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More Law and Less Protection:
"Critogenesis" "Legal Iatrogenesis," and Medical Decision Making
HAROLD BURSZTAJN, M.D.
Dr. Bursztajn is Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and Co-Director. Program in Psychiatry and the Law, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Boston, Massachusetts.
Presented at a Scientific Meeting of the Boston Society for Gerontologic Psychiatry, November 3, 1984.
Conversations with Sissela Bok, A. Stone Freedberg, and Alan Stone over the years have been the source of inspiration for the ideas presented here. Their incubation was nourished through joint efforts with members of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. The Program includes Paul S. Appelbaum M.D. (Director), Archie Brodsky, Phil Brown, Ph.D., Ben Zion Chanowitz, Ph.D, Thomas G. Gutheil, M.D. (Co-Director), Robert M. Hamm, Ph.D., R. James Holzworth, PhD., Mark Hauser. M.D.. Joyce Nevis-Olesen, David Stone, M.A., Mark Warren M.A., and this writer (Co-Director). The critical comments of Sissela Bok, Ph.D., Archie Brodsky. Ben Zion Chanowitz, Ph.D., Thomas Gutheil, M.D., and Joyce Nevis-Olesen have contributed significantly to revisions in this paper made since its presentation. I am grateful to Hilary Putnam. Ph.D.. for noting crités as a suitable root term to designate critogenic as judge-caused, as in critogenic injury.
Failure to provide quality health care for competence-impaired persons in the geriatric population poses particular medicolegal problems. One response to this failure has been increased legal activism by advocates who press for an expanded judicial role in decision making for these and other incompetent patients—an approach that aims to achieve both the protection of patients' rights and the provision of quality health care. Charles Baron, one of the leading scholarly proponents of this position, has captured this admirable combination of concerns in the title of his paper, "Medicine and Human Rights: Emerging Substantive Standards and Procedural Protections for Medical Decision Making within the American Family" (Baron, this issue). Baron proposes that the courts, rather than families and physicians, be the first (rather than the last) resort for the decision making necessary for incompetent patients; the specific mechanism he espouses is the appointment of a guardian ad litem for each incompetent patient with a petitioner—whether that petitioner is the patient's physician or family.
Unfortunately, rather than providing increased protection for families with loved ones whose competence is impaired or in question, this approach has foundered in the past decade. In a chapter in Law, Psychiatry, and Morality entitled "Psychiatric Abuse and Legal Reform: Two Ways to Make a Bad Situation Worse," Alan Stone (1984), a past president of the American Psychiatric Association, wrote of the alienation of the family as one of its consequences. How can more law mean less protection for both incompetent patients and their families?
This medicolegal paradox will be addressed from a theoretical perspective emphasizing the critical role of uncertainty, particularly as it is shared by physicians, patients, and families, in medical decision making—an approach developed by members of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Within this context, discussion will focus on the harmful effects, the nonmonetary costs, to elderly incompetent persons and their families that overzealous judicial intervention can occasion. Baron's thesis will be examined as an example of how unfamiliarity with current clinical and research approaches to medical decision making can generate a legal approach that can produce results inimical to well-intentioned reformist aims.
A PARADOX AND TWO PREMISES
Baron's activist stance regarding incompetent patients is based on the assumption that more law and more judicial intervention will inevitably lead to increased protection of human rights and thus to maximization of the public good. The positive social aim informing this stance—protection of the rights of the incompetent and the system of due process ensuring those rights—is not under attack in this paper. However, acceptance of the adversary system as the soundest recourse for providing that protective function bears close, hard scrutiny; and the ways in which medical decisions based on shared uncertainty promote that protection, though unacknowledged by Baron, warrant attention.
Two major premises underlie Baron's position and are clearly expressed in his writing (1981, this issue). Each premise has positive objectives, and action on the basis of each can have negative consequences. Together they reveal important differences in the approaches of the legal and medical professions and underscore the far-reaching implications of these differences for issues at the interface of law and psychiatry. Continuing examination of these and other legal, as well as medical premises and approaches by members of both professions may decrease divergences between them as the demand for their joint expertise in areas of growing public concern increases.
1. The "Public Is Better Than Private" Premise
According to Baron, judicial decision making in regard to incompetent patients has the clear advantage of being subject to public examination, unlike clinical decisions made by physicians and families. But is it true that public decision making is an unmixed blessing in cases of impaired competence?
Legal intervention has costs as well as benefits, and an idealized view of the judiciary—particularly its adversarial aspects—overvalues the system's benefits and undervalues its costs. Although the benefit derived from public debate and education on important social issues resulting from publicity brought by legal proceedings may be unassailable, the circumstances, conditions, and procedural safeguards for those most personally affected merit serious assessment.
At the heart of the care and comfort that medicine offers to both incompetent elderly patients and their families is the therapeutic alliance with the family built by the physician and focused on shared uncertainty. (Bursztajn, Feinbloom, Hamm, and Brodsky 1981). Subjecting the physician-patient-family alliance to the bright light of publicity in these situations deprives the family, as well as the physician, of the opportunity for dealing with the complex feelings of hostility, grief, love, and sadness that crisis precipitates; that is, an opportunity for reparation, healing, and growth. (As Elvin Semrad said, "People grow only around sadness. It's strange who arranged it that way, but that's the way it seems to be" [Rako and Mazer, 1980, p. 45].)
Even more direct deleterious consequences of legal intervention in patient care can occur. As Alan Stone (1984) has pointed out, alienating families from their competence-impaired relatives by public judicial intervention undermines the foundation on which long-term care for the incompetent patient rests. Rather than risk the spotlight of public attention, many families, as well as others providing health care, are more likely simply to withdraw from ongoing involvement. What makes tragedy tolerable for those nearest to it, both family and physician, is the feeling that one has done one's best, that a moral choice has been made for those unable to choose, and some control has been exercised in the face of tragedy by those who care, personally and professionally, for the incompetent patient.
Clinical experience and psychodynamically based thinking have taught modern medicine the value of restrained intervention in the complex process of family mourning that shrouds decision making for the incompetent patient faced with death. Mourning for a family member's loss of competence through illness or approaching death can permit family members to begin to let go of childhood fantasies of omnipotence and immortality that inhibit an effective adaptation to loss, and hence to life: "For a relative to witness the almost miraculous changes which may occur in the dying patient not only must be of tremendous importance to the mourning process, but may well change the attitude of the bereaved toward his own death. We, the hospital staff, must make sure not to deprive the relatives of this experience" (Pincus, 1974, pp. 8-9). This reflection by a young priest, quoted in Lillian Pincus's work on mourning (1974), reveals one face of that adaptation.
The idealized view of inevitable public progress through legal intervention has its counterpart in that view of medicine based on seventeenth-century mechanistic science, which inspired the belief that uncertainty in patient care can be reduced ad infinitum. Just as the consequences of this view in medicine have been to push intervention by medical technology beyond the point of diminishing returns for the patient, the form of legal intervention proposed by Baron has had similar counterproductive results.
Disregard of the potential for harm entailed in the public exposure following judicial intervention is analogous to the type of disregard in the medical arena instanced by invasive clinical tests, such as coronary artery angiography, and their iatrogenic cost. While the medical profession is becoming increasingly aware of iatrogenesis as a possible consequence of invading the body of an individual, no such awareness restrains advocates of public legal procedures from the potential consequence of "worsening an already bad situation" by invading the family-body dynamic. The legal part of this analogy—the possibility that judicial proceedings in the case of an incompetent elder and his or her family could "make a bad situation worse"—describes an instance of potential "legal iatrogenesis."
Since iatrogenesis means "doctor-caused," we unfortunately cannot ask our legal colleagues to use this term as a reminder of the injury that legal intervention may precipitate. Nor is there any clear legal counterpart for the medical maxim primum non nocere (first, do no harm) which serves to remind clinicians of the possible costs of intervention. But we can ask members of the legal profession to find a suitable corresponding term or a maxim to describe the judicial counterpart to the medical profession's basic injunction. Perhaps critogenesis—"judge-caused"—can begin to supply the needed analogue.
The right to privacy (Warren and Brandeis, 1890) as protection against potential "legal iatrogenesis" or critogenic injury receives little, if any attention from those who would otherwise be among the first to proclaim its violation in cases of potential medical iatrogenesis. When the particular case involves an issue of broad social concern—and, given the ever-enlarging geriatric population, competency determination for the elderly is just such an issue—maintaining the delicate balance between public information and individual privacy requires constant vigilance, particularly as the technological means for making private matters public continually expands (Bok, 1982).
2. The "When in Doubt, Oppose" Premise
The belief that the adversary system can best protect patient interests lies at the heart of Baron's espousal of a court-appointed guardian ad litem to advocate, on the patient's behalf, for a position opposed to that of the petitioner—regardless of what that position is or who presents it. Such a narrow view of patient interests presumes that all families coping with the crisis of loss and grief that accompanies adaptation to the incompetence of a loved one function at a most primitive level of narcissistic pathology, wherein anything the "weak" patient "gains" the "strong" family member must "lose." Families can, of course, function at this and other pathological levels; regressive, narcissistic, as well as paranoid, family patterns do exist. However, the possibility of working through such defensive patterns in the grieving process with a supportive physician is seriously hampered when the legal arena becomes the locus for interpersonal regression. Legal proceedings thwart the natural grieving process and attendant resolution of intrapsychic conflict by introducing an external focus for conflict—litigation. The contention of the courtroom thus displaces, and avoids grieving and its healing effects for the family.
We recognize that there are patients without families and those with families overwhelmed by their crisis. However, where a secure doctor-patient-family alliance is in place, it provides the most positive condition for working through the medical, emotional, and psychosocial issues confronting the incompetent patient and his or her family (Isenberg and Gutheil, 1981). Most importantly, the automatic appointment of an adversarial guardian ad litem to advocate for the patient is an indiscriminant disruption of that meliorative condition.
The complexity of contemporary medical decision making requires analysis and weighing of factors along a wide spectrum of possibilities; it must therefore eschew mechanistic, "black or white" extremes in order to arrive at determinations that are clinically and ethically sound. In contrast, the adversarial system, by its very nature, focuses on such extremes, and Baron's proposal of a court-appointed guardian ad litem for all incompetent persons with a petitioner embodies this focus. Its emphasis on opposition leaves little room for considering crucial questions involving the nature and circumstances of competence: What are the ways in which it fluctuates? What physiological, psychodynamic, and psychosocial factors and situations contribute to its diminution or enhancement? How can it best be nurtured? How and when has it increased or diminished in a particular patient's life (Gutheil and Appelbaum, 1982)? The complexity at the core of these issues, as well as the decision-making process required to address them, is too often dispelled by a crack of the gavel. The proceedings thus set in motion then rely heavily on the fantasy that the most thorough battle by adversaries will, perforce, arrive at the best resolution of these issues.
BEYOND "LEGAL IATROGENESIS "—BEYOND "CRITOGENESIS"
By shedding the illusion that medical science can fulfill childhood wishes for omnipotence and omniscience, we can recognize the harm that can be produced by medical technology in the pursuit of an unattainable mechanistic ideal of science (Bursztajn et al., 1981; Gutheil, Bursztajn, and Brodsky, 1984). Over half a century ago. Judge Jerome Frank articulated similar caveats in relation to medicine and the law in observing that the law's perception of "the state of scientific knowledge" might be in need of revision: "For unfortunately too many persons, science is a charter of certainty .. . [and] seems to hold out an expectation that ultimately man will gain total relief from uncertainty. ... Of course that is an unscientific conception of science" (Frank, 1930, p. 307).
Empirical research currently in progress by members of the Program in Psychiatry and the Law at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center demonstrates the constraints placed on both clinical and judicial decision making by human judgmental processes under conditions of uncertainty. For example, we have presented work (Bursztajn, Chanowitz, Gutheil, and Hamm, 1983) showing that the decision to prescribe neuroleptics for a psychotic patient is significantly influenced by how the possibility of the side effect of tardive dyskinesia was worded; that is, whether as a consequence to be "risked" or "accepted." This study revealed that neither medical expertise nor judicial impartiality was immune to the influence of how language "frames" situations (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Both judges and psychiatrists in the study were influenced by whether the potential side effect was described as something to be "risked" or "accepted"—a linguistic factor "framing" the uncertain dimensions of the situation (and, traditionally, not taken into account as relevant). However, in the light of the legal tradition's emphasis on protecting people from harm of human origin, judges in the study tended vastly to overestimate the probability of harm by medical intervention. In this regard, Edwards's (1968) finding concerning the conservatism of probability estimates should serve as a reminder that initial overestimates are not easily corrected. Thus, simply providing judges with correct estimates of the probability of this side effect occurring—or with other clinical data in similar situations—is insufficient for thorough evaluation and subsequent judgment.
Limiting critogenic harm is therefore not merely a matter of making psychiatric expertise available in the adversary process. Such expertise will also not correct for the legal "hindsight bias" (Fischhoff, 1975), which reflects one of the fundamental differences between the training, theoretical frameworks, and pragmatic approaches of the medical and legal professions: the physician is trained in prospective decision making; the judge in methods of retrospective judgment; and the aura of certainty subsumed by the latter is to the former more of a wish than a reality.
Perhaps patients, families, physicians, lawyers, and the public good may best be served by developing a model of interaction between the legal and medical systems based on cooperative and complementary rather than adversarial mechanisms. An ongoing educative process—through forums and research—to achieve this end is a long-range process that can only develop over time. And it can best take place in an atmosphere conducive to alliance rather than in the heated atmosphere of the courtroom.
The clinical and research considerations discussed here argue for a legal counterpart to the medical dictum primum non nocere, particularly with regard to legal intervention in the doctor-patient-family relationship. As Putnam (1981) has emphasized, any decision involves giving some benefit of the doubt. Our work supports the conclusion that in all but the most extreme instances, the family and the physician of the incompetent patient are best able to serve the patient's interests by being given the benefit of legal doubt and concomitant judicial non-intervention. Legal reformers who wish to protect the rights of patients and families in medical decision making should consider the limitations of judicial expertise in making prospective medical decisions, in addition to the possible emotional costs of legal intervention incurred by patients and families.
In cases where the threshold for judicial or medical intercession has been clearly exceeded, perhaps the best mechanism for resolution is one whereby investigation precedes intervention. In such cases, the alternative of a physician-attorney team—coguardians ad litem, charged with investigating options in the best interest of the patient—merits joint consideration by members of both professions. The psychiatrist's participation in competency assessment, vicarious decision making, and quality of care is a first attempt at specifying the prerequisite expertise demanded of the physician member of such a team (Bursztajn, Gutheil, Kaplan, and Brodsky [unpublished]). Such a team, experienced in dialogue rather than debate, can offer protection against both iatrogenic and critogenic injury.
Baron, C. H. (1981), To die before the gods please: Legal issues surrounding euthanasia and the elderly. J. Geriat. Psychiat. , 14/1:45-70.
------ (1983), Medicine and human rights: Emerging substantive standards and procedural protections for medical decision making within the American family. Family Law Quart. , 17:l40; This Journal , 18:95-141. 1985.
Bok, S. (1982), Secrets: On the Ethics if Concealment and Revelation . New York: Pantheon Books.
Bursztajn. H., Feinbloom, R.I., Hamm, R.M., & Brodsky, A. (1981). Medical Choices, Medical Chances: How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty . New York: Delacorte Press.
------ Chanowitz, B. Z., Gutheil, T. G., & Hamm, R. M. (1983), Context-specific language effects in the decision to prescribe neuroleptics. Presented at the Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making, Toronto, October 1983.
Edwards. W. (1968), Conservatism in human information processing. In: Formal Representation of Human Judgment . ed.B. Kleinmutz. New York: Wiley. pp. 17-52.
Fischhoff, B. (1973), Hindsight/Foresight: The effect of outcome knowledge on judgment under uncertainty. J. Exper. Psych.: Human Percept. & Performance , 1:288-299.
Frank, J. (1930). Law and the Modern Mind . New York: Brentano.
Gutheil, T. G., & Appelbaum, P. S. (1982). Clinical Handbook of Psychiatry and the Law . New York: McGraw-Hill.
------ Bursztajn, H.. & Brodsky, A. (1984). Malpractice prevention through the sharing of uncertainty: Informed consent and the therapeutic alliance. N. Eng. J. Med. ,311:49-51.
Isenberg, E. F., & Gutheil, T. G. (1981). Family process and legal guardianship for the psychiatric patient: A clinical study. Bull. Amer Acad. Psychiat. & the Law . 9:128-139.
Pincus, L. (1974), Death in the Family: The Importance of Mourning . New York: Pantheon Books.
Putnam, H. (1981), Reason, Truth, and History . Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Rako, S., & Mazer, H., eds. (1980). Semrad: The Heart of a Therapist . New York: Jason Aronson.
Stone, A. (1984). Law, Psychiatry, and Morality . Washington D.C.: APA Press.
Tversky. A., & Kahneman. D. (1981), The framing of decisions and the rationality of choice. Science . >211:453-458.
Warren. S. D., & Brandeis, L. D. (1890), The right to privacy. Harvard Law Rev . 4:5:193-220.


Last week one of my highschoolers told me that hope probably doesn't deserve to be a stand-alone sort of word. She suggested it isn't a distinct concept, separate from any other idea we communicate with words. It's overused, she pointed out, and as I listened to the State of the Union last night — given by a man whom I watched campaign on hope and take office my last year of college when the economy collapsed — I had to agree. To my student, hope is simply another word we use to describe something we really want, a deep and longing desire.
We were outside, amid trees stripped to grey nakedness, with ice under foot and clouded blue sky over head, dotted by geese who've flocked to our wide open spaces. She's a cynic and I've only just started my recovery from cynic to hopeful realist. We plodded along after she said all that, each looking to and fro across a landscape seemingly barren and devoid of hope. Between us I could feel the silence grow, soft and fearful as I wrestled for words to speak since I so vehemently disagreed with her.
But how does one explain hope?
It's Ash Wednesday and there are people wandering the world with grey soot smudged on their faces in the form of a poorly drawn cross made by dirty fallen thumbs looking forward to redemption. But it's a future redemption and today the ground is still hard and cold. Lent begins and we give things up: meat, sugar, drink or other things upon which we depend instead of finding rest in God. While the practice of fast is certainly formational, it's also responsive and it's worth considering in these winter months slowly turning to spring — what we are responding to.
There's a thing that in seminary we like to call the "grand narrative" or a "controlling narrative" which serves as an interpretive lens for how one reads and interprets Scripture. As a good evangelical seminary, we usually consider this to be the story of Jesus Christ, the story of God coming in to save creation that has fallen down a winding rabbit hole towards greater and greater levels of chaos. We point to his words and the prophecies and the narrative of the seasons to say that Jesus will one day come again to restore and renew all things.
Lent, I think, the season of waiting and going without, is a response in recognition of this redemptive process. Recognizing that Jesus has come, and will come, and learning what it means to wait hopefully in the midst of this present age. Jesus is coming. He's here, he has come. But I have not only been saved I am still in the process of being saved.* In a similar way, Lent reminds us that we are waiting. With creation we groan and wait and long for the renewal that comes in the end of times. We respond to the Gospel by entering into it; by acknowledging this period of waiting and hoping. Lent shows us we're waiting, teaches us to long, and forms our hope for the future.
Hope, my friend said rightly, is an intense desire for something. I desperately long for violence to end, for wars to abate, for my family to come home. But there is more than just longing when it comes to the redemption of the world and the many things that make up that redemption. In the way that it's used in political campaigns and among high school lovers, hope is cheap and ill used, hardly needed as a word separated from desire and want. We want a better economy in the same way we hope for a job upon college graduation.
But this I'm learning: we don't put our hopes in humanity and the world. We put it in the One who made those things and we put our faith in the promises handed down to us, the foundation of his faithfulness and the character that says he will fulfill what he has begun. This is what hope is, the faith and trust that God will see His promises through, the patient expectation that the earth will be renewed and the culmination of all things will include a new and distinctively different relationship with the One who is.
Hope is deep and more than simple desire. It pulls from the being of our person and rests on the foundation of previously fulfilled promises and the faith of those gone before us. Lent, the season of waiting helps us refocus that hope: away from created to Creator, towards coming redemption and fulfillment. Because in the liturgical season of waiting we are reminded that we are waiting existentially. We learn to long for renewal. We hang in suspension. This is the tension that Christians live in. Here, oh yes, here! But also not yet. We are expectant, anxiously so. We are waiting. And we know that it will come despite all our impatience! Despite persecutions, failures, and misunderstandings. We're waiting, but not in empty desire. We're waiting in deep, founded, faithful hope.


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Founded on the western banks of a fabulous natural harbour, what was once the entire city of HAVANA now forms the most captivating part of Habana Vieja, the old city and the capital's tourist centre. This UNESCO-declared World Heritage Site is one of crumbling magnificence and restored beauty. Any sight seeing you do will fan out from here, taking in the fine museums, colonial buildings, elegant plazas, sweeping boulevards and narrow, atmospheric streets bristling with life.
Most visitors restrict themselves to Habana Vieja and Vedado, where many of the post-colonial mansions have been converted into public works and ministry offices or museums. The best way to appreciate Vedado's compact, quiet suburban streets is on foot. From here, you could walk the couple of kilometres to the famous Plaza de la Revoluci�n, where giant monuments to the two most famous icons of the Cuban struggle for independence, Che Guevara and Jos� Mart�, present unmissable photo opportunities. Beyond Vedado to the west, on the other side of the R�o Almendares, Miramar � modelled on mid-twentieth-century Miami � ushers in yet another change in the urban landscape. A commercial district is emerging on its western fringes, accompanied by a number of luxury hotels, whilst some of Havana's most sophisticated restaurants are scattered around Miramar's leafy streets.
What to see:
Cementerio Cristobal Colon
The beauty and magnificence of this cemetery has made it famous throughout the Latin American continent. Established in 1876, it holds nearly a million graves, many of whose headstones have been embellished by major Cuban sculptors such as Ramos Blancos, among others. The Afro-Cuban religious practice of, �santer�a� is common throughout the island, and this cemetery is no exception; thus it is not unusual to find colourfully dressed rag-dolls lying next to the graves, placed as offerings to one or other deity. And a popular local legend tells the story of the Milagrosa or Miraculous Lady, who died in childbirth along with her infant; although they had originally been buried separately, both were found�some time later�lying in the same grave, now a shrine for devout Catholics.
A fine example of 18th century ecclesiastic architecture, the fa�ade is full of columns, niches and other baroque embellishments, in contrast to the asymmetry of the spires. Close to the sea and dominating one of the main squares within the old city walls, it was once inhabited by Jesuit priests until they were evicted, the building was then consecrated as Havana Cathedral in 1789. On the inside there are copies of paintings by Rubens and Murillo on the alters, and at the top end of the choir section one can see part of frescoes by Italian artist Giuseppe Perovanni. Some of Columbus' remains were kept here between 1796 and 1898, and there is a finely crafted sculpture of Saint Christopher, Patron Saint of Havana, which dates from 1632 and was made by Mart�n And�jar in Seville, Spain. Admission is free.
El Capitolio Nacional
Built in 1929 to house the island's Senate and House of Representatives, and with a dome that dominates the Havana skyline, this building looks rather similar to the Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Inside there is a statue of La Republica, the biggest indoor bronze effigy in the world. There is also an enormous and historic gallery called the Sal�n de los Pasos Perdidos (The Hall of Lost Steps); a 28-carat diamond that marks the exact centre of the city; and the headquarters of the Cuban Natural History Museum, housing the country's largest natural history collection.
Where to eat:
La Ferminia
La Ferminia is one of the best Cuban restaurants in town. It is also among the best places to sample the local Creole cuisine. It is located in the exclusive area of Miramar, in a beautiful mansion with numerous individual rooms, each one of them with a capacity to accommodate between 20 and 30 people. The service is excellent and the establishment offers courses in gourmet cooking as well. The menu is exquisite and varied with Seafood and local flavors. The dishes are carefully prepared on a barbecue or in the oven, and are accompanied by delicious Salads and Cuban delicacies such as Congr�.
Bar Ambos Mundos
The elegant furniture, piano music, marble walls and floor help create an intimate and relaxed atmosphere at this restored cafe. Soft lighting makes this the ideal romantic hangout at night. The establishment offers a selection of spirits, beers, light meals and traditional Cuban cooking. Beverages include a house cocktail known as the �Ambos Mundos,� the daiquiri and Cuban mojitos. Frequented by Earnest Hemingway during his first stay in Cuba during the 1930s, this establishment has since become an obligatory haunt of writers and artists.
El Floridita
One of the most popular restaurants in Havana, not only for its award winning fish and seafood dishes, but also for its cocktails, this place is locally referred to as the "cradle of the Daiquir�." The atmosphere is peaceful, even though all the 10 tables are right next to the bar. Decoration includes a large mural that dates from the 1930s depicting the city harbor in the 18th Century. Meals are often accompanied by a trio playing traditional Cuban music. Specialities of the kitchen include the Rueda de Pargo Ambos Mundos (snapper steak), the Gran Plato Hemingway (Hemingway Big Plate) and Langosta Mariposa (Butterfly Lobster).
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Thomas Schneider, né le  à Rheinhausen, est un footballeur allemand qui évoluait au poste de défenseur et devenu entraîneur par la suite. Il est actuellement entraîneur assistant de l'équipe de l'équipe de Belgique.

Biographie

Clubs successifs

Parcours de joueur
 1991-2003 :  VfB Stuttgart  (133 matches, 7 buts)
 2003-2005 :  Hanovre 96 (8 matches)

Parcours d'entraîneur
 2013 - 2014 :  VfB Stuttgart
 Depuis 2014 : Allemagne (adjoint)

Notes et références

Liens externes

Footballeur allemand
Joueur du VfB Stuttgart
Joueur du Hanovre 96
Entraîneur allemand de football
Entraîneur du VfB Stuttgart
Naissance en novembre 1972
Naissance en Bade-Wurtemberg

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


With every new hire, your objective is to select the most qualified person for the job. Yet you're also responsible for supporting a fair and diverse workforce – and for upholding anti-discrimination laws by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Whether intentional or not, hiring practices that discriminate against protected applicants could lead to serious legal trouble.
Are you aware of the various federal and state laws that prevent discrimination? Just as important, are you confident your hiring process treats every job seeker equally and fairly?
Attend this online webinar replay for a discussion of the oversights that can hurt your hiring efforts – and what you can say, do and ask each step of the way to avoid accidental discrimination.
CLICK HERE to take the "How to Steer Clear of Accidental Discrimination When Hiring" Online Workshop, right now!


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Shahead Metro Station is a station on Shiraz Metro Line 1. The station opened on 5 May 2015. It is located on Shahed Boulevard a between Mirza-ye Shirazi Metro Station and Qasrodasht Metro Station.

Shiraz Metro stations
Railway stations opened in 2015


It's that time of the year once more where the streets and houses become lined with bright lights. Churches are more adorned and the iconic purple and pink Advent wreath makes its appearance. Advent is a time of preparation, a time of waiting. But why do we spend four weeks in this season preparing for Christmas, the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in a stable?
To understand this, let us look to where His story begins, in the first chapter of the first book of the New Testament, Matthew 1. Here begins the genealogy of Jesus Christ. In what may look like a long list of difficult-to-pronounce names, we see the lineage of Israel, the history of the Jewish people, from Abraham to Judah to King David to Joseph, the husband of Mary. The Jews are waiting in darkness, longing for the long-awaited Messiah, the Promised Land, and freedom from captivity. Advent is much more than waiting for the arrival of the newborn baby Jesus. It brings hope and joy for the coming of the new King, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the one who will bring salvation not only to the people of Israel, but to the entire world.
The entire world. That means you and me and our grandparents and a few billion people we don't even know.
All because of a baby born in a stable to a poor virgin? Yep.
Two of my favorite Advent songs, O Come O Come Emmanuel and Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, help celebrate this mystery and understand the meaning and impact of Advent.
"Emmanuel" means "God is with us". God becomes man to dwell among us and give us a tangible glimpse of our invisible Creator (John 1:14).
Jesus becomes the ransom to pay the price to set his people free and to save Israel—all his children—from "lonely exile".
Jesus not only comes to save his people, but He comes by fulfilling the Old Testament. Jesus is the New King David, come to close the miserable path to sin and open wide the gates of mercy that will lead us back to our ever-loving Father.
Christ our God to earth descending / Comes our homage to demand.
As we prepare in this time, let us not think of the things of this world, but keep our thoughts Heavenward. The Creator of the Universe is coming to earth!
As the one God chose to bring Himself into the world, Mary gives us the example of how to keep close to the Lord, by pondering his good in her heart (Luke 2:19, 51). Jesus too gives us an example of how to think of nothing earthly minded by being humble. God, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, humbled himself to be born to a poor virgin.
Alleluia, Alleluia / Alleluia, Lord Most High!
Marta Stangl is a first year FOCUS Missionary serving the UVA Community. She also loves puns.


I would know what the best program for do illustration and the easier for learn because I don´t work with no.
Really? You can show me please one illustration that you sell very much?
I started with Inkscape, learned the basics of vector by using it then moved to Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is an open source free vector program to learn but after a certain point you may need to buy AI if you are keen to create vector designs for Microstock agencies. Gradients and transparancies created by IS is not editable in AI and this limits your creativity. I don't have any experience with other programs like Corel Draw or Free Hand.
Wow, thanks for the link. Impressive work. I just may purchase a print or two!
I started with Inkscape, learned the basics of vector by using it then moved to Adobe Illustrator.
Good advice if you want to do vectors. I learned vectors by using the pen tool in Photoshop, then I moved to Adobe Illustrator.
If you want to do raster 3D illustrations instead of or in addition to vector, you will need a 3D program such as Blender, which is free, or Autodesk 3DS Max or Maya which are very expensive but are the choice of most professionals.
As said before Inkscape is a free open source software http://inkscape.org and can be a good one for a start.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but will the EPS output of InkScape be good enough for the EPS10 vector submission standards of SS ?
Eps files created by Inkscape is accepted by SS. I have some files in my SS portfolio created with IS.
But I don't know the eps version of an IS eps. It doesn't ask you the eps version when saving. So it may not be eps10. Nevertheless SS accepts it. It seems SS is not accepting only eps10 ones.
If you use gradients in your eps SS will likely to reject it because of bitmaps.
Sorry, I did not see your post before.
With gradients I think that could be with radial gradients, but not linear ones.
Thanks Beppe Grillo and ACS - I have a followup question. In InkScape, there is an option to save the EPS file as 'PostScript Level 3' or 'PostScript Level 2'. Which one is better ? Also, do either of them correspond to AI 8 or AI 10 ?
I don't know actually. I did save the same file in that 2 different versions (Level 2 and 3), opened them in Adobe Illustrator, tested/edited and couldn't find any difference. Both files were equally editable.
This was one of the questions I couldn't find a clear answer in my journey from InkScape to AI.
Thank you again ACS !
In your experience, is it really necessary ? I have created shapes in my vector using objects and grouping them. Ungrouping them may not be to the liking of the designer who may want to make changes to my vector.
I would live them as group, I don't think that would couse a big problem for AI users.
I too recommend to convert all objects to paths.
Thanks again ACS. I will leave the grouping but will convert all objects to paths !
At newbielink:http://www.cmvatutorials.com [nonactive] there is an article that might give you some insight as far as vector programs go. In the Articles section it's called "What Software Should You Get To Create Vector Art". There are links to many different options for vector programs as well.
How does Corel Draw compare to Adobe Illustrator for vectors? Is anybody using this program?
Some people participate in endless debate "Corel Draw vs Adobe Illustrator", wise people use the best of the both worlds. It is much faster and more effective to build main geometry of the vectors in Corel Draw. Adding special effects, working with colors - this is better implemented in Adobe Illustrator. I do main composition framework in CD, then paint and color it in AI. Resulting EPS file will be more accurate if generated in AI.
For me I recommend Adobe Illustrator. If you are already a photoshop user, it is easy to learn Adobe illustrator since most of its commands and environment have similarities.
Thank you for the useful and practical info. How about auto tracing - would you use Live Trace in AI or Corel Draw? Or is the choice dependent also on the type of image?
instead of going for MS Paint or stuff like that, you might want to go for InkScape or similarly versatile (and open) program suites. It is available for all operating systems (as in Windoze, Mac, Linux) and is free as in Free Beer as well as free as in Free Speech.
I'm very picky and neither program fully satisfies me in terms of tracing. Simple things I do in Corel. When I need to do a complex trace - I try both with different settings. And then I pick the best trace.
Thanks for the information, looks like promising alternative to a___e.
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Inside the IceHL
IceHL Fantasy League
September 27, 2010 / Chris Smith
Lately, I've been trying to think of ways to revive the IceHL project. If you're new to this, the IceHL was a fantasy hockey league where readers made all the decisions. You picked what cities would have teams then voted on user-submitted logo designs. All in all, we ended up with 30 unique teams. It was an exercise to get creative, and brand teams from the ground up.
So I thought, why not set up an actual IceHL fantasy league this year? We'd use an online service like Yahoo or ESPN. Icethetics readers could own and manage IceHL teams and go head-to-head throughout the season. And maybe there could be a small prize or two for the winner.
This is not a done deal yet. I haven't decided whether to do it. But there's been a big response on Twitter and via email, so I'm going to take the next step. If we use ESPN, which is most likely, you can only have up to 20 teams in your custom league. This means we won't be able to use all of our IceHL teams, unfortunately.
My guess is there are more than 20 of you that will be interested in joining this league. (I could be wrong.) That being said, everyone who wants in will have to apply to play. Here are the rules:
Applying for an IceHL team
I'm not going to require that you have experience playing fantasy hockey, but at least that you have an attention span long enough to finish the season. I know a lot of people start a team and forget about it by December. You have to be willing to commit if you're going to apply.
If you are awarded a team, you must be willing to use the IceHL team's name and logo that is assigned to you. Changing it without permission from the commissioner will be grounds for termination from the league. So how do you apply for a team?
Apply by posting a comment below which must include the following:
Your first name and last initial (ex.: Chris S.), no screennames
Your email address (it will only be seen by me and is the only way I'll be able to contact you if you are awarded a team)
In the body of the comment, please note your experience, if any (remember, it doesn't matter), playing fantasy hockey and list your preferred IceHL team choices. List at least 3 and no more than 10. (If no teams on your list are available to you, one will be assigned at random.) Also please note whether you designed any of the winning IceHL logos. Teams will be assigned to owners based on order of preference. All 30 teams and logos are listed below.
How owners/teams will be selected
The only fair way I can see to select owners and assign teams is at random. However, some applicants will be given an advantage in the selection process. If you designed any of the winning logos for the IceHL and would like to participate in the fantasy league, your name will go in the hat twice, while everyone else's goes in once. This doesn't assure you'll get a team, but it does give you better odds (which you deserve for your hard work).
Other advantages will be revealed later. However, I don't want to give them away now so as to avoid potential cheating.
IceHL teams
Select your preferred teams from this list.
Alaska Huskies Atlanta Arsenal
Baltimore Blue Crabs Boston Colonials
Boulder Beasts Calgary Cavalry
California Wave Chicago Hitmen
Dallas Outlaws Detroit Motorheads
Edmonton Kodiaks Hamilton Steelcats
Houston Hellcats Milwaukee Lagers
Minnesota Mammoths Montreal Olympiques
New Orleans Gators New York Guardians
North Carolina Nighthawks Portland Pioneers
Quebec Armada Regina Renegades
Salt Lake City Scorpions Saskatoon Sharpshooters
Seattle Aviators St. Louis Archers
Tampa Bay Barracudas Vancouver Lumberjacks
Washington Sentinels Winnipeg Winterhawks
If you would like to apply for a team in the IceHL Fantasy Hockey League, please read the application instructions above. Failure to follow the 3 simple instructions will disqualify you from consideration.
Update on 2010-10-01 00:42 by Chris
Forgot to mention something. All applications must be submitted by Thursday night. None will be accepted after that time... unless I deem it necessary for some reason. Then the winners will be announced on Friday morning. If you are selected and do not reply within 24 hours, your team will be given away to another applicant.
Applications close Thursday at 11:00 PM
A lot of great response to the idea of an IceHL fantasy league. Already around 100 individual applicants looking for one of 20 IceHL teams. I think it's safe to say we'll move forward with this. And I'm going to set it up through ESPN's fantasy website, in case you were wondering.
With so many entries, I know most of you will be disappointed by not getting a team. Some have asked whether we could do two separate leagues of 15 teams so we could at least use all 30. This is still an experiment so I'm going to stick with just the one 20-team league for now. We'll see how it goes and maybe do it up next season.
My vision for that would include an extension of the IceHL project next summer in which we expand the league to 40 teams and set up two 20-team fantasy leagues in 2011-12. Then maybe we take the top 3 or 4 finalists from each group and do a playoff pool for the ultimate IceHL champion.
Back to this year's league. I have some more details for you. The 20 teams will be divided up into four divisions, each of which will be named after a popular IceHL artist. We'll be using the guys who had by far the highest number of nominated and winning logos in the project.
The IceHL divisions will be named: Wheeler Division, Smith Division, Robbins Division and Taylor Division. Just my way of making sure we don't forget about our incredible designers. By the way, the league will be available for all to see and follow along with, so even if you don't own a team, you can still feel involved.
September 27, 2010 / Chris Smith/
IceHL Fantasy Season Starting


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You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Hansard > Commons Debates > Commons Debates by date > Commons Debates - previous sessions > Bound Volume Hansard - Written Answers
24 Mar 2005 : Column 981W—continued
Plutonium
Pete Wishart: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what consultations her Department has had with outside organisations about the best way to dispose of plutonium waste. [223541]
24 Mar 2005 : Column 982W
Mr. Mike O'Brien: The Department has had discussions with a range of organisations, including the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) which is responsible for advising the Government on the long-term management of the UK's higher activity radioactive waste, including any plutonium that comes to be regarded as waste. CoRWM is due to report its recommendations in 2006.
Pete Wishart: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans her Department has for dealing with the plutonium stockpile; and if she will make a statement. [223542]
Mr. Mike O'Brien: Future options for the management of the plutonium stockpile are kept under constant review and I welcome the work recently undertaken by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and the BNFL stakeholder dialogue working group on plutonium management.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will become the owner of UK's plutonium stockpile as of 1 April 2005. In the meantime the storage of plutonium in the UK continues to be managed in strict accordance with international requirements and has been updated post 9/11. UK plutonium will remain in protective storage pending decisions on whether to immobilise it as a waste or to use it as fuel.
Pete Wishart: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much her Department has allocated to security measures to protect (a) nuclear power stations and (b) plutonium stores in each of the last five years; what budget has been allocated for each of the next five years; and if she will make a statement. [223543]
Mr. Mike O'Brien: It is the operators of the licensed civil nuclear sites that pay for the security measures to protect these sites, not the Department of Trade and Industry. The security arrangements are regulated by the Office for Civil Nuclear Security (OCNS). OCNS approves the security measures in place and monitors compliance with these security plans.
Private Finance Initiative
Dr. Cable: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many private finance initiative and public private partnership contracts with her Department have been won by subsidiaries of Halliburton in each year from 1997; what the terms were of each contract; and if she will make a statement. [205076]
Nigel Griffiths: DTI officials are not aware of any PFI/PPP contracts between the Department and subsidiaries of Halliburton.
Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what meetings her Department has recently held to discuss road safety issues in respect of vehicle use and construction regulations, with particular reference to the recall by Volkswagen of vehicles because of problems with outer drive shafts; and if she will make a statement. [223024]
Mr. Jamieson: I have been asked to reply.
The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) is responsible for supervising and monitoring vehicle recalls. VOSA's vehicle safety branch holds regular discussions with all vehicle and automotive part manufacturers, including Volkswagen, on issues of vehicle and component safety. Neither VOSA nor Volkswagen are aware of a drive shaft recall.
Sheffield Europe Week
Mr. Davidson: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much her Department spent sponsoring Sheffield Europe Week; from which budget within her Department this cost was met; and what unit was responsible for this project. [221233]
Mr. Alexander: United Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI), whose parent Departments are the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, did not provide direct financial support to the Sheffield in Europe Week programme of events, which ran from 25 February to 6 March 2005. The UKTI regional team for Yorkshire and Humberside did endorse some of the events by agreeing to the use of the UKTI brand. UKTI endorsement was considered worthwhile in order to promote language training in the region through the Regional Language Network and to help foster an understanding of how different cultures and the European Union impact on businesses and international trade.
Mr. Ben Chapman: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many small and medium-sized enterprises were established (a) between 1997 and 2001 and (b) since 2001. [222684]
Nigel Griffiths: Barclays Bank's latest survey of business creation includes non-VAT registered firms and shows that there were 453,000 business start-ups in England and Wales in 2004, the highest since the survey began in 1998.
Barclays data show that there were 1,554,000 business start-ups in total in England and Wales in the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 combined. There were 1,606,000 business start-ups in total in England and Wales in the years 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 combined.
DTI figures show there were 728,755 VAT registrations in total in the UK in the years 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 combined. There were 534,035 VAT registrations in total the UK in the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 combined. Data for 2004 will be available in autumn 2005.
Data on VAT registrations are available in the publication Business Start-ups and Closures: VAT Registrations and De-registrations 1994–2003", available from the Library of the House and also at http://www.sbs.gov.uk/analytical/statistics/vatstats.php.
VAT registrations do not capture all start-up activity. Businesses are unlikely to be registered if they fall below the compulsory VAT threshold, which has risen in each year since 1997. Only 1.8 million out of 4 million enterprises were registered for VAT at the start of 2003.
Both Barclays and VAT registration data include enterprises of all sizes. However, 99.8 per cent. of enterprises are small or medium-sized.
Mr. Dhanda: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the contribution made by small and medium-sized enterprises to the UK economy, with particular reference to the level of exports; and what steps her Department takes to assist small and medium-sized enterprises which rely on exports. [223338]
Nigel Griffiths: The business success of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) underpins our national prosperity. At the start of 2003, the 4 million SMEs in the UK represented 99.8 per cent. of all businesses and contributed some 52.4 per cent. of all private sector turnover (excluding finance sector). Some 16 per cent. of UK SMEs are exporters. Through their international trade activity, these SMEs help to strengthen the existing drivers of UK productivity—innovation and competition; thus contributing to the UK's overall competitiveness.
Through UK Trade and Investment (UKTI), the Government deliver a range of support services to help SMEs win business overseas. Details of the assistance available is set out on UKTI's corporate website www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk.
UK Trade and Investment
Mr. Arbuthnot: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when she will announce the proposed changes to (a) the structure and staffing and (b) the focus of UK Trade and Investment; when these changes are to take effect; and if she will make a statement. [203895]
Mr. Alexander: The structure and staffing of the organisation has to be determined in the light of UKTI's future strategy and its focus, as set out in UKTI's Corporate Plan 2004–07, and the financial and manpower resources available following the SR2004 settlement.
UK Trade and Investment's future strategy is set out in its Corporate Plan 2004–07, available at www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk<http://www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk>. Details of the settlement are set out in the Efficiency Technical Note for UK Trade and Investment, also available at www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk<http://www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk>
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
Mr. Wyatt: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (1) what steps he has taken to assist in tackling money laundering in Bermuda; [223776]
(2) what discussions he has had with the Bermudan Monetary Authority on money laundering. [223777]
Mr. Rammell: The UK discusses money-laundering with the Bermudan Monetary Authority (BMA) mainly through our joint participation in the Caribbean
Financial Action Task Force (CFATF—the regional body for anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing in the Caribbean and Central America).
The UK has provided training to Bermudan officials and law enforcement officers both directly through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office-funded Regional Financial Services Adviser and indirectly through the Caribbean Anti-Money Laundering Programme (which we support financially). A senior staff member of the BMA also recently worked on secondment for two years with the UK Financial Services Authority.


You have probably seen the commercials or come across the My Pillow at your local mall. Maybe you heard about it from a friend who either loves it or hates it. Somewhere along the line you heard about the My Pillow and were wondering, is the My Pillow worth it? I really like it and it has mostly … [Read more...] about My Pillow Review | Should You Get One?


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By-election blues: Malcolm Turnbull eats humble pie after Super Saturday wipeout
By John Passant | 30 July 2018, 8:00am | comments |
Enjoy that pie, Malcolm (Image via @TurnbullMalcolm on Instagram)
It was indeed a Super Saturday, says John Passant — for Bill Shorten and the Labor Party, that is.
SUPER SATURDAY turned out to be super indeed. Labor held all of its four seats, with swings to the ALP in every one. It was a great day for the ALP, and for the many many people who despise this anti-worker Turnbull Government.
The born to rule Liberals could not even win back what they regard as "their" seat, Mayo. Rebekha Sharkie, a former Liberal, and now part of a supposedly middle of the road spin off, Centre Alliance, thrashed Georgina Downer, the Institute of Public Affairs aficionado. Downer is the very model of a modern major conservative.
The insider media narrative, built on its own out of touch "reality" and a succession of polls, was that it would be very close in Longman and Braddon. A win in either seat for the Liberals (or the LNP as they are in Queensland) would supposedly see Bill Shorten under real pressure to keep the Labor Party leadership.
One insider said the ALP could lose both seats. A major Murdoch media outlet, three days before the by-election, produced a poll showing Labor would lose Longman under Shorten but win under their preferred candidate, Albanese. The swing to Labor in Longman was almost 10%. In Braddon it was 0.5% to Labor, based on a strong flow of preferences from fisherman Craig Garland.
After Super Saturday, the only leadership speculation there is should be about Malcolm Turnbull. However, this is not part of the mainstream media's "Channel 9" political entertainment agenda, so, unlike the "Kill Bill" strategy, will not be pushed by The Australian, Sky News and other Murdoch outlets, the Fairfax newspapers, commercial radio or commercial television. At least the ABC has, on the basis of the reality Super Saturday presents of a likely Shorten government, begun to ask questions about Turnbull's government — although not his leadership.
There is no real alternative leadership to Turnbull within the Liberal Party. It says much about the reactionary nature of the Liberals that Peter Dutton is their (loss) leader in waiting. As part of a deliberate Government strategy, he was a prominent campaigner in Longman, Braddon and Mayo.
His racist and xenophobic pitch to voters, based on lies about strong borders (nudge nudge, wink wink), "African gangs" (megaphone message) and cutting immigration (nudge nudge, wink wink) seems to have lost votes for the Liberals. The primary vote for the LNP candidate in Longman, "Big Medals" Trev Ruthenberg, is running, at the time of writing, at around 28% — 10% below the LNP primary vote in the 2016 election.
Some of those previous LNP voters switched directly to Labor. Some defected to the cardboard cutout One Nation on the way to voting for Labor. The PHONies' vote went up by 6% to 16%. Despite the PHONies preferencing the LNP above Labor, a significant number of these voters then sent their votes to Labor.
LNP Longman candidate Trevor Ruthenberg heckled during his media conference this morning. @PeterDutton_MP says they're "union thugs" @abcbrisbane #qldpol #auspol pic.twitter.com/TYsGbJwIlR
— Jessica van Vonderen (@jessvanvonderen) July 28, 2018
The 5.5% two party preferred swing to Labor in Longman will worry Peter Dutton, the racist in chief. His seat of Dickson is next door to Longman and he holds it with a margin of just 2%. As the Turnbull Government and his own political future look over, he will become more desperate, and will ramp up the xenophobia and racism.
Turnbull megaphoned Dutton on African gangs. As an exchange on Friday between voters in Longman and Turnbull suggests, the issues for most voters centred around wages and penalty rates, jobs and public services.
One lesson from Longman is that this distraction no longer works, if it ever did. A government that does not address stagnating wages, penalty rate reductions, cuts to public health, transport and education, and that does not create full-time fulfilling jobs, cannot survive on racism alone.
These class issues were concertinaed in the question of tax cuts for big business, which, if the cross bench in the Senate are sensible, is now dead.
Bill Shorten captured it when he asked on Friday:
"Do voters really want more of the same? More cuts to hospitals, more cuts to schools, more tax cuts for big banks? I don't think so. We're going to find out."
And find out we did. Labor's strategy of concentrating on bread and butter issues was a success. Given the Turnbull-Dutton Government has nothing to offer to address these issues other than neoliberal policies that deliberately make them worse for most people, Labor's approach puts it in the box seat to win the next Federal election. On a margin of just 2%, Peter Dutton will become a rotting scrap in the garbage can of conservative history.
The election of a Shorten Labor government will challenge the ALP to deliver on its rhetoric and promises to workers, while at the same time managing capitalism and its inherent contradictions. If growing inequality and stagnating wages are systemic – and I believe they are – then the real question is what forces exist to keep the pressure on Labor to deliver?
We asked people to make a choice, and they did. They chose better hospitals, not bigger banks. Better schools, not handouts for the top end of town. Good jobs and higher wages. And they chose to protect penalty rates, not cut them. pic.twitter.com/G1JKpaAs1a
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) July 29, 2018
The one class with that capacity is the working class and the trade union movement in particular. The Change the Rules campaign shows that the relationship between union officials and the ALP is too close. Change the Rules is trickle down for unionists and workers.
"Trust us. We will deliver from on high." When Labor gives a few crumbs, the trade union bureaucracy will be happy and pronounce victory. But workers want to sit at the table and share the meal, not just be given some scraps. After all, we did all the work to produce their feast.
I think the electoral focus – which is what Change the Rules is all about – misconceives workers' fundamental strength in the workplace and their capacity to cut off the flow of profits to the bosses.
The real question to me is whether Labor will enshrine an unfettered right to strike in the law and remove all the other impediments to industrial action. On the back of that, the second question is: will the ACTU mobilise workers to strike in the fight to defend jobs, increase wages and protect public services? The answer to both is no.
The real alternative is workers organising themselves to strike for better pay, conditions, jobs and social services. Without a strong fighting force outside Labor to keep the pressure on the incoming Shorten government, the pressure from the ruling class to develop policies in government that favour it will be immense and irresistible.
By all mean let's celebrate Labor's Super Saturday success. The political death of the Liberal government will be something to savour. But let's also keep in mind that we must keep the pressure on Labor all the time to deliver real and substantial benefits for workers.
That means building a fighting working class prepared to strike for better pay, better jobs and better public services. Otherwise we will end up doing the same dance of neoliberalism and class collaboration with Labor again and again and again.
"Malcolm Turnbull said #SuperSaturday was about his leadership and I agree. He's a weak leader, he's a jelly back leader, he's got no capacity to lead this country effectively. I wish he'd go to an election right now," Senator Doug Cameron #bfozpollive pic.twitter.com/BSzwOin6x5
— BuzzFeedOz News (@BuzzFeedOzNews) July 29, 2018
Read more by John Passant on his website En Passant or follow him on Twitter @JohnPassant. Signed copies of John's first book of poetry, Songs for the Band Unformed(Ginninderra Press 2016), are available for purchase from the IA store HERE.
Out-of-touch. Malcolm Turnbull blames Bill Shorten for penalty rate cuts but the crowd calls him out. He dismisses questions with "that's rubbish" and cannot retreat quick enough. #auspol pic.twitter.com/RrR9vMphTz
— Fred Smith (@actualfredsmith) July 27, 2018
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John Passant Super Saturday by-elections Longman Braddon Mayo Georgina Downer Malcolm Turnbull #Libspill Bill Shorten
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Taj Burrow (AUS), 31 has taken out the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast presented by Land Rover over Jordy Smith (ZAF), 22, in rippable two-to-three foot (1 metre) waves at Snapper Rocks.
The opening event of then 2010 ASP World Tour season, the Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast started the year off with a bang, bringing the greatest assemblage of surfing talent in history to one of the most iconic pointbreaks in the world, and the world's best surfers shattered high-performance barriers once again.
"I'm so so happy right now - it's the best feeling on Earth!" Burrow said. "It's unreal. I have a good group of friends with me and my parents are here supporting me. To have everyone cheering me on in the final is really really special."
While the young South African led throughout the first half of the 40-minute Final, it was Burrow who changed the tide with a mid-heat assault, racking up several solid scores in larger set waves amidst the deteriorating conditions.
"I didn't feel like I surfed my best in the Final," Burrow said. "I kind of just did what it took to win. I just waited for the best waves, did a couple nice turns - nothing too wild. I'd rather have taken Jordy's approach - catch lots of waves and just let loose. That's kind of my strategy normally, but it worked fine. Being a bit more patient and ive than usual definitely paid off. But I knew Jordy could unleash and get the big score any moment."
Burrow, who has secured victories in the previous two events entered (Pipeline in December and Burleigh Heads in February), has been in sensational form over the past three months, and will look to continue the momentum in 2010 as he hunts down his first ASP World Title.
"What can I say? I don't know," Burrow said. "I surprised myself really. Obviously, Pipe was the biggest event I could ever win. I was just overwhelmed. I felt like retiring after that event. I just couldn't believe it, and didn't think it could get any better. I guess I've taken the confidence from it and worked on some good boards. Burleigh Heads was a good warm-up. I felt good that there as well - there are fun little rights, and then here, I took a while to get rolling, but I just built up momentum. I felt great out there and here I am on the podium again - it just feels unbelievable."
Smith, who went on a giant-ing spree at the event, eliminating former nine-time ASP World Champion Kelly Slater (USA), 38, in yesterday's Round 4 before posting the best result of his young career.
"It's my first Final so I'm pretty stoked," Smith said. "It's unfortunate that the waves went kind of dead in our heat there, but we tried our best. It's been a great event though and I'm looking forward to the next one."
Long touted as one of the most dominant forces in the surfing world, Smith had yet to realize his potential in the competitive realm, but if this event's performance is any indication, the powerful natural-footer is a near-certain threat for an ASP World Title.
"I just feel a lot more comfortable with myself this season," Smith said. "I'm having a lot more fun with my surfing and everything seems to be coming together for me. I'm amped with a Runner-Up finish here and hope I can keep the momentum up for the rest of the season."
Dane Reynolds (USA), 24, looked the form surfer of the event yesterday, defeating defending event winner Joel Parkinson (AUS), 28, with an impressive 19.20 out of a possible 20. However, the young Californian was unable to find a rhythm in today's challenging conditions, bowing out of the event with an Equal 3rd at the hands of Smith.
"I felt pretty good yesterday and it felt like my equipment was finally working," Reynolds said. "Even though the conditions weren't as good today, I thought I could catch an average wave and surf it well enough to get a good score, but that didn't happen. When the other guy gets a good roll going, it's hard to come back - or it is for me anyway."
With his penchant for churning out Earth-shattering performances and a good start to the year, several pundits are considering Reynolds as a legitimate ASP World Title contender, but the humble natural-footer has yet to commit such a goal.
"I've never been in this situation before so it's hard for me to say (in regards to motivation for the ASP World Title)," Reynolds said. "When you're a little kid, everyone always tells you that the ASP World Title is the goal, but there's only one each season and 45 guys going for it. It hasn't been a goal for me yet."
Bobby Martinez (USA), 27, matched his best result on the Gold Coast today, collecting an Equal 3rd (his first in 2006), but the sole goofy-footer in today's event was clearly upset about the deteriorated conditions.
"It's disappointing to finish when it's windy like this today," Martinez said. "We all want to surf when it's glassy, and I'm disappointed that we have to finish today. I did my best to mix it up out there, but it's very challenging out there on your backhand today."


Woodland's parent company, Aero Group, is a well-known name in the outdoor shoe industry since the early fifties. Woodland is a leading manufacturer and supplier of apparel and accessories, and is a strong supporter of sustainability in the fashion and apparel world. Founded in Quebec, Canada, it entered the Indian market in 1992, and has become a leading outdoor brand today. The launch of its first hand-stitched leather shoe took the footwear market by storm, cementing the value of Woodland brand in India.
Environmental impacts have always been a major concern for us at Woodland. We strive to continually become more aware of, and be sensitive towards environmental impact of our business practices. We evaluate our processes and continually implement new strategies to improve efficiencies and minimise our ecological footprint.
We design and construct products to perform better and last longer and believe that a high quality product that retains its performance properties and aesthetic appeal for many years is more environmentally responsible than one that must be replaced frequently due to inferior materials or poor workmanship.
As our brand grow, we have become more capable of working towards tangible, positive changes in our environmental practices. We have already taken strong steps in the right direction and have continued to explore new means to become better stewards. We also encourage our customers to adopt eco-friendly practices. We continuously try to balance the carbon amount that is released from our factories by planting trees and use eco-friendly raw materials and techniques in manufacturing and packaging. We believe in using business to inspire solutions to environmental crisis, and it is with this belief that we strive to discover new ways and also increase awareness for creating sustainable solutions in India.
We realise the importance of eco-consciousness and have embraced it as one of our key objectives. In other words, we are pro planet, and we constantly work towards keeping our environment safe.
In keeping with our eco-conscious philosophy, we have always tried to make eco-friendly products which are made through processes that cause minimal harm to the environment. We wish to share this philosophy and involve our customers in exercising the same. In today's world where globalisation and staying connected is crucial, we are working towards creating an interactive platform where we can discuss issues related to nature and the environment around us.
We are a strong supporter of sustainability in the fashion and apparel world. We believe that every brand is responsible towards the society it operates in and must give back to the community as it grows and succeeds. We have always looked at different ways in which we can contribute to the society, as building value for our communities is as satiating as generating profit for our shareholders.
We support our mission to stand out asan eco-friendly brand and also realises the importance of eco-consciousness, with an aim to keep the environment clean. Our efforts are in line with inculcating values of eco-friendly conditions amongst the new generation, to save the environment and create awareness among them to conserve nature.
As part of our CSR initiative – Proplanet – we have introduced products made from materials and process that are free from all harmful substances, reflecting the eco-friendly philosophy. In apparel, there are organic cotton t-shirts which are made of pure cotton and are free from all toxins and pesticides. The brand's pure green t-shirts are made from recycled plastic bottles that are sterilised and processed into fibre strands knitted together to create a fabric that is 100 percent recycled.
In footwear category, the leather used for making shoes is mostly vegetable tanned,using harmless natural chemicals, and comes from the company's tanneries in several countries. Leather outsourced from other tanneries is also vegetable tanned. We have installed technologies which recycle the waste to a large extent. As a result, effluents (water mixed with used chemicals) from our tannery are passed through a series of pits where the water is treated with chemicals like ferrous sulphate and lime mixed with poly-electrolytes to precipitate and separate the clearwater and sludge. The process helps it clean up to 25,000 litres of discharge every eight hours.
In addition, the biodegradable collection of summer sandals and slippers are made from vegetable tanned leather and recycled rubber with antibacterial lining material to keep the feet dry. They are manufactured with minimal amount of pressure on the environment.
As a commitment to sustainability, we have initiated a process under which all our retail stores are steadily converting to carbon-neutral stores. The initiative includes accurate accounting of the carbon footprint of each store in order to attain zero carbon emissions from stores spread across the country. A German company specialising in eco-friendly architecture and design has been designing these stores where the wooden flooring and cash counters are made of reclaimed lumber while the wall fixtures are made of recycled fibres, and lights are energy efficient. This drive began with the Bangalore store, and has been on since.
In addition to reducing the retail carbon footprint, we intend to encourage customers to use green products across all categories by providing incentives for every carbon credit earned by the customer. The campaign was introduced to encourage customers to pledge their emission reductions for every solar water heater they use. Upon pledging, each customer using a solar geyser was gratified with Woodland e-vouchers, which they claimed after authentication. It was initiated to propagate the message of adopting an eco-friendly lifestyle to the masses.
We always use environment-friendly products like organic cotton, recycled rubber, etc. to manufacture our products along with designing and constructing products to perform better and last longer. Every product's hangtags, as well as our business cards, are printed on certified 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper. To reduce the total amount of paper used in the marketing materials of our brand, and the energy consumed to make and recycle them, we have consciously made a decision to move towards more electronic billing, publishing and communication.
We recognise the importance of sustainable development and we also encourage our customers to adopt eco-friendly practices. We continuously try to balance the carbon amount that is released by planting trees and using eco-friendly raw materials and techniques in manufacturing and packaging.
· Communicating, educating and motivating them to seize the opportunities to reduce environmental opportunities: We engage in multiple initiatives and campaigns right from in-store experiential activities to online campaigns, associations with like-minded organisations, educational institutes and NGOs for tree plantation with schools, bicycle rides with local communities, encouraging people with discount/gift as an acknowledgment to increase the use of solar products.
· Continuously improving the manufacturing process to reduce our water consumption and preserve natural resources: We undertake multiple educational campaigns and innovative ideas to promote an eco-friendly world. We partnered with Asia's largest musical festival – Sunburn – for 'Leave No Trace' campaign, to spread awareness on preserving eco balance. The campaign ensured to spread the message of a pollution-free environment and the Proplaneters ensured that all waste items were collected and transported for recycling processes, leaving no trace behind. We aim to spread awareness and contribute to the society through as many mediums as possible. We are very happy and proud to help the society in as many ways as possible. We created an installation from reused material and collected vast amount of plastic in the form of plastic bottles. The same plastic was used for our eco-friendly collection of t-shirts.
· Reducing energy consumption and GHG emissions for manufacturing and transport: Striving to optimise modes of transport used towards low carbon-emitting options, each Woodland factory is monitored for water resource to ensure that any preventive action to protect the source is put in place.
· As a team, we also encourage a work culture that looks after eco-consciousness and ensure employee participation in eco friendly activities.
We have been associated with UNICEF since 2011 with an aim to raise resources for improving access to basic sanitation, drinking water and hygiene for school-going children in India. The main aim for this partnership with UNICEF is to contribute on programmes related to Water, Sanitation and Hygiene(WASH) reaching out to 115 million school-going children in India. This is aimed to ensure that every school in India has well-maintained water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. The partnership complements national priorities set out in the mission and contributes to achieving the national goal.
This partnership has benefitted 682,000 boys and girls in over 6200 schools by providing them access to quality water and safe sanitation, improved hand-washing infrastructure and ensuring regular hand-washing practices by all the school children before their mid-day meals.
We have supported the WWF India Conservation initiative previously as well where funds were raised to donate solar lanterns to over 120 household in three villages in Central India's Satpuda Maikal landscape. Patwahi, Chiklabadi and BanglaDadar are some of the small villages situated in the most remote parts of two wildlife corridors providing passage for wildlife to move between Kanha and Pench Tiger Reserve and Kanha and Achanakmar Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh.
To increase awareness about renewable energy, we demonstrated the concept of generating renewable energy by individuals through pedalling stationary cycles where the bicycle's rear wheel is attached to a dynamo which generates electrical charge when the cyclist pedals. The charged energy is stored in the batterybox. This generated electrical charge by natural human cycling is used to light up Woodland stores. More than 18,000 people joined this initiative and pledged to support the same.
Earth Hour is the largest grassroots movement started by WWF with the mission to unite people to protect the planet. This movement that has spread to 172 countries across the globe has achieved massive environmental impact, including legislation changes by harnessing the power of the crowd. As nature lovers, we at Woodland understand that protecting the environment is the primary need of the hour; which is why it took up the cause to bring about a change. Among the many environment projects we are associated with, Lights4Stripes is one of the most important and recent ones.
Understanding the challenges that the people of the Sundarbans are facing, we partnered with WWF India to support their Earth Hour crowdfunding project- Light4strips. The areas were massively underdeveloped and exposed to numerous hazards ranging from snake bites to tiger attacks. This project was launched in an effort to improve the conditions and to protect the people and tiger at the Sundarbans. The aim was to provide solar streetlights to villages located near wildlife reserves. From the collected funds, 33 streetlights were installed at the borders of Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary, Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, which impacted the area that has a population of approximately 13,000 people. This initiative also replaced 24 older installations in the same line which were converted into solar streetlights.
As a brand, we believe in the philosophy of sustainable mountain development and ecology preservation of higher altitude areas. This incited the brand for a partnership with Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE), an initiative focussed towards providing clean energy and education access to remote Himalayan communities.
Annually, GHE unites willing adventurers to go out in the Himalayan wilderness and create a tangible difference to the communities there. We have helped and supported their vision of providing experiential education and sustainable rural livelihood through setting up of solar home stays and advocating use of adventure gear as means of safety and livelihood for local people.
Woodland will maintain an unwavering commitment to innovation, sustainable business practices and keep its tradition of promoting outdoor and adventure sports worldwide while reinforcing the Woodland brand mantra, Explore More. The goal is to substantially reduce the amount of materials used over time and the energy consumed to manufacture and distribute those materials and products.


text:
Congress of the People (Cope) eller Folkkongressen är ett sydafrikanskt,  politiskt parti grundat 2008 av före detta ANC-medlemmar, under ledning av Mosiuoa Lekota, Mbhazima Shilowa och Mluleki George. Cope ställde upp i 2009 års val i vilket de fick 7.42% av rösterna (drygt 1,3 miljoner röster).

Partiets namn anspelar på ett politiskt stormöte år 1955, Congress of the People, vilket har lett till en strid med ANC om vem som äger rätten till det namnet. Cope lanserades officiellt i Bloemfontein den 16 december 2008, en dryg månad efter att initiativet först tillkännagetts och två månader efter att Mosiuoa Lekota brutit med ANC.

Bakgrund
Den 18 december 2007 valde Sydafrikas dominerande parti, ANC, den kontroversielle Jacob Zuma till ny partiledare. Partiet är splittrat i frågan om ledarvalet. Jacob Zuma har tidigare lämnat posten som vicepresident efter anklagelser om korruption och våldtäkt.

Två dagar senare avgick Zumas företrädare Thabo Mbeki motvilligt som president efter att ANC uppmanat honom till detta. Mbekis anhängare inom ANC menar att han därigenom förödmjukats offentligt och anklagar partiledningen för maktmissbruk.

En falang inom partiet meddelade i oktober 2008 att man kommer att bilda ett utbrytarparti. I början av december hölls fyllnadsval till parlamentet i 27 valkretsar i Västra Kapprovinsen. Oberoende kandidater, som stödjer planerna på en ny partibildning, erövrade tio mandat medan ANC bara vann i tre valkretsar.

Partibildning
Den 16 december bildades det nya partiet, Congress of the People (COPE) av omkring 4 000 delegater i Bloemfontein. Landets förre försvarsminister Mosiuoa Lekota utsågs till partiledare,  Mbhazima Shilowa till förste vice partiledare och Lynda Odendaal till andra vice partiledare.

Den populäre pastorn Allan Boesak aviserade samtidigt sitt stöd för det nya partiet.

Valresultat
COPE blev tredje största parti med 7.42% i valet 2009 och var det största oppositionspartiet i fem provinser. Inför kommunvalet 2011 hade partiet drabbats av interna stridigheter och tappade stöd till 2.1% på nationell nivå, men behöll en stark ställning i Norra kapprovinsen där COPE nu styr fyra kommuner i koalition med Democratic Alliance.

I det allmänna valet 2014 föll COPE i allt väsentligt sönder och fick bara 0,67% av rösterna.

Källor

Externa länkar
www.congressofthepeople.org.za

Politiska partier i Sydafrika
Socialdemokratiska partier i Afrika
Politiska partier bildade 2008


text:
In enzymology, a D-nopaline dehydrogenase () is an enzyme that catalyzes the chemical reaction

N2-(D-1,3-dicarboxypropyl)-L-arginine + NADP+ + H2O  L-arginine + 2-oxoglutarate + NADPH + H+

The 3 substrates of this enzyme are N2-(D-1,3-dicarboxypropyl)-L-arginine, NADP+, and H2O, whereas its 4 products are L-arginine, 2-oxoglutarate, NADPH, and H+.

This enzyme belongs to the family of oxidoreductases, specifically those acting on the CH-NH group of donors with NAD+ or NADP+ as acceptor.  The systematic name of this enzyme class is N2-(D-1,3-dicarboxypropyl)-L-arginine:NADP+ oxidoreductase (L-arginine-forming). Other names in common use include D-nopaline synthase, nopaline dehydrogenase, nopaline synthase, NOS, 2-N-(D-1,3-dicarboxypropyl)-L-arginine:NADP+ oxidoreductase, and (L-arginine-forming).  This enzyme participates in arginine and proline metabolism.

References

EC 1.5.1
NADPH-dependent enzymes
Enzymes of unknown structure