text:
Sternthal Books
Eritrian and Sudanese Refugees in Israel: A Reckoning
Ian Sternthal
I Eritrian and Sudanese Refugees in Israel: A Reckoning
II A Changing Society: Privatization & Migrant Workers
III The Refugees: A Timeline
VI The Sinai Torture Houses
V The Rise of The Right in Israel
For many years the only 'refugees' spoken about in Israel were the masses of stateless European Jews unable to find sanctuary from the perils of Nazism. The M.S St. Louis left Germany in 1938 with a boatload of emigres, only to be turned away from every single port they docked at. All nine hundred passengers returned to Germany. Only two hundred would survive the Holocaust. Israel's creation was justified by the burning belief that no people should ever be subject to such horrors.
One would think the frequent invocations of the Holocaust in Israeli public discourse would render consensus sympathetic to the suffering of any victims of genocide, yet the the fate of the Eritrian and South Sudanese refugees fighting to remain in Israel has largely been met with contempt and derision. At a protest in 2012 Likud MK Miri Regev now the minister of Culture and Sport, went so far as to say "the Sudanese are a cancer in our body." And yet in 1951, Israel was one of the first countries to vie for the creation of the Convention On Refugees, whose mandate was to define and outline the rights of individuals seeking refuge and asylum after World War 2 (WW2). According to UNHCR: "The core principle is non-refoulement, which asserts that a refugee should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom." While Israel has largely abided by policies of non-refoulement, it has also implemented policies aimed at making the lives of refugees so untenable many have left of their own resolve.
Since 2006 a steady stream of Africans fleeing from the military dictatorship in Eritria, and the civil war in South Sudan have illegally crossed the Egyptian border into Israel. Though Israel has since erected a border fence, curtailing the possibility of further immigration, and though these new populations have nearly ceaselessly integrated into the local labor force, the Israeli government, media, and consensus have recently initiated a campaign aimed at deportation. There is little question that a return to Africa would further endanger this already vulnerable population, a risk compounded by the presence of torture houses in Sinai where hundreds of African migrants have been held for ransom. For many, reaching Israel is a matter of life and death.
While the recently hatched plans to forcibly deport the refugee community have been shelved due to a decree by the supreme court, it is more crucial then ever to present a synthesized and factual timeline of this story; to investigate and hold accountable state formulated narratives which brand the 'refugees as infiltrators who pose a dangerous threat towards Israeli cohesiveness and security.
But why is there such rampant skepticism towards multiculturalism? And public opinion notwithstanding, why is it that aside from massive demonstrations, Israeli's have so few avenues with which to influence legislative mechanisms within the Knesset, which this November voted 71 to 41 in favor of deporting the refugees to an unknown African country.
A major policy reversal of non-refoulement had taken place without with any significant increase in public discussion on the matter. In distinction to the American system, where a barrage of emails, phone calls, and protests directed at the offices of many members of congress succeeded in swaying elected representatives to resist Trump's travel ban – the Israeli political system does not enable citizen's to sway MK'S voting patterns through the ballot box. Israel boasts a unitary parliamentary system based on proportional representation, heralded by many as the Middle East's sole democracy. This means that citizens can only vote for a party, not for an individual representative geographically bound to represent them. So long as a party receives over two percent of the popular vote, they receive a proportional number of seats from the 120 seats which constitute the Knesset. The party with the majority of seats is invited to form a government, either based on its majority, or its ability to form a coalition with likeminded parties.
As opposed to the Canadian and American systems, the Israeli system invests within each party the power to select their delegates internally according to a 'closed list' system – where the representatives are internally selected by each party according to their own rules and regulations. As the country is not divided into voting districts, independent media, grassroots campaigners, and citizens are deprived of the possibility of targeting and monitoring elected officials so as to keep them accountable to their campaign promises.
Neve Shaanan is a small parcel of land tucked between Tel-Aviv's central bus station, and the cities Southern neighborhoods. Constructed according to a menorah shaped urban grid, it is today home to tens of thousands of refugees from Eritria and South Sudan, alongside a significant population of foreign workers and Israeli's. Once known as 'The Shoe district' due to its large concentration of shoe importers and manufacturers, it is always been a socio-economically depressed area, largely owing to the presence of Tel-Aviv's central bus station, and its long standing neglect from city hall.
The neighborhood's location and price range made it a desirable location for many foreign workers who began to come to Israel at the behest of the government in the early 1990's. Following the end of the Intifada the Israeli economy began to look for a solution to replace the large Palestinian labor force which had for years crossed daily into Israel, working largely in construction, maintenance, and other 'undesirable' jobs. The government began to encourage migrant workers to come and work in Israel – with one stipulation: Familiar with the European context, where migrant workers who naturalized begin to transform the socio-economic realities of their host countries, Israeli ministers devised a purposefully ambiguous set of immigration policies and procedures designed to exploit cheap international labor, while also preserving Israel's 'Jewish' character. As opposed to Europe – neither the foreign workers, nor their children, would ever have the opportunity to become permanent residents of Israel. A series of legislative protocols were enacted to ensure just this.(2)
The 1990's represented a significant turning point in Israel's neo-liberal transformation, where the country was opened up to private investment, government owned industries were privatized, and real estate speculation would dramatically change the cost of living. These changes have consistently privileged the wealthy classes and resulted in large feelings of disenfranchisement amongst a middle class which continues to struggle for its survival.
Privatization opened the economy up for global investment, creating a new social structure of capital linked to the globalized economy. It is in this context that the African asylum seekers began pouring across the border; without a stable legal status – and unable to be deported due to humanitarian concerns in Sudan and Eritria – the refugee community was forced to huddle together, often living five people to a room in order to survive. Exploitative real estate practices in Neve Sha'anan evolved in reaction to an overall reluctance to rent apartments to Black Africans, where local landlords began charging the refugees per head – resulting in a situation where their 'collective rent' for neglected and decaying apartments far superseded the cost of renting brand new apartments in the cities more costly northern neighborhoods.
The influx of African refugees to Israel was first precipitated by the startlingly violent beating and murder of 28 Sudanese nationals at the hands of Egyptian police in 2006 (New York Times, 2006). At the time, there was no fence on the Egyptian-Israeli border, and with the help of Bedouin smugglers, many African's fleeing hardship began to see Israel as a promised land – one which provided decent opportunities for a better life.
By 2011 more and more refugees continued to pour into the city. They began to open business – internet cafés, bars, injira restaurants, and salons, increasingly intergrating into the local labor force. As a source of cheap labor, they could be seen doing a variety of urban maintenance work, as well working in kitchens and a variety of other restaurants. At this time, residents of Neve Sha'anan began to mobilize and speak out against these 'foreigners' who they felt were taking over their neighborhood. Rather then directing their anger at the municipality and government – who's policies – or lack thereof – had forced these vulnerable groups to band together in an already under serviced neighborhood. The resident's frustration increasingly turned against the refugees.
In 2011 local right wing Israeli activists were given a plot of land in Neve Sha'anan, under the aegis of creating a garden 'for Israelis.' This was done without any official tenders, agreements, or announcements, and with the municipality's tacit support, a group of young gentrifying ideologues began knocking on doors, seeking out the neighborhood's mostly alienated and and elderly population of local Israeli's to join the new urban garden. Foreign workers and refugees were not invited to participate, and although the founders insisted that integration takes time, there has since been no programming aimed at using the space to foster co-existance within the community. The garden is surround by tall apartment buildings where African and Filipino residents peer out at the communal gatherings and fresh produce they are forbidden from enjoying.
I spent many afternoons in the garden with the local members, and beneath their heatedly racist rhetoric, there is real suffering; one 80 year old woman told me that she was the only Israeli in her building. In the beginning she would beseech her migrant neighbors to not leave garbage in the building, but over time they grew aggressive towards her, and she feared speaking up. Under the same premise of bringing new life to this dilapidated area, local activists mobilized to create a festival called 'Nite Lites' which features video art installations, food carts and other programming over Christmas. Tens of thousands of shekels have been poured into these events over the last three years.
The plight of the refugees is further compounded by the emergence of kidnappings perpetrated by Bedouin communities in Israel and Egypt, who hold African migrants in torture houses in the Sinai desert, charging ransom for repatriation. Women are repeatedly beaten and raped, and are given cell phones to notify their families. The price for their lives now exceeds 50,000 dollars. An investigative report by investigative journalist Ilana Dayan follows the ransom payment in Tel-Aviv, yet police have been totally negligent in intercepting these drops.
Once the refugees are freed, they have to make the dangerous journey to the Israeli border, where the Egyptian police shoot to kill, and the Israel jail's them upon entry. This phenomenon is closely documented in 'Sound of Torture', a documentary by Keren Shayo which closely follows Meron Estefanos, a Swedish-Eritrean radio host, who broadcasts a weekly radio program on the situation of the Eritrean hostages held in Sinai. Estefanos fields live calls from hostages and their relatives hoping to facilitate their release. The film follows Meron to Israel and the Sinai Desert, where she meets face to face with those who reached out from the torture houses, exposing the horrific reality of the torture camps and of the many victims they have claimed.
The film shows shots of massive unmarked graves, where those who don't make it across the border are buried in unmarked plots. As I exited the film, a friend showed me a recent post from Netanyahu's instagram – proudly celebrating the 'departure' of over 5,800 'infiltrators', whose lives had been made so miserable that they would choose the gamble their lives rather then live in the open air prison that life in Israel had become for them.
The public humiliation of the refugee population continued, with several notable events taking place. In May of 2012 massive demonstrations took place in Tel-Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood. A young MK named Ayelet Shaked made a name for herself with her sharp criticism of the immigrant community.
On May 23rd 2012 a massive protest attended by political figures including Danny Danon and MK Miri Regev took place in Neve Sha'anan – where crowds attacked African passersby, lit garbage cans on fire, smashed car windows, and destroying the storefronts of African owned businesses, earning the demonstration the title 'Kritallnacht in Tel-Aviv' – a reference to the dark days of 1938 in Germany where the windows of Jewish owned business were smashed. According to an article on rt.com, "The crowd cried "The people want the Sudanese deported" and "Infiltrators get out of our home."
This attack was coordinated with no legal protocols, by which the Tel Aviv Municipality stopped issuing business licenses to Eritrian citizens, even for those who hold Israeli work visas. "The city explained the rejections on the pretext that it only grants business licenses to people holding work visas, when the duration of these visas extends to the entire length of the business permit's duration. Tel Aviv's business licenses are given for one year, whereas Eritrean citizens need to renew their visas every four months, effectively baring Eritreans from obtaining business licenses," (Haaretz, 2013).
By early 2013 the authorities, The Refugees were finally able to formally seek recognition as refugees, but hardly any of the cases heard were accepted. According to Lisa Anteby-Yemini, in her article 03 Anteby-clean, while other global-north countries accept an average of 87% of asylum requests from Eritrean asylum-seekers, in Israel there have only been seven requests granted by the third quarter of 2016. Similarly, while the rest of the world grants an average of 63% of requests for asylum from refugees from Sudan, only one Sudanese national received refugee status in Israel:
"Recently, PIBA has begun to reject requests for asylum out-of-hand on the grounds that they were 'delayed', even though for years they have denied Eritreans and Sudanese the opportunity to request asylum, never informed them of a change in this policy towards them, and certainly never told them of the existence of a deadline for submitting requests. The conclusion from all this is clear: the Israeli immigration system is built so that no requests will be granted, by applying stringent criteria and restrictions that are unacceptable in the rest of the world."
Around the same time, the municipality of Tel-Aviv began issuing permits to 'Israeli' students willing to move to Neve Shaanan and the Hatikva neighborhood (Haaretz, 2013), Dan Peer among other activists began a campaign to rid the neighborhood of the refugee population through their own political organization 'Darom Ha'ir' – 'The South of the City', blaming the refugees for the downtrodden state of the neighborhood. Rather then directing their anger towards governmental policies which forced the refugees to band together under conditions which would wreak havoc on the infrastructure of any city. The truth is that without a legal status to protect them, they are obligated to depend on their own networks, and are unable to disperse throughout the country. Furthermore, the residents of these neglected quarters would do better to direct their anger towards the government and municipality.
What is even more disconcerting, is that the 'Darom Hair' masquerades as a 'left leaning' organization, and is made up of secular educated young people, who disguise their hatred under a smokescreen of concern for the dilapidated state of the neighborhood. Beyond the fact that this area had been totally neglected and poverty stricken for years prior to the arrival of the refugees, the neglect they rail against is also the very factor which enabled all of these young people to find affordable housing within the area. Furthermore, I can attest to the fact that, from my experience, that the most dangerous parts of the neighborhood are connected to largely Eastern European prostitution rings, drug dealers, and mafia, which have little to do with the African Migrants.
While the mood continued to sour against the refugees, in 2013 Israel completed construction on a security fence on the Israeli/Egyptian border, which has resulted in the almost complete termination of the refugee influx into Israel. The public's wrath for this group, however, has only intensified.
The term 'infiltrators' is derived from a law passed in 1954, titled The prevention of Infiltration Law, which gave the state the legal rights to criminally pursue anyone who illegally enters Israel. Initially the 'infiltrators' were deigned as residents of the Arab countries surrounding Israel, or Palestinians residing in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. In 2012 the government amended the infiltration law to include the thousands of African refugees who began to pour through the 'open' Egyptian border, transforming these populations from 'refugees seeking asylum' into criminals in the eyes of the State.
The amended version of the law allows for the detention of migrants who enter the country illegally for up to a year without trial and allows the state to hold those already in Israel indefinitely in the open detention facility. The amendment replaced previous legislation that allowed for detention without trial for up to three years.
The government opened 'The Holot Detention Center', Hebrew for sands, the remote new facility is open by day and locked at night. But detainees have to be present for roll call three times a day, a provision meant to prevent them from working outside.
Israel's Supreme Court overturned that law in September, ruling that it violated principles of human dignity and freedom. Local human rights groups have already petitioned the Supreme Court against the new measures.
In 2015, an immigrant from Eritrea, Habtom Zarhum, was beaten to death by a mob after being misidentified as an assailant in a terrorist attack at the Beersheva bus station.[76]
This past Spring Israel's high court outlawed The Holot detention center, where African migrants have held without trial and ordered some 2,000 inmates there to be released over the next three months.
While the future is still ambiguous, the refugees future is still uncertain. Open a newspaper and daily there are articles filled with stories of refugees being segregated into seperate schools, and subject to an ever changing series of rules designed to make their lives so untenable in Israel they would rather choose the dangers of exile.
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Nevet Yitzhak's monograph 'Video Works' looks back at seven of the artists video installations, completed between 2007 and 2014.
'In the Studio with Nahum Tevet'
A new docu-series on contemporary artists from Israel created by Artis. Every few weeks we will be releasing a new film from the 20 part series.
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Natural Worker
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Rami Maymon
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Edited & Designed by Ian Sternthal
Sternthal Books' Publishing Catalogue 2011-2018
A New Relationship Between Reflective Sides
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Hagar Cygler
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Patterns For Contemporary Living
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First We Feel Then Fall
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The Iblis, The Sultan, The Girl, & The Lion's Tale
Grady's Kinneret paintings recall the chalk markings that surround around a body in a crime scene, with the outlines bleeding into the surrounding areas. The body is no longer present, the markings bear prominence only after the body has been removed, and the victim has disappeared, leaving only the remains of victim killed by unnatural causes.
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A minimalist yet razor sharp voice emerges from the recent works of Leor Grady. This voice is inscribed with traces of a battle left behind by an invisible body that demands severance of the actual body — queer, Mizrahi, Yemenite, traditional — and from a symbolic body — national, modern, western, and artistic. Grady's figurative images are measured. When they appear — they are the figure of this body; which Israeli culture in general, and Israeli art in particular, represses, displaces, excludes, and overlooks — unable to recognize or come to terms with the consequences of its appearance — neither in the symbolic artistic realm, nor in local visual culture.
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Like every national discourse, my mother's syntax built upon a silent consensus among those who spoke it. Hers was the language of the occupiers, a language that could not afford to let uncultivated areas develop, from which alternative narratives might emerge.
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One would think that the frequent invocations of the Holocaust in Israeli public discourse would render consensus sympathetic to the inexorable suffering of any victims of genocide, yet the fate of the Eritrian and South Sudanese refugees currently living in Israel has been met with contempt and derision.
Our world is the last of all worlds. A base world of fragments and husks. Abundance came down from above, lights were poured from vessel to vessel, but the vessels could not contain the intensity, and they shattered to pieces. Lest we forget, our role is to wander amongst the heaps, and seek out the sparks, return the light to its place...the primordial intensities could not be contained in the first place, and the world was created in fracture. Hence, the healing process does not involve returning the elements to their original place, but rather dictates the creation of a new space, where the disparate elements can rest.
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This exoticization of the 'other' is janus-faced, already implied by fact that the porcelains were created to suit western tastes for the Orient, and were intended for western export. As objects of an aesthetic exchange between east and west, they both mirror the complexity of the orientalist dialectic, and expose the relations of power which govern this exchange.
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Past Events / 2018
In Print Art Book Fair Jerusalem
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Elham Rokni: Don't Touch the Cucumber Tray
Sadnaot Ha'Omanim
'Fajja' by Keren Benbenisty, at The Petach Tikvah Museum of Art
Petach Tikvah Museum of Art
'The Believers' Installation at Breda Photo Festival
Koepel Prison, Breda
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Offprint London Art Book Fair, 2015
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London.
The 2015 New York Art Book Fair
MOMA PS1, September 17th, 2015
'Hush: Israel Palestine 2000-2014' Book Launch at The Migdalor
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'A A O UE' NYC Book Launch at Printed Matter
May 14th, 2013, NYC
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Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel-Aviv
Songs Of Innocence and Experience Book Launch @ The Photographers Gallery in London
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Volume Berlin
Sternthal Books is an art book publishing company which uses print, motion, and digital media to examine current global issues from an artistic perspective. Through our experience, we shepherd our clients and collaborators through the various stages through which an idea is transformed into a finished product. We believe that art provides all people with the power to express ourselves, transform our surroundings, and make the world a better place. If you are an artist, gallery, or museum interested in publishing, please get in touch at contact@sternthalbooks.com, and for a more detailed list of available services scroll below.
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The Festival of Marketing starts next week and we have star speakers, thought-provoking content and inspirational lectures lined up for you, finished off with beats from Eliza Doolittle and Grandmaster Flash.
There is only a week to go until our Festival of Marketing opens in London on 12 November. With that in mind, this seemed a good point to pick out the speakers, themes and concepts that are getting us most excited at Marketing Week. If you haven't arranged your visit yet, it's time to beg, borrow or steal in order to get your place*.
1. Bradley Wiggins. Britain's most famous Olympian is this week's Marketing Week cover star and he's opening our Festival of Marketing on 12 November in an intimate interview with respected Sky News presenter Dermot Murnaghan on winning, team strategy and building a sports brand from grassroots to global success.
2. The Cabinet of Curiosities. The Festival is more than a standard business-to-business conference, so we've curated some of the most interesting, unusual and thought-provoking content into our Cabinet of Curiosities. From Jeremy Gilley, who markets the world's most difficult brief – world peace, to inventors of a 1000mph car and a guide to starting your own creative technology business, led by Marketing Week's own regular columnist Alex Tait, digital director, EMEA, Kellogg, come hear what they have to say.
3. Stardust. We know that attending session after session on strategy, content marketing and personalisation will help you achieve success, but it's also good to sprinkle a little stardust to keep things lively. We've got plenty of it, with the talented rapper Professor Green talking about brand endorsement, while former X Factor judge and pop star Tulisa talks about reputation management in the public eye. At The Digitals awards show, music is provided by Eliza Doolittle and the legendary Grandmaster Flash (my own personal favourite pick of the programme).
4. The Transformation Hub. This is where marketing inspiration meets operational advice. Provided by Econsultancy, our trainers tackle issues such as adapting to social media trends, common content marketing problems and structuring your teams effectively. Don't miss out.
5. The Festival Village. Even at events, you need to answer emails, have meetings or make calls. The Festival Village aims to be just that; a working village with coffee bars, juice bars, work spaces, libraries, charging zones, cinemas and more, meaning that you can simply transport your office to the Festival for the day.
Obviously, this is simply a snapshot of the Festival content. Brilliant brand speakers come as part of the deal too, with CMOs from brands such as Ryanair rubbing shoulders with the mischievous Paddy Power on our stages.
*You don't have to beg, borrow or steal. We still have a few tickets left so go to FestivalofMarketing.com to book.
Our Festival of Marketing begins in London on November 12-13. So we've compiled the Marketing Week guide to some of the speakers we've already announced for the Festival of Marketing.
Strategist, master storyteller and former Labour communications chief Alastair Campbell will be a keynote speaker at this year's Festival of Marketing.
The Festival of Marketing, created by the teams at Marketing Week, Econsultancy, Creative Review and Design Week, has taken the award for Event Of The Year at the 2014 PPA Awards.


City Landscape Drawing. There are some pics regarding with City Landscape Drawing out there. I collect various City Landscape Drawing. Hope you like it.
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All Northpark Drive owners now aware of right-of-way plans
Written by Cynthia Calvert
All property owners along Northpark have been contacted regarding the right-of-way process begun by the Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority/Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone No. 10 (TIRZ), according to Stan Sarman, chairman.
Sarman told the group that he has offered to meet with any that have questions and while some had a reluctant attitude, after he explained that the Authority will be taking inches from the green space between the curb and the sidewalk, the reception has been much better.
"All property owners seem to be in favor of the project. I've met with Chik-fil-A and Culver's. We are meeting with the owner of the strip center on the southwest corner of Northpark next week," he said.
The Northpark project will bring a significant improvement to the street, adding an overpass from Hwy. 59 to Russell Palmer Road. Initial funding has been secured and engineers have begun work.
Joel Salinas and Vince Obregon of HNTB, the contractors for Northpark, are creating a 3D model and have hired consultants to look at traffic and boring layout. They have met a second time with Union Pacific Railroad.
Representatives of the Harris County Flood Control District gave a brief presentation about the drainage study currently underway in Kingwood. While there are no current capital projects in Kingwood, they are desilting and desnagging water-bearing ditches and channels.
The TIRZ fund balance as of Oct. 31 is $10,562,690. McCall Gibson Swedlund and Barfoot, a CPA firm, gave the final annual audit report. Rachel Ray-Welsh of Walter P. Moore said the two upcoming intersection improvement projects, at Kingwood Drive and Woodland Hills and at Kingwood Drive at Willow Terrace, are in the design phase. She is meeting with HOAs and trails groups to discuss right-of-way issues at those intersections. The completed project at Northpark and West Lake Houston Parkway merited some discussion about motorists headed east attempting to turn incorrectly both north and south. Ray-Welsh agreed to send an engineer out to look for signage improvement.
Sarman announced that a public meeting will be held Feb. 6 regarding the Northpark project. All residents are encouraged to attend and learn more about the plans.
Author: Cynthia CalvertEmail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A trained journalist with a masters degree from Lamar University, a masters from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, as well as extensive coursework toward a masters of science in psychology from the University of New Orleans, Calvert founded the Tribune Newspapers in 2007. Her experiences as an investigative, award winning reporter (She won Journalist of the Year from the Houston Press Club among many other awards for reporting and writing), professor and chair of the journalism department for Lone Star College-Kingwood and vice president of editorial for a large group of community weeklies provides her with a triple dose of bankable skills that cover every aspect of the journalism field. Solid reporting. Careful interviews. Respect and curiosity for people and places.
Randalls Grocery to close Kingwood stores
Great wine pairings for cold-weather meals
They make vacations!
Oklahoma City offers fun family vacation
TIRZ ends year with status updates
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Libraries & Archivists Are Digitizing 480,000 Books Published in 20th Century That Are Secretly in the Public Domain
in Archives, Books, Internet Archive | September 27th, 2019 Leave a Comment
Image by Jason "Textfiles" Scott, via Wikimedia Commons
All books in the public domain are free. Most books in the public domain are, by definition, on the old side, and a great many aren't easy to find in any case. But the books now being scanned and uploaded by libraries aren't quite so old, and they'll soon get much easier to find. They've fallen through a loophole because their copyright-holders never renewed their copyright, but until recently the technology wasn't quite in place to reliably identify and digitally store them.
Now, though, as Vice's Karl Bode writes, "a coalition of archivists, activists, and libraries are working overtime to make it easier to identify the many books that are secretly in the public domain, digitize them, and make them freely available online to everyone." These were published between 1923 and 1964, and the goal of this digitization project is to upload all of these surprisingly out-of-copyright books to the Internet Archive, a glimpse of whose book-scanning operation appears above.
"Historically, it's been fairly easy to tell whether a book published between 1923 and 1964 had its copyright renewed, because the renewal records were already digitized," writes Bode. "But proving that a book hadn't had its copyright renewed has historically been more difficult." You can learn more about what it takes to do that from this blog post by New York Public Library Senior Product Manager Sean Redmond, who first crunched the numbers and estimated that 70 percent of the titles published over those 41 years may now be out of copyright: "around 480,000 public domain books, in other words."
The first important stage is the conversion of copyright records into the XML format, a large part of which the New York Public Library has recently completed. Bode also mentions a software developer and science fiction author named Leonard Richardson who has written Python scripts to expedite the process (including a matching script to identify potentially non-renewed copyrights in the Internet Archive collection) and a bot that identifies newly discovered secretly public-domain books daily. Richardson himself underscores the necessity of volunteers to take on tasks like seeking out a copy of each such book, "scanning it, proofing it, then putting out HTML and plain-text editions."
This work is now happening at American libraries and among volunteers from organizations like Project Gutenberg. The Internet Archive's Jason Scott has also pitched in with his own resources, recently putting out a call for more help on the "very boring, VERY BORING (did I mention boring)" project of determining "which books are actually in the public domain to either surface them on @internetarchive or help make a hitlist." Of course, many more obviously stimulating tasks exist even in the realm of digital archiving. But then, each secretly public-domain book identified, found, scanned, and uploaded brings humanity's print and digital civilizations one step closer together. Whatever comes out of that union, it certainly won't be boring.
via Vice
Public Domain Day Is Finally Here!: Copyrighted Works Have Entered the Public Domain Today for the First Time in 21 Years
11,000 Digitized Books From 1923 Are Now Available Online at the Internet Archive
British Library to Offer 65,000 Free eBooks
Download for Free 2.6 Million Images from Books Published Over Last 500 Years on Flickr
Free: You Can Now Read Classic Books by MIT Press on Archive.org
The Library of Congress Launches the National Screening Room, Putting Online Hundreds of Historic Films
by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Comments (0) |


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Ironomyiidae — семейство двукрылых насекомых из инфраотряда круглошовных мух (Muscomorpha). Насчитывают три современных вида, объединяемых в род Ironomyia и известных исключительно из Австралии. Более многочисленные ископаемые представители в отложениях мелового периода на территории России, Китая, Монголии и Канады, а также в бирманском янтаре.

Классификация
В состав семейства включают 1 современный и 5 вымерших родов:

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Примечания

Platypezoidea
Семейства насекомых

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Home › Posts › Advance in Steveston: What's it got to take?
Advance in Steveston: What's it got to take? A collaborative approach to church planting is bringing change to Steveston
Greg Laing, Multiply
Missional Communities
There has never been an Evangelical church that has thrived in the Village of Steveston. This idyllic corner of Southeast Richmond, B.C. is a desirable place to live. But how could it be possible that there has never been a single local gospel-centered church that has been well-planted? This reality hit hard when I was visiting with a long-time friend who has faithfully served a fledging church there. His name is Nick, and he and his wife Jamie were appointed pastors of a PAOC work six years ago. This lovely but small group are the picture of faithfulness with Sunday services in various locations around the Village. The church is twenty years old but has never thrived. It was cold comfort when Nick realized that their experience was normal.
Disturbed, but not defeated, Nick pressed the Lord and discovered a deeper calling than merely being a local church pastor trying his best to grow that assembly. He felt called to Steveston as a missionary. He had to think differently about how to engage ministry and define effectiveness.
As a missionary, Nick began to do his homework by "mapping" the spiritual history of the area. Two key discoveries surfaced: Steveston was home to one of the first Buddhist Temples in North America and that the primary need within the village was loneliness. While they continued their Sunday services, they began a new work that focused on connecting directly with the Village through the arts which led them to share with far more people than ever walked through the door on a Sunday morning. His missionary mindset (where collaboration is preferred over solo ministry) led Nick to imagine a shared approach to planting the gospel that now includes five denominations.
As a missionary God, the Lord was not unaware of the void of gospel-centered work. As soon as Nick and Jamie moved to Steveston, the Lord pressed them to regular prayer-walking and focused prayer for the Lord of the harvest to send more labourers. God faithfully answered their cry, and in recent years several couples have been called to plant new works there. But this work is opposed: one couple (CNBC) recently left after five years of diligent work without seeing much success. However, they did help establish a beach head for the gospel in two ways: the lease that they had for their own plant is now a ministry space for the collaborative work of five churches; the relationship that they cultivated in a subsidized housing project that we will call "OceanSide," that is home to many immigrants and single parent families. The nations are now moving into Steveston.
As a missionary agency, Multiply has cultivated a 10 day domestic discipleship pathway called SOAR. The Vancouver SOAR summer event has been hosted in Southwest Richmond for the last few years and in 2016 a SOAR team from the USA found an open door to share their joy and faith with kids within OceanSide. They were surprised by the openness of the children and their families. Inspired by this testimony, I asked them "which local church in Steveston will inherit your efforts when you return home?" They said that they were not sure. I had been a pastor in the Vancouver area before joining Multiply and quickly prayed on the spot about who could receive this baton of favor? Pastor Nick came straight to mind and we called him right then and arranged a meeting of our SOAR team leader and himself. Early introductions were made. Later that Fall, our Multiply team received the eager proposal from a U.S. church that felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to come to Vancouver during the next Spring Break. It was a new idea to have a Spring Break SOAR but we urgently needed ministry sites. As we prayed, Nick came straight to mind. I called him and we met that day; I shared the fast-breaking opportunity to partner with us to host a SOAR team in Steveston. Astonished, he told me that he and his church Board had just met and found themselves crying out to the Lord to send help. Here I was, offering sudden help. The Spring Break ministry at OceanSide that took place was clearly blessed by the Lord and led to SOAR teams serving there in summer 2017 and again in 2018. It also led Nick and his wife to become co-leaders of the whole Vancouver SOAR program.
Nick shared with me recently several stories of how the Lord is opening more and deeper connections within the many hard-pressed families who live in the complex: the ends of the earth have come to OceanSide, and the Kingdom of God is advancing.
What's it got to take for a move of the Lord that will result in lasting and thriving Kingdom advance in Steveston? Nick and the new church planters have decided to humble themselves and take a new approach. They are have decided to work collaboratively, as a team, so that they may all thrive together, that the world may know. Please join Nick and the other planting pastors in prayer. The spiritual warfare is profound; but the door for service is clearly open before them.
One year later... (January 2020) The previous year has seen many incredible stories of transformation emerge as Nick and the other church planters have faithfully worked together in collaboration for the sake of God's Kingdom. The gospel has gained a stronger foothold in the Village than ever before, and many relationships have been established and deepened. The collective church in Steveston has partnered with merchants, the city, and other organizations in unprecedented ways, and unique beachheads of gospel movement are growing. In many ways, after being there for seven years, Nick feel he is finally ready to begin.
Greg Laing serves as Multiply's Mission Mobilizer for Western Canada, based out of our office in Abbotsford, BC. In this role, he is involved in networking with our global workers and local churches to inspire and equip the Body of Christ for mission.
Multiply (Abbotsford, BC)
Are you a Tourist or a Disciple?
A tourist is someone who takes a tour for pleasure or culture. A disciple is a follower of a teacher.Read more Read more...
7 Secrets to Being a Missionary in Your Golden Years
Bethany DuVal
How old is too old to be a missionary? Is there really an ideal missionary age?Read more Read more...
Lausanne Movement: connecting influencers and ideas for global mission
Learn about the Lausanne Movement's mission, and dive into the their extensive resources.Read more Read more...
Why We Go to Communities Where Christ is Least Known
Joshua Bogunjoko
Where shall we buy bread for the people who are hungry for the gospel? Why we go to communities where Christ is least knownRead more Read more...
Don't Wait! Three Tips To Help You Make Disciples
Barry Cooper
This article addresses the common fears and excuses for being a disciple maker.Read more Read more...
Social Isolation, Mental Health, and Discipleship
Claudia Rossetto
Social Isolation is the main obstacle to addressing poverty. How can communities organize themselves to create a more connected Vancouver?Read more Read more...
Unity, Relationship and the Future of Mission - Part 1
How do unity, relationship, and the characteristics of Millennials interact for a hope filled future of mission?Read more Read more...


They haven't even entered the workforce yet, but St. Scholastica's Occupational Therapy graduate students are already making an impact in the field through their research projects.
Some OT students are doing literature reviews for their final projects, partnering with the Essentia Health-Polinsky Medical Rehabilitation Center. They divide into groups, choose topics, and select articles to critically review. At the end of the semester, they present their findings to practitioners.
"We do lots with research; we have the time to do it, and that's part of our job," said Kelly Erickson, assistant professor of occupational therapy. "It really is a win/win on both sides. We hope we're teaching students to become better practitioners and consumers of literature in a way that's realistic within practice, and giving back to the practitioners who desperately want and need this information but don't have the time to get it."
Students are also doing their own original projects, investigating topics such as the effectiveness of an app called Dexteria designed to rebuild fine motor skills in stroke patients.


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Q: Speeding up Probability using Monte Carlo I have a recipe for generating custom distributions, which I want to use Probability[...] on, but am finding that with more than a few variables it very quickly becomes intractable (it runs for hours).  I know that in some circumstances you can approximate these probabilities using a Monte Carlo simulation, but for some reason it is not working in my case---even for very small examples.
For example, with:
dist =
ProbabilityDistribution[
Piecewise[{{3/4, x1 == 1 && x2 == 0}, {1/4, x1 == 2 && x2 == 1}}],
{x1, 1, 2, 1}, {x2, 0, 1, 1}]

then
Probability[x1 == 1, {x1, x2} \[Distributed] dist]

outputs the answer of ¾ just fine, but
NProbability[x1 == 1, {x1, x2} \[Distributed] dist,
 Method -> "MonteCarlo"]

outputs the error "NProbability: Unable to generate the necessary samples from [dist]."
Strangely, using an example with only one variable it seems to work.  For example, using
dist2 =
 ProbabilityDistribution[
  Piecewise[{{3/4, x1 == 1}, {1/4, x1 == 2}}],
  {x1, 1, 2, 1}]

then
NProbability[x1 == 1, x1 \[Distributed] dist2, Method -> "MonteCarlo"]

gives an answer that is (approximately) ¾, with no errors.
I know there must be something basic about the "MonteCarlo" method that I'm not understanding, but I've had trouble finding much documentation on it. Any help would be much appreciated!

A: If you try RandomVariate[dist] you get an error message explaining that there is currently no random sampling method for custom multidimensional distributions. It's an unfortunate limitation.
Since your distribution is basically just a probability table for discrete events, you can work around this limitation by using EmpiricalDistribution:
dist = EmpiricalDistribution[{3/4, 1/4} -> {{1, 0}, {2, 1}}]
NProbability[x1 == 1, {x1, x2} \[Distributed] dist, Method -> "MonteCarlo"]

Note also the necessity to specify both coordinates of the distribution, even though you're only interested in the first coordinate. An alternative is:
NProbability[
  x1 == 1, x1 \[Distributed] MarginalDistribution[dist, 1],
  Method -> "MonteCarlo"
]

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TV ReviewsModern FamilySeason 9
Chris Martin is the highlight of Modern Family, and yes this is a headline from 2017
Kyle Fowle
Filed to:Recap
TV ReviewsAll of our TV reviews in one convenient place.
Modern FamilySeason 9
"Brushes With Celebrity"
When a sitcom spends most of its marketing time promoting the numerous guest stars set to appear in its next episode, you usually have a pretty good sense of what kind of episode you're about to get. You can predict that it won't be too serious, that there won't really be any storylines that tie in with the rest of the season. More often than not the episodes are built around the guest stars. The motivations and plots of the main characters are warped in order to accommodate for a guest star's appearance. This is neither an inherently good or bad thing, but rather an observation about how these episodes tend to be structured just a little bit differently.
Typically, the result is an episode that, for lack of a more exciting and thesaurus-searched word, fine. "Brushes With Celebrity" is fine. It's an episode that avoids some of the pitfalls this season has fallen into, and yet never quite achieves any of its own standout moments. It's an episode that feels built to deliver pleasant mediocrity; it's neither ambitious or inventive, nor reductive and off-putting. "Brushes With Celebrity" is the kind of episode that feels right at home in the ninth season of a sitcom; it sets up a premise, hits the comedic beats it needs to, and then gets out.
The premise, as the title suggests, is the Dunphys and Pritchetts having various run-ins with celebrities. It begins when Phil reveals that he's showing a house to Chris Martin. He continually calls Martin his hero, which is strange because Martin isn't a magician—to which Phil would certainly reply with some quip about him creating musical magic or something. With a flower freshly embroidered on his jeans, Phil sets out to sell Chris Martin on the benefits of living with the city at his feet. While Phil does that, Jay has a run-in with Terry Bradshaw, Manny tries to work up the courage to approach a playwright he admires, and Cam and Mitchell do their best to get the attention of the host of a home gardening show in the hopes of being picked for a garden renovation.
Each meeting, of course, goes off the rails. Jay gets a little too buddy-buddy with Bradshaw over lunch, making the mistake of insulting Failure To Launch, which the former NFLer considers some of his best work. Manny, who approaches his hero at the behest of his mother, gets nothing but a harsh bit of celebrity pomposity from the grim playwright. Mitchell and Cam go through all the dramatics possible to earn a spot on "I Beg Your Garden," only to discover that the show has been cancelled for two years. Then there's Phil, who mostly gets along with Chris Martin, only to be undone by an inflamed testicle and a trip to the hospital.
The success of each storyline is really dependent on the guest star. For instance, the story of Jay getting a little too friendly with Bradshaw doesn't do much for me because Bradshaw isn't really playing a part. He's just Terry Bradshaw as a juror. That doesn't leave much room for any sort of inspired comedy—we'll get to the surprising delights of Chris Martin in a bit, who also plays himself but in a different way—and instead promotes a heavy reliance on broad-strokes comedy. Jay's contained plot is just him being an awkward, unrelenting fanboy with Bradshaw. He even gleefully shows off the restraining order Bradshaw signs. It's all too predictable and easy, much like Manny's encounter with the gruff but also deeply insecure playwright, whereas the other celebrity encounters use their guest stars in much more interesting ways.
What's intriguing about Cam and Mitchell's attempts to get on a home gardening reality show is how Modern Family uses it to once again pick away at their marriage. The idea that Cam and Mitchell might not be totally happy with each other has been a running theme of the season, though it certainly hasn't been at the forefront of every episode. Rather, it's been introduced in fits and spurts, much the way cracks in a relationship develop, especially when you're on the outside looking in. Once you see one bit of friction, the others start to clarify.
In this instance, Cam and Mitchell understand that the key to getting on the show is by presenting themselves as embroiled in conflict. It'd be funny enough to let them just run with that gag only to get serious later on, but "Brushes With Celebrity" does something different: it gives Cam and Mitchell a single moment of acknowledgement before they dive into their charade. When they come up with the idea of getting into a fight in front of the TV show host, Cam says it'll be perfect because they're always bickering, to which Mitchell replies, "yes, and sometimes it reveals something deeper, but sometimes it doesn't." It's a small moment that hints at a struggle that's been brewing all season, and one that's balanced out by Mitchell's touching reasons for liking rustic barn board in his house.
Phil's storyline might not be as deep, but it's nonetheless fun because Chris Martin proves to be game for the comedic bits. He turns in a hilarious performance as a presumably exaggerated version of himself. He compliments Phil's jeans, worries that he's losing touch with who he truly is, and decides that he can get back to his roots so long as he has "three chords, a mattress, and my chef." It's a truly delightful turn that fits in with the absurdity of a testicle-based storyline. From now until the end of time, I will have the image of Chris Martin putting an ice pack on Ty Burrell's balls burned into my brain. Any episode that can do that can't be half bad.
Luke's advice for Claire, who's struggling with her new book club: "Just say it holds a mirror up to society."
Manny's hero is a solitary dude: "He writes in a hollowed out tree somewhere in Montana."
After learning that Phil embroidered his own jeans, Chris Martin has a piece of fashion advice: "Get a long sleeve shirt, put it under a t-shirt, and it lets everyone know you own multiple shirts."
"All men break the same."
Cam considers reclaimed wood to be "an insulting appropriation of barn culture."
Kyle Fowle is a freelance writer based out of Canada. He writes about TV and wrestling for The A.V. Club, Real Sport, EW, and Paste Magazine.


1000 dwarf trees, 25 types of apples, Pacific Ocean breeze, and a long history of island craftmanship. It's with these core ingredients that Ravenskill Orchards is carrying on a decades old tradition of creating small batch premium cider on Gabriola Island.
In 2002, Keith and Marti MacKenzie started their heritage apple orchard on 27 acres of Gabriola Island land. The Ravenskill Orchards now produce a range of award-winning ciders available across BC: Groovin' Granny Smith, Semi Dry, Real Dry.