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a-queer-seminarian · 3 years ago

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Do you believe that God condemns anyone to Hell, or are we all going to wind up in Heaven?

Short answer? do i believe in hell? hell no!

[id: a cross stitch of the infamous "Hell Is Real" sign in Ohio, but with the word NOT added so it reads "Hell is NOT real" / end id. I sewed this cuz i have to drive past this dang sign every time i drive home and it makes me so cranky.]

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Long answer?

The concept of hell has become less and less probable to me over the years. it seems like such a human solution to the problem of sin, not a Divine one.

This past year as i've studied the concept of prison abolition --

see Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis (free pdf online)

and, for a Christian view on how fundamentally messed up the US's prison system is, see Rethinking Incarceration by Dominique DuBois Giliard. (There are short vids and study guides for the latter, if reading isn't your thing / if you'd prefer those over paying for the book.)

-- and i find that many of the arguments against human prisons could also be argued against hell, which is really just The Ultimate Prison. Hell seems much like the punitive system we've got going on here, blown up to a supernatural size.

In Rethinking Incarceration, Giliard says that dealing with systemic problems and collective sin by choosing which individuals are The Problem and proceeding to Get Rid Of Them by chucking them in prison -- or hell -- is an unjust human solution, not a Divine solution.

He relates this to the harmful theology of penal substitution -- that the reason God became incarnate in the person of Jesus was simply to take the blame for all our wrongdoing -- to be the surrogate, or substitute, for the punishment all humanity would otherwise have to receive. But, Giliard writes,

Penal substitution is most problematic because it makes God’s response to sin too much like our own. It is a sort of recasting of God in our own image, as opposed to allowing the divinely inspired Scriptures to speak for God’s motives. Marshall also writes that “restoration, not retribution, is the hallmark of God’s justice and is God’s final word in history.”

God's justice is not that punitive kind of justice, but restorative. Jesus's whole life, and death, and resurrection together brings justice into our world because through all of it, the relationship between humanity and divinity was restored -- not because Jesus took the punishment that God would have slammed down on us.

{edit: I have a second post addressing how there are indeed parts of the Bible that depict God as punishing individuals or groups. Still, punishment is never the motive of Divine justice in scripture.)

If punishment is not God's justice, and neither is severed relationship, then hell, the ultimate punishment & place of isolation, is not God's justice.

Meanwhile, we can see the bad fruits of our punitive justice systems here on earth -- what happens when we accept that society is divided into "criminals" and "good people" or "citizens." As Giliard writes:

When we lose sight of the grace and mercy exemplified on the cross of Christ, people who have violated right relationship become irredeemable “criminals” to fear, avoid, and quarantine. When “criminals” are viewed as the social cancer infecting our communal health, safety, and thriving, we cease to see and affirm their humanity. Rather than fellow image bearers, we see “criminals” as hazardous elements contaminating our neighborhoods, and they thus must be purged by any means necessary. Michelle Alexander writes, “Criminals, it turns out, are the one social group in America we have permission to hate. In ‘colorblind’ America, criminals are the new whipping boys. They are entitled to no respect and little moral concern.” ...

I see similar things happen when people pretend they can guess who is going to hell, when they divide humanity into the heavenbound and the hellbound.

(I won't go into it here but it needs to be noted: think about who is seen as prison-bound, how our system sets up certain groups, such as Black and Latine persons & other persons of color, to end up in prison; and then think of who is often seen as hellbound, such as LGBTQA+ persons & non-Christians. Bigotry is tangled up in all this, which is what Giliard's book largely focuses on when it comes to mass incarceration.)

when we assume we know someone is doomed to hell, we give up on them. we cease to see them as one of us, and one of God's beloved children made in Their image. i'd rather assume there is no hell and find out i'm wrong about that later, than live as if i thought there were a hell if there isn't.

and of course, if we assume we ourselves are headed to hell -- particularly by fearmongerers who teach that being LGBTQA+, or Black, or disabled, or not Christian, any manner of things sends you there -- well. i think the bad fruits of that are quite clear, including how it leads us to despair, to fall into the pit of self-loathing. we either punish ourselves and isolate ourselves and harm ourselves by trying to fix what is not broken, or we say "fuck it, i'm going to hell anyway" and cut ourselves off from certain community.

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Prison is an easy solution, but not a fruitful one. Same with Hell. It's an easy fix, but not a viable one.

Throwing certain Bad Irredeemable Humans into the pit won't make the humans who are left fit for God's Kin(g)dom -- we all have work to do on ourselves and as a collective community.

God calls us to the much longer and more difficult work of repentance, reform, and rebuilding -- here and now and in the world to come.

Again I turn to Giliard:

Scripture consistently reveals that restoration, not punitive punishment, is at the heart of God’s justice. Biblical justice does include retribution, but not exclusively. Biblical justice cannot be solely defined by it. The more accurate description of biblical justice is restorative justice. Biblically, justice is a divine act of reparation where breached relationships are renewed and victims, offenders, and communities are restored. Justice, therefore, is about relationships and our conduct within them. Justice asks, How is righteousness embodied and exuded in how I live in relation to God, neighbor, and creation? In fact, Scripture could be read as the narrative of God’s restorative justice unfolding in the world.

No prisons. No hell. No punishment for punishment's sake -- but resources provided to make repentance and reconciliation possible. No severing of some humans from the rest of humanity, or from the Body of Christ -- but restored relationships.

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Will the restoration happen before heaven begins? Maybe. Then I'd say there is some sort of purgatory state in between (because purgatory isn't a place of punishment, but of, well, purging away all that is corrupt and harmful). But not a permanent hell. Not a place made for punishing or discarding.

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because the belief and fear of hell has done so much damage, i refuse to hold to a belief in hell. and hey, if it turns out there is one, fine! it doesn't change how i should live my life:

in the end, whether hell is or is not real, i should live my life the same way -- loving God, neighbor and creation with all that i am, and doing my part to live into God's Kin(g)dom where the oppressed are lifted up, and the oppressors have their own violence exposed to them for the evil it is so that they may begin the hard work of reforming their ways.

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For more excerpts from Rethinking Incarceration, see this Google Doc.

for more stuff about hell, see my hell tag over on my other blog.

#hell #long post #essays #rethinking incarceration

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

Optimism fades that jobs lost to virus will return (AP) Nearly half of Americans whose families experienced a layoff during the coronavirus pandemic now believe those jobs are lost forever, a new poll shows, as temporary cutbacks give way to shuttered businesses, bankruptcies and lasting payroll cuts. It’s a sharp change after initial optimism the jobs would return. In April, 78% of those in households with a job loss thought they’d be temporary. Now, 47% think that lost job is definitely or probably not coming back, according to the latest poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That translates into roughly 10 million workers who will need to find a new employer, if not a new occupation. The poll is the latest sign the solid hiring of May and June, as some states lifted stay-at-home orders and the economy began to recover, may wane as the year goes on. Adding to the challenge: many students will begin the school-year online, making it harder for parents to take jobs outside their homes.

Watchdog to review conduct of federal agents in Portland, DC (AP) The Justice Department inspector general said Thursday that it will conduct a review of the conduct of federal agents who responded to unrest in Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C., following concerns from members of Congress and the public. The watchdog investigation will examine use-of-force allegations in Portland, where the city’s top federal prosecutor and mayor have publicly complained. In Washington, investigators will look at the training and instruction provided to the federal agents who responded to protest activity at Lafayette Square, near the White House. Among the questions being studied are whether the agents followed Justice Department guidelines, including on identification requirements and in the deployment of chemical agents and use of force. The investigation was announced amid ongoing chaos in Portland, where Mayor Ted Wheeler was tear-gassed by federal agents as he stood outside the courthouse there. Local authorities in both cities have complained that the presence of federal agents have exacerbated tensions on the streets, while residents have accused the government of violating their constitutional rights.

FBI interviewing Chinese visa holders across U.S. about possible military ties: Justice Department (Reuters) The FBI has interviewed visa holders it believes to secretly be members of the Chinese military in more than two dozen U.S. cities, the Justice Department said on Thursday. The department said it has arrested three Chinese nationals for visa fraud, while a fourth remains a fugitive staying at China’s consulate in San Francisco. The United States believes the four were members of China’s military posing as researchers. “In interviews with members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in over 25 cities across the U.S., the FBI uncovered a concerted effort to hide their true affiliation to take advantage of the United States and the American people,” John Brown, executive assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s national security branch, said in a statement.

The coming plastic-covered beach (Bloomberg) The annual flow of plastics into our oceans is on a trajectory to triple over the next 20 years, which could add up to 110 pounds of plastic trash for every meter of coastline worldwide, a new report finds. That path is not inevitable, however. The volume could be cut by 80%, the analysis found, by taking actions to reduce the growth of virgin plastic production, improve waste collection systems across the globe, and invest in the creation of plastic materials that are easier to recycle.

New York street partying fuels fears of coronavirus resurgence (The Guardian) Motorcycles revved, waiters served drinks, and food in busy outdoor street seating areas and, on the pavement, people gathered to sip to-go drinks. On Saturday night in Astoria, in Queens, it was almost as if coronavirus had never hit New York City. In April, the city was the center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with the daily death toll reaching almost 800 people at its height. But as cases of Covid-19 have steadied and lockdown restrictions have eased, this stretch of Steinway Street has emerged as an unofficial party street. But standing on the other side of the road from Mehmood in Astoria, outside a barber shop, Omar Melendez, 39, who has a newborn at home, said he was “living in fear”.

Thousands in Puerto Rico still without housing since Maria (AP) Nearly three years after Hurricane Maria tore through Puerto Rico, tens of thousands of homes remain badly damaged, many people face a hurricane season under fading blue tarp roofs and the island’s first major program to repair and rebuild houses hasn’t completed a single one. Maria hit more than 786,000 homes on Sept. 20, 2017, causing minor damage to some homes and sweeping others from their foundations. A federally funded program administered by local officials carried out relatively small repairs to some 108,000 homes the next year, while churches and nonprofits patched up thousands with private funds. A Puerto Rican government program known as R3 is the first major effort by the U.S. territory to carry out major repairs and rebuilding of damaged and destroyed housing. Nearly 27,000 homeowners have applied. But nearly 1 1/2 years after federal funding was released to local officials, not a single repair or rebuilding job has been completed. For many Puerto Ricans, the program’s slow progress has become a symbol of their government’s inability to address the long-term effects of the disaster. “They talk about billions of dollars, but we’re not seeing it,” said Sergio Torres, mayor of the northern mountain town of Corozal. His municipality still has 60 homes with blue tarps as roofs and two families still living in school shelters. “It’s a way of life here.”

Latin America’s beach towns isolate themselves to keep the coronavirus out (Miami Herald) Before the pandemic, thousands of people left the capital city of Santiago, Chile, every weekend to head to Los Molles. They filled the hotels and bars run by the town’s 648 permanent residents. It was a reliable and amicable relationship: The tourists came for the beaches and laid-back fishing village vibes, and their spending fed the Los Molles economy. When coronavirus quarantine measures were announced, Santiago residents fled to their beach vacation homes midweek, hoping to escape a claustrophobic quarantine in the capital and relax in Los Molles. But they found flaming barricades made of wood and tires, billowing tar-thick smoke and blocking the highway entrances leading into town. If the flaming barricades didn’t get the message across, the volunteer guards let anyone who wasn’t a permanent resident know this wasn’t the time for a beach vacation and sent them away. Los Molles is among a handful of small tourist towns in Latin America that have decided on isolation to protect themselves against the coronavirus pandemic. Remote beach towns in Mexico have used the same strategy. Residents of these small communities say the measures have worked. Los Molles residents said that with community organizing they have avoided any infections as of late July despite being two hours outside Santiago, which is now a global COVID-19 hot spot.

Bolivia election delayed to October as pandemic bites (Reuters) Bolivia’s general election will be pushed back until Oct. 18 as the pandemic grips the South American nation, a move that could fan tensions between the interim conservative government and the socialist party of former President Evo Morales. The head of the electoral tribunal said on Thursday that the vote would be postponed from the previously scheduled Sept. 6 date to ensure the safety of voters, with hospitals and cemeteries straining under the impact of the virus. The vote is key to the political future of the Andean nation of 11.5 million people after a fraught election last year sparked widespread protests and led to the resignation of the country’s long-term leftist leader Morales.

Brazil reports record infections as coronavirus spreads to all regions (Washington Post) There was a time, weeks ago, when Carlos Renan dos Santos Evaldt allowed himself to hope. Much of Brazil was in varying states of chaos as the novel coronavirus devastated the country’s largest cities. But it had largely spared the wealthier, more developed south. But after a surge in cases and deaths, his city is considering imposing a lockdown. The pockets of Brazil that had been largely unscathed by the virus—the south, the vast central states—have been engulfed by it. The sheer relentlessness of the surge here underscores Brazil’s failure to quell the world’s second-worst coronavirus outbreak. On Wednesday, Latin America’s largest country posted a record 67,860 new cases, bringing the total infected to 2.2 million, with nearly 83,000 dead. Both counts are second only to the United States.

Thailand protest movement puts country’s youth on collision course with military-backed establishment (CNN) Thailand’s student movement has reignited, as young people across the country defy threats from the military-backed government to take to the streets and call for the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. In what was the biggest demonstration since the pandemic began, about 3,000 people gathered at Bangkok’s Democracy Monument on Saturday, according to organizers. They called for the dissolution of parliament, for the constitution to be rewritten, and for authorities to stop intimidating activists. Similar demands were made at smaller protests that sprang up in towns and cities across the country every day this week, with more planned for the coming days. The protests come after years of political upheaval marked by a military coup in 2014, followed by failed promises to restore democracy, and what activists say is a repression of civil rights and freedoms.

Iranian Civilian Jet Swerves to Avoid American Warplane in Syria (NYT) An Iranian passenger plane en route from Iran to Beirut swerved and dropped abruptly on Thursday to avoid a nearby American fighter jet, injuring several passengers before landing in Beirut. Videos broadcast by Iranian and pro-Iran Lebanese media, which said the footage was taken by passengers, showed a fighter jet flying alongside the passenger plane, operated by Mahan Air, a privately owned Iranian airline. Passengers then screamed as sudden turbulence seized the plane. In the aftermath, one video showed a passenger with his face and head bloodied, as well as a man lying down, apparently unconscious, while someone tended to him. Oxygen masks dangled overhead. Capt. Bill Urban, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said in a statement later Thursday that an Air Force F-15 on “a routine air mission” near a small American military base in southern Syria had conducted “a standard visual inspection of a Mahan Air passenger airliner.”

Israeli police use water cannons on protesters, arrest 55 (AP) Israeli police used water cannons to disperse protesters in central Jerusalem and arrested at least 55 of them as clashes broke out overnight after thousands staged a protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israelis have held a series of demonstrations in recent weeks calling on Netanyahu to resign, citing his trial on corruption charges and his fractious unity government’s poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cut off from world, and virus, Gaza prepares for Eid like nowhere else (Reuters) Gazans are thronging beaches and crowding markets filled with holiday sweets and clothes as they prepare to celebrate Eid al-Adha largely free of the coronavirus restrictions affecting the Muslim festival elsewhere. The 360 sq. km. coastal strip has had little access to the outside world for years due to an Israeli-led blockade which many Palestinians say is like living in permanent lockdown. No cases have been recorded in the towns and refugee camps where its two million Palestinian population live. The result is that Gazans are preparing much as normal ahead of Eid, which begins at the end of July, with few people wearing masks in shopping centers that are packed after sunset. “God protected us from the virus,” said Malkeya Abdallah, 62, as she relaxed on the beach near Gaza City.

#headlines #news

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kolajmag · 6 years ago

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There's a new issue of Kolaj Magazine!

Kolaj #24 is now available. Our goal with every issue is that Kolaj Magazine is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of contemporary collage in art, culture, and society. Kolaj #24 is no different.

GET THE PRINT MAGAZINE!

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

In the issue Editorial, Ric Kasini Kadour writes about the divide between contemporary art and society. “We need to work ourselves out of this corner and rebuild our relationship with society-at-large. One way we do that is to make art that is meaningful to our neighbours.”

A collage by Cairo, Egypt’s Beya Khalifa is on the cover and a portfolio of her work is in the issue. She confronts western notions of “Orientalism” by collaging historic Bedouin photographs with geometric patterns found throughout the Middle East. The issue features additional Artist Portfolios from Dresden, Germany; Boston, Massachusetts; Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil; and Moscow, Russia.

In our round of news about collage, we report on a postcard project from the Edinburgh Collage Collective, a critical new book from Matthew Craven, artists working on a Museum of Contemporary Collage in Denmark, and the photomontage that won Best in Show at Louisiana Contemporary.

Maeve Hanna reviews Vancouver artist Marcia Pitch’s four hundred collaged faces on round wooden disks.

Silvia Cuello gives us a report on how collage is faring in Latin America’s landlocked nation, Bolivia.

And Laurie Kanyer explains the brain chemistry of collage. She writes, “When an artist creates a collage, they use areas of the brain and body systems that calm the body and tap into creative problem solving…Transforming a visual piece into a higher form beyond its original intent, as in a collage, is more recreational than imagined.

Ric Kasini Kadour explains why Danielle Krysa’s new art book, A Big Important Art Book, Now With Women, makes him jealous.

Bouncing between Oaxaca, Mexico and Sydney, Australia, Steve Tierney worked with photographer Tanja Bruckner to make his own source materials using his own body…That performative act resulted in a brilliant series of collage that boldly investigates gender.

Newburgh, New York artist FonSomething makes Collage Magnet Packs but also muted mythological creatures of the fifth mind.

Chicago-based Julia Arredondo’s Self-Assembled Collage Packs are just one part of her Anarcho-Capitalism driven art practice which also includes poetry, ‘zine making, Latin American folk healing, conceptual commercialism, punk, botanica, and Avon sales. She’s a force!

The issue’s Cut-out Page comes from Alison Kurke who writes, “Cutting, pasting, composing, using different materials are soothing and attention-absorbing pastimes, and collage is perfectly suited to my life-long love of and constant search for paper and ephemera of all types.” Oh we feel you!

And as always, a Kolaj Artist Directory & Collage Books.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Already subscribed? Don’t worry, you will be receiving your copy by 20 November 2018.

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penzanews · 3 years ago

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SPIEF 2021 in live format to give new impetus to business ties development amid pandemic

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent greetings to participants, organizers and guests of the 24th St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which will be held in a live format at the Expoforum Convention and Exhibition Center on June 2–5, with strict adherence to safety measures to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus infection.

As he noted, according to the established tradition the key and most pressing issues facing the economies will be discussed at the forum with the participation of prominent public officials, senior executives from major corporations and financial institutions, renowned experts, and pioneering entrepreneurs.

“The need for open, constructive dialogue is particularly evident today. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all countries across the globe, and has severely restricted international ties. It is vital to work together as we forge a path to recovery. Other socioeconomic issues such as poverty relief, improving education opportunities, expanding employment and prospects for labour markets, as well as addressing violations of fair competition principles also require careful attention,” says Russian President’s message published on the Kremlin website.

“We must now endeavour to build equal, constructive partnerships between members of the global community and expand business ties on a number of levels to effectively tackle today’s critical global challenges and achieve sustainable development. We have long worked towards these ends through the Eurasian Economic Union, promoting principles of free trade, and facilitating mutually beneficial investments and common technological development. The Russian Federation is also interested in closer economic, scientific, and technical cooperation with partners in other regions. We are ready to share our experience in areas such as healthcare and digitalisation, and to work with partners to build better telecommunications, energy, and transport infrastructure. We also recognize the importance of addressing key issues facing the environment and climate,” the message says.

Moreover, in his greeting, Vladimir Putin, who is going to attend SPIEF 2021 Plenary Session in person, expressed confidence that the agreements reached at the Forum will contribute to the development of international relations and facilitate the implementation of new economic projects.

The main theme of the Forum is “A Collective Reckoning of the New Global Economic Reality.” The main business program is divided into four thematic tracks: ‘Joining Forces to Advance Development’, ‘Delivering on National Development Targets’, ‘The Human Factor in Responding to Global Challenges’, and ‘New Technology Frontiers.’

According to the information presented on the website of the Roscongress Foundation, which is the organizer of the forum, intercountry dialogues will also be held on the sidelines of SPIEF with representatives of the business communities of Africa, Germany, Italy, Qatar, Latin America, North America, Finland, France, Sweden, and Japan, and the EAEU–ASEAN dialogue will take place. The SPIEF business program includes more than 130 expert discussions and covers a wide range of topics that aim to develop various areas of the economy.

“This year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum will be the first major business event following the forced pause in face-to-face events. We have provided support to the Forum’s foreign guests for unhindered entry into the Russian Federation. Representative delegations from numerous countries have confirmed they will attend. A significant part of the business programme is devoted to issues concerning international cooperation to advance development. Today, we have already found ourselves in a new reality in a changed world. Our job is to rebuild and to this end it is crucial to unite our efforts and build a dialogue both at the national and the international level,” Adviser to the Russian President and Executive Secretary of the SPIEF Organizing Committee Anton Kobyakov said.

Qatar is the guest country for SPIEF 2021. The Qatari delegation will be one of the largest in the history of the country’s participation in international economic forums; representatives of 50 Qatari organizations will come to the Forum in St. Petersburg. The SPIEF business program will feature discussions on the development of trade, economic, and cultural relations between Russia and Qatar. In addition, the Russia–Qatar Business Dialogue, a high-level discussion devoted to the further development of investment opportunities, will be held.

Foreign participants of SPIEF include: Total Chairman and CEO Patrick Pouyanne, Wintershall Dea GmbH Chairman of the Board and CEO Mario Mehren, Siemens Energy AG President and CEO Christian Bruch, Huawei Eurasia President Daniel Zhou, WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge, World Energy Council Secretary General and CEO Angela Wilkinson, World Economic Forum President Borge Brende, and Qatar Financial Centre Authority CEO and Member of the Board of Directors Yusuf Mohamed Al-Jaida, among others.

Commenting on the upcoming event in St. Petersburg, Neil MacKinnon, Global Macro Strategist at VTB Capital, stressed that SPIEF has a long-standing good reputation.

“It has a long-standing reputation amongst international investors and top policymakers as a key event in the financial market calendar for discussing important topics for both the global and Russian economies,” the expert said.

According to Neil MacKinnon, the event is so important that even the online format of the forum due to the restrictions associated with COVID-19 would not detract from the significance of the event.

In addition, in his opinion, the economic situation in the world is gradually improving, and the topic of international cooperation is again acquiring special relevance.

“The picture for the global economy is much more positive than it was a year ago and the major economies have put in place supportive policy measures to overcome the impact of COVID-19 and ensure a transition back to pre-pandemic growth trends,” Neil MacKinnon added.

In turn, Philip Hanson, Emeritus Professor of the Political Economy of Russia and Eastern Europe, University of Birmingham, suggested that SPIEF this year will attract fewer Western participants than usual.

“This will apply to both virtual and in person participation formats. This is partly because virtual participation gives less opportunity for informal conversations but also because of the strained relations currently between Russia and the West,” the expert explained.

In his opinion, the main interest of SPIEF is the domestic discussion of economic policy.

“This could be of particular interest this year. There are tensions over the degree of austerity in macroeconomic policy – how will the budget rule be modified? And there are related tensions between business and government over how – and indeed whether – private investment can be increased. It would be characteristic of SPIEF 2021 if these topics were aired,” Philip Hanson added.

Evgeniya Voyko, Associate Professor of the department of political science at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, noted that SPIEF is a good opportunity to restart business activities.

“The Forum will allow attracting investors and finding partners, despite the restrictions due to the pandemic, which, of course, influence the event. So, not all foreign participants have the opportunity to come to SPIEF because of their domestic rules related to the pandemic, or because of their own psychological reasons – many decided not to risk it. In addition, there are certain limits and sanitary standards, the observance of which is one of the main conditions for the forum to take place,” the expert said.

According to her, the level of relations between the Russian Federation and the Western countries is now quite low, but this does not apply to all states.

“In particular, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz confirmed his participation in the forum. Austria kept neutrality and did not support the anti-Russian rhetoric that was voiced in Europe last month,” Evgeniya Voyko said, adding that for the Russian authorities, SPIEF would also be an excellent way to once again state their position on some international issues.

Meanwhile, Oleg Prozorov, Director General of the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Russia, called St. Petersburg International Economic Forum the main platform for interaction between business, politics, government and the economy in the Eurasian space.

“We see the success of the forum this year in the fact that SPIEF will be the first international business event to be held [in person] after the COVID-19 pandemic,” Oleg Prozorov said.

“The Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Russia and its members pin their hopes and expect that the St. Petersburg Economic Forum will be the start of a new business season and open borders for the movement of the business community. We hope that the forum will demonstrate how international economic ties will develop further,” he said.

Christiane Schuchart, Regional Director, Russia, German Eastern Business Association, stressed that after a long break in face-to-face meetings, SPIEF will become an excellent platform for dialogue and views exchange, the need for which is long overdue.

“Existing relationships can also be maintained online, but establishing new contacts and relationships only through online formats is difficult and hardly possible in the long term,” she explained.

According to her, one of the important results of the SPIEF will be the agreements and contracts concluded between its participants.

“In addition to the urgently needed dialogue, a number of contracts will definitely be signed. We already know about some of the initiatives that the representatives of the German side must sign with their Russian partners,” said the Regional Director for Russia of the German Eastern Business Association.

“Thus, the forum provides an opportunity to maintain and develop a network of contacts, as well as continue activities and projects suspended since February 2020. We welcome the determination of the Russian government to resume holding the forum in person in June, despite the pandemic,” Christiane Schuchart concluded.

Source: https://penzanews.ru/en/analysis/67127-2021

#spief #covid-19 #st petersburg international economic forum

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rickhorrow · 5 years ago

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10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 1620

RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF JANUARY 6 : MAYOR’S EDITION

with Jacob Aere

The sports world and beyond remembers David Stern. Former Commissioner David Stern took the NBA into the modern era over the course of his 30 years as Commissioner after he assumed the role in 1984. By the time he left the Commissioner’s office in 2014, a league that had once struggled for a foothold had grown into a more than $5 billion-a-year industry. The NBA's longest-serving commissioner, Stern was credited with transforming the NBA into the global powerhouse it is today, overseeing major uplifts in commercial revenue and media coverage, domestic and international expansion, and a surge in global popularity. Under Stern, the NBA added seven new franchises, including two in Canada, and grew into a commercial behemoth. It also created the WNBA in 1997 and a developmental league, now known as the G League, in 2001. Thanks largely to Stern, the NBA is now revered as a sports industry pioneer and innovator. Rick had the privilege to work with Commissioner Stern on the formation of the Miami Heat and the eventual Oklahoma City Thunder, as well as interviewing him numerous times. He will be greatly missed.

Endeavor acquired majority equity ownership stake in experiential hospitality leader On Location Experiences from existing investors. Last week, Beverly-Hills based agency giant Endeavor announced that it had acquired On Location Experiences. The reported $660 million deal will give Endeavor a majority stake in the hospitality and live events company, which works with the NFL, the NCAA, and the PGA Tour, among other entities. The NFL, through its strategic investment arm, 32 Equity, will continue to be a minority shareholder and retain its seat on the Company’s Board of Directors. On Location will seek to enhance its existing sports and entertainment offerings, including its long-term relationship with the NFL, by leveraging Endeavor’s access to content and experiences across entertainment, sports and fashion. The deal will also help to strengthen Endeavor properties, including the UFC, which it acquired in 2016 for $4 billion. Former Bloomberg, Westwood One, and Time Inc. executive, Paul Caine, will lead the newly integrated entity. The deal is the latest in a flurry of acquisitions by major Hollywood talent agencies as they expand into other entertainment disciplines, particularly music and sports.

Tennis Australia announces a charity match to support bushfire relief. According to The Guardian, Australian tennis player Nick Krygios’ plans for a massive fundraising effort for bushfire victims has resulted in a tennis exhibition match set to feature some of the world’s top players. Kyrgios kicked off a flood of donations to the fundraising campaign from sporting names around Australia, including American basketballer LaMelo Ball. After Krygios’ initial push, Tennis Australia announced “Rally For Relief,” an exhibition match on Rod Laver Arena January 15. It will also grant $1 million for communities to rebuild tennis facilities. Kyrgios has also pledged $200 for each ace he serves across the Australian summer of tennis. Fellow Australian players Alex de Minaur, John Millman, and Samantha Stosur, among others, also vowed to donate money from their aces while the new ATP Cup got on board. The tournament announced that $100 would be donated to the Australian Red Cross for every ace served over the next 10 days, with the final figure expected to surpass $150,000. Much of Australia is up in flames and sports figures are here to help inspire seismic change across the globe for charitable donations.

In the wake of record low ratings for their annual New Year’s Day outdoor game, no progress is yet evident on discussions of NHL Olympic participation. NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said that there is "really nothing new" on possible Olympic participation at the moment, but there will be "further discussion in the near future," according to The Athletic. Daly said, "I imagine it will be discussed further with the NHLPA in connection with any resumption of talks relating to a potential CBA extension. But, we and the NHLPA will also need to get a better understanding from the IIHF and/or IOC regarding the conditions on which NHL players would be invited to the Olympics. That remains a question as to which we do not have a lot of clarity at this point." NHLPA Executive Director Don Fehr said the players have "made it clear that they want to participate" in the Olympics. He said, "We want to find a way to do that." More discussions are expected before the end of the month, between the league, the NHLPA, and the IIHF.

U.S. men's national soccer team cancels Qatar training camp amid escalating tensions in the Middle East. The USMNT is moving the team’s training camp out of Qatar back to the United States as a “precaution” given heightened tensions in the Middle East following the U.S. airstrike that killed Iranian General Qassem Suleimani last Thursday. According to the Los Angeles Times, the camp was scheduled to open Sunday in Doha, host city for the 2022 World Cup, but now will be staged in Bradenton, Florida. Though Doha is 950 miles from Baghdad -- the center of the current conflict -- “tensions in the region have escalated.” The Washington Post adds that U.S. outposts and personnel have “braced for retaliatory attacks.” The last thing the struggling USMNT needs at this point in time is to worry about a potentially life-threatening military conflict. USMNT officials did the right thing in moving the camp to Brandenton and out of harm’s way.

A lawsuit blaming Pop Warner for two fatalities is dismissed in federal court. According to the New York Times, a federal court judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Pop Warner, stating that the two women who sued the youth football organization had no proof that their sons’ deaths later in life were linked to any head trauma they had sustained over a decade earlier as youth football participants. The judge in the case, ruling for the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, said the mothers did not show sufficient links between any head trauma their sons may have suffered while playing Pop Warner football and their behavior later in life. The judge added that the plaintiffs had discounted other contributing factors, including the “social and biological.” The case, which was set to go to trial this month, was a benchmark for head-trauma related cases against sports organizations. Pop Warner, meanwhile, continues to refine and improve its football safety practices each year, with the constant input of renowned doctors as well as football experts, and remains the gold standard of youth football organizations nationwide.

The NBA G League secondary competition has announced the addition of Mexican professional men’s basketball team Capitanes next season, its first franchise based outside the U.S. and Canada. Established in 2016, the Mexico City outfit will become the NBA G League’s 29th team from the start of the 2020-2021 season, and will play their home games at the Gimnasio Juan de la Barrera, based in Mexico’s capital. The announcement was made during a press conference ahead of Dallas Mavericks 122-111 victory over the Detroit Pistons in Mexico City on December 12, the first of two regular-season games played in the Hispanic nation during the ongoing 2019-2020 season. NBA commissioner Adam Silver said: “Bringing an NBA G League team to Mexico City is a historic milestone for the NBA which demonstrates our commitment to basketball fans in Mexico and across Latin America. As the first G League franchise based outside of the US and Canada, we look forward to welcoming Capitanes to the NBA family.” The schedule for the 2020-2021 NBA G League season, which tips off next November, will be announced in August, 2020.

Sports teams using machine learning tech to drive sponsorship revenues. According to JohnWallStreet, the sports industry has begun to place a greater emphasis on data capture and analytics, particularly as it relates to on-field performance. But while sports has become big business, Adam Grossman, founder of Block Six Analytics (B6A), suggests “from an economic and financial perspective - in terms of understanding concepts like asset valuation, cash-flow and regression - it remains behind the times.” To help bring the industry up to speed, Grossman developed a sponsorship evaluation platform that values sports assets in the same manner “that venture capitalists, private equity firms and investment banks look at investment opportunities.” B6A's proprietary sponsorship model translates traditional fit and engagement benchmarks into probabilistic revenue growth metrics. Over the last 10 months, more than a dozen pro sports organizations have begun using Block Six technology to drive sponsorship revenues. Sports sponsorships sellers naturally seek brand partners that are demographically aligned. While most teams and media entities have managed to gather insights on their own, “the challenge has always been capturing the demographic data needed to ensure audience alignment, so that both parties can achieve their goals.”

Sony and Verizon are bringing 5G to sports broadcasting. According to Mobile Marketing Magazine, Sony and Verizon collaborated to demonstrate how 5G technology and streaming can be used in live sports broadcasting during the NFL’s Texans vs. New England Patriots game on December 1. A camera person from NBC Sports used Sony’s PXW-Z450 shoulder camcorder to capture the game and the video was sent through to a production room in the NRG Stadium in Houston with the help of Sony’s prototype transmitter box, Xperia 5G mm Wave device, and finally, Verizon’s 5G Ultra-Wideband network. The result was an almost real time broadcast sent to NBC producers without any hiccups. In the future, the same 5G-connected cameras could be used to transmit to remote production teams that aren’t located at the site of the sporting event. In the future, another advantage to 5G is the use of wireless connectivity, so cameras can use all angles and positions to capture the games.

David Stern passes away, but his legacy lives on through NBA Cares. David Stern was dedicated to public service, as is evidenced by NBA Cares, which he launched in 2005. Over its first five years, the program donated more than $100 million to charity. NBA Cares is the league’s global social responsibility program that builds on the NBA’s mission of addressing important social issues in the U.S. and around the world. Causes the platform supports include education, youth, and family development, and health, including Special Olympics, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, UNICEF, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Share Our Strength and GLSEN. NBA Cares programs and participants have provided more than five million hours of hands-on service, created more than 1,300 places where kids and families can live, learn or play, and engaged more than 51 million youth basketball programs in communities around the world. Internationally, NBA Cares has created more than 323 places where kids and families can live, learn, or play in 40 countries – largely thanks to Stern and his legacy.

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jazzworldquest-blog · 6 years ago

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USA: The Balance Imbalance of Afinque: Dancing Through the Tensions and Intricate Realities that Unite Us with Zemog El Gallo Bueno on YoYouMeTú Volume 3

The Balance Imbalance of Afinque: Dancing Through the Tensions and Intricate Realities that Unite Us with Zemog El Gallo Bueno on YoYouMeTú Volume 3

Zemog El Gallo Bueno is the philosopher’s psychedelic Latinotronic band. With multiple, branching roots and a lifetime of grappling with identity, the driving force behind the group Abraham Gomez-Delgado-Delgado has gathered musical kindred spirits back into a band for a raw, rhythmically stunning, dancefloor-ready, thinking person’s album.

Nothing is as straightforward as you want to make it, Gomez-Delgado insists. But it can be a hell of a beautiful ride, as mapped out on YoYouMeTúTrilogy: Volume 3 (release November 9, 2018).

“It can feel awkward to use the term Latinx or Latin or Latino, because you’re being grouped together with so many people. But you can’t say no to it, or things get taken away from communities. I wanted to walk close to the line of tradition and then do something that’s not necessarily predicted. To say, hey, we are individuals and have intricate realities like other humans,” Gomez-Delgado says. “We’re not all just like, ‘hey salsa, let’s party!’ I’m not your entertainment, nor am I here to be a jerk and not entertain you.” Gomez-Delgado and Zemog are here to get you to dance to your own humanity, as they grapple musically with theirs.

Volume 3 presents a closing rally to a deep-going, wide-ranging trio of albums. The previous, Volume 2, was sparked by Gomez-Delgado’s struggle to rebuild his life while grappling with intense experiences of alienation and migration, Volume 3 revels in the joys of healing love and friendship and the three-chord song--a formula just as potent in Cuba and Puerto Rico as in garage rock (“Sexy Carnitas,” “Pianola”)--and in life’s moments, great (“Wedding Song,” “Delgados Feliz”) and small (“Quiero Correr,” about a really good jog in the park).

Gomez-Delgado’s musings on “Balance Imbalance Dance” speak to the spirit of the whole album: “Without balance there is no imbalance. You need tension. You need to throw a wrench into things,” Gomez-Delgado reflects. “It’s not an opposite; it’s in balance. You zoom out to wanting utopia, and as hard as hard times can be, we need them to remind us of what is and what is important.”

{full story below}

The texture and timbre of complex experience has always been important to Gomez-Delgado. His work strives to embrace all the contradictions and riches of his Puerto Rican-Peruvian heritage, his life as a young immigrant in a sometimes less-than-friendly environment, and his yearnings as a remarkably deft and sensitive musician. He longs to create the connection between people, onstage and off, that’s often called afinque in salsa music: that moment of meld when everyone sways as one.

After a successful string of albums with his band--and many of his favorite bandmates continue to play with him--Gomez-Delgado found himself in a period of deep introspection that made it challenging to play music with others. Eventually, Gomez-Delgado found his way forward, moving all his favorite salsa elements to a single instrument that could be played by a single musician. “It coaxed me toward remembering how to play with others,” Gomez-Delgado recalls.

That energy, once coupled with the excellent New York-based musicians in Zemog, burst into new intensity at a regular gig at Brooklyn music hub Barbès, where the band had a long-standing residency. Gomez-Delgado worked to keep the intensity present on Volume 3, keeping the live vibe on tracks like “Agua a Peso” and “Pianola.”

This new-found sense of vibrant community lets Gomez-Delgado’s wonderfully vivid imagination run wild, vibrating with cha cha cha, salsa, guaracha, punk, funk, and pure idiosyncrasy. “I wanted this album to have a wide spectrum. That asks a lot of people. That’s not always fair or right, but sometimes you are reacting to what life is,” notes Gomez-Delgado. “I’m going to bring these things up in my music. I wanted to lay some heavy stuff down and if you can get through that, then we’ll have fun and a good conversation.”

The heavy stuff springs from the political, no surprise for an artist like Gomez-Delgado in this day and age. “Americae,” with its Latin lyrics and its fantastic, all-over-the-place polyrhythms, cuts to the heart of the American dilemma of its cries for freedom and its basis in genocide and slavery. “This original and ‘invisible’ sin keeps coming up. Until we deal with it, it will keep coming back,” comments Gomez-Delgado.

Yet Zemog never lets gloom dominate the conversation. “Motivate,” written with conga virtuoso Reinaldo DeJesus, urges movements and motions, with coils of low brass, inspiring percussion, and a dreamy guitar line that dares you to sit still. The lyrics ask us all to get the guts to up on the dancefloor, literally and figuratively, to step up and wake up, in an anthem that feels like Frank Zappa and Antibalas colliding with cumbia.

With a similar floating sense of rhythm but a more stately sway, “YoYouMeTú” addresses identity dilemmas of a more intimate nature. The crisis of connection that we all face--that promises greater happiness if we learn to deal with it--can be resolved only by losing some of what we cling to and having faith in this vulnerability. “The lyrics use the words ‘afinque’ and ‘afincado,’ used in salsa starting in the 60-70s. They basically describe when the band is tight and becomes one, with the dancers in the room. You lose time, fully present but not in a stressful, ego-filled way. The band is swinging. That to me is the main thing of all of this,” explains Gomez-Delgado. “It’s hard to accept because anything that’s new is contradicting what you knew before. That tension takes an inner faith to move through.”

What happens on the dancefloor or in our tangled inner worlds blurs for Zemog, but that is where the pleasures of committed relationship (a moment celebrated with his wife Olia in “Wedding Song,” which they crafted for their big day) and family (“Delgados” includes a recording of Gomez-Delgado’s extended family singing together in Puerto Rico.) This is the place Gomez-Delgado fought so hard to reach, what he lays out in polychrome, shifting, quirky detail on the album. “I don’t care how cliche it is. It’s really about us and how we affirm each other’s existence. It’s the most basic thing, but I don’t care. The message still isn’t getting through, judging by our current climate. So it’s vital to say it and play it.”

About Zemog EL Gallo Bueno is a New York City based group of musician friends created and led by Puerto Rican/Peruvian composer and multi-instrumentalist Abraham Gomez-Delgado. Zemog’s music has been described as “Kaleidoscopic Avant Latin Roots” which adventures through 1930's Puerto Rican street cries, 60's free jazz fumes, 70's New York salsa residue and 80’s warehouse Latin Punk. Gomez-Delgado left his native Puerto Rico as a child and relocated to the mainland U.S. where he moved frequently and lived in different socio-economic and racially charged communities where he experienced first hand the deep divisions and injustices that plague the United States. He had also met many healing, inspiring and loving people through out his journey, in the U.S. These experiences and people helped shape much of Abraham Gomez-Delgado’s music and led him to connect and collaborate with many like minded and innovative musicians, composers, artist’s and educators that make up the members of Zemog El Gallo Bueno. Reinaldo DeJesus, Chris Stromquist, Jackie Coleman, Benjamin Willis, Maria Christina Eisen, Bryan Vargas, Ted Nordlander, Juancho Herrera, Pablo Bencid and Matt Bauder. Zemog El Gallo Bueno has performed at the Blue Note, Montreal Jazz Festival, Joe's Pub, Mass MoCA, Jazz Gallery, S.O.B’s, Lincoln Center, BAM, Chicago World Music Festival, Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Barbes, Zebulon, Camaradas El Barrio amongst others. Abraham Gomez-Delgado was awarded the New Jazz Works grant from Chamber Music America and the Doris Duke Foundation, Meet The Composer MetLife Grant, USArtists International Award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.

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fullspectrum-cbd-oil · 5 years ago

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Factbox: Democratic U.S. Presidential Hopefuls Differ With Trump on Foreign Policy

President Donald Trump’s unpredictable foreign policy moves have sent shock waves around the world, from his overhaul of U.S. trade relationships to his questioning of longstanding alliances.

But the Democratic contenders hoping to challenge him in the November 2020 U.S. election have largely eschewed foreign policy debates, seen as less important to U.S. voters, instead focusing on domestic issues such as healthcare, immigration and gun control.

When they have spoken of America’s role in the world, they generally have emphasized an intent to rebuild U.S. alliances damaged by Trump’s “America First” doctrine.

The Democrats are also broadly in agreement on the need to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal that Trump abandoned, to push North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program, and for a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians.

Differences have emerged on whether to reverse Trump’s tariffs on imports from China, and on when the United States should use military force overseas.

Here is a look at the foreign policy positions of the top 10 Democratic candidates.

JOE BIDEN

The former vice president and Democratic front-runner has said he wants to repair America’s standing in the world and alliances like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

“The next president is going to have to be able to pull the world back together,” Biden told National Public Radio in an interview published on Sept. 3. “Four more years of this president, there will be no NATO,” Biden added.

Biden also said Trump’s call in August for Russia to be invited back into the G7 group of nations was “embarrassing,” adding that the Republican president’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin while spurning traditional U.S. allies were “irrational and self-defeating”.

Biden once told Putin during a meeting, “I don’t think you have a soul,” Biden later said. As vice president, Biden condemned Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Like other Democratic candidates, Biden has denounced Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Biden has said he would pursue an extension of the New START nuclear arms control treaty with Russia, which expires in 2021 and which Trump has not committed to extending.

On trade, Biden has indicated he would lift some tariffs that are damaging to U.S. farmers, but said he also would prevent China from stealing intellectual property and “dumping steel on us.”

Biden, who served as Democratic former President Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years, has argued he has the foreign policy experience that none of the other Democratic candidates possess. Obama trusted Biden with withdrawing troops from Iraq and uniting allies to combat Islamist terrorism, Biden said in his NPR interview.

But his long record also opens Biden up to criticism. He voted in 2002 to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, paving the way for President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion that led to a long and costly conflict and destabilized the Middle East.

Biden later called his vote a mistake and has promised to end America’s “forever wars.” In a Democratic debate in Houston this month, he said he would withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan and suggested using bases in Pakistan to “prevent the United States being the victim of terror coming out of Afghanistan.”

BERNIE SANDERS

The U.S. senator from Vermont has combined his calls for a “political revolution” at home with a vision for a shift in U.S. policy overseas. Sanders has criticized high levels of military spending that enrich defense contractors and pledged to cool tensions with Iran.

Sanders said in this month’s debate that he and Biden strongly disagree on trade, citing his opposition to trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement that Sanders said led to job losses.

In the past, Sanders expressed solidarity with left-wing governments, but now draws a distinction between his avowed “democratic socialism” and governments like that of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, who he has called a “vicious tyrant.”

As well as opposing Cold War-era policies, he voted against the Iraq war and co-authored a bipartisan resolution to try to end U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabia-led war against Houthi insurgents in Yemen.

ELIZABETH WARREN

The U.S. senator from Massachusetts has pledged to create a foreign policy with a focus on creating and defending jobs in the United States. Warren has said she would cut the “bloated defense budget.”

“We need to bring our troops home” from Afghanistan, Warren said in a Democratic debate, “and then we need to make a big shift. We cannot ask our military to keep solving problems that cannot be solved militarily.”

Warren was the first major candidate to call for Trump to be impeached for taking actions to impede the federal investigations of Russian election interference. She also criticized the president’s June meeting with Putin in which Trump appeared to make light of the election interference.

PETE BUTTIGIEG

Buttigieg studied abroad in England and Tunisia and worked for the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company. He took time out of his first term as mayor of South Bend, Indiana to deploy to Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy Reserve.

Buttigieg has pledged to reverse two pivotal steps taken by Trump by having the United States rejoin the Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord. Buttigieg has argued for scrapping the authorization for use of military force passed by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, saying it has become a “blank check” for the use of force.

“When America acts alone, it can only be because core interests are at stake and because there is no alternative,” said Buttigieg, adding that neither the situation in Venezuela nor that in Iran passed that test. He also has said he would withhold U.S. funds from Israel if it annexes West Bank settlements.

KAMALA HARRIS

The U.S. senator from California has not issued a detailed foreign policy plan, but has emphasized restoring America’s traditional alliances like NATO. She has said trade policy should help the United States “export American products, not American jobs,” but added the nation needs to trade with the world and should partner with China on climate change issues and North Korea. “I am not a protectionist Democrat,” Harris said.

Harris has been criticized by some on the left for her links to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israeli lobbying group. Her website describes her support for Israel as “unshakeable” and that she would “work towards a two-state solution so that Palestinians and Israelis can govern themselves in security, dignity and peace.”

ANDREW YANG

Along with his flagship domestic proposal for a universal basic income for all Americans over age 18, Yang has proposed a “reverse boot camp” to ensure military service members are ready to return to civilian life. The former tech entrepreneur’s foreign policy initiatives include a proposal to develop new encryption standards that are not vulnerable to quantum computing technology, as well as to invest in quantum technology to stay ahead of geopolitical rivals.

Yang also has said the decision to launch a nuclear attack should not rest solely with the president, proposing that the vice president also verify such calls.

CORY BOOKER

The U.S. senator from New Jersey has criticized Trump’s foreign policy as an “America alone policy” and emphasized working with allies to take on the challenges of China and climate change.

“We are the strongest nation on the planet Earth, and our strength is multiplied and magnified when we stand with our allies in common cause and common purpose,” Booker said in a debate. “That’s how we beat China.”

Booker has said it was a mistake for Trump to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal but that he would take the opportunity to renegotiate the agreement.

BETO O’ROURKE

The former U.S. congressman from Texas has said he would end Trump’s trade war on day one of his administration and suspend tariffs, a commitment none of the other top 10 Democratic candidates have made. O’Rourke has proposed leading a global coalition to pressure China to end anti-competitive behavior.

JULIAN CASTRO

The former U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development said in a debate he would put a renewed focus on Latin America to address immigration and to compete with China’s growing influence there.

He said a “21st Century Marshall Plan for Central America,” like the post-World War Two initiative to rebuild Western Europe, is needed “so that people can find safety and opportunity at home instead of having to make the dangerous journey to the United States.”

The United States should also pressure Venezuela to have free and fair elections and offer those fleeing the country temporary protected status, Castro said.

TULSI GABBARD

The U.S. congresswoman from Hawaii has made her anti-war position central to her campaign. Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, has spoken against U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war as part of a personal campaign to end “regime change wars.” She has met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and expressed skepticism that his government was behind chemical weapons attacks, drawing fierce criticism from some in her own party.

(Compiled by Simon Lewis; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Will Dunham)

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courtneytincher · 5 years ago

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Could Restoring Soil Help Halt Climate Change?

leolintang/GettyBy David R. Montgomery, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, University of WashingtonIt’s time to take soil seriously. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states with very high confidence in its latest report, land degradation represents “one of the biggest and most urgent challenges” that humanity faces.The report assesses potential impacts of climate change on food production and concludes that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will reduce crop yields and degrade the nutritional quality of food.To avert climate catastrophe, the report warns, people need to make changes in agriculture and land use. In other words, it’s no longer enough to wean society off of fossil fuels. Stabilizing the climate will also require removing carbon from the sky. Rethinking humanity’s relationship to the soil can help on both scores.Soils under stressHealthy, fertile soils are rich in organic matter built of carbon that living plants pulled out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Carbon-rich organic matter helps fuel the soil organisms that recycle and release mineral elements that plants take back up as nutrients.But soils release carbon too. And the frequent tillage and heavy fertilizer use that underpin modern conventional agriculture have accelerated degradation of soil organic matter, sending more carbon skyward—a lot, it turns out.The new IPCC report concludes that globally, cropland soils have lost 20-60 percent of their original organic carbon content. North American farmland has lost about half of its natural endowment of soil carbon. On top of those losses, modern agriculture consumes a lot of fossil fuels to pull plows and manufacture the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers that farmers rely on to coax large harvests from degraded soils.Land management choices also affect the amount of carbon stored in trees, plants and soil. The new IPCC report estimates that serious changes in forestry and agriculture to curtail deforestation and improve soil management could reduce global emissions by 5 percent to 20 percent. While this won’t solve the climate problem, it would represent a significant down payment on a global solution.Farming for carbonInvesting in soil regeneration would also deliver other benefits. One key takeaway from the IPCC report is that conventionally tilled soils erode more than 100 times faster than they form. This troubling conclusion echoes and amplifies what I found a decade ago, after compiling global data on rates of soil formation and loss. My book Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations tells how soil degradation undermined societies around the world, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the U.S. Dust Bowl of the 1930s.Today humans have degraded roughly one-third of the world’s topsoil, and about 3.2 billion people—more than a third of humanity—already suffer from the effects of degraded land. Continuing down this path does not bode well for feeding a growing world population.But what if it was possible to reverse course, regenerate soil organic matter and reduce farmers’ need for diesel fuel and chemical fertilizers made with fossil fuels? This would make it feasible to stash more carbon in the soil and reduce the amount that’s sent skyward in the process of growing food.I saw the potential for regenerative agriculture to restore soil organic matter in both developed and developing countries when I researched Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life, my book about how regenerative farming practices allow farmers to reduce their use of costly fertilizers and pesticides.All of the farmers I interviewed shared three things in common. They had switched from plowing to no-till methods that minimized soil disturbance, planted cover crops, and grew a diverse mix of cash and cover crops. Some had even adopted regenerative grazing practices that put livestock to work rebuilding carbon-rich soil. Their results showed me that when farming and ranching practices build soil health, they can reverse soil degradation rapidly and profitably.Worth the transitionBarriers to adopting regenerative farming systems include force of habit, lack of knowledge about new practices and real and perceived economic risk during the transition. But the benefits of rebuilding healthy, fertile soil are clear.According to a 2018 U.N. report that reviewed global land degradation, the economic benefits of land restoration average 10 times the costs. Rebuilding fertile soil is also one of the most promising ways to address hunger and malnutrition in Africa, where the costs of failing to combat land degradation are typically three times the cost of addressing the problem.Restoring soil health would help mitigate the effects of climate change. Increasing the amount of organic matter in soil enhances its ability to hold water. And improving soil structure would let more rainfall sink into the ground, where it can better sustain crops—especially during drought-stressed years—and help reduce flooding downstream. In addition to benefiting the climate, less fertilizer use will reduce off-farm water pollution.Regenerative practices that focus on soil building bring other benefits too. For example, one 2006 study surveyed low-input, resource-conserving agricultural practices in 286 development projects across Latin America, Africa and Asia that employed cover crops for nitrogen fixation and erosion control and integrated livestock back into farming systems. It found that for a wide variety of systems and crops, yields increased an average of almost 80 percent. Results like these indicate that investing in soil-building practices would help feed a warming world.When President John F. Kennedy called for a national effort to go to the Moon, the U.S. managed to do the unthinkable in under a decade. I believe it’s time now for a global “soilshot” to heal the land. Rebuilding healthy fertile soil on the world’s agricultural lands would require fundamental changes to agriculture, and a new agricultural philosophy. But consider who stands to lose from such a shift: corporate interests that profit from modern agrochemical-intensive farming and factory-farm livestock production. Who stands to gain? Everyone else.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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jimprues · 6 years ago

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The Vast Impact of Legalizing Hemp

The Empire doesn't understand yet what has happened. Legalizing hemp farming and hemp industries will have a profound impact on our local communities, our soil, our ecosystems and our culture at large. They don't understand that legalizing hemp, part of the new Farm Bill enacted in December, is a tremendous catalyst for change. But we do.

Hemp was the first plant under human cultivation, some 10,000 years ago. Hemp farming and production was a staple of Europe and much of the world 1,000 years ago. Without hemp Europeans could not have colonized so much of the world, as hemp sails are durable and don't rot. So we have some history with the plant.

William Hurst, the yellow news publisher from 100 years ago was quite the racist. He hated people of color, and while it was quite clear that hemp was a staple for poor folk, he intentionally confused hemp and marijuana, a favorite high of these minorities. He demonize both incessently in his papers until congress took the step of making production of hemp and manufacture of hemp products illegal, along with its cousin, 'the heathen devil weed'. But why go after hemp?

Hearst happened to own millions of acres of forest that he wanted to leverage as paper for his 'news' empire. That would never happen as long as hemp was readily available and clearly a much wiser option. He removed that as a legal option, and caused unspeakable damage to our culture and country for nearly a century.

So that's how we got here, and with this new Farm Bill, we reverse this travesty. And again, The Empire doesn't yet know what it has allowed to happen.

First, a little clarity. There are hundreds of major strains of cannabis, the family's latin name. They all share the ability to grow in less than ideal soils with minimal pesticide use. They have edible, oil rich seeds. Their stalks contain strong, durable fibers. They absorb heavy metals and radiation. Hemp has less than .03% of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

Yet each strain has its unique characteristics. Hemp grown for fiber is planted closely together, with large, spindly patterns than can reach 15 feet. Hemp grown for oil has more widely space plants, with far more side branches to encourage bud and seed growth.

Cannibus varieties grown for THC also prefer wide spacing, to allow as many buds to form and develop as possible.

So why the big deal? Let's start at 30,000 feet. Much of our current malaise is due to corporate globalism, a trade system developed for profit, not to fulfill human need. Shoes from China, shirts from the Philippines or Indonesia, food from South America, fossil fuels from the Middle East - we've been globalized, without really seeing the problem even as us older folk watched this process take place over decades. Here's a good reference on our oldest cultivated plant.

With legal hemp we begin to reverse this trend, we start strengthening local production and hence our local communities. This will be tightly coupled with the local food movement, which is already gaining influence in many areas. A great blow against The Empire.

How? Here's a bit of a list…

Hempcrete - the Roman Coliseum and viaducts were built with hempcrete, the hemp fibers adding centuries to the viable 'life' of the concrete. As we begin the huge task of rebuilding US infrastructure, hempcrete can be invaluable.

Fuel - biodiesel and ethanal/methanal - the seeds are pressed and processed for biodiesel, the stalks fermented to create ethanal/methanal fuels. Both are efficient and renewable.

Food - hemp seeds have a refreshing, nutty taste. They are a great addition to soups, salads, burgers and more. Hemp oil can be used in food as well.

Clothing - hemp fibers are strong and durable, and through processing can become quite soft. The material takes color dyes well too!

Shoes - slippers and sandals are easily fashioned. Heavy duty work boots will require more processed forms of help.

Composites - Any number of composites can be created from hemp parts. Indeed, many cars now have composites with a hemp base for dashboards and interior molds, just like the first Ford's did 100 years ago.

Plastics - While our abusive relationship with disposable plastics requires a cultural shift, bioplastics made from hemp are far less damaging to our environments and oceans.

Medicines - CBDs (cannabinoids) are the current rage, able to help treat PTSD, arthritis and other conditions. The plant contains over a hundred cannabinoids, many with medicinal properties. CBDs are not psychoactive.

Even if you're not stoned, this is an impressive list. Your mission, should you choose to join us, is to aid in our transition to local, hemp based products. Farming, processing, distribution, new products, education and networking - there are tremendous opportunities. Fire logs, furniture, we don't even know yet what we're capable of being reunited with our old friend.

With hemp we gain a valuable resource for reducing the destruction of our already degraded home planet, Earth. We immediately reduce logging and its destructive footprint. The bleaching process to make paper from wood is eliminated as well. Imagine the boost we can bring to our communities with locally made clothes, fuel oils and food. Composites for the new 3D printing tech. It's going to get wild folks!

Curiously, the corrupt Trump administration has enabled the most substantial farm bill in decades. Now, the new congress can further policies which support hemp, which will surely support us.

Embracing hemp carries deeper overtones. Such work is healing and has us in intimate touch with the Earth and its natural cycles. It encourages us to embrace a radical new relationship with our natural world. It encourages us to be present to Life itself.

Now that the government is out of he way, the speed with which we reintroduce ourselves to our oldest plant friend is up to us. It will take a few years to re-find the knowledge and machinery used in the past, and to find our way forward with new ideas and technology. But the time when hemp is again pervasive in our culture is coming soon.

Looking for work or a new enterprise? Think hemp.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Now that Democrats control of the House of Representatives after the 2018 midterm elections, one of their biggest priorities will be majorly challenging the Trump administration’s national security and foreign policy.

That will put significant pressure on President Donald Trump to change his personal conduct, his stated worldview — and even his foreign business ties.

Democrats in the House generally disagree with how the Trump administration is steering the ship. Controlling the House allows them to actually do something about it.

They want greater scrutiny of the Pentagon and State Department’s operations and spending. They will try to nudge the US toward tackling longer-term global challenges, such as climate change or global poverty, instead of wars in, say, Yemen. They hope to better understand if Trump’s family business relationships influence the president’s thinking on foreign affairs. And they may even reopen the stalled probe into Russia’s election influence.

Not all House Democrats share the same foreign policy views. Progressive, self-identified “foreign policy populists” want top Trump officials — like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis — to justify troop deployments in a process that includes dramatic, days-long hearings. That proposal may set up a fight with more centrist Democrats who typically refrain from making a show of criticizing the military.

There are also areas where House Democrats overlap with Trump, namely, the diplomacy-first approach toward North Korea. But overall, they plan to significantly challenge — and in some cases, curtail — much of the administration’s foreign policy.

The Senate remains in Republican hands, which means House Democrats will be limited in what they can do. But based on interviews with six Democratic House members and aides, that won’t stop them from trying to push back on Trump.

“There will definitely be a reevaluation of America’s engagement in the world,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, told me.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) is poised to become the chair of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), and he told me the next Congress should focus on:

Overseeing Trump’s use of the military, particularly its deployment in disaster response, as well as its “lack of a consistent policy concerning civilian casualties.” Roughly 3,000 Puerto Ricans died during and in the aftermath of September 2017’s Hurricane Maria.

Auditing the Pentagon “to ensure that we are getting the best value for the taxpayer dollars we are spending.” Mattis said on Tuesday that the Pentagon is already preparing for an audit.

Promoting “an inclusive military.” Trump tried to ban trans people from serving in the summer of 2017.

Pushing back on Trump’s plan to increase and modernize the US’s nuclear arsenal. “We currently have a reliable nuclear deterrent that is more than adequate,” Rep. Smith said.

Ensuring troops are properly trained for their missions. The military has seen a recent uptick in fatal training accidents since 2013.

Tackling large issues ignored by the Trump administration — like the threat of climate change.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), who could soon lead the House Armed Services committee, questions witnesses during a hearing on April 12, 2018. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

HASC Democrats seem mostly on board with this plan, especially the oversight part.

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-MD), a HASC member and veteran, told me he wants “to ensure the Department of Defense is more transparent with Congress, and that we are fulfilling our oversight role of the Trump administration.”

Democrats “will approach issues the way Smith has been saying they will,” a House Democratic aide told me. But there may be a growing challenge from progressives, like HASC member Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who say they want to change the way the US thinks about national security and foreign policy.

“We need restraint in our military use, a new focus on diplomacy and statesmanship, to develop human capital, and engagement with others when it comes to tackling foreign problems,” he told me, adding that there’s a growing push to link US foreign policy with economic populism.

The goal of “foreign policy populists,” a label Khanna says he applies to himself, is to question each dollar spent on military affairs that doesn’t go to improving America’s infrastructure, education system, or health care.

One way to do that, Rep. Khanna continued, would be to have Mattis and the Joint Chiefs chairman, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, join HASC for a three-day hearing to justify every military deployment — an idea Rep. Khanna said he’s spoken to Rep. Smith about. It’s unclear if that would happen, though, or how hard the Pentagon would push back against that request.

Still, the US should spend money on foreign issues, primarily curbing climate change and its effects, curtailing China’s power, alleviating global poverty, and promoting women’s rights. In effect, it’s a strategy to rebuild at home but help abroad when possible and in the world’s interest. “It’s a hybrid of Bernie Sanders’s restraint and Bono’s engagement,” says Khanna.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) speaks at a rally to reject Mike Pompeo’s nomination for secretary of state at US Capitol on April 11, 2018, in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for MoveOn.org

Many other HASC Democrats agree that the Defense Department’s actions require more scrutiny than it currently receives. “If Obama was guilty of micromanaging the Pentagon, Trump is the opposite, so you’ll see a lot more oversight in that regard,” one House Democratic staffer told me.

A different Democratic congressional aide told me what Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) — likely to be led by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) — would prioritize.

That list includes:

Greater oversight of the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The committee is particularly interested in looking into the administration’s “loyalty tests,” where they vet officials for their loyalty to Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “assured us that won’t happen,” the aide said, “but it happens over and over again.”

Trump’s potential conflicts of interests abroad. Democrats remain unsuccessful in obtaining documents about the Trump Organization’s property in Panama, for example.

“Toughen[ing] up our response to Russia — or any country for that matter — for their election interference,” the aide said.

Challenging the administration’s stance toward Moscow, especially the president’s warm embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Updating authorizations for the use of military force abroad, which have remained untouched since 2002.

Ending America’s support for the war in Yemen, for which there is a growing congressional effort to end. On Tuesday, Mattis and Pompeo both said they wanted a ceasefire in Yemen within the next 30 days.

Rep. Eliot Engel, who may soon lead the House Foreign Affairs committee, attends a memorial vigil for victims of the Paris terror attack on November 15, 2015, in New York City. Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images

The oversight part is key. Even if Republicans keep the Senate, House Democrats can still request documents to perform their oversight duties. Though the GOP can stymy legislation, it would have no authority to block those requests because of the committee’s oversight function.

That could mean a lot of hearings, or at least inquiries, about the president’s past ties to Russia, and if the Trump Organization’s business dealings around the world have any effect on his foreign policy. There’s some worry about that: Four foreign governments spent money at Trump properties in 2017, government watchdog group Public Citizen said in January.

“Business is booming at the Trump International Hotel in DC, not because of the décor, but because corporations and foreign governments want to curry favor with the president,” Robert Weissman, Public Citizen’s president, said in a statement at the time.

Rep. Castro told me he wants the party to look deeply into some of Trump’s most contentious relationships, especially the trade war with China and growing ties with Saudi Arabia. He also wants Democrats to closely scrutinize Trump’s threats to cut aid to Africa and Latin America, as well as relationships with new leaders in Mexico and Brazil.

Far right politician Jair Bolsonaro, who won Brazil’s presidential election on Sunday and has expressed admiration for Trump, troubles Castro: “He speaks in fascist overtones,” he said. Trump congratulated Bolsonaro on his win, and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Sunday that the president looks forward to working “side by side” with him.

Democrats still hope to work in a bipartisan fashion with their Republican colleagues. HFAC is notable for how well both sides have worked together in the past, but there’s a chance the heightened pressure on Trump may sour relations down the line.

“We want to work with them,” the Democratic congressional aide told me, “but it’s up to them to decide [that] they want to work with us.”

Castro also serves on the House Intelligence Committee — and he wants it to pick up the stalled investigation into Russia’s interference during the 2016 presidential election.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) speaks during a news conference regarding the separation of immigrant children on July 10, 2018, in Washington, DC. Alex Edelman/Getty Images

House Republicans who led the probe brought it to a conclusion in March, saying there was “no collusion” between Russia and the Trump campaign. A more bipartisan effort in the Senate continues.

Democrats, though, have continued to interview people who may have pertinent information. For example, in July they spoke for four hours with Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos’s wife.

Castro told me Democrats should dig deeper to verify all the information the committee as a whole has been told. “This committee didn’t issue a single subpoena to verify what dozens of witnesses told us,” he said.

It’s unclear, though, how much cooperation Democrats would get from Republicans — especially those tied to the Trump campaign or administration — during a renewed probe. After all, there’s a good chance a Democrat-led House and a GOP-led Senate would increase tensions, but that doesn’t worry Castro.

“You can have gridlock with a divided government,” he told me, “but it’s healthy if Democrats control at least one chamber. It’s good for transparency.”

Original Source -> Democrats won the House — and Trump’s foreign policy may be in trouble

via The Conservative Brief

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how2to18 · 7 years ago

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“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

— Walt Disney

“Dreams have started wars.”

— Walter Benjamin

“It is the manner in which the U.S. dreams and redeems itself, and then imposes that dream upon others for its own salvation”

— Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart

HOW TO READ Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in The Disney Comic landed in the United States in 1975. Printed in Hungary, the underground screed against Disney’s Donald Duck comics was immediately detained by the Imports Compliance Branch of the US Customs Department. Disney sued the book’s publisher for “piratical” use of characters.

Written by Chilean radicals Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck analyzed decades of postwar Disney comics designed to indoctrinate the children of Latin America with pro-capitalist propaganda. In 1973, after the bloodiest coup in the continent’s history — a coup that ended Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government, his life, and the lives of thousands — General Augusto Pinochet’s junta had the book burned, along with many other books deemed subversive.

Sill penning sharp critiques, Ariel Dorfman sees Donald Trump as Donald Duck: “We are clearly in a moment,” he writes, “when a yearning to regress to the supposedly uncomplicated, spotless, and innocent America of those Disney cartoons, the sort of America that Walt once imagined as eternal, fills Trump and so many of his followers with an inchoate nostalgia.” Today, Donald Duck lags in its appeal to consumers. Star Wars is a more effective vehicle to influence the young, whose culture has already been colonized, with ideals of freedom as well as to capitalize on our collective distress. Like Donald Duck, Star Wars is an invisible disguise, in which, as Dorfman and Mattelart put it, “protest is converted into imposture” and radical energy is digested to eliminate its power. If that means riffing on revolution or including women and people of color in the plot, the underlying logic is the same.

More Americans will see Star Wars in 2020 than will vote. The Star Wars Universe is slated to include two more films between now and then, and its latest movie, The Last Jedi, premiered last week. What we need in response is an extensive analysis of how the Star Wars films, comics, and merchandise are distributed in other countries, as well as our own. Star Wars is sacred to millions, and millions are blind to Star Wars. Inspired by Dorfman and Mattelart, here are 13 ways to read it.

1. Disney, the Guardian of the Universe

It was a movie, then a franchise, and as it grew into a cinematic universe, a black hole opened up, sucking away the popcorn and leaving something ideologically opposed to cinema itself. The Star Wars Expanded Universe — what we now call its constellation of media satellites — is made up of screenplays, films, TV shows, novels, picture books, video games, board games, comics, and so much more. By 2000, Star Wars intellectual properties were so expansive that Lucas Licensing’s Publishing Department devised a “continuity database” to keep track of the gospel of Star Wars.

Twelve individuals oversee the archive as guardians of the Star Wars canon. It is known to them — and to Star Wars superfans — as the Holocron, a self-referenced story term for a fortified library of wisdom that “contain[s] the most closely guarded secrets of the Jedi Order.” Holo, meaning holographic; cronos, meaning a personification of time; or perhaps Cronus, the Greek god who castrated his father Uranus. Unlike the Jedi archive introduced in Attack of the Clones (2002), the Licensing Department’s Holocron exists on Planet Earth and contains the most lucrative story ever copywritten. It is made up of “55,000 entries for franchise characters, locations, species, and vehicles.” What it doesn’t include is the miniscule merchandise seeping into daily life — the key fobs, tote bags, gel pens, socks, and soda — branded in the name of the Holocron.

In 2012, when Walt Disney Company acquired the rights of the Star Wars Expanded Universe for $4.05 billion — including all of Lucasfilm’s lesser holdings like Indiana Jones — Hollywood was still reeling from Disney’s acquisition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for $4 billion three years earlier. To single out Disney, however, is not the point. In the age of corporate consolidation, sucking up intellectual property weaponizes story. Disney is perhaps the most aggressive in this regard — vertically integrating production, distribution, and exhibition wherever it can — but they are in the middle of an arms race. In 2016, Dreamworks sold for $3.8 billion to NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, which wrestled Harry Potter away from Disney. In the fog of The Last Jedi’s opening weekend, Team Disney has merged with rival 21st Century Fox, purchased for a whopping $52.4 billion from Rupert Murdoch. In this corporate cold war, the Disney Empire has retooled Star Wars into its own Death Star, capable of destroying other movie studios and their parent companies.

2. The Force

Back in 2015, opening weekend for The Force Awakens racked in $582 million worldwide. In the lead up to that opening, the cross-market saturation of Star Wars ads overlapped every medium. These ads didn’t have to advertise the movie; simply the scent of Star Wars was sufficient. Public service announcements exhorted listeners to “Avoid the Dark Side.” Tiny Star Wars–branded stickers appeared on tangerines. Facebook changed its status update prompt, which usually reads “What’s on your mind,” to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens today! Are you excited to see it? Let your friends know.” Hillary Clinton mentioned “the Force” in a presidential debate.

The Force is not, as Yoda would have you believe, “an energy field created by all living things.” The Force that Star Wars speaks for is capitalism. Disney roused this giant, conjured its spell, and put it to work. Money is the Force that balances good and evil. If used for good, money can save freedom and democracy. When properly invested, money moves us closer to class equality and racial harmony. If used for evil, fear and violence will reign. But money is rarely mentioned in Star Wars. The Universe is organized around a murky barter economy, where the cost of fuel or the construction of military-industrial starfleets is rarely discussed. Since the Empire would be an incorporated entity (granted a lax corporate charter from Wilmington, Delaware), why don’t its commanders talk like corporate leaders? Imperial commanders ought to discuss which old crony will get the bid to rebuild the planet they just destroyed. Or do these commanders represent a Cuban-style bureaucracy projected into outer space?

The Force Awakens was a game-changer, demonstrating how deeply a marketing campaign can penetrate society. Adweek has called this “relentless, but also masterful.” “Star Wars inspired product integration between brands and Hollywood at an unprecedented scale,” said the American Marketing Association. But Disney only amplified what Star Wars had already been doing. From the beginning in 1977, Burger King hawked Darth Vader special edition drinking glasses, and Kenner (a subsidiary of General Mills) manufactured Star Wars action figures. These relationships seem quaint because hundreds of other companies have since hitched themselves to Disney’s shining Star Wars and gladly pay for the host body’s advertising. Or perhaps Disney is the parasite with many host bodies. Disney’s allegiance to capitalism is a case study of the Force used for the Dark Side.

3. The Star Wars Liberation Movement

George Lucas says that he sold Lucasfilm to Disney in order to protect the mythology he created — to protect his creation from generational obscurity and to protect it from himself. Producer Kathleen Kennedy commands the liberation of Lucasfilm from Lucas. She marshaled the expanding revitalization of the Star Wars franchise with The Force Awakens (2015), Rogue One (2016), and now The Last Jedi (2017). These are the big floats in the parade that we will experience as massive cultural events — they are no longer cult events — for the rest of our lives.

Disney’s stewardship of Star Wars is seen, by some, as a decolonization of the franchise, or its liberation in the way the United States “liberated” Japan and Germany in 1945. But it’s more akin to the delusion known as “the liberation of Iraq” in 2003. In Iraq, the United States was determined to open untapped markets in the name of freedom. In Star Wars, Rian Johnson will direct a new trilogy with so-called “complete creative freedom” in the name of better movies. Supposedly, George Lucas wanted Disney to be the studio to produce the original Star Wars when the films were a twinkle in his eye. This is why Disney’s liberation of Star Wars also functions as a Bismarckian unification, a match made in the boardroom.

4. Memory in the US Star Wars Political Universe

Star Wars inverts historical context and political movements, minimizing the gravity of American aggression at home and abroad. In a 2016 New York Times op-ed, US Army Veteran Roy Scranton described the irony of watching Star Wars while deployed in Iraq: “I was the faceless stormtrooper, and the scrappy rebels were the Iraqis,” Scranton wrote. Ten years earlier, Italy’s RAI Television reported a completely brutal account of “experimental laser weapons being used against Iraqi civilians.” “Star Wars in Iraq,” headlines read. There’s continuity between historical events and the Star Wars Political Universe, but there’s also a mash-up, a reversal of meaning. “Ever since Star Wars, Americans love and consider themselves these great anti-authoritarians and we look to identify with the rebels across the globe,” punk essayist Ian F. Svenonius writes. The movies remake history and as history is told and retold, the movies must be remade. In this recurring remakequel, the audience has the privilege to cheerlead for whichever side they feel.

Back in 1977, Star Wars was already a simplification of the American military intervention in Vietnam. In Episode IV: A New Hope, only one side (the Empire) has the H-bomb, which in the movie is known as the Death Star, a spherical space station that can destroy an entire planet with its super laser. By 2017, the Rebels fighting the Empire have been re-labeled as the Resistance, evoking the French Resistance, not to be confused with Yemen’s Houthi rebels of 2017. The Empire has “means of mass destruction,” says some a rebel in Rogue One, a decade after American media convinced the United States that Iraq (the Rogue State) had weapons of mass destruction which began the “Forever War.” Precisely because Star Wars exists “A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away,” it is free to mix and match political reality: to distort, confuse, and ultimately deny history.

Despite this scrambling of history, the truth is that the Empire and the Resistance are on the same side, battling on behalf of Disney in what is known as the Content Wars. In these wars, the Big Six Studios are each beating back the streaming rebellion of Netflix, Amazon Studios, and, in the case of Hulu, which was a 21st Century Fox asset, sucking it inside the Disney machine.

5. Star Wars and Trump’s War on Journalists

The Star Wars Cinematic Universe is a universe much like ours — life-sustaining and technologically advanced — but it’s a universe importantly without a public sphere. No news, journalism, entertainment media, or even advertising. Disney reportedly banned Los Angeles Times film critics from pre-screenings of The Last Jedi. It was retaliation for the newspaper’s two-part story exposing that the City of Anaheim rents a 10,241-space parking structure (that cost taxpayers $108 million) to Disney for one dollar a year. The story also revealed that Disney financially supported pro-Disney city council members during local elections. (Disney’s punitive action was probably further incited because of another review, “How to Read El Pato Pascual: Disney’s Latin America and Latin America’s Disney,” an art show currently open at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture inspired by Dorfman and Mattelart.) When the Trump White House bans certain members of the press corps from official briefings, Disney’s tendencies and actions are dismally familiar. On-screen and off, the Empire rejects the Fourth Estate.

6. Robots

A press corps, of course, isn’t the Universe’s only convenient omission. There are no tech giants or interplanetary corporations in its galaxy far, far away. Droids are open source, secure, and possibly encrypted. All techno-utopian potential with none of technology’s risks, droids are something a normal person can fix and trust. On Earth, where Star Wars is a multinational corporation, droids are still called robots and they are the horizon. They will be manufactured by Apple, Google, Amazon. It’s easy to imagine Star Wars licensing its brand to a company manufacturing consumer robots — or even acquiring a robotics startup to develop a consumer R2-D2. This is how R2-D2, a lovable droid, and its cousin the BB-8 unit will come to be. Bloomberg reported that when, in 2015, Sphero released the BB-8 droid toy — which can be controlled with a smart phone — it sold 22,000 units in 12 hours.

Drones are another market. The Star Wars brand will manufacture larger, more capable versions of the prophesied machines protected under proprietary intellectual property laws. Unlike in the films, the droid hardware will not be interchangeable, but rather soldered in place. The popular R2 unit will be a Trojan Horse. Around the house, the R2-shaped trash collector that supposedly serves you will also collect your family’s biometric data, record your conversations, and order toilet paper for you via your digital wallet. All the while, R2 will be profiling you on behalf of Disney, the Evil Empire. What a difference a universe can make.

7. “Progressivism”

Since becoming head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy has kept her promises: she has released a film every year, pushing strong female leads and characters of color into a generally white, male Star Wars Universe. Many fans like the direction the new movies are taking. They don’t want their sense of wonder dashed. But what is the subtext of Kennedy’s new direction? Andre Seewood wrote a three-part essay in IndieWire about the “hyper-tokenism” of the new Star Wars, writing that Rogue One presented a “marked increase in screen time, dramatic involvement and promotional images of a Black character in a White film, while simultaneously reserving full dramatic agency as the providence of White characters by the end of the film.”

Meanwhile, the alt-right reacted to the newly inclusive Universe by staging a weak-sauce boycott of Rogue One. “By now, getting angry about stuff that’s progressive and inclusive is kind of the alt-right’s schtick,” Wired Magazine reported, presupposing that a multi-billion dollar movie could ever be progressive. Isn’t a movie that big, by its very nature, guilty of co-opting “inclusiveness” for financial gain?

8. Jedi as Lifestyle, Lifestyle as Copyright Infringement

To read Star Wars, you might follow the money. You might also follow the lawsuits. Disney’s battalion of lawyers, who doggedly protect Disney IP, have synchronized with Lucasfilm’s legal team. Get ready for an enlivened pace of copyright infringement suits to unfold on behalf of the Star Wars Universe, a place where there are no logos or brands. But for us, Star Wars is a brand. It does not have to be Star Wars Day, which is May 4, to don a Star Wars T-shirt because wearing a Star Wars shirt is as innocuous as wearing a Rolling Stones tee — both, by the way, are sold at Target.

The exploitation of the Jedi Knight “lifestyle,” however, goes deeper than T-shirts. If Star Wars helped to commodify a certain nerd culture as cool, Luke Skywalker embodies the nerd who became a Jedi. He’s the messianic front man of a pseudo-gypsy rock group with exotic, Orientalist undertones. He is at once Burning Man, hippy, wabi-sabi, and swordsmen. Americans consume this persona as people across the world who actually live in cultures on which the Jedi is loosely based are uprooted and saturated with Mickey Mouse tees, only to become collateral damage in the slipping grip of US global hegemony.

9. The Tea Party

In a 2006 sketch, British comedians Mitchell and Webb play two SS Officers, skull patches ironed onto their gray uniforms. They ask, “Are we are the Baddies?” Star Wars operates by a similar logic: a political system based on obvious good and obvious evil. Characters fight on the side they fight on based on psychology — often quite Freudian — inspired by a childhood trauma. By psychologizing the forces of good and evil, political debate is displaced and made apolitical in the Star Wars Universe. In our lived experience, wars are fought over access to capital, labor, over ethnic tensions and land disputes. If the Dark Side isn’t doing what they’re doing in order to advance resource extraction to secure energy for a “superior race,” what exactly are they doing?

If the United States is the Empire in the films, fans say, “So what, it’s just a movie.” George Lucas is a liberal who allegedly expressed his criticism of George Bush with a film whose budget rivaled the Battle of Fallujah. But in the homeland of the warmongers, audiences dressed in Darth Vader costumes root for the Rebels, the Terrorists. Gray-haired adults accept the franchise’s black-and-white message through the haze of nostalgia — demonstrating how one era’s defenders of freedom might allow the next era to be destroyed.

Disney’s latest purchase of 21st Century Fox further scrambles the political allegiances of the franchise. After all, Disney didn’t buy out the Rupert Murdoch–owned production company with cash; it was a quid pro quo merger. The $52.4 million is payment in Disney stock, elevating Murdoch to the second largest cardholder in Disney with a 4.4 percent stake in the company. Future Star Wars installments will therefore continue to enrich Rupert Murdoch — the man who owns the right-wing media outlet Fox News, the man who helped bring Donald Trump to power.

10. License the Myth

Will Star Wars supersede our own history? In the future, Star Wars will serve as our Greek epic. As The Economist put it, Star Wars has already “cemented its position as the market leader in the industrialization of mythology.” Disney understood the primal seduction of storytelling and based his business model on bottling fairy tales and folklore that once belonged to the commons. Walt Disney’s genius wasn’t creating Mickey Mouse; it was licensing the rights to Mickey Mouse. Not only is Mickey the most recognizable character in the world, but Mickey dictates copyright law in the United States of America. Mickey is the colonizer of storytelling. And the power in owning the fantasy and make-believe world of children’s imaginations only expands with new digital technologies.

The greatest betrayal Lucas lofted against his generation of filmmaking is his overuse of Joseph Campbell’s mono-myth theories and writings. The hero’s journey follows certain stages; the most important stage is monetizing the hero’s journey. The hero sucks away financing from different stories — stories of unsung heroes who speak up and defend the rights of people they may not even know. It blots out small stories, slow stories. Next time you imagine how a hereditary hero (somehow related to the last hero) is capable of saving whole planets from evil, think about why are we being told that there was always (even “long ago”) an evil lording over us. There always will be. Does that story give us hope to change this or reaffirm our place in the universe, conditioning us to accept such oppression?

11. George Lucas

Once a film nerd at the University of Southern California, George Lucas came of age in the 1960s, when a new wave of young white male film studs transformed the studio model of Hollywood. Suspicious of on-the-lot theatricality and big heroic budgets, these films experimented with cheaper, slower styles and morally ambiguous themes. A freaky underground film scene (16mm and 8mm) stewed in New York and San Francisco. Of this milieu, Lucas made THX 1138 (1971), a sci-fi yarn about freeing your mind and body, and American Graffiti (1973), the Sha Na Na of anti–Vietnam War messages. Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope umbrella produced both.

Coppola commented at the Marrakech International Film Festival in 2015, “I think Star Wars, it’s a pity, because George Lucas was a very experimental crazy guy and he got lost in this big production and never got out of it.” Lucas, his protégé, had sold him up the river. The young rebel George Lucas has turned himself (or we have turned him) into Darth Vader.

12. Darth Vader versus Mickey Mouse

Disney is the Empire. The Star Wars franchise is the Death Star. George Lucas is Vader. Who — or what — is Luke Skywalker in this allegorical Universe? Luke Skywalker, with his self-exiled father, is a human embodiment of Mickey Mouse.

In 1931, Walter Benjamin wrote, “All Mickey Mouse Films are founded on the motif of leaving home in order to learn what fear is,” a concept based on a story from the Grimm Brothers. Benjamin saw Mickey Mouse films as popular not because of the mass appeal inherent in the film medium, but because the public sees themselves in Mickey. Skywalker, too, leaves home to conquer that deep fear. In the marketing of Star Wars, Skywalker is deficient as an icon. But Darth Vader, who incarnates a genocidal maniac and fear itself, with his black-helmeted mask, becomes the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars. In a simple twist of brand awareness, fear now eats the soul.

13. Star Wars in the Public Domain

In a 2015 interview with Charlie Rose, George Lucas likened Disney to “white slavers” who took his intellectual property and mucked it up. But his official public apology assured us all that Disney folk were loyal “custodians of Star Wars.” Despite this apology, Lucas knows the mistakes he’s made. Wouldn’t it be nice if he could wrest back his franchise from the Empire, liberating his myth to be consumed by the people in the public domain? How far can a fair use legal defense get us? This remixed trailer imagines Star Wars as a grindhouse flick from the 1970s and gives us a glimmer of the popular mythologies and glorious camp that we’re missing. The people, free to make their own Star Wars episodes, web series, novels, and comics, may socialize the myth — or ratchet up the clichéd lines, talk over it, and piss on it. Wouldn’t it be great if Jean-Luc Godard was hired to direct the next Star Wars? Stormtroopers being interviewed in their masks about labor abuses and equal pay straight out of the factory-worker interviews of Tout va bien? If that doesn’t inspire you, imagine a Star Wars installment directed by Eric Andre, Dee Rees, or John Waters.

Featured image courtesy of Josh Hallett.

M. W. Lipschutz is a writer, filmmaker, and visual artist who lives and works in Los Angeles.

The post How to Read Star Wars appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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kristarangel-blog1 · 7 years ago

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HIST 410 Final Examination Answers – DeVry

Follow Below Link to Download Tutorial

http://finalexamsolutions.com/downloads/hist-410-final-examination-answers-devry/

For More Information Visit Our Website ( https://homeworklance.com/ )

Email us At: [email protected] or [email protected]

Question 1.1.(TCO 1) Historical research involves four main tasks. Discoverrefers to the task of: (Points : 4)

locating primary sources to learn the facts asking questions like “Who created the source and why?” analyzing all the available primary sources and judging which is the most accurate distributing the new findings to the world

Question 2.2.(TCO 6) In 1917, as World War Iraged through Europe, Russia:(Points : 4)

finally broke through the German army and drove into Germany defeated the Austrians and invaded the Balkans experienced two revolutions and sued for peace was completely overrun by the Germans

Question 3.3.(TCO 5) All of the following were major factors that helped the Reds to win the Russian Civil War except: (Points : 4)

peasants and minority nationalities feared a White victory more than a Red one Whites wanted to continue WWI Bolsheviks controlled the heartland of Russia Whites were not unified as well as Bolsheviks

Question 4.4.(TCO 5) What event marked the beginning of World War II? (Points : 4)

the Nazi-Soviet Pact the German invasion of Poland the Anschluss Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland

Question 5.5.(TCO 9) What city was divided during the Cold War, and became a hotspot for espionage and intrigue? (Points : 4)

Paris London Berlin Rome

Question 6.6.(TCO 9) How did the Korean Warstart? (Points : 4)

Communist troops from South Korea attacked North Korea. Communist troops from North Korea attacked South Korea. China attacked United Nations troops. North and South Korea were divided after a bitter civil war.

Question 7.7.(TCO 8) What was the intention of the Marshall Plan? (Points : 4)

to rebuild the military power of western Europe to help the Japanese economy recover from the War to rebuild the economies of war-shattered Europe to prevent the spread of communism into Africa and Asia

Question 8.8.(TCO 6) Bangladesh is: (Points : 4)

home to thousands of Muslim radicals who fled Afghanistan the site of a long conflict with the Soviet Union and mujahedin rebels the former eastern part of Pakistan, and one of the world’s poorest nations a mountainous region with a small population

Question 9.9.(TCO 2) Which Middle Easterncountry is the site of the Kabbah, Islam’s holiest site, and the world’s largest oil producer? (Points : 4)

Egypt Saudi Arabia Iran Kuwait

Question 10.10.(TCO 2) Arab-Israeli warsoccurred in: (Points : 4)

1946, 1948, 1955, 1967, 1975 1948, 1958, 1968, 1970, 1973 1948, 1958, 1967, 1973, 1990 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982

Question 11.11.(TCO 4) Poland achieved the election of its first Roman Catholic pope when Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla assumed the papacy as Pope:(Points : 4)

John Paul II Paul VI John XXIII John Paul I

Question 12.12.(TCO 4) The only Eastern European country that had widespread bloodshed in 1989 was: (Points : 4)

Romania Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Poland

Question 13.13.(TCO 7) One reason that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 was: (Points : 4)

Iraq was thought to have WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Iraq had invaded Israel Iraq was home to al-Qaeda Iraq invaded Kuwait

Matching

Question 1.1.(TCO 10) Match the terms in Column I with the descriptions in Column II. (Points : 18)

Potential Matches:

1 :belief that the Church should work for social reform

2 :populist president of Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s

3 :black civil rights leader during the 1960s

4 :Cuban revolutionary hero who died in Bolivia

5 :the native peoples of Latin America

6 :dictator of Cuba from the 1930s to the early 1960s

Answer

:indigenous

:Che Guevara

:Martin Luther King Jr.

:liberation theology

:Juan Peron

:Fulgencio Batista

Question 2.2.(TCO 3) Match the terms in Column I with the descriptions in Column II. (Points : 18)

Potential Matches:

1 :animals threatened with extinction

2 :the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-1950s

3 :a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment for future generations

4 :any form of precipitation that is unusually acidic

5 :an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated

6 :the change from fertile land to desert, which plagues many African countries

Answer

:desertification

:endangered species

:sustainable development

:globalization

:acid rain

:global warming

1. (TCO 1, 2) Identify and analyze two causes of World War I. Use historical examples to support your answer.

Of the various causes of World War I, which do you think was the most important and why? (Points : 40)

Question 2. 2. (TCO 5, 11) Analyze how the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, along with the Great Depression of the 1930s, contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

Then analyze significant ways in which World War II changed the world. Make sure you use enough historical details to support your answer. (Points : 40)

Question 3. 3. (TCOs 9, 10) Identify and analyze the main events of the Korean War and Cuban Missile Crisis. Then assess how these events affected the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Make sure you use enough details to support your answer. (Points : 41)

Question 4. 4. (TCOs 4, 8) Analyze how the Solidarity (Solidarnosc) movement in Poland led to the collapse of communism in Poland. Point out what events led to the growth of the Solidarity movement, and then identify and analyze the events that followed Gorbachev’s policy of political pluralism in Poland. Use specific details to support your answer. Then evaluate

#HIST 410 Final Examination Answers – DeVry

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homeworklanceblr-blog · 7 years ago

Text

HIST 410 Final Examination Answers – DeVry

Follow Below Link to Download Tutorial

https://homeworklance.com/downloads/hist-410-final-examination-answers-devry/

For More Information Visit Our Website ( https://homeworklance.com/ )

Email us At: [email protected] or [email protected]

Question 1.1.(TCO 1) Historical research involves four main tasks. Discoverrefers to the task of: (Points : 4)

Question 2.2.(TCO 6) In 1917, as World War Iraged through Europe, Russia:(Points : 4)

finally broke through the German army and drove into Germany defeated the Austrians and invaded the Balkans experienced two revolutions and sued for peace was completely overrun by the Germans

Question 3.3.(TCO 5) All of the following were major factors that helped the Reds to win the Russian Civil War except: (Points : 4)

Question 4.4.(TCO 5) What event marked the beginning of World War II? (Points : 4)

the Nazi-Soviet Pact the German invasion of Poland the Anschluss Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland

Question 5.5.(TCO 9) What city was divided during the Cold War, and became a hotspot for espionage and intrigue? (Points : 4)

Paris London Berlin Rome

Question 6.6.(TCO 9) How did the Korean Warstart? (Points : 4)

Question 7.7.(TCO 8) What was the intention of the Marshall Plan? (Points : 4)

to rebuild the military power of western Europe to help the Japanese economy recover from the War to rebuild the economies of war-shattered Europe ��to prevent the spread of communism into Africa and Asia

Question 8.8.(TCO 6) Bangladesh is: (Points : 4)

Question 9.9.(TCO 2) Which Middle Easterncountry is the site of the Kabbah, Islam’s holiest site, and the world’s largest oil producer? (Points : 4)

Egypt Saudi Arabia Iran Kuwait

Question 10.10.(TCO 2) Arab-Israeli warsoccurred in: (Points : 4)

1946, 1948, 1955, 1967, 1975 1948, 1958, 1968, 1970, 1973 1948, 1958, 1967, 1973, 1990 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982

Question 11.11.(TCO 4) Poland achieved the election of its first Roman Catholic pope when Cardinal Karol Jozef Wojtyla assumed the papacy as Pope:(Points : 4)

John Paul II Paul VI John XXIII John Paul I

Question 12.12.(TCO 4) The only Eastern European country that had widespread bloodshed in 1989 was: (Points : 4)

Romania Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Poland

Question 13.13.(TCO 7) One reason that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 was: (Points : 4)

Iraq was thought to have WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Iraq had invaded Israel Iraq was home to al-Qaeda Iraq invaded Kuwait

Matching

Question 1.1.(TCO 10) Match the terms in Column I with the descriptions in Column II. (Points : 18)

Potential Matches:

1 :belief that the Church should work for social reform

2 :populist president of Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s

3 :black civil rights leader during the 1960s

4 :Cuban revolutionary hero who died in Bolivia

5 :the native peoples of Latin America

6 :dictator of Cuba from the 1930s to the early 1960s

Answer

:indigenous

:Che Guevara

:Martin Luther King Jr.

:liberation theology

:Juan Peron

:Fulgencio Batista

Question 2.2.(TCO 3) Match the terms in Column I with the descriptions in Column II. (Points : 18)

Potential Matches:

1 :animals threatened with extinction

2 :the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-1950s

3 :a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment for future generations

4 :any form of precipitation that is unusually acidic

5 :an ongoing process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated

6 :the change from fertile land to desert, which plagues many African countries

Answer

:desertification

:endangered species

:sustainable development

:globalization

:acid rain

:global warming

1. (TCO 1, 2) Identify and analyze two causes of World War I. Use historical examples to support your answer.

Of the various causes of World War I, which do you think was the most important and why? (Points : 40)

Question 2. 2. (TCO 5, 11) Analyze how the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, along with the Great Depression of the 1930s, contributed to the outbreak of World War II.

Then analyze significant ways in which World War II changed the world. Make sure you use enough historical details to support your answer. (Points : 40)

#HIST 410 Final Examination Answers – DeVry

0 notes