes first. If it fails, then the decision to pursue legal action comes down to where their marks are protected and if it’s worth the cost. “The cost of getting a solicitor to write a letter is about £300 each letter, then following up and chasing, you are looking at around £1,000,” he says.

Farah Bhatti, shareholder at business law firm Buchalter, advises her clients to protect their mark in countries where they plan on selling their products. “Because unlike the US, where it’s a first-to-use country… a lot of other countries are first-to-file countries,” she says. In cases where companies have registered her clients’ trademarks, she ends up filing oppositions against them. Obtaining the rights ends up costing $20,000 when a registration could’ve been only $3000 to $5000.

IP is immensely complicated, especially when you’re expanding internationally. Every country has its own management system, copycat products abound in every industry, and the Internet has only made it easier than ever to adopt ideas.

If success is in your plans, Dore-Smith says, then you should get protection for your brand. Design can be inspired by another shop, but not by a duplication of its marks. “Making a direct copy of something is just stupid and taking the piss,” he adds.

The coffee industry has more challenges ahead in navigating IP in international waters and it may take a few high-profile cases to spur companies into taking protective action.

The final part of this series will focus on IP as it specifically relates to the coffee plant itself in origin countries. Missed the first installment? Click here.

Jenn Chen (@TheJennChen) is a San Francisco–based coffee marketer, writer, and photographer. Read more Jenn Chen on Sprudge.

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