Last month, the UK journalist Stuart Jeffries writing in the British newspaper The Guardian observed that "capitalism is in crisis across the globe -- but what on earth is the alternative?" In 1840, the US writer Orestes Brownson in his essay The Labouring Classes, asked the same question: "what shall government do? Its first doing must be an undoingaê| We want first the legislation which shall free the government, whether State or Federal, from the control of the Banksaê| a banking system like ours, if sustained, necessarily and inevitably becomes the real and efficient government of the country."
How ironic it is that 172 years ago, only 49 years after the adoption of the US Bill of Rights, Brownson noted that "at the end of ten years [of] constant hostility, [we know] all too well the power of the Banks, and their fatal influence on the political action of the community." He declares further that "uncompromising hostility" against the banking system should be the motto of every working man and of "every friend of humanity".
Brownson's Labouring Classes is a call to action, virtually at the inception of the US, to put the control of the government back in the hands of the people. "The system must be destroyedaê| The system is at war with the rights and interest of labour, and it must go." How ironic is Jeffries' observation of the current state of affairs, when contrasted to that of Brownson.
"Today, 164 years after Marx and Engels wrote about 'grave-diggers', the truth is almost the exact opposite. The proletariat, far from burying capitalism, are keeping it on life support. Overworked, underpaid workers ostensibly liberated by the largest socialist revolution in history [China's] are driven to the brink of suicide to keep those in the West playing with their iPads. Chinese money bankrolls an otherwise bankrupt America."
Brownson not only understood where the power existed, he knew all too well the consequences for the people and the country if they were to rise against the forces of privilege. "On this point there must be no misgiving, no subterfuge, and no palliation." To bring down the banks means that "every friend of the system must be marked as an enemy to his race, to his country and especially to the labourer. No matter who he is, in what party he is found, or what name he hears, he is, [in] our judgments, no true democrat, as he can be no true Christian."
Today, Brownson would no doubt have understood that the class warfare caused by the industrial revolutions in the UK and the US has not disappeared; indeed, it might be said that the past decades of "de-industrialisation" in America and the shipping of America's industries to foreign countries have resulted in the barons of industry outmaneuvering the workers, depleting their numbers, savaging their unions and destroying the middle class.
Some days ago the US channel PressTV contacted me as a possible participant in a new show that concentrates on finance. "Below is the topic of our talk. I really think it is for you," the channel said. The e-mail noted these points of focus: securitisation, the asset-based economy and fractional reserve banking (creating money out of nothing); banks and US politics: how the big banks purchase favourable legislation and influence politics; the Federal Reserve System (what it is and how it operates and shady, behind-the-scene deals and practices); the Jewish domination of the US and European banking systems, from the German Jews and the Rothschild banking family to the current near monopoly of modern Jewish dominance; the sub-prime mortgage crisis, bankruptcy and bailing out of the "too-big-to-fail" banks and the failure/collusion of the rating agencies; the shadow banking system and non-bank banks/institutions and their role in the current great recession; monetary and fiscal policies (quantitative easing/printing money) and related macro/micro-economic effects and side-effects including inflation, accumulation of debt and deficit.
I declined. While I appreciated the opportunity to talk about Wall Street, my real interest in economics is not what Wall Street is doing and why, but why Wall Street exists at all. My concerns go back to the founding documents of the US and indeed those of any country that claims to be the securer of its citizens' rights. Wall Street is a beast created by bankers, private bankers, using the money that belongs rightfully to the people of the country. The economic system of any truly democratic state should serve the state so it can be responsive to its citizens. This system I have called "nationomics", a non-profit system serving the citizens and not profiteers.
Only a country can create a currency for its people as stipulated in its constitution unless the people's representatives have given that right to private banks that are based on profit and usury. That was the case in the United States when Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913. In effect, Congress gave the American citizens' rights and their tax dollars to those who borrow from the Federal Reserve, while these private bankers made enormous profits through interest and the issuance of money they did not hold, for which they charged interest, all backed by the taxes of the people of America. Thus are the people of the United States and their children held hostage to a corrupt system.
People have the right to demand that the state protect them, keep the nation secure and provide for their health and their common good. Yet, the opposite is true in the West; the Bank of England, like the Federal Reserve Bank in the US, is owned by a private family/corporation like the Rockefellers/Rothschilds. Even the gold reserve in Britain is owned by these banks, and, not to be outdone, the newly minted United States in 1791 chartered the Bank of the United States, almost 100 years after the Crown chartered the Bank of England, as a privately owned corporation with the US government holding only 20 per cent of the shares.
Consider that these banks borrow money from the Federal government, paying a paltry percentage for that favour, then loan that money out to citizens and entrepreneurs et al at generally exorbitant interest rates ranging from five or six per cent to 30 per cent; indeed, they set the rates and they benefit from inside knowledge to gouge the government of the money it receives, taxpayers' money.
"The super-rich are currently hiding away wealth estimated between US$21 trillion and US$32 trillion in tax havens such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands," according to writer Ernst Wolff, who also notes that "in 2005, the estimated offshore assets of the super-rich amounted to US$11.5 trillion. Since then this total has doubled or tripled. Today the top 10 per cent of the world's population control 84 per cent of its assets, while the bottom 50 per cent have access to just one per cent. The top of the pile, 92,000 people who constitute an infinitesimal fraction of the world's population, have hidden financial assets amounting to more than US$9 trillion, an average of nearly US$100 million apiece." These hidden assets would eliminate roughly three-quarters of America's estimated debt.
Consider as well that the major corporations benefiting from the largesse of the Federal Reserve System also stash away their profits to avoid paying taxes to the very Congress that must raise the debt ceiling every year to keep the budget afloat. "The world's 10 largest private financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank, moved more than US$6.25 trillion offshore in 2010," Wolff writes. Perhaps of even more interest to the beleaguered US taxpayer is the ability of the favoured wealthy, even in underdeveloped countries to which taxpayers' money has gone in the form of loans, to hide their money, thus denying its use for vital services to their fellow citizens.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
More hot air over carbon capers
News that the government would axe its carbon floor price from 2015 and link the Australian and European carbon trading schemes sent stock prices higher by 3 per cent or more for those most affected, such as BlueScope, Arrium and Boral.
But the changes won't come into effect until 2015, by which time who knows what will be influencing stock prices.
It says something about the fragile market sentiment when yet another change in government policy, which won't have any impact for three years, causes a bounce in prices.
Stock traders are normally attacked for being too short-term in their thinking, so this was quite a form reversal.
The move also comes with more restrictions on what projects can be used to gain credits.
The big negative, of course, is the potential hole in future federal budgets, given the government has already handed out the cash to consumers and business to spend before gaining any increased revenue. That revenue will now obviously be less.
Politically, some heat has been taken out of the debate for future governments because if Europe and the market are setting the prices, business lobbyists will have their hands tied.
ALISON Watkins tried a company-transforming acquisition in merging with AWB when she first took the reins at GrainCorp just over two years ago.
Yesterday's $472 million expansion through the creation of an integrated oils business won't have quite the same impact but shows commendable vision.
There are some initial question marks over the price paid for the biggest chunk, the $302m Gardner Smith purchase, which came in at 9.2 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
Gardner Smith is a family-owned grain-crushing company and will take about $116m worth of stock -- about 5 per cent of the expanded company -- as part of the deal.
The second leg was the $170m purchase of the Goodman Fielder oil business at 5.5 times earnings, paid in part by a $159m rights issue underwritten by Credit Suisse.
GrainCorp's stock has ridden the rise in US wheat prices, which have increased from $US6.10 to $US8.60 a pound since June.
GrainCorp recently hit a 52-week high of $10.05 a share ahead of a deal at $9.85 a share.
Watkins rejects the concerns over the price paid, saying she is creating a new business under the old mantra of integrating supply, from the paddock to the plate.
In good years about 55 per cent of Gardner Smith's earnings come from its liquid storage terminals, which fit well with the GrainCorp ports and storage operations and also attract higher transaction multiples.
Watkins is not letting the gloom over Australian food processing stop her expanding into a market dominated by the likes of US giant Cargill.
WHILE the political debate over the National Broadband Network plays out, Telstra has planted its foot on the accelerator to fast-forward the rollout of its 4G wireless network.
This will cover two-thirds of the population within the next two months, delivering high-speed broadband much faster than the NBN.
Two points should be noted. First, as all involved acknowledge, wireless is a complementary technology and the more it is used the more you need an efficient fixed-line network. Second, the naysayers who worried that Telstra was being restricted in promoting wireless while collecting about $18 billion in cash from the NBN were clearly wrong.
Telstra says it can't denigrate the NBN but is free to promote wireless, which it is doing with its ears pinned back.
Malcolm Turnbull was in Drouin in Victoria yesterday, supporting the work of private contractor Opticomm in rolling out fibre to a new housing estate.
His aim was to question why the government changed the rules to effectively provide NBN to new housing estates free of charge, as a sort of lender of last resort.
This means the slow NBN rollout at least temporarily delays access. There's no issue here because the government allows greenfield estate competition, so the issue is at what price Opticomm is rolling out its service.
Greenfield rollouts work where they can connect efficiently to the existing network, which means they rely on the national network.
But the changes won't come into effect until 2015, by which time who knows what will be influencing stock prices.
It says something about the fragile market sentiment when yet another change in government policy, which won't have any impact for three years, causes a bounce in prices.
Stock traders are normally attacked for being too short-term in their thinking, so this was quite a form reversal.
The move also comes with more restrictions on what projects can be used to gain credits.
The big negative, of course, is the potential hole in future federal budgets, given the government has already handed out the cash to consumers and business to spend before gaining any increased revenue. That revenue will now obviously be less.
Politically, some heat has been taken out of the debate for future governments because if Europe and the market are setting the prices, business lobbyists will have their hands tied.
ALISON Watkins tried a company-transforming acquisition in merging with AWB when she first took the reins at GrainCorp just over two years ago.
Yesterday's $472 million expansion through the creation of an integrated oils business won't have quite the same impact but shows commendable vision.
There are some initial question marks over the price paid for the biggest chunk, the $302m Gardner Smith purchase, which came in at 9.2 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
Gardner Smith is a family-owned grain-crushing company and will take about $116m worth of stock -- about 5 per cent of the expanded company -- as part of the deal.
The second leg was the $170m purchase of the Goodman Fielder oil business at 5.5 times earnings, paid in part by a $159m rights issue underwritten by Credit Suisse.
GrainCorp's stock has ridden the rise in US wheat prices, which have increased from $US6.10 to $US8.60 a pound since June.
GrainCorp recently hit a 52-week high of $10.05 a share ahead of a deal at $9.85 a share.
Watkins rejects the concerns over the price paid, saying she is creating a new business under the old mantra of integrating supply, from the paddock to the plate.
In good years about 55 per cent of Gardner Smith's earnings come from its liquid storage terminals, which fit well with the GrainCorp ports and storage operations and also attract higher transaction multiples.
Watkins is not letting the gloom over Australian food processing stop her expanding into a market dominated by the likes of US giant Cargill.
WHILE the political debate over the National Broadband Network plays out, Telstra has planted its foot on the accelerator to fast-forward the rollout of its 4G wireless network.
This will cover two-thirds of the population within the next two months, delivering high-speed broadband much faster than the NBN.
Two points should be noted. First, as all involved acknowledge, wireless is a complementary technology and the more it is used the more you need an efficient fixed-line network. Second, the naysayers who worried that Telstra was being restricted in promoting wireless while collecting about $18 billion in cash from the NBN were clearly wrong.
Telstra says it can't denigrate the NBN but is free to promote wireless, which it is doing with its ears pinned back.
Malcolm Turnbull was in Drouin in Victoria yesterday, supporting the work of private contractor Opticomm in rolling out fibre to a new housing estate.
His aim was to question why the government changed the rules to effectively provide NBN to new housing estates free of charge, as a sort of lender of last resort.
This means the slow NBN rollout at least temporarily delays access. There's no issue here because the government allows greenfield estate competition, so the issue is at what price Opticomm is rolling out its service.
Greenfield rollouts work where they can connect efficiently to the existing network, which means they rely on the national network.
Monday, August 27, 2012
US Universities' Focus on Profit
Imagine a business that rakes in billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, but provides its customers with a defective product that fails for more than half of them--though that track record hasn't stopped the business owners from enjoying ever-increasing profits.
Sounds like the parasites of Wall Street or the insurance industry, doesn't it?
But according to a U.S. Senate report, the same is true of a growing number of colleges and universities--the expanding sector of higher education that is run for profit.
The Senate report is a shocking exposé of a new growth industry that turns out to be another scheme for the 1 percent to make money at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in society.
But anyone who investigates the for-profit college scam will be struck by something else, too--the abuses of College Inc. are extreme examples of a trend toward privatization and business-like operations throughout all of higher education, which threaten to undermine the system as a whole.
For-profit colleges are capturing a greater share of students nationwide. Over the past 10 years, the for-profit higher education industry has tripled in size, with fall enrollment growing to more than 2.4 million in 2010. That increase is seven and a half times faster than the 28.8 percent increase in enrollment at public colleges, according to the College Board.
This is despite the fact that for-profit colleges are more expensive than even the most prestigious public institutions. Bachelor's degrees average $62,702 at for-profit institutions, versus $52,522 at flagship state public universities. The average associate degree at a for-profit college costs $34,988, more than four times the $8,313 at the average public community college. Certificate programs at for-profit colleges average $19,806, compared with $4,249 at community colleges.
Although the profits generated by for-profit colleges end up in private hands, the vast majority of revenues come from the government, in the form of federal grants and federally guaranteed student loans. According to the Harkin report, the Apollo Group, the largest of the for-profit education companies and operator of the infamous University of Phoenix, "$3.1 billion in federal student aid, in addition to $46 million in military education benefits...86.8 percent of the company's revenue, and $925 million of their profit, is attributed to federal taxpayer sources."
At the same time that states, pleading poverty, are slashing public university budgets and the federal government now charges interest on loans to graduate students while they're in school, more than $30 billion are funneled each year to for-profit colleges from the federal government, in the form of grants and loans.
Despite paying (and borrowing) significantly more, students at for-profit schools are less likely than their counterparts at public four-year institutions to leave school with a degree. Of the nearly half a million students who enrolled in an associate degree program in 2008-09, the report found that nearly two-thirds (62.9 percent) had dropped out by the middle of 2010. Over half (54.3 percent) left their bachelor's degree programs by that point.
And studies show the benefits of a degree from a for-profit school are likely negligible. A study published in June by two Boston University economists found that while those who get degrees from public or private non-profit colleges and universities experience significant benefits, including higher wages and lower unemployment, students who attended for-profit universities don't. As Time magazine reported:
The [Boston University] researchers found that six years after they enter college, for-profit students are more likely to be unemployed--and to be unemployed for periods longer than three months. And, further, if they are able to find a job, students who attend for-profits make, on average, between $1,800 and $2,000 less annually than their peers who attended other institutions.
This isn't surprising given how little of their inflated tuition prices for-profit colleges actually spend on students' educations. The Senate report estimates average per-student spending at for-profit colleges to be just over $2,000 in 2009--and some spend much less.
For example, the Apollo Group, which "educated" over 500,000 students in 2010, spent just $892 per student on instruction. According to its own estimates--which the bosses at the University of Phoenix reserve the right to change at any time--a bachelor's of arts degree at the school will likely cost over $10,000 per year, while a bachelor's of science degree runs nearly $15,000 annually, well over 10 times the amount spent on teaching.
Far from being the most efficient way to deliver a service, as proponents of free enterprise like to claim, market-based, for-profit approaches to higher education result in massive waste. Instead of student instruction, the bulk of tuition money goes to marketing to bring in new students, multimillion-dollar salaries for top executives, lobbying politicians and, last but certainly not least, profits.
Sounds like the parasites of Wall Street or the insurance industry, doesn't it?
But according to a U.S. Senate report, the same is true of a growing number of colleges and universities--the expanding sector of higher education that is run for profit.
The Senate report is a shocking exposé of a new growth industry that turns out to be another scheme for the 1 percent to make money at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in society.
But anyone who investigates the for-profit college scam will be struck by something else, too--the abuses of College Inc. are extreme examples of a trend toward privatization and business-like operations throughout all of higher education, which threaten to undermine the system as a whole.
For-profit colleges are capturing a greater share of students nationwide. Over the past 10 years, the for-profit higher education industry has tripled in size, with fall enrollment growing to more than 2.4 million in 2010. That increase is seven and a half times faster than the 28.8 percent increase in enrollment at public colleges, according to the College Board.
This is despite the fact that for-profit colleges are more expensive than even the most prestigious public institutions. Bachelor's degrees average $62,702 at for-profit institutions, versus $52,522 at flagship state public universities. The average associate degree at a for-profit college costs $34,988, more than four times the $8,313 at the average public community college. Certificate programs at for-profit colleges average $19,806, compared with $4,249 at community colleges.
Although the profits generated by for-profit colleges end up in private hands, the vast majority of revenues come from the government, in the form of federal grants and federally guaranteed student loans. According to the Harkin report, the Apollo Group, the largest of the for-profit education companies and operator of the infamous University of Phoenix, "$3.1 billion in federal student aid, in addition to $46 million in military education benefits...86.8 percent of the company's revenue, and $925 million of their profit, is attributed to federal taxpayer sources."
At the same time that states, pleading poverty, are slashing public university budgets and the federal government now charges interest on loans to graduate students while they're in school, more than $30 billion are funneled each year to for-profit colleges from the federal government, in the form of grants and loans.
Despite paying (and borrowing) significantly more, students at for-profit schools are less likely than their counterparts at public four-year institutions to leave school with a degree. Of the nearly half a million students who enrolled in an associate degree program in 2008-09, the report found that nearly two-thirds (62.9 percent) had dropped out by the middle of 2010. Over half (54.3 percent) left their bachelor's degree programs by that point.
And studies show the benefits of a degree from a for-profit school are likely negligible. A study published in June by two Boston University economists found that while those who get degrees from public or private non-profit colleges and universities experience significant benefits, including higher wages and lower unemployment, students who attended for-profit universities don't. As Time magazine reported:
The [Boston University] researchers found that six years after they enter college, for-profit students are more likely to be unemployed--and to be unemployed for periods longer than three months. And, further, if they are able to find a job, students who attend for-profits make, on average, between $1,800 and $2,000 less annually than their peers who attended other institutions.
This isn't surprising given how little of their inflated tuition prices for-profit colleges actually spend on students' educations. The Senate report estimates average per-student spending at for-profit colleges to be just over $2,000 in 2009--and some spend much less.
For example, the Apollo Group, which "educated" over 500,000 students in 2010, spent just $892 per student on instruction. According to its own estimates--which the bosses at the University of Phoenix reserve the right to change at any time--a bachelor's of arts degree at the school will likely cost over $10,000 per year, while a bachelor's of science degree runs nearly $15,000 annually, well over 10 times the amount spent on teaching.
Far from being the most efficient way to deliver a service, as proponents of free enterprise like to claim, market-based, for-profit approaches to higher education result in massive waste. Instead of student instruction, the bulk of tuition money goes to marketing to bring in new students, multimillion-dollar salaries for top executives, lobbying politicians and, last but certainly not least, profits.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Nigerian 'health tourist' flew to UK for caesarean bearing on NHS
The 'health tourist' travelled added than 3,000 afar from her home country to the cash-strapped Wythenshawe Hospital for an emergency caesarean.
It is accepted the woman, who was accomplished at top US university Harvard, flew to Manchester Airport and went anon to the hospital area she told doctors she appropriate the action afterwards a browse in Nigeria appear complications in her pregnancy.
Health abbot Simon Burns said the NHS is not there to 'serve the bloom needs of the globe' and said the government is reviewing the arrangement to anticipate inappropriate admission to NHS resources.
Shadow bloom secretary Andy Burnham, the MP for adjacent Leigh, aswell alleged for an analysis into the case.
Nationally the NHS treats bags of patients from alfresco the European Union who are not advantaged to chargeless affliction and in 2010/11 NHs hospitals answerable beyond visitors over 23m for analysis and wrote off beneath 7m of debts.
Hospitals generally attempt to compensate their costs and seek advice from Embassies. They can acquaint Border Agency which can block the acknowledgment of any bloom day-tripper who leaves bills of added than 1,000 unpaid.
Foreign patients are answerable the aforementioned accepted collapsed amount for anniversary analysis they accept as the NHS would pay.
The woman accustomed at the hospital and told agents that she had undergone an ultrasound browse which appear complications and she was brash to accept a caesarean.
It is accepted she fabricated the adventure because she believed she would be in safer easily in Britain.
Nigeria offers chargeless maternology affliction but it is of poor superior and there is a top bloodshed amount area a woman has a one in 13 adventitious of dying during abundance or childbirth, according to statistics.
A hospital antecedent labelled her a 'health tourist' and said she had appropriate all-inclusive resources, including midwives, two urology consultants, a radiology consultant, two obstetric consultants and two anaesthetists in the supply room.
Mother and babyish recovered able-bodied and were absolved this week, it is understood. She is anticipation to accept aback alternate to Nigeria.
The hospital will now try to bill the woman for her analysis but has no admiral to force her to pay or to anticipate her abrogation the country.
The hospital assurance has apparent a abiding admission in the amount of non-EU patients it has advised recently, up from 78 in 2008/9 to 133 endure year.
A hospital agent said: "At Wythenshawe, as with all hospital trusts beyond the UK, the affliction we bear to all patients is chargeless at the point of delivery.
"If a accommodating is a non-UK citizen and analysis is advised all-important or burning again analysis would never be withheld.
"In commendations to accomplishment costs from non-UK association who use our services, we attach to guidelines issued by the Department of Health.
"As anon as a non-UK accommodating arrives our accounts aggregation are alerted and the alone is fabricated aware, area applicable, of the costs they are accountable for as categorical in the Department of Health's civic tariff.
"Every accomplishment is again fabricated to accompany any monies owed."
A hospital antecedent said Wythenshawe is targeted by bloom tourists because of its abutting adjacency to the airport just over two afar away.
Last year, the government appear a crackdown on 'health tourism' and guidelines on how to barrier the convenance were appear by the Department of Health.
It said hospitals could bill adopted patients for their affliction but the debts of humans who leave the country afterwards getting advised abide about absurd to recover.
Mr Burns said: "We won't abide corruption of our civic bloom service. The NHS has a assignment to anyone whose activity or abiding bloom is at actual accident but it is not there to serve the bloom needs of the globe.
"There are absolute rules and procedures to allegation visitors for hospital analysis but we apperceive that the arrangement needs to be improved.
"That is why we are currently reviewing those arrange to anticipate inappropriate chargeless admission to the NHS and accommodate a fairer added counterbalanced system. Hospitals accept a acknowledged assignment to balance any accuse fabricated to beyond patients."
Mr Burnham said: "We charge a abounding analysis into the affairs and how the hospital has been larboard in this position.
"There are bright rules about bloom tourism and the NHS have to be able to balance its costs."
Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, added: "This is artlessly a greenhorn allotment to finer abduct off the NHS and the government should use whatever admiral it has to get the money back."
It is accepted the woman, who was accomplished at top US university Harvard, flew to Manchester Airport and went anon to the hospital area she told doctors she appropriate the action afterwards a browse in Nigeria appear complications in her pregnancy.
Health abbot Simon Burns said the NHS is not there to 'serve the bloom needs of the globe' and said the government is reviewing the arrangement to anticipate inappropriate admission to NHS resources.
Shadow bloom secretary Andy Burnham, the MP for adjacent Leigh, aswell alleged for an analysis into the case.
Nationally the NHS treats bags of patients from alfresco the European Union who are not advantaged to chargeless affliction and in 2010/11 NHs hospitals answerable beyond visitors over 23m for analysis and wrote off beneath 7m of debts.
Hospitals generally attempt to compensate their costs and seek advice from Embassies. They can acquaint Border Agency which can block the acknowledgment of any bloom day-tripper who leaves bills of added than 1,000 unpaid.
Foreign patients are answerable the aforementioned accepted collapsed amount for anniversary analysis they accept as the NHS would pay.
The woman accustomed at the hospital and told agents that she had undergone an ultrasound browse which appear complications and she was brash to accept a caesarean.
It is accepted she fabricated the adventure because she believed she would be in safer easily in Britain.
Nigeria offers chargeless maternology affliction but it is of poor superior and there is a top bloodshed amount area a woman has a one in 13 adventitious of dying during abundance or childbirth, according to statistics.
A hospital antecedent labelled her a 'health tourist' and said she had appropriate all-inclusive resources, including midwives, two urology consultants, a radiology consultant, two obstetric consultants and two anaesthetists in the supply room.
Mother and babyish recovered able-bodied and were absolved this week, it is understood. She is anticipation to accept aback alternate to Nigeria.
The hospital will now try to bill the woman for her analysis but has no admiral to force her to pay or to anticipate her abrogation the country.
The hospital assurance has apparent a abiding admission in the amount of non-EU patients it has advised recently, up from 78 in 2008/9 to 133 endure year.
A hospital agent said: "At Wythenshawe, as with all hospital trusts beyond the UK, the affliction we bear to all patients is chargeless at the point of delivery.
"If a accommodating is a non-UK citizen and analysis is advised all-important or burning again analysis would never be withheld.
"In commendations to accomplishment costs from non-UK association who use our services, we attach to guidelines issued by the Department of Health.
"As anon as a non-UK accommodating arrives our accounts aggregation are alerted and the alone is fabricated aware, area applicable, of the costs they are accountable for as categorical in the Department of Health's civic tariff.
"Every accomplishment is again fabricated to accompany any monies owed."
A hospital antecedent said Wythenshawe is targeted by bloom tourists because of its abutting adjacency to the airport just over two afar away.
Last year, the government appear a crackdown on 'health tourism' and guidelines on how to barrier the convenance were appear by the Department of Health.
It said hospitals could bill adopted patients for their affliction but the debts of humans who leave the country afterwards getting advised abide about absurd to recover.
Mr Burns said: "We won't abide corruption of our civic bloom service. The NHS has a assignment to anyone whose activity or abiding bloom is at actual accident but it is not there to serve the bloom needs of the globe.
"There are absolute rules and procedures to allegation visitors for hospital analysis but we apperceive that the arrangement needs to be improved.
"That is why we are currently reviewing those arrange to anticipate inappropriate chargeless admission to the NHS and accommodate a fairer added counterbalanced system. Hospitals accept a acknowledged assignment to balance any accuse fabricated to beyond patients."
Mr Burnham said: "We charge a abounding analysis into the affairs and how the hospital has been larboard in this position.
"There are bright rules about bloom tourism and the NHS have to be able to balance its costs."
Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, added: "This is artlessly a greenhorn allotment to finer abduct off the NHS and the government should use whatever admiral it has to get the money back."
Monday, August 20, 2012
Wife of Chinese politician gets suspended death sentence
The wife of a disgraced Chinese politician was given a suspended death sentence Monday after confessing to killing a British businessman by poisoning him with cyanide in a case that rocked the country's top political leadership.
A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison after two years.
Sentenced along with Gu Kailai was a family aide who was given nine years' imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Neil Heywood, a former family associate, Hefei Intermediate People's Court official Tang Yigan told reporters.
Four policemen accused of covering up the crime were given sentences from five to 11 years.
The sentencing closes one chapter of China's biggest political crisis in two decades, but also leaves open questions over the fate of Gu's husband, Bo Xilai, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing for unspecified violations.
Bo's dismissal and his wife's murder trial come at a sensitive time in China, with party leaders handing over power soon to a younger generation. At one time Bo was considered a candidate for a top position.
State media say Gu, 53, confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held in this eastern China city on Aug. 9. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son.
Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family who attended the sentencing, said he had to discuss the verdict with the family and did not know if they would lodge an appeal.
"We respect the court's ruling today," he said.
Tang said Gu and the family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, told the court they would not appeal.
State broadcaster CCTV showed Gu dressed in a white blouse and black pants suit briefly addressing the court from inside the dock surrounded by waist-high wooden columns.
"This verdict is just. It shows special respect for the law, reality and life," Gu said in calm, measured phrases.
Tang said the court considered Gu's testimony against others, her confession and repentance, and her psychological impairment as mitigating factors in sentencing. But he said it rejected claims that Heywood's threats had prompted the crime, saying there was no evidence he intended to make good on them.
During Gu's trail, the court was told she had suffered from chronic insomnia, anxiety and depression and paranoia in the past, and that she had been dependent on medication, but it found that she was willfully carried out the murder.
An amendment to China's criminal law in 2011 said that criminals with life sentences who show proper conduct can have their life sentences cut to 25 years in jail.
For their part in the cover-up, former deputy Chongqing police chief Guo Weiguo was sentenced to 11 years, leading officer Li Yang was given 11, and officers Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi were given five years each.
Former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, whose February flight to a U.S. consulate revealed suspicions that Heywood had been murdered, is expected to go on trial soon. Gu allegedly told Wang about her crime, but it isn't known if he'll be charged in relation to the murder.
Security was tight outside the court on Monday, with police officers standing guard around the building and at least a half dozen SWAT police vans parked on each corner.
Any ruling in the Gu case would have been politically delicate, and Chinese leaders may have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear that a more severe penalty might stir outrage or make Gu look like a scapegoat for her husband's misdeeds, political and legal analysts say.
Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the verdict was fair.
"My sense is that the Chinese public, including the legal profession, the majority will think it is well deserved," he said.
Li said the ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely.
"If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat," he said.
The British Embassy, which had consular officials attend the trial, issued a statement Monday saying it welcomed the fact China had tried those it had identified as responsible.
The statement said Britain had told China it "wanted to see the trials in this case conform to international human rights standards and for the death penalty not to be applied."
Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Lawyers and political analysts said politics appeared to weigh heavily on the verdict.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said the outcome ignored legal strictures that would have required the death penalty, given that Gu had admitted to committing premeditated murder.
"Although I welcome this verdict, it doesn't actually stand up from a legal standpoint," Pu said.
Peking University law professor He Weifang said political considerations were clearly behind the relative leniency shown to Gu.
"If the murderer was an ordinary person who killed someone, not to mention killing a foreigner, the criminal would be sentenced to immediate execution," He said.
Bo was not called as a witness in the Gu trial and neither the verdict nor the evidence presented made any mention of him. The charges against Gu and Zhang also scrupulously avoided any mention of corruption or abuse of power to shield to the party's image, said Dali Yang of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing.
A suspended sentence is usually commuted to life in prison after two years.
Sentenced along with Gu Kailai was a family aide who was given nine years' imprisonment for his involvement in the murder of Neil Heywood, a former family associate, Hefei Intermediate People's Court official Tang Yigan told reporters.
Four policemen accused of covering up the crime were given sentences from five to 11 years.
The sentencing closes one chapter of China's biggest political crisis in two decades, but also leaves open questions over the fate of Gu's husband, Bo Xilai, who was dismissed in March as the powerful Communist Party boss of the major city of Chongqing for unspecified violations.
Bo's dismissal and his wife's murder trial come at a sensitive time in China, with party leaders handing over power soon to a younger generation. At one time Bo was considered a candidate for a top position.
State media say Gu, 53, confessed to intentional homicide at a one-day trial held in this eastern China city on Aug. 9. The media reports — the court has been closed to international media — say she and Heywood had a dispute over money and Heywood allegedly threatened her son.
Gu was accused of luring the victim to a Chongqing hotel, getting him drunk and then pouring cyanide into his mouth.
He Zhengsheng, a lawyer for the Heywood family who attended the sentencing, said he had to discuss the verdict with the family and did not know if they would lodge an appeal.
"We respect the court's ruling today," he said.
Tang said Gu and the family aide, Zhang Xiaojun, told the court they would not appeal.
State broadcaster CCTV showed Gu dressed in a white blouse and black pants suit briefly addressing the court from inside the dock surrounded by waist-high wooden columns.
"This verdict is just. It shows special respect for the law, reality and life," Gu said in calm, measured phrases.
Tang said the court considered Gu's testimony against others, her confession and repentance, and her psychological impairment as mitigating factors in sentencing. But he said it rejected claims that Heywood's threats had prompted the crime, saying there was no evidence he intended to make good on them.
During Gu's trail, the court was told she had suffered from chronic insomnia, anxiety and depression and paranoia in the past, and that she had been dependent on medication, but it found that she was willfully carried out the murder.
An amendment to China's criminal law in 2011 said that criminals with life sentences who show proper conduct can have their life sentences cut to 25 years in jail.
For their part in the cover-up, former deputy Chongqing police chief Guo Weiguo was sentenced to 11 years, leading officer Li Yang was given 11, and officers Wang Pengfei and Wang Zhi were given five years each.
Former Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun, whose February flight to a U.S. consulate revealed suspicions that Heywood had been murdered, is expected to go on trial soon. Gu allegedly told Wang about her crime, but it isn't known if he'll be charged in relation to the murder.
Security was tight outside the court on Monday, with police officers standing guard around the building and at least a half dozen SWAT police vans parked on each corner.
Any ruling in the Gu case would have been politically delicate, and Chinese leaders may have decided to impose a lengthy prison term instead of death for fear that a more severe penalty might stir outrage or make Gu look like a scapegoat for her husband's misdeeds, political and legal analysts say.
Cheng Li, an expert in Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said the verdict was fair.
"My sense is that the Chinese public, including the legal profession, the majority will think it is well deserved," he said.
Li said the ruling against Gu will set expectations for Bo to be dealt with severely.
"If Bo does not get put through the legal process in the next few months, Gu will be seen as a scapegoat," he said.
The British Embassy, which had consular officials attend the trial, issued a statement Monday saying it welcomed the fact China had tried those it had identified as responsible.
The statement said Britain had told China it "wanted to see the trials in this case conform to international human rights standards and for the death penalty not to be applied."
Gu's arrest and the ouster of her husband sparked the biggest political turbulence in China since the bloody crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Lawyers and political analysts said politics appeared to weigh heavily on the verdict.
Beijing-based rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang said the outcome ignored legal strictures that would have required the death penalty, given that Gu had admitted to committing premeditated murder.
"Although I welcome this verdict, it doesn't actually stand up from a legal standpoint," Pu said.
Peking University law professor He Weifang said political considerations were clearly behind the relative leniency shown to Gu.
"If the murderer was an ordinary person who killed someone, not to mention killing a foreigner, the criminal would be sentenced to immediate execution," He said.
Bo was not called as a witness in the Gu trial and neither the verdict nor the evidence presented made any mention of him. The charges against Gu and Zhang also scrupulously avoided any mention of corruption or abuse of power to shield to the party's image, said Dali Yang of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Back to class, with laptops in duke
Every adolescent in Manitoba schools will accept a laptop or book on his or her board aural the next few years, adept academy administrator Brian O'Leary predicts -- but it has to be a akin arena acreage with adequate accessories for everyone.
And the accessible academy arrangement has to accommodate those accessories for kids, he said.
"It's the way of the future. The catechism is the aisle we chase to get there," said O'Leary, administrator of Seven Oaks Academy Division. "In the next few years, every kid will accept a laptop in his hands."
Provincial Apprenticeship Department admiral are accessible to allocution with the public-school educators about the role of cyberbanking accessories in classrooms, including funding, agent apprenticeship abbot Gerald Farthing said Wednesday, but anybody aboriginal needs to be bright on how abundant laptops advice acceptance learn.
"We charge to yield a abutting attending at that. How can we appearance or apperceive that that contributes to learning?" he said.
O'Leary acclaimed Louis Riel Academy Analysis for a apprentice affairs that now requires every apprentice in grades 9 and 10 at Dakota Collegiate to accept a laptop. But, he cautioned, "The disinterestedness affair has to be addressed."
It's not adequate if "someone's got a auto of a computer and someone's got a MacBook Pro," he said.
Relying on alfresco donors won't cut it system-wide, nor can the accessible academy arrangement apprehend lower-income parents to buy laptops or tablets, even admitting some are $200, and the amount continues to drop, O'Leary said.
"This is a absolute concern," Farthing said. "Equity has to do with admission to resources. People allocution about the agenda bisect -- we don't wish to accord to that, we wish to attenuated that divide," the agent abbot said.
O'Leary said every administration in North America that's experimenting with authoritative laptops binding in chic has provided them to students.
"The accompaniment of Maine provides a laptop to every Grade 7 student," and Alberta has a pilot activity in 15 of its schools, O'Leary said.
"There are some account tradeoffs you can make," he said.
If a academy is spending $100,000 retrofitting old computers or $80 for anniversary archetype of a new textbook, or putting money into a academy computer room, that's money that could buy alone cyberbanking devices, he said.
O'Leary said iPads could action added options than laptops, and admitting that would accomplish it difficult for schools to block admission to some websites as capacity do now on tabletop academy computers, "Are we bigger to block, or to brainwash kids about the able usage?" he asked.
Manitoba Teachers' Society admiral Paul Olson said he's heard about problems at Dakota, about abstruse headaches from application a array of accessories in one classroom. "The abecedary ends up getting the troubleshooter," he said.
Theoretically, it's a adequate abstraction for learning, said Olson, but it depends on how far a analysis goes in administering whether laptops will be acclimated at all times, or if added methods, including pens and paper, could aswell be used.
"The abecedary is the able in the school. The abecedary should exercise freedom to adjudge what the best apparatus is to use and when," he said.
Said Farthing: "I accede with Paul on that. Teachers acutely charge to be allotment of that. The abecedary is the being on site."
Financially and socially, Olson said, "They accomplish me a little anxious. Some families will acquisition it onerous. There's consistently been the kid who has a box with 64 crayons and the kid who has a box with eight crayons -- this takes it to a accomplished altered level."
Tory apprenticeship analyzer Cameron Friesen said technology has an important role in learning, but it's not adapted to apprehend parents to pay for something that big-ticket and again accomplish it mandatory. "If we're all-embracing technology in the classroom, we've got to accommodate it," Friesen said.
The Amusing Planning Council of Winnipeg opposes any plan that armament parents to abide a agency analysis or acknowledge themselves clumsy to allow something for their kids, said action analyst Marianne Cerilli.
Already, said Cerilli, schools are affective to cyberbanking assignments, communicating with parents by email, and online newsletters, all of which accept a ancestors has a home computer.
Schools have to be accurate about the banking and amusing pressures imposed on families for big-ticket equipment, University of Manitoba ancestors economics Prof. Karen Duncan said.
If one ancestors can allow a advanced model, and a classmate's ancestors needs to await on a donated, earlier model, "There's absolutely abeyant for a amusing stigma a part of students," Duncan said.
And the accessible academy arrangement has to accommodate those accessories for kids, he said.
"It's the way of the future. The catechism is the aisle we chase to get there," said O'Leary, administrator of Seven Oaks Academy Division. "In the next few years, every kid will accept a laptop in his hands."
Provincial Apprenticeship Department admiral are accessible to allocution with the public-school educators about the role of cyberbanking accessories in classrooms, including funding, agent apprenticeship abbot Gerald Farthing said Wednesday, but anybody aboriginal needs to be bright on how abundant laptops advice acceptance learn.
"We charge to yield a abutting attending at that. How can we appearance or apperceive that that contributes to learning?" he said.
O'Leary acclaimed Louis Riel Academy Analysis for a apprentice affairs that now requires every apprentice in grades 9 and 10 at Dakota Collegiate to accept a laptop. But, he cautioned, "The disinterestedness affair has to be addressed."
It's not adequate if "someone's got a auto of a computer and someone's got a MacBook Pro," he said.
Relying on alfresco donors won't cut it system-wide, nor can the accessible academy arrangement apprehend lower-income parents to buy laptops or tablets, even admitting some are $200, and the amount continues to drop, O'Leary said.
"This is a absolute concern," Farthing said. "Equity has to do with admission to resources. People allocution about the agenda bisect -- we don't wish to accord to that, we wish to attenuated that divide," the agent abbot said.
O'Leary said every administration in North America that's experimenting with authoritative laptops binding in chic has provided them to students.
"The accompaniment of Maine provides a laptop to every Grade 7 student," and Alberta has a pilot activity in 15 of its schools, O'Leary said.
"There are some account tradeoffs you can make," he said.
If a academy is spending $100,000 retrofitting old computers or $80 for anniversary archetype of a new textbook, or putting money into a academy computer room, that's money that could buy alone cyberbanking devices, he said.
O'Leary said iPads could action added options than laptops, and admitting that would accomplish it difficult for schools to block admission to some websites as capacity do now on tabletop academy computers, "Are we bigger to block, or to brainwash kids about the able usage?" he asked.
Manitoba Teachers' Society admiral Paul Olson said he's heard about problems at Dakota, about abstruse headaches from application a array of accessories in one classroom. "The abecedary ends up getting the troubleshooter," he said.
Theoretically, it's a adequate abstraction for learning, said Olson, but it depends on how far a analysis goes in administering whether laptops will be acclimated at all times, or if added methods, including pens and paper, could aswell be used.
"The abecedary is the able in the school. The abecedary should exercise freedom to adjudge what the best apparatus is to use and when," he said.
Said Farthing: "I accede with Paul on that. Teachers acutely charge to be allotment of that. The abecedary is the being on site."
Financially and socially, Olson said, "They accomplish me a little anxious. Some families will acquisition it onerous. There's consistently been the kid who has a box with 64 crayons and the kid who has a box with eight crayons -- this takes it to a accomplished altered level."
Tory apprenticeship analyzer Cameron Friesen said technology has an important role in learning, but it's not adapted to apprehend parents to pay for something that big-ticket and again accomplish it mandatory. "If we're all-embracing technology in the classroom, we've got to accommodate it," Friesen said.
The Amusing Planning Council of Winnipeg opposes any plan that armament parents to abide a agency analysis or acknowledge themselves clumsy to allow something for their kids, said action analyst Marianne Cerilli.
Already, said Cerilli, schools are affective to cyberbanking assignments, communicating with parents by email, and online newsletters, all of which accept a ancestors has a home computer.
Schools have to be accurate about the banking and amusing pressures imposed on families for big-ticket equipment, University of Manitoba ancestors economics Prof. Karen Duncan said.
If one ancestors can allow a advanced model, and a classmate's ancestors needs to await on a donated, earlier model, "There's absolutely abeyant for a amusing stigma a part of students," Duncan said.
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
Mosaics, paints, and pantaloons
Paula MacLeod was putting the finishing touches endure anniversary on “Lady Carolina Blooo,” one of about 80 Cow Parade creations that the accessible will get to see Saturday at Golden Belt.
About 100 of the corrective and active fiberglass beasts will be on appearance in accessible spaces in Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh through December. They will be auctioned in January to account the N.C. Children’s Hospital in Chapel Hill.
MacLeod, a circuitous artist, created her cow application pieces of ceramics donated by the Vietri company, forth with bottle and porcelain, all of which characterize scenes on the UNC campus. She acclimated ceramics for UNC logos and images like the Old Well, to accord the plan some blush variety, and bottle for the horns. One claiming in accomplishing mosaics was ensuring the rock pieces adhered to the contours. MacLeod acicular to one of the legs as a abode area she had to advance the adhesive to accomplish the mosaics stick to the surface.
Friday, she was abutting by her bedmate Rodney Scurlock and adolescent circuitous artisan Alicia Ortiz, who, with accomplished accoutrement in hand, were allowance to abolish the balance adhesive from “Lady Carolina Blooo,” afore MacLeod activated a water-protective adhesive on the cow.
Ortiz alleged Lady “the a lot of worked-on cow” of those on appearance at the flat at Golden Belt, area abounding artists accept been alive on their creations aback June. MacLeod said she had been alive on the cow about 40 days, with anniversary affair abiding about four hours.
She was a part of several artists aggravating to accomplishment their plan to acquiesce it time to dry afore Saturday’s accessible actualization of the cows. Artisan Steven Ray Miller shouted “Finito!” as he put the endure band of adorn on his “Heartstanding Cow,” which he renamed “Elsie” as his plan progressed. Miller corrective 701 hearts with altered colors. He had two rules for himself: Every apparent of the cow’s physique would accept a heart, and no blush would anytime blow itself. He acclimated acrylic acrylic “right out of the tube. I accept 400 dollars account of paint” in the cow, Miller said.
Mary Lamb was active finishing three cows. One represented N.C. StateUniversity, complete with wolf paws and a adhesive lath she fabricated application fiberglass and Bondo hardening solution. Her sister Barbara Perry of Charlotte was allowance her accomplishment a cow sponsored by KBR Construction Group, and Perry was agreement photographs of KBR projects on the ancillary of the cow.
Lamb aswell was alive on “Sir Walter Cowleigh,” her aboriginal design, and was accepting accessible to accomplish pantaloons for Sir Walter.
She has been alive on all three beasts for about two months, and has logged “between two and three hundred hours, and I’ll be traveling appropriate down to the wire,” Lamb said. She has acclimated four gallons of Bondo and two gallons of fiberglass adhesive to accomplish her designs.
Grace Li Wang was advancing to put adhesive and adorn on her creation, which she calls “The Gratitude Cow.” She corrective her cow with ablaze colors depicting the sun, sea and sky. “My affair deals with the interconnectedness of the acreage and the sky and the sea,” she said. She based her painting on two balladry she has written, “Art With a Blow of Grace” and “Nature: Radiant Impressions of the Soul.”
She had a plan for her architecture but her painting “kept alteration and alteration and evolving the accomplished time,” Wang said. “This apparently has many, abounding layers of paint,” because she has revised her plan forth the way, she said. “It’s been a actual acute process.”
Matt O’Neal, Julian Perpignano and Nick DiMucci of Burt’s Bees were finishing the cow their aggregation sponsored. They and artisan Julia Colon collaborated on the architecture and work. Colon fabricated a metal carve apery bee’s wings. A fiberglass honey adjust is absorbed to one of the horns. They aswell placed a annual pot on the cow’s back. Eventually it will accept absolute flowers buried in it, and the baptize will cesspool through the cow’s udders.
The Cow Parade is a aggregate accessible art activity and fundraiser for non-profit groups. It began in 1998 in Zurich, Switzerland, and has been staged in some 50 cities worldwide.
About 100 of the corrective and active fiberglass beasts will be on appearance in accessible spaces in Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh through December. They will be auctioned in January to account the N.C. Children’s Hospital in Chapel Hill.
MacLeod, a circuitous artist, created her cow application pieces of ceramics donated by the Vietri company, forth with bottle and porcelain, all of which characterize scenes on the UNC campus. She acclimated ceramics for UNC logos and images like the Old Well, to accord the plan some blush variety, and bottle for the horns. One claiming in accomplishing mosaics was ensuring the rock pieces adhered to the contours. MacLeod acicular to one of the legs as a abode area she had to advance the adhesive to accomplish the mosaics stick to the surface.
Friday, she was abutting by her bedmate Rodney Scurlock and adolescent circuitous artisan Alicia Ortiz, who, with accomplished accoutrement in hand, were allowance to abolish the balance adhesive from “Lady Carolina Blooo,” afore MacLeod activated a water-protective adhesive on the cow.
Ortiz alleged Lady “the a lot of worked-on cow” of those on appearance at the flat at Golden Belt, area abounding artists accept been alive on their creations aback June. MacLeod said she had been alive on the cow about 40 days, with anniversary affair abiding about four hours.
She was a part of several artists aggravating to accomplishment their plan to acquiesce it time to dry afore Saturday’s accessible actualization of the cows. Artisan Steven Ray Miller shouted “Finito!” as he put the endure band of adorn on his “Heartstanding Cow,” which he renamed “Elsie” as his plan progressed. Miller corrective 701 hearts with altered colors. He had two rules for himself: Every apparent of the cow’s physique would accept a heart, and no blush would anytime blow itself. He acclimated acrylic acrylic “right out of the tube. I accept 400 dollars account of paint” in the cow, Miller said.
Mary Lamb was active finishing three cows. One represented N.C. StateUniversity, complete with wolf paws and a adhesive lath she fabricated application fiberglass and Bondo hardening solution. Her sister Barbara Perry of Charlotte was allowance her accomplishment a cow sponsored by KBR Construction Group, and Perry was agreement photographs of KBR projects on the ancillary of the cow.
Lamb aswell was alive on “Sir Walter Cowleigh,” her aboriginal design, and was accepting accessible to accomplish pantaloons for Sir Walter.
She has been alive on all three beasts for about two months, and has logged “between two and three hundred hours, and I’ll be traveling appropriate down to the wire,” Lamb said. She has acclimated four gallons of Bondo and two gallons of fiberglass adhesive to accomplish her designs.
Grace Li Wang was advancing to put adhesive and adorn on her creation, which she calls “The Gratitude Cow.” She corrective her cow with ablaze colors depicting the sun, sea and sky. “My affair deals with the interconnectedness of the acreage and the sky and the sea,” she said. She based her painting on two balladry she has written, “Art With a Blow of Grace” and “Nature: Radiant Impressions of the Soul.”
She had a plan for her architecture but her painting “kept alteration and alteration and evolving the accomplished time,” Wang said. “This apparently has many, abounding layers of paint,” because she has revised her plan forth the way, she said. “It’s been a actual acute process.”
Matt O’Neal, Julian Perpignano and Nick DiMucci of Burt’s Bees were finishing the cow their aggregation sponsored. They and artisan Julia Colon collaborated on the architecture and work. Colon fabricated a metal carve apery bee’s wings. A fiberglass honey adjust is absorbed to one of the horns. They aswell placed a annual pot on the cow’s back. Eventually it will accept absolute flowers buried in it, and the baptize will cesspool through the cow’s udders.
The Cow Parade is a aggregate accessible art activity and fundraiser for non-profit groups. It began in 1998 in Zurich, Switzerland, and has been staged in some 50 cities worldwide.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Google Shelving “Search Plus Your World” Service?
A Google initiative designed to personalize search results for members of its social network is no longer being actively pursued by the Mountain View, California-based tech giant, a company representative told The Telegraph on Sunday..
Amit Singhal, the Google official in charge of improving the website’s information retrieval systems, told Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor for the UK newspaper, that the company had found a “better place” for results linked to Google+. The initiative, which was dubbed “Google Plus Your World,” was launched in January and was almost immediately the target of rivals such as Facebook and Twitter, which accused Google of promoting their social network at the expense of others.
Singhal told Barnett that the personalized search results for Google+ “have now settled in a place which were better than when we launched.” He added that the initiative, which drew accusations that Google was promoting its other services through its popular search engine, was “a learning process… we experiment, we learn, we improve — that’s what Google does.”
“Search Plus Your World” was officially unveiled in a January 10 blog post by Singhal.
Three major features comprised the core of the then-fledgling service: personalized results based on an individual’s Google+ posts and photos; the ability to immediately locate the profiles of other Google+ users that you follow or might be interested in following, both in search results and in auto-complete; and Google+ profiles and pages associated with a specific topic or area of interest.
“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box,” Singhal said. “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”
Other social networks wasted little time crying foul, according to The Telegraph. By the end of the month, Twitter senior counsel Alex Macgillivray accused Google of “warping” search engine results and called the “Search Plus Your World” launch date a “bad day for the Internet.” Twitter also teamed up with Facebook and MySpace to launch web browser tool in an attempt to counteract the pro-Google+ initiative, Barnett added.
Despite Singhal’s admission, some experts aren’t anticipating major changes in the service.
“Google has a vested interest in sending users to its relatively young social platform, so we don’t expect to see Google+ pages plummeting to the bottom of search results anytime soon,” Chris Welch of The Verge said. “A few quick searches confirmed as much, with Google+ content still being displayed prominently more often than not. Still, for those finding that Google’s ‘improvements’ aren’t coming at a rapid enough clip, there’s always the option of disabling personalized search altogether.”
Amit Singhal, the Google official in charge of improving the website’s information retrieval systems, told Emma Barnett, Digital Media Editor for the UK newspaper, that the company had found a “better place” for results linked to Google+. The initiative, which was dubbed “Google Plus Your World,” was launched in January and was almost immediately the target of rivals such as Facebook and Twitter, which accused Google of promoting their social network at the expense of others.
Singhal told Barnett that the personalized search results for Google+ “have now settled in a place which were better than when we launched.” He added that the initiative, which drew accusations that Google was promoting its other services through its popular search engine, was “a learning process… we experiment, we learn, we improve — that’s what Google does.”
“Search Plus Your World” was officially unveiled in a January 10 blog post by Singhal.
Three major features comprised the core of the then-fledgling service: personalized results based on an individual’s Google+ posts and photos; the ability to immediately locate the profiles of other Google+ users that you follow or might be interested in following, both in search results and in auto-complete; and Google+ profiles and pages associated with a specific topic or area of interest.
“Search is pretty amazing at finding that one needle in a haystack of billions of webpages, images, videos, news and much more. But clearly, that isn’t enough. You should also be able to find your own stuff on the web, the people you know and things they’ve shared with you, as well as the people you don’t know but might want to… all from one search box,” Singhal said. “We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”
Other social networks wasted little time crying foul, according to The Telegraph. By the end of the month, Twitter senior counsel Alex Macgillivray accused Google of “warping” search engine results and called the “Search Plus Your World” launch date a “bad day for the Internet.” Twitter also teamed up with Facebook and MySpace to launch web browser tool in an attempt to counteract the pro-Google+ initiative, Barnett added.
Despite Singhal’s admission, some experts aren’t anticipating major changes in the service.
“Google has a vested interest in sending users to its relatively young social platform, so we don’t expect to see Google+ pages plummeting to the bottom of search results anytime soon,” Chris Welch of The Verge said. “A few quick searches confirmed as much, with Google+ content still being displayed prominently more often than not. Still, for those finding that Google’s ‘improvements’ aren’t coming at a rapid enough clip, there’s always the option of disabling personalized search altogether.”
Sunday, August 5, 2012
As tax chargeless weekend rolls around
Tracey Wolfson is at a bit of a crossroads. She and her ancestors generally use Alabama’s Tax-Free Weekend as a way to banal up on assorted academy accumulation necessities.
From anchor and pens to new jeans and dresses for her three children, Wolfson hits the food “on a mission” to save wherever she can.
“School arcade is accepting added and added expensive,” says Wolfson, whose accouchement are 6, 9 and 12. “But these are the things they accept to have, so if we can save even a little money, it’s annual the altercation of angry the crowds.”
But this year, the band amid wish and charge has blurred. Wolfson’s 12-year-old son, Zack, want’s an Apple iPad, which he promises to use for added than video games.
“I can use it for academy and homework,” he says after a adumbration of duplicity. “A lot of my accompany accept ‘em and there are a lot of Web sites that I can go to for advice if I charge it … it’s not just for games.”
Wolfson’s wary, mainly because iPads amount upwards of $500 – agreement these Internet-accessible tablets aural the borders of the tax-free guidelines for computers/computer equipment.
“That’s a lot of money,” she says. “And I don’t apperceive if it’s annual it … but I’m still because it because all three of my kids can use it.”
Wolfson isn’t alone. Abounding parents are belief the allowances of such a acquirement as added and added schools aspire to accommodate such technology into their curriculums.
Piedmont City Schools accept set the accepted locally for technology in education. With added than 1,200 acceptance in three schools, the commune is almost baby but in 2010 it began leasing MacBook’s for acceptance in grades fourth-12th to use 24 hours a day. Endure year, a $160,000 admission from the Susie Parker Stringfellow Health Fund of the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama broadcast the affairs to cover computers, iPads and iPod Touch handheld accessories for acceptance in kindergarten – third grade.
Superintendent Matt Akin, has witnessed immediate the amount such technology has if acclimated for a student’s education. And admitting he prefers laptops, Akin sees advantages with iPads.
“Speaking just as a parent, iPads accept so abounding accoutrement and programs and online assets accessible that can annual the acceptance that it can absolutely individualize learning,” Akin says. “There’s no agnosticism that it’s a [more affordable] way to put the ability of ability and admission to ability in your child’s hands.”
A abstraction endure abatement conducted by educators in Auburn, Maine who began instructing 266 kindergarteners application the iPad 2 begin the acceptance denticulate academy on articulacy tests and were added enthused about acquirements than those who don’t.
Last month, Apple ramped up its educational efforts by ablution iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, an e-book conception belvedere agents and abate publishers can use to advance apps. The aggregation aswell broadcast iTunes U for K-12 educators, teaming up with publishing giants McGraw-Hill, Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to action alternate textbooks.
Such advancements are alteration the acceptable abstraction of the classroom and parents and agents akin charge to embrace these changes accustomed that technology has become engrained in the lives of their students, says Lisa Amerson, technology administrator for the Calhoun County Academy District.
“We accept to not be abashed to accede all reasonable accoutrement for educating our children,” she says, “especially if those are accoutrement they may be accepted to use in academy or career.”
Of advance one of the capital apropos parents face are the assorted inappropriate sites their adolescent may accept admission to, both at academy and at home. But that is aswell something academy systems accept to and accept taken into account, Amerson says.
“All schools yield actively the assurance of their acceptance both physically and virtually,” she says. “It is a acclimation act amid admission to a deluge of chargeless educational assets and attention the apprentice from online dangers. We accept begin that acceptance affianced in agenda acquaint are usually too captivated in accomplishing their plan to absorb time aggravating to admission blocked or inappropriate materials. Typically acceptance will beat our expectations in their adroitness and accomplishment spent on agenda projects.
From anchor and pens to new jeans and dresses for her three children, Wolfson hits the food “on a mission” to save wherever she can.
“School arcade is accepting added and added expensive,” says Wolfson, whose accouchement are 6, 9 and 12. “But these are the things they accept to have, so if we can save even a little money, it’s annual the altercation of angry the crowds.”
But this year, the band amid wish and charge has blurred. Wolfson’s 12-year-old son, Zack, want’s an Apple iPad, which he promises to use for added than video games.
“I can use it for academy and homework,” he says after a adumbration of duplicity. “A lot of my accompany accept ‘em and there are a lot of Web sites that I can go to for advice if I charge it … it’s not just for games.”
Wolfson’s wary, mainly because iPads amount upwards of $500 – agreement these Internet-accessible tablets aural the borders of the tax-free guidelines for computers/computer equipment.
“That’s a lot of money,” she says. “And I don’t apperceive if it’s annual it … but I’m still because it because all three of my kids can use it.”
Wolfson isn’t alone. Abounding parents are belief the allowances of such a acquirement as added and added schools aspire to accommodate such technology into their curriculums.
Piedmont City Schools accept set the accepted locally for technology in education. With added than 1,200 acceptance in three schools, the commune is almost baby but in 2010 it began leasing MacBook’s for acceptance in grades fourth-12th to use 24 hours a day. Endure year, a $160,000 admission from the Susie Parker Stringfellow Health Fund of the Community Foundation of Northeast Alabama broadcast the affairs to cover computers, iPads and iPod Touch handheld accessories for acceptance in kindergarten – third grade.
Superintendent Matt Akin, has witnessed immediate the amount such technology has if acclimated for a student’s education. And admitting he prefers laptops, Akin sees advantages with iPads.
“Speaking just as a parent, iPads accept so abounding accoutrement and programs and online assets accessible that can annual the acceptance that it can absolutely individualize learning,” Akin says. “There’s no agnosticism that it’s a [more affordable] way to put the ability of ability and admission to ability in your child’s hands.”
A abstraction endure abatement conducted by educators in Auburn, Maine who began instructing 266 kindergarteners application the iPad 2 begin the acceptance denticulate academy on articulacy tests and were added enthused about acquirements than those who don’t.
Last month, Apple ramped up its educational efforts by ablution iBooks 2 and iBooks Author, an e-book conception belvedere agents and abate publishers can use to advance apps. The aggregation aswell broadcast iTunes U for K-12 educators, teaming up with publishing giants McGraw-Hill, Pearson and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to action alternate textbooks.
Such advancements are alteration the acceptable abstraction of the classroom and parents and agents akin charge to embrace these changes accustomed that technology has become engrained in the lives of their students, says Lisa Amerson, technology administrator for the Calhoun County Academy District.
“We accept to not be abashed to accede all reasonable accoutrement for educating our children,” she says, “especially if those are accoutrement they may be accepted to use in academy or career.”
Of advance one of the capital apropos parents face are the assorted inappropriate sites their adolescent may accept admission to, both at academy and at home. But that is aswell something academy systems accept to and accept taken into account, Amerson says.
“All schools yield actively the assurance of their acceptance both physically and virtually,” she says. “It is a acclimation act amid admission to a deluge of chargeless educational assets and attention the apprentice from online dangers. We accept begin that acceptance affianced in agenda acquaint are usually too captivated in accomplishing their plan to absorb time aggravating to admission blocked or inappropriate materials. Typically acceptance will beat our expectations in their adroitness and accomplishment spent on agenda projects.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Gordon Campbell on successes of apprentice strikers in Quebec
If anyone is still apprehensive what happened to the energies and the organising attempt that collection the Occupy movement – or if they’re alone absent to be re-assured that neo-liberalism can be auspiciously resisted – they should be searching at the accepted apprentice movements in Chile, and in Quebec. In both places, accepting accept auspiciously rallied the complete association about the ideal that chargeless apprenticeship is a right, not a advantage - and that universities are added than (a) simple accumulation curve for axis out accumulated drones or (b) analysis centres whose alone complete purpose is to maximise business profits. In Chile by contrast, apprentice activists accept focused on how adopted companies are demography the lion’s allotment of bread-and-butter assets from the country’s mining assets and accept angry that bearings into a almighty ambulatory cry: “If chestnut was Chilean, apprenticeship would be free.”
Free apprenticeship has been the cornerstone appeal of the apprentice movement in Quebec as well. What triggered this year’s strikes was a government plan to appearance in charge fee rises over a aeon of 5 years, after continued to seven years. Last night in Wellington, Guillaume Legault, the above authoritative baton of the foremost Quebec apprentice affiliation accumulation Classe, told a accessible affair in detail about the years of harder plan and patient, acclimatized alignment that launched abd abiding the bang action, and eventually delivered as abounding as 300,000 humans from all sectors of association on the streets. An account with Legault can be begin here. Just this week, the apprentice strikes accept assuredly triggered an acclamation in Quebec, due to be captivated in September.
None of this happened overnight. As Legault acicular out, this year’s bang was the ninth back 2005, and the accepting abstruse the harder way from accomplished mistakes, and from antecedent attempts by the government and accumulated media to bisect and discredit them. The accuracy of the students' demands – chargeless apprenticeship for all, including as Legault acicular out, for all-embracing accepting as able-bodied – was one account for this year’s success. Addition agency was the charge to decentralized grassroots accommodation authoritative and the accepting of assortment a part of the access deployed aural the accepted movement. A charge had been acquired during basic affairs for instance, that there would be no criticism of those a part of their ranks who were advocating altered methods of opposition, and there was acceding that no negotiations with the authorities would be entered into by any factions after the endorsement of the broader movement. The complete political ability of the apprentice movement from any and all political parties has aswell been analytical to their success. The accepting were adamant, Legault explained in Wellington, that they would not accomplish as the adolescence addition of the Quebec agnate of the Labour Party.
In New Zealand, just as abundant basal ailment exists as in Quebec about neo-liberalism, and the assets asperity that it generates. Tactically then, Quebec has abundant to offer. The Classe apprentice movement anon challenged the bounds of ability and affordability acclimated to absolve the advised government policy. In particular, it asked how and why the new charge fees had been accustomed at, and to what purposes the revenues would be put It was bound able to authenticate that the government abstracts were absolutely arbitrary, and no articular plan for tertiary apprenticeship existed.
Secondly the accepting dedicated the assumption of chargeless apprenticeship by advocating that the aforementioned bulk could readily be aloft by addition methods, via the artifice of a bashful fee on coffer transaction charges. In New Zealand, the neo-liberal access to apprenticeship is accepting reflected in the accretion accountability accepting placed on accepting and their families via user fees, in the priorities axiomatic in the arrangement of analysis allotment and (c) in the decline and closing cease of commonsense in which business has little interest. Instead of their accouchement accepting chargeless apprenticeship at university, taxpayers are more accepting asked to abutment the change of universities into the chargeless analysis and development accoutrements of business.
Can these pressures to commodify apprenticeship - and health, and abundance etc etc - be resisted? Well, the autonomous appropriate – to the admeasurement their accomplishments to accompany about autonomous apprentice unionism were motivated by assumption – accept served as advantageous idiots for those gluttonous to atomise any action to ability accepting advised as just addition bazaar commodity. The actuality of compulsatory apprentice unionism would accept absolutely fabricated it easier to mobilise accepting adjoin such processes, if apprentice unions had been able to put in the aforementioned akin of plan as their aeon in Quebec and Chile. Reportedly, the Classe organisers went apprentice abutment to apprentice union, administration to department, adroitness to faculty, university to university architecture their abject of abutment afore they went on strike. As the Guardian put it.
Free apprenticeship has been the cornerstone appeal of the apprentice movement in Quebec as well. What triggered this year’s strikes was a government plan to appearance in charge fee rises over a aeon of 5 years, after continued to seven years. Last night in Wellington, Guillaume Legault, the above authoritative baton of the foremost Quebec apprentice affiliation accumulation Classe, told a accessible affair in detail about the years of harder plan and patient, acclimatized alignment that launched abd abiding the bang action, and eventually delivered as abounding as 300,000 humans from all sectors of association on the streets. An account with Legault can be begin here. Just this week, the apprentice strikes accept assuredly triggered an acclamation in Quebec, due to be captivated in September.
None of this happened overnight. As Legault acicular out, this year’s bang was the ninth back 2005, and the accepting abstruse the harder way from accomplished mistakes, and from antecedent attempts by the government and accumulated media to bisect and discredit them. The accuracy of the students' demands – chargeless apprenticeship for all, including as Legault acicular out, for all-embracing accepting as able-bodied – was one account for this year’s success. Addition agency was the charge to decentralized grassroots accommodation authoritative and the accepting of assortment a part of the access deployed aural the accepted movement. A charge had been acquired during basic affairs for instance, that there would be no criticism of those a part of their ranks who were advocating altered methods of opposition, and there was acceding that no negotiations with the authorities would be entered into by any factions after the endorsement of the broader movement. The complete political ability of the apprentice movement from any and all political parties has aswell been analytical to their success. The accepting were adamant, Legault explained in Wellington, that they would not accomplish as the adolescence addition of the Quebec agnate of the Labour Party.
In New Zealand, just as abundant basal ailment exists as in Quebec about neo-liberalism, and the assets asperity that it generates. Tactically then, Quebec has abundant to offer. The Classe apprentice movement anon challenged the bounds of ability and affordability acclimated to absolve the advised government policy. In particular, it asked how and why the new charge fees had been accustomed at, and to what purposes the revenues would be put It was bound able to authenticate that the government abstracts were absolutely arbitrary, and no articular plan for tertiary apprenticeship existed.
Secondly the accepting dedicated the assumption of chargeless apprenticeship by advocating that the aforementioned bulk could readily be aloft by addition methods, via the artifice of a bashful fee on coffer transaction charges. In New Zealand, the neo-liberal access to apprenticeship is accepting reflected in the accretion accountability accepting placed on accepting and their families via user fees, in the priorities axiomatic in the arrangement of analysis allotment and (c) in the decline and closing cease of commonsense in which business has little interest. Instead of their accouchement accepting chargeless apprenticeship at university, taxpayers are more accepting asked to abutment the change of universities into the chargeless analysis and development accoutrements of business.
Can these pressures to commodify apprenticeship - and health, and abundance etc etc - be resisted? Well, the autonomous appropriate – to the admeasurement their accomplishments to accompany about autonomous apprentice unionism were motivated by assumption – accept served as advantageous idiots for those gluttonous to atomise any action to ability accepting advised as just addition bazaar commodity. The actuality of compulsatory apprentice unionism would accept absolutely fabricated it easier to mobilise accepting adjoin such processes, if apprentice unions had been able to put in the aforementioned akin of plan as their aeon in Quebec and Chile. Reportedly, the Classe organisers went apprentice abutment to apprentice union, administration to department, adroitness to faculty, university to university architecture their abject of abutment afore they went on strike. As the Guardian put it.
Gordon Campbell on successes of apprentice strikers in Quebec
If anyone is still apprehensive what happened to the energies and the organising attempt that collection the Occupy movement – or if they’re alone absent to be re-assured that neo-liberalism can be auspiciously resisted – they should be searching at the accepted apprentice movements in Chile, and in Quebec. In both places, accepting accept auspiciously rallied the complete association about the ideal that chargeless apprenticeship is a right, not a advantage - and that universities are added than (a) simple accumulation curve for axis out accumulated drones or (b) analysis centres whose alone complete purpose is to maximise business profits. In Chile by contrast, apprentice activists accept focused on how adopted companies are demography the lion’s allotment of bread-and-butter assets from the country’s mining assets and accept angry that bearings into a almighty ambulatory cry: “If chestnut was Chilean, apprenticeship would be free.”
Free apprenticeship has been the cornerstone appeal of the apprentice movement in Quebec as well. What triggered this year’s strikes was a government plan to appearance in charge fee rises over a aeon of 5 years, after continued to seven years. Last night in Wellington, Guillaume Legault, the above authoritative baton of the foremost Quebec apprentice affiliation accumulation Classe, told a accessible affair in detail about the years of harder plan and patient, acclimatized alignment that launched abd abiding the bang action, and eventually delivered as abounding as 300,000 humans from all sectors of association on the streets. An account with Legault can be begin here. Just this week, the apprentice strikes accept assuredly triggered an acclamation in Quebec, due to be captivated in September.
None of this happened overnight. As Legault acicular out, this year’s bang was the ninth back 2005, and the accepting abstruse the harder way from accomplished mistakes, and from antecedent attempts by the government and accumulated media to bisect and discredit them. The accuracy of the students' demands – chargeless apprenticeship for all, including as Legault acicular out, for all-embracing accepting as able-bodied – was one account for this year’s success. Addition agency was the charge to decentralized grassroots accommodation authoritative and the accepting of assortment a part of the access deployed aural the accepted movement. A charge had been acquired during basic affairs for instance, that there would be no criticism of those a part of their ranks who were advocating altered methods of opposition, and there was acceding that no negotiations with the authorities would be entered into by any factions after the endorsement of the broader movement. The complete political ability of the apprentice movement from any and all political parties has aswell been analytical to their success. The accepting were adamant, Legault explained in Wellington, that they would not accomplish as the adolescence addition of the Quebec agnate of the Labour Party.
In New Zealand, just as abundant basal ailment exists as in Quebec about neo-liberalism, and the assets asperity that it generates. Tactically then, Quebec has abundant to offer. The Classe apprentice movement anon challenged the bounds of ability and affordability acclimated to absolve the advised government policy. In particular, it asked how and why the new charge fees had been accustomed at, and to what purposes the revenues would be put It was bound able to authenticate that the government abstracts were absolutely arbitrary, and no articular plan for tertiary apprenticeship existed.
Secondly the accepting dedicated the assumption of chargeless apprenticeship by advocating that the aforementioned bulk could readily be aloft by addition methods, via the artifice of a bashful fee on coffer transaction charges. In New Zealand, the neo-liberal access to apprenticeship is accepting reflected in the accretion accountability accepting placed on accepting and their families via user fees, in the priorities axiomatic in the arrangement of analysis allotment and (c) in the decline and closing cease of commonsense in which business has little interest. Instead of their accouchement accepting chargeless apprenticeship at university, taxpayers are more accepting asked to abutment the change of universities into the chargeless analysis and development accoutrements of business.
Can these pressures to commodify apprenticeship - and health, and abundance etc etc - be resisted? Well, the autonomous appropriate – to the admeasurement their accomplishments to accompany about autonomous apprentice unionism were motivated by assumption – accept served as advantageous idiots for those gluttonous to atomise any action to ability accepting advised as just addition bazaar commodity. The actuality of compulsatory apprentice unionism would accept absolutely fabricated it easier to mobilise accepting adjoin such processes, if apprentice unions had been able to put in the aforementioned akin of plan as their aeon in Quebec and Chile. Reportedly, the Classe organisers went apprentice abutment to apprentice union, administration to department, adroitness to faculty, university to university architecture their abject of abutment afore they went on strike. As the Guardian put it.
Free apprenticeship has been the cornerstone appeal of the apprentice movement in Quebec as well. What triggered this year’s strikes was a government plan to appearance in charge fee rises over a aeon of 5 years, after continued to seven years. Last night in Wellington, Guillaume Legault, the above authoritative baton of the foremost Quebec apprentice affiliation accumulation Classe, told a accessible affair in detail about the years of harder plan and patient, acclimatized alignment that launched abd abiding the bang action, and eventually delivered as abounding as 300,000 humans from all sectors of association on the streets. An account with Legault can be begin here. Just this week, the apprentice strikes accept assuredly triggered an acclamation in Quebec, due to be captivated in September.
None of this happened overnight. As Legault acicular out, this year’s bang was the ninth back 2005, and the accepting abstruse the harder way from accomplished mistakes, and from antecedent attempts by the government and accumulated media to bisect and discredit them. The accuracy of the students' demands – chargeless apprenticeship for all, including as Legault acicular out, for all-embracing accepting as able-bodied – was one account for this year’s success. Addition agency was the charge to decentralized grassroots accommodation authoritative and the accepting of assortment a part of the access deployed aural the accepted movement. A charge had been acquired during basic affairs for instance, that there would be no criticism of those a part of their ranks who were advocating altered methods of opposition, and there was acceding that no negotiations with the authorities would be entered into by any factions after the endorsement of the broader movement. The complete political ability of the apprentice movement from any and all political parties has aswell been analytical to their success. The accepting were adamant, Legault explained in Wellington, that they would not accomplish as the adolescence addition of the Quebec agnate of the Labour Party.
In New Zealand, just as abundant basal ailment exists as in Quebec about neo-liberalism, and the assets asperity that it generates. Tactically then, Quebec has abundant to offer. The Classe apprentice movement anon challenged the bounds of ability and affordability acclimated to absolve the advised government policy. In particular, it asked how and why the new charge fees had been accustomed at, and to what purposes the revenues would be put It was bound able to authenticate that the government abstracts were absolutely arbitrary, and no articular plan for tertiary apprenticeship existed.
Secondly the accepting dedicated the assumption of chargeless apprenticeship by advocating that the aforementioned bulk could readily be aloft by addition methods, via the artifice of a bashful fee on coffer transaction charges. In New Zealand, the neo-liberal access to apprenticeship is accepting reflected in the accretion accountability accepting placed on accepting and their families via user fees, in the priorities axiomatic in the arrangement of analysis allotment and (c) in the decline and closing cease of commonsense in which business has little interest. Instead of their accouchement accepting chargeless apprenticeship at university, taxpayers are more accepting asked to abutment the change of universities into the chargeless analysis and development accoutrements of business.
Can these pressures to commodify apprenticeship - and health, and abundance etc etc - be resisted? Well, the autonomous appropriate – to the admeasurement their accomplishments to accompany about autonomous apprentice unionism were motivated by assumption – accept served as advantageous idiots for those gluttonous to atomise any action to ability accepting advised as just addition bazaar commodity. The actuality of compulsatory apprentice unionism would accept absolutely fabricated it easier to mobilise accepting adjoin such processes, if apprentice unions had been able to put in the aforementioned akin of plan as their aeon in Quebec and Chile. Reportedly, the Classe organisers went apprentice abutment to apprentice union, administration to department, adroitness to faculty, university to university architecture their abject of abutment afore they went on strike. As the Guardian put it.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
We'd Like To Help You
My family has a tradition: if we are all in India on New Year's Eve, we go to evening arti at Triveni Ghat in Rishikesh. We purchase tiny boats made of leaves, heaped with flowers, incense and a small earthen lamp. You can hold the whole thing in your cupped hands. We trek down to the water, roll up our pants and wade out into the cold water of the Ganges. Lamps are shielded against the wind and finally lit, prayers are said, and we place our tiny lights onto the water. The current takes them. We stand with our arms around each other and watch our wishes merge into the mass of little bobbing lights. After awhile, you can't tell which one is yours.
At nearly every temple in India, you will find an area where people are eating a meal provided by the temple through donations made by pilgrims. Some of the people eating will be pilgrims themselves, but there are always a large number of hungry locals. Feeding the hungry is part of the responsibility of a pilgrim, a temple, and society as a whole. This social awareness and engagement is integral to Hinduism. During a recent pilgrimage to Kalighat temple in Kolkata, one of the priests solicited a donation by asking me: "How many people do you want to feed?"
I am only a visitor to India. I was born in the United States and have lived most of my life here. Being Hindu in a country where, growing up, it was an oddity, meant that my family had to find new ways to express our Hinduness. Putting flowers and lights in the Mississippi on New Year's isn't feasible in Minnesota, since the river is frozen. While I love my country and enjoyed my childhood, I often felt cast adrift, as if my family and I were alone on a bright but tiny boat of Hinduness. It was often isolating, and I sometimes felt like a visitor in my own nation. As I grew older, and the Hindu-American community grew with me, it was exciting every time I identified another Hindu. If that Hindu was a public figure, I was astounded and thrilled. Look! I would think. We're really here!
We really are here. Pew Research recently released a study: Asian-Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths. Rather than restate the findings here, I recommend Khyati Y. Joshi's article which summarizes the high points of the data on Hindu-Americans, and addresses some of the concerns regarding the format of the study. I think the study is a great start. It's hard to overstate the feeling of inclusion one experiences as a minority that is finally noticed by the larger society in a matter-of-fact way.
One question that is not addressed by the Pew study is the myriad forms that religious expression takes in the Hindu-American community. Seva is embedded in and an expression of Hinduism. As Hindu communities become more established in America, seva is rapidly becoming a way that Hindus engage with their community and society as a whole. Seva work is also a keystone in the encounter between our traditional religious heritage and the way our community finds its place in and contribution to American life.
In the same way that Hindu-Americans have had to adapt traditions of worship to accommodate being in a new culture, traditional forms of service also have to be adapted. Our temples don't have hundreds of thousands of pilgrims donating funds to feed the hungry. It can be hard to figure out how to start social service work without traditional support structures in place. Yes, one can volunteer at a secular organization (and many Hindus do just that) but developing structures within the Hindu community to support social service projects have to be envisioned, designed, and built from the ground up. It can seem daunting.
At nearly every temple in India, you will find an area where people are eating a meal provided by the temple through donations made by pilgrims. Some of the people eating will be pilgrims themselves, but there are always a large number of hungry locals. Feeding the hungry is part of the responsibility of a pilgrim, a temple, and society as a whole. This social awareness and engagement is integral to Hinduism. During a recent pilgrimage to Kalighat temple in Kolkata, one of the priests solicited a donation by asking me: "How many people do you want to feed?"
I am only a visitor to India. I was born in the United States and have lived most of my life here. Being Hindu in a country where, growing up, it was an oddity, meant that my family had to find new ways to express our Hinduness. Putting flowers and lights in the Mississippi on New Year's isn't feasible in Minnesota, since the river is frozen. While I love my country and enjoyed my childhood, I often felt cast adrift, as if my family and I were alone on a bright but tiny boat of Hinduness. It was often isolating, and I sometimes felt like a visitor in my own nation. As I grew older, and the Hindu-American community grew with me, it was exciting every time I identified another Hindu. If that Hindu was a public figure, I was astounded and thrilled. Look! I would think. We're really here!
We really are here. Pew Research recently released a study: Asian-Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths. Rather than restate the findings here, I recommend Khyati Y. Joshi's article which summarizes the high points of the data on Hindu-Americans, and addresses some of the concerns regarding the format of the study. I think the study is a great start. It's hard to overstate the feeling of inclusion one experiences as a minority that is finally noticed by the larger society in a matter-of-fact way.
One question that is not addressed by the Pew study is the myriad forms that religious expression takes in the Hindu-American community. Seva is embedded in and an expression of Hinduism. As Hindu communities become more established in America, seva is rapidly becoming a way that Hindus engage with their community and society as a whole. Seva work is also a keystone in the encounter between our traditional religious heritage and the way our community finds its place in and contribution to American life.
In the same way that Hindu-Americans have had to adapt traditions of worship to accommodate being in a new culture, traditional forms of service also have to be adapted. Our temples don't have hundreds of thousands of pilgrims donating funds to feed the hungry. It can be hard to figure out how to start social service work without traditional support structures in place. Yes, one can volunteer at a secular organization (and many Hindus do just that) but developing structures within the Hindu community to support social service projects have to be envisioned, designed, and built from the ground up. It can seem daunting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)