November is National Community Safety and Crime Prevention Month, and the Canada Safety Council encourages all Canadians to reach out to their neighbours this month.
"When you take the time to know your neighbours, not only will you probably be healthier and happier for it, your efforts will also make the community safer for everyone," says Jack Smith, President of the Canada Safety Council.
1. Take a walk in your neighbourhood. Make a point of greeting people. Be known to them and remember who they are.
2. Offer to assist neighbours and don't shy away from asking for help. Small requests can be an excuse to strike up a conversation and discuss neighbourhood safety issues or concerns.
3. Spend time in your front yard or common area. When you sit out front, not only are you an extra pair of "eyes on the street," and you also open up new opportunities to greet and be greeted by neighbours.
4. Join in or lead a community activity or event. Whether it's a cleanup, fundraiser or block party, having a common goal can unite the neighbourhood and nurture a local network of friendships. Consider engaging others in initiatives like the Block Parent or Neighbourhood Watch Program.
We can all take simple steps to build one of the most powerful defences against crime: a resilient and caring community of neighbours who look out for one another.
Check with your local police force for Neighbourhood Watch and other crime prevention resources. The following are a sample of other organizations working towards community safety and crime prevention.


text:
Prison Voicemail is an award-winning social venture with a mission to improve communication channels between people in prison and their family and friends, with the aim of relieving some of the causes of stress and isolation that ultimately increase the risk of self-harm and reoffending.
Co-founders Alex and Kieran outside their local prison in Norwich.
A world in which going to prison does not mean losing touch with family and other important support networks in the outside world.
To use scalable technology to improve communication channels between prisoners and their families.
We aim to make it easier for people in prison to maintain positive relationships with their families during this stressful time. These relationships give prisoners a much-needed support network, reducing the burden on prison staff and potentially lowering the incidence of self-harm and suicide. In the long-term, strong family ties have also been shown to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.
Founded in late 2015, Prison Voicemail is now available in over 85% of prisons in England and Wales, and has helped over 10,000 families to stay connected during difficult times. In July 2016 the service was mandated for national rollout across the HM Prison Service by the then Prisons Minister, Andrew Selous.
Prison Voicemail is supported by Cambridge Social Ventures, Pitch@Palace, MassChallenge, Stephen Lloyd Awards, Norfolk Community Foundation, University of Cambridge Judge Business School, and Centre of Innovation in Voluntary Action (CIVA).
Winner - Mass Challenge UK 2016
Winner - EDP Business Awards Future50 One To Watch 2016
Finalist - Pitch@Palace 6.0
Finalist - Stephen Lloyd Awards 2016
Finalist - Digital Agenda Impact Awards 2017
Co-founders Kieran and Alex telling Her Majesty The Queen about Prison Voicemail during Pitch@Palace in November 2016.
As a social venture Prison Voicemail prioritises social impact over financial returns, and is committed to continually assess the impact of its services and use this information to drive greater impact.
Independent research carried out by academics at the University of Lincoln during 2017 across 56 prisons found a wide range of benefits from using the service (download the full report here ), including:
Both families and prisoners were extremely positive about the service, reporting significant impacts on their health and well-being, relationships, and ability to resolve practical issues.
Prisoners reported positive impacts on their behaviour and likelihood of reoffending. 63% said voicemails help them to behave better in prison.
96% of prisoners and 97% of families said voicemail makes them feel better.
83% of prisoners and 93% of families said their relationships are better as a result of voicemail.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home > News and Speeches > News and Speeches for Department of Community Safety > 2013 > September
Back to: Department of Community Safety
Western Cape Violent Crimes Up, Police Must Explain
Media Release by Dan Plato, Western Cape Minister of Community Safety
Today, September 19, the National Minister of Police and National Commissioner released the annual crime statistics. These statistics are a reflection of the South African Police Service's (SAPS) performance in combatting crime and protecting and securing the inhabitants of our province and country. The increases in violent crime are cause for concern.
That is why the Western Cape Cabinet will be requesting Western Cape Police Commissioner, Lieutenant-General Arno Lamoer, and his top brass to appear before it and explain why they have failed to arrest crime in the Western Cape and what they are going to do to remedy the situation. The people of this province deserve these answers.
The key indicators have shown an increase when compared to last year, while others have shown a decrease. Out of 28 crime categories, 22 have shown dramatic increases – this is simply unacceptable.
Category 2011/2012 2012/2013 Percentage +/-
Murder 2 300 2 580 + 12.2%
Attempted Murder 2 328 3 280
+ 40.9%
Aggravated Robbery 13 788 16 738 + 21.4%
Illegal Possession of Firearm 2 395 2 907 + 21.4%
Carjacking 542 789 + 45.6%
Cash in transit robbery 14 30 + 114.3%
Robbery at residential premises 1 344 1 647 + 22.5%
Robbery at non-residential premises 1 567 1 934 + 23.4%
Total Sexual Offences 9 153 8 776 + 13.5%
Driving under the influence of alcohol/ drugs 17 534 15 167 - 13.5%
Figure 1: Crime patterns for the Western Cape
However, the Western Cape, despite these increases, has comparatively fared much better than other provinces such as Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape which have experienced higher numbers of cases reported (see table below)
Western Cape Gauteng Estern Cape KwaZulu-Natal
Murder 2 580 2 997 3 344 3 629
Attempted Murder 3 280 3 609 1 768 3 855
Assault GBH 24 519 40 793 27 880 28 897
Sexual Offences 8 776 12 288 9 567 12 405
House Robbery 1 647 6 607 1 726 4 119
Non Residential Robbery 1 934 5 010 1 949 2 353
Carjacking 789 4 952 695 2 427
Reported Cases 2012/2013
Crime statistics provide a measure of success of policing, but they are also a valuable tool for responding to crime patterns and directing valuable resources to where they are most needed. This can only be done by having access to statistics on a more regular basis, so that various role-players such as other government departments and civil society can respond to the changing crime patterns and help to prevent crime.
Not only are we not given access to crime statistics, we are also not given any information to indicate where problematic areas are. The national police commissioner today singled out socio economic problems and the need for partners. The WCG, which has no operational control over the SAPS, is doing everything it can to address socio-economic problems (see here http://www.westerncape.gov.za/gc-news/97/26496), and contribute to crime prevention and assisting SAPS, but we are hamstrung without information which would allow us to be more responsive to the needs that exist.
We also need a capable partner to fight crime. Increasingly our oversight interventions, many of which have been strongly opposed by SAPS management, show that the police are not able to effectively tackle specific crimes that affect the Western Cape.
While police have said that they are committed to combatting drug and gang crimes, the specialised units have not been re-established and our watching briefs are showing that SAPS are failing to bring criminals to justice in many gang related cases.
Given the results made public today, the Western Cape Cabinet will be asking General Lamoer and his top management to appear before it as soon as possible. Among other matters that will be interrogated, Cabinet will be asking the police:
The reasons for the increases in violent crimes
Which areas are the most problematic and why
Given the increases in crime last year, what interventions SAPS has implemented to reduce murder and attempted murder in the last six months as they have been aware of this for months already (something this government and the rest of the Western Cape has not)
Greg Wagner
Spokesperson for Minister Plato


text:
Back home, but briefly (Friday links)
The Sounders resume practice today at Starfire after a couple of days off, but the local training stay won't last long. The team take camp to Bradenton, Fla., for 10 days starting Saturday.
According to this report from Honduras, it sounds like trialist defender Ever Alvarado has returned to his club team, Real Espana. I believe it was reported that he had a 10-day trial with Seattle, which would explain it. I haven't seen mention of Harlinton Gutierres, who traveled with Alvarado, but I'd assume he's returned to Honduras, as well (UPDATE 5:13 p.m.: Gutierres is still in camp, here's are Friday's notes from training).
I'll have a better understanding of the camp roster later today (check the Twitter feed for quicker updates). Until then, here are some links:
— Former Sounders FC communications director Frank MacDonald has joined the guys at Ruffneck Scarves. He was a great help to me in my first couple years as a full-time reporter and I wish him the best.
— Here's a recent news release from the Women's Premier Soccer League as it looks to help out those affected by Women's Professional Soccer canceling its 2012 season. It sounds like there could be a Seattle team joining the second-tier WPSL in 2013. I'll try to figure out more on this one.
— It looks like RedHook Brewery and the ECS have collaborated on a new No Equal amber lager.
— According to these two stories, it sounds like academy players won't be allowed to play high school soccer. The club-versus-school debate isn't new, but this anticipated decision would be from the U.S. Soccer Development Academy, the top of the ladder, not just individual clubs or teams.
— Ives Galarcep has all you need to know on the Los Angeles Galaxy being salary compliant in 2012 with all its signings.
— Here's the latest from MLSsoccer.com's "ExtraTime Radio" and Steven Goff has some highlights of Charlie Davies' candid portion of the podcast.
— That Kei Kamara is quite the prankster.
— The Copa American and Gold Cup could merge into a super tournament in 2016, according to this report. It would be hosted in the U.S. with a mix of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF teams. What do you think of the idea? Think Seattle would get some games?
— The CCL website has this story on Santos Laguna if you want to learn a little more on Seattle's upcoming opponent.
— Following up on the Harry Redknapp-to-possibly-coach-England story. The former NASL Sounder says he's not thinking about the job opening, but I'm sure he'll be glad to hear the FA is favoring English and British candidates.
— You have to check out this story on Italian forward Alessandro Del Piero and a young girl in a coma.
— Lastly, a Turkish team bus was hit by a train Tuesday. Remarkably, only a couple guys were hurt.


He had vowed to return by month's end, but seven moons had passed since, and the longer his absence the greater her longing, the deeper her yearning, and the more intense her heartache. She likened his absence to that of a world without the sun; a world without glory, without purpose, without peace... without hope.
"But, madam," Lula grieved, helping Celine into new day's gown, "your orders were to remain safe within the walls of the castle until the day of Prince Koen's return."


text:
Eduardo Kac ;  (born 1962) is a contemporary artist of dual nationality (American and Brazilian) whose artworks span a wide range of practices, including performance art, poetry, holography, interactive art, digital and online art, and bio art. He is particularly well known for his works of space art.

Kac began his art career in 1980 as a performance artist in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1982 he created his first digital work and in 1983 he invented holopoetry, exploring holography as an interactive art form. In 1985 he began creating animated poetic works on the French Minitel platform.

Throughout the 1980s Kac created telecommunications artworks, using media such as fax, television, and slow scan TV. In 1986 Kac created his first work of telepresence art, in which he used robots to bridge two or more physical locations. During the 1990s he continued to produce these works, expanding his practice with works of interspecies communications. In 1997 he coined the phrase bio art. Throughout his career, Kac has coined numerous neologisms to describe his transdisciplinary art practice, including biorobotics (functional merger of robotics and biotechnology), plantimal (plant with animal genetic material or animal with plant genetic material), and transgenic art (the expression of genes from one species in another in an artwork).

Kac is well known for his transgenic artworks that use biotechnology to create plants and animals with new genetic characteristics. His works Time Capsule (1997), Genesis (1999), GFP Bunny (2000) and Natural History of the Enigma (2003-2009), in particular, are recognized as notable works for having joined biotechnology, art and bioethics together into artworks that are at once political and philosophical.

In 2017 Kac created Inner Telescope, an artwork conceived for zero gravity and made aboard the International Space Station. Kac worked with the French Space Observatory office, from the French Space Agency, to have this work made in space by the astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Since 2019, Kac has been developing Adsum, an artwork for the Moon. Conceived in five phases, as of 2022 Kac had completed the first three parts. "Adsum" is a glass artwork with four visual symbols internally laser-engraved in three dimensions and is meant to exist in the lunar environment.

A multidisciplinary artist, Kac has also employed poetry, fax, photocopying, photography, video, fractals, RFID implants, virtual reality, networks, robotics, satellites, telerobotics, Morse code and DNA extraction in his practice.

Life
Kac was born July 3, 1962, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He studied at the School of Communications of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, receiving a BA degree in 1985, and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he received an MFA degree in 1990. In 2003 he received a doctorate from the Planetary Collegium at the University of Wales, Great Britain. Kac is a professor of art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Art career

1980s

In 1980 Kac launched the Movimento de Arte Pornô (Porn Art Movement) on Ipanema Beach, in Rio de Janeiro, with the stated goal of subverting the logic of normative pornography at the service of activism and imagination. Working under the extremely conservative political climate of Brazil under a military dictatorship, Kac and other Movement members, such as Glauco Mattoso, Leila Míccolis, and Hudinilson Jr., developed the new body-centered aesthetics collectively until 1982. Kac was also a performer with the Gang, the performance unit of the Movimento de Arte Pornô; the Gang performed in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities.

Beginning in 1982, Kac started to create digital works. In 1983 Kac invented holographic poetry (which he also called holopoetry), the first of which was HOLO/OLHO, named after the Portuguese word for "eye". 24 holographic poems followed this first work, including Quando? (When?) (1987), a cylindrical work that could be read in two directions.

Around the same time, and drawing on his interest in experimental poetry forms, Kac began making animated poetry works with the French Minitel system that was then in use in Brazil. In 1985 he contributed one such work, Reabracadabra, to the Arte On Line exhibition, organized by the Livraria Nobel bookstore in São Paulo. Other Minitel animated poems by Kac include Recaos (1986), Tesão (1985/86) and D/eu/s (1986). In 1986, with Flavio Ferraz, Kac organized the Brasil High-Tech exhibition at the Galeria de Arte Centro Empresarial Rio in Rio de Janeiro.

From 1985 to as late as 1994, Kac did a number of telecommunications artworks that used Slow-scan television (SSTV), FAX, and live television, to create interactive exchanges between separate locations.

In 1986 Kac created his first telepresence artwork, using a robot to connect distant audiences. In 1988 he began work on his Ornitorrinco project, a telepresence artwork completed in Chicago, in 1989, in collaboration with Ed Bennett. The work brought together robotics, telecommunications technologies and interactivity to create a robot that was controlled remotely. The piece allowed viewers in one location to control the robot's camera and motion, creating a telepresent work and effecting the experience of viewers in the other location.

In 1989 Kac moved from Brazil to Chicago, where he would complete his MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago the following year.

1990s
In the 1990s, Kac continued creating telematic works, with Dialogical Drawing (1994) and Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1994) both using networks to explore the viewer experience of an artwork mediated between two sites in real time. In the latter case, the artwork joined a plant in New York city and a live canary in Kentucky in conversation. The inclusion of a bird and a plant as part of an interactive system is an early example of what Kac called interspecies communications.

In 1996, Kac's space artwork Monogram was included in the DVD that flew to Saturn mounted to the side of the Cassini spacecraft.

In Teleporting An Unknown State (1994), Kac built a system that allowed a plant to survive in a gallery, illuminated not by direct sunlight but by the action of local or remote viewers of the work. In practice, local or remote viewers of the work selected from a set of webcams facing the sky of distant cities. A video projector above the plant relayed the webcam images to the plant, thus enabling it to do photosynthesis with light transmitted remotely. As a result, the system transmitted light values (frequency and amplitude) from distant skies to a local plant.

Notably, Kac coined the term "bio art" with his 1997 performance work Time Capsule. In Time Capsule, Kac implanted himself with an RFID chip originally designed for use in pets. A participant in Chicago then triggered the RFID scanned in the Brazilian gallery where Kac was performing, causing the scanner to display a unique code for the implant. Kac then registered himself on the pet database associated with the implant, becoming the first human to do so. Time Capsule was simultaneously live on television and the Internet.

By the late 90s Kac defined himself either as a "transgenic artist" or a "bio artist", and was using biotechnology and genetics to create provocative works that concomitantly explore scientific techniques and critique them.

Kac's next transgenic artwork, created in 1998/99 and titled Genesis, involved him taking a quote from the Bible (Genesis 1:26 – "Let man have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth"), transferring it into Morse code, and finally, translating that Morse code (by a conversion principle specially developed by the artist for this work) into the base pairs of genetics. The new DNA sequence was introduced into bacteria.

Participants were then able to shine ultraviolet lights onto the bacteria containing the new DNA, thus altering it. So when Kac translated it back to English, it said something completely different. Through this work, Kac encourages audiences to consider the new interconnectedness between biology, technology, and meaning.

2000s
In one of his best known works, GFP Bunny, presented in 2000 in Avignon, France, Kac commissioned a French laboratory to create a green-fluorescent rabbit; a rabbit born with a Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) gene from a type of jellyfish. Kac named the rabbit Alba. Under a specific blue light, the rabbit fluoresces green. GFP Bunny proved to be hugely controversial, in part due to the unprecedented nature of the artwork, in part because of the general lack of familiarity with the safety of the process at the close of the twentieth century. The safety of the process was evidenced by the award of the Nobel Prize, in 2008, to the inventors of the GFP technique. The cultural contribution made by GFP Bunny was acknowledged by one of the scientists in his Nobel Lecture on December 8, 2008.

Kac's original aim was for Alba to live with his family, but prior to the scheduled release of Alba to Kac, the lab retracted their agreement and decided that Alba should remain in the lab. Kac responded by creating a series of works that called for her freedom. Other works would follow, focused on celebrating her life.

As familiarity with bio art, in particular, and biotechnology, in general, increased in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, GFP Bunny ceased to be controversial and gained significant presence in popular culture, appearing in franchises such Big Bang Theory, Sherlock, and Simpsons, and in novels such as Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood, and Next, by Michael Crichton.

His work Natural History of the Enigma (2003–2008) continued in the theme of bio art by merging his DNA with that of a petunia, creating a hybrid organism that Kac called a plantimal. The plant, also given the name Edunia (from Eduardo and Petunia), mimicked the flow of blood through human veins by mixing Kac's DNA only with the plant's genetic components that made the veins in its leaves red.

Kac's bio art has been celebrated by contemporary at critics and historians. Frank Popper called it "revolutionary" and Didier Ottinger wrote that "the fluorescent rabbit poses questions that lead toward a redefinition of our aesthetic notions and criteria". Christiane Paul stated that "Kac's approach recalls that of Renaissance artists such as Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, who were fascinated equally by the universal laws of science and the universal truths of art." Eleanor Heartney wrote that in Kac's transgenic art "advances in bio-engineering and genome research are applied to living entities in ways that raise philosophical questions about the ethics of science and the human potential to alter the basis of natural law".

2010s
In 2017 Kac collaborated with French astronaut Thomas Pesquet to create an artwork in space called Inner Telescope. Following Kac's instructions, Pesquet cut and folded two pieces of paper into a sculptural form. Floating in zero gravity, the form could be read as the three letters forming the French word for me, M-O-I, or a stylized human figure with the umbilical cord cut.

2020s
Since 2019, Kac has been developing Adsum, an artwork for the Moon. Conceived in five phases, as of 2022 Kac had completed the first three milestones. Adsum is a glass artwork with four visual symbols internally laser-engraved in three dimensions and is meant to exist in the lunar environment. The four symbols that constitute the work are: an hourglass (representing time at a human scale), two circles (one large, representing the Earth; one small, representing the Moon), and the infinity symbol (representing time at a cosmic scale).

Permanent collections
Kac's work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Tate Modern, London, Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Valencia, Spain, Reina Sophia Museum, Madrid, Spain, Les Abattoirs Toulouse, France, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Several of Kac's artist's books are included in the library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Awards
In 1998 he received the Leonardo Award for Excellence from ISAST. In 1999, he received the Inter Communication Center (Tokyo) Biennial Award in 1999.

In 2002 he received the Creative Capital Award in the discipline of Emerging Fields.

In 2008 he received the Golden Nica award at Ars Electronica for his project Natural History of the Enigma.

Bibliography
Books by Eduardo Kac

 Luz & Letra: Ensaios De Arte, Literatura E Comunicação [Light & Letter: Essays on Art, Literature and Communication]. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa, 2004.
 Telepresence & Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits, & Robots, Foreword James Elkins. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
 Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007,
 Media Poetry: an International Anthology (2nd edition), Bristol, United Kingdom, Intellect Books, 2007.

Catalogues and monographs of Eduardo Kac's exhibitions

 Eduardo Kac. Published on the occasion of Kac's mid-career survey, curated by Ángel Kalenberg. Valencia, Spain: Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM) (in Spanish, English and Valencian), 2007. [Texts by Consuelo Císcar Casabán, Ángel Kalenberg, Didier Ottinger, Eleanor Heartney, Steve Tomasula, Gunalan Nadaranjan, Annick Bureaud, Eduardo Kac, Santiago Grisolía. Also includes a Critical Anthology, Chronology, and Bibliography]
 Kac, Eduardo. Hodibis Potax: Poetry Anthology [Oeuvres poétiques]. Ivry-sur-Seine, France: Édition Action Poétique (in French and English), 2007. [Published on the occasion of the solo exhibition Hodibis Potax, by Eduardo Kac, realized in the context of Biennale des Poètes en Val-de-Marne (Poetry Biennial, France), May 2007.]
 Eduardo Kac: Histoire Naturelle de L'Enigma et Autres Travaux / Eduardo Kac: Natural History of the Enigma and Other Works. Poitiers, France: Al Dante Éditions (in French and English), 2009. ["Ouvrage conçu & par les éditions Al Dante à l'occasion de l'exposition énonyme au centre d'art comtemporain Rurart... en partenariat avec l'espace Mendes France (centre de culture scientifique) de 8 octobre au 20 decembre 2009." / "Book edition designed by Al Dante on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Rurart Contemporary Art Center ... in partnership with Espace Mendes France (Center of Science and Culture,) from October 8 to December 20, 2009."] Additional publication information quoted from the title page of this catalogue.

Books about the art of Eduardo Kac

 Rossi, Elena Giulia (ed.). "Eduardo Kac : Move 36". Filigranes Éditions, Paris (in French and English), 2005, .
 The Eighth Day: The Trangenic Art of Eduardo Kac, eds. Sheilah Britton and Dan Collins. Tempe, Arizona: The Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University, 2003. .
 Azoulay, Gérard (ed.). Télescope intérieur. Observatoire de l'espace/CNES (in French and English), 2021, .

References

External links

 Al Jazeera English interview on YouTube
 Eduardo Kac interview on Digitalarti Mag

1962 births
Living people
Brazilian artists
BioArtists
New media artists
Conceptual artists
Electronic literature writers
Brazilian Jews

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


You can contact our Head of Business Improvement Nigel Johnston on 0191 566 1000, or email him here.
The Northern Housing Consortium is committed to assisting its members to maximise efficiencies and to ensure that the tenants of social housing and the taxpayer get the best value for money.
Efficient operation is paramount in all organisations to achieve full potential. This is particularly the case in the current economic situation, which is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
The NHC is in a unique position to help local authorities, social landlords, ALMOs and all organisations involved in housing to achieve real efficiencies and to realise the benefits.
What efficiency services do we offer?
We can help you to look at any service in a critical and challenging way, keeping staff involved and ensuring that any review is done with you, not to you.
For organisations looking to adopt a Systems Thinking methodology, NHC is licensed to use Vanguard method Systems Thinking.
For those involved with contact centres and customer service, we have a dedicated network, CONTACTnet. This group has a steadily growing membership which shares good practice and carries out benchmarking on contact centre performance every quarter.
Building on contact centres, we believe that what customers say to you over the telephone or face to face can tell you a lot about how well your organisation is working, and what your customers really want from you. We offer a short review, which uses customer contact as its basis, to help you understand what customers want.
Members can search our Members' Market Place for assistance on a wide range of areas. Here, suppliers advertise their goods and services, and you can find guidance, policy information and events from the NHC via the Members can search our Members' Market Place for assistance on a wide range of areas. Here, suppliers advertise their goods and services, and you can find guidance, policy information and events from the NHC via the search function.search function.


text:
typedef struct BLEIO_GATT_HANDLE_DATA_TAG {
    BLE_MAC_ADDRESS             device_addr;            // MAC address of the BLE device.
    GDBusConnection*            bus;                    // connection to system d-bus
    GDBusObjectManagerClient*   object_manager;         // d-bus object manager for org.bluez
    bluezdevice*                device;                 // the device to do I/O with
    BLEIO_GATT_STATE            state;                  // current connection state
    uint8_t                     ble_controller_index;   // index of the bluetooth controller to be used
    GTree*                      char_object_path_map;   // maps characteristic UUIDs to d-bus object paths
}BLEIO_GATT_HANDLE_DATA;

#endif // BLE_GATT_IO_LINUX_COMMON_H

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
In Search of a Professor's Legacy
David Perlmutter
Perlmutter, D. (2012, Mar 23). In Search of a Professor's Legacy. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Perlmutter, David. / In Search of a Professor's Legacy. 2012. Chronicle of Higher Education.
@misc{a9035bfc68d642e3863381dbb62e24c6,
title = "In Search of a Professor's Legacy",
author = "David Perlmutter",
publisher = "Chronicle of Higher Education",
Perlmutter, D 2012, In Search of a Professor's Legacy. Chronicle of Higher Education.
In Search of a Professor's Legacy. / Perlmutter, David.
Chronicle of Higher Education. 2012.
T1 - In Search of a Professor's Legacy
AU - Perlmutter, David
PB - Chronicle of Higher Education
Perlmutter D. In Search of a Professor's Legacy. 2012.


text:
Q: EnumHelper returns description instead Enum value I use an EnumHelper method and try to get both description and enum value (Id) as shown below:
EnumHelper:
public static class MyEnumHelper
{
    public static string GetDescription<T>(this T enumerationValue)
        where T : struct
    {
        System.Type type = enumerationValue.GetType();
        if (!type.IsEnum)
        {
            throw new ArgumentException("Must be Enum type", "enumerationValue");
        }
        //for the enum
        MemberInfo[] memberInfo = type.GetMember(enumerationValue.ToString());
        if (memberInfo != null && memberInfo.Length > 0)
        {
            object[] attrs = memberInfo[0]
                .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(DescriptionAttribute), false);

            if (attrs != null && attrs.Length > 0)
            {
                return ((DescriptionAttribute)attrs[0]).Description;
            }
        }
        return enumerationValue.ToString();
    }
}

Enum:
public enum StatusEnum
{
    [Description("Deleted")]
    Deleted= 0,

    [Description("Active")]
    Active= 1,

    [Description("Passive")]
    Passive= 2
}

Entity:
public class DemoEntity
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    public StatusEnum StatusId { get; set; }

    [NotMapped]
    public string StatusName
    {
        get { return MyEnumHelper.GetDescription(StatusId); }
    }
}

Controller:
DemoEntity entity = DemoEntity();
entity.StatusId = StatusEnum.Passive;
// !!! This returns "Passive" instead of its value 2. How can I get its value?

However, when trying to assign Id value of an enum by using strongly type feature of the enum as shown above, I still get its description instead of Id. Any idea about where the problem is?

A: just cast your enum to int if you need the value
entity.Id = (int)StatusEnum.Passive;

A: I would have perhaps done this:
public enum Status
{
    Deleted= 0,
    Active= 1,
    Passive= 2
}

public class DemoEntity
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    public Status Status { get; set; }

    [NotMapped]
    public string StatusName
    {
        get { return this.Status.ToString("g"); }
    }

    [NotMapped]
    public int StatusId
    {
        get { return (int)this.Status; }
    }
}

*

*Don't suffix "Enum" onto your enums - you don't do it for classes (DemoEntityClass?) and Intellisense draws a clear distinction between a class and an enum (for example). Microsoft don't do it (StringSplitOptions, not StringSplitOptionsEnum)

*If your description attributes are the same as your enum name values (as yours are), ToString("g") is a simpler, baked in way of turning the enum name into a string

*Enums are named ints; ints can be cast back and forth to enums willingly. If you try to cast an int to an enum and it is not a member of the enum, it just carries on behaving as the same int value (((Status)3).ToString() returns "3");

Consider the library Enums.Net if you're getting heavy into work with enums

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home » Blog » Peer Support, Peer Problems
Peer Support, Peer Problems
By Ike Evans
For Steve Harrington, president of the National Association of Peer Supporters, the loss of a relationship triggered a deep depression with psychotic features, resulting in hospitalization.
For Leah Harris, communications and development coordinator for the National Empowerment Center, it was her parents dying young from a combination of mental illness and the "toxic effect of overmedication and broken spirits," and then her own treatment for mental illness during her youth.
They and other advocates describe years of languishing in traditional treatment settings until the peer support movement, with its emphasis on recovery and wellness, showed them another way.
Harrington and Harris are both certified peer specialists. The defining characteristic of peer specialists is that they self-disclose as persons who have received mental health treatment, and put forward their own recovery stories as a professional resource for others to tap.
"One of the biggest things that peers want and need for recovery is relationships — not just a relationship with a peer supporter but relationships in their communities," said Harrington.
This raises obvious questions: What are the parameters of the peer-to-peer specialist relationship? What are the emotional stakes for those charged with maintaining a level of openness about their own struggles that traditional psychotherapy has long frowned upon?
For those within the peer support field, this question points up the issue of boundaries — specifically, the danger for the unwary peer supporter in becoming overly consumed by the plight of the peer client, to the point of harming the integrity of the therapeutic relationship and even jeopardizing one or both persons' recovery.
"I don't want to infect them, or for them to infect me."
So said "Mary," a small, elderly Hispanic woman whose warm, matronly demeanor failed to conceal how furiously her mind was working to process the input she was getting. "Them" is people with lived experience of mental illness.
It's the Friday night of Alternatives, the largest and most visible national conference that is organized by and for consumers of mental health services. Mary's comment was made during one of the event's evening caucuses.
Mary is considering training to become a peer specialist. By her own account, she is a compulsive helper. In fact, the major sticking point for her is what she sees as her penchant for "codependency" — a tendency to become too deeply enmeshed in the tribulations of the people she tries to help.
The therapeutic relationship is necessarily a test of the ability to maintain strict boundaries in an emotionally charged setting. But for peer specialists — individuals with lived experience of mental illness who have trained to use their recovery story to help others — the personal stakes can feel much higher.
Most of the caucus attendees are peer specialists. These peer specialists spend much of the ensuing discussion trying to assuage Mary's doubts. Mary is peremptorily concerned with the effect she might have upon a peer — and the effect that a peer could have on her.
"We have to make sure that we're being friendly, but not friends," said "Judith," a certified peer specialist and caucus participant. "It's the ability to know where your stuff ends and the peer that you're serving begins. We need an understanding of limits and responsibilities in our role as a peer provider."
A Growing Field
Boundaries are just one of the many hot topics that define this growing field. As of September 2012, 36 states had established programs that train and certify peer specialists. Certified peer specialists (CPS) now sit on the boards of state hospitals.
They accompany doctors and nurses on their morning rounds. They act as group facilitators, debriefers, trauma specialists, advocates and trainers. They chair human rights committees that make recommendations to hospitals for the purpose of reducing the use of seclusion and restraint and other dehumanizing practices. They are not just used as back-end troubleshooters but as front-end consultants and planners.
"For those interested in becoming peer specialists, the biggest hurdle they're going to have is that the other staff that they work with are probably not going to understand what their role is," said Dennis Bach, director of Austin, Texas-based Via Hope.
According to Bach, poor utilization of peer specialists' skills remains the biggest problem within the field.
"Because of that lack of understanding, quite often individuals that are hired as peer specialists get assigned to do stuff that's not appropriate — like drive a bus, or sort papers or whatever — instead of working with other people who are getting services, sharing their stories and helping people with their recovery," said Bach.
Via Hope, a nonprofit funded by the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, offers a Certified Peer Specialist course that consists of a 35-hour training followed by a written certification exam. Participants must successfully complete both to become certified. Once certified, a peer specialist must earn at least 20 continuing education units every two years to maintain his or her certification.
As peer support emerges as a discipline, with its own best practices and delivery models, there is a growing concern that it risks being co-opted by the very systems it was meant to change — or that peer specialists' efforts to acclimate to the incumbent cultures at their workplaces can blunt the creative tension that makes them most effective.
"Peer supporters, because of the environment, the culture, relationships with co-workers, they often, unfortunately too often, tend to perform and practice more like traditional clinicians than they do peer supporters," said Harrington. "There's a lot of reasons why that happens, but it's been a concern of ours as an association for a very long time."
Harrington makes a distinction between cooptation and professionalization, arguing that the latter is desirable even while the former is not. Against those who argue that any form of credentialism is anathema to peer support, Harrington thinks that it's possible to uphold professional norms within the field without sacrificing its transformative edge.
"Professionalization deals with competency and training. Co-optation is more like enculturation," said Harrington. "We have some peer supporters, a very small number, who say that peer supporters should have no training, should not be certified, to preserve the purity of peer support. Then we have others who say it should be a degreed profession, that you should be able to get at least a bachelor's degree in peer support. Of course, reason tends to fall somewhere in the middle."
A World Within, a World Apart
Leah Harris is adamant that peer support must remain a world that is definable and distinct from the surrounding culture in which it operates.
"I'm a strong advocate that peer supporters should not be getting a paycheck from the agencies that they're working at, that they should be getting independent funding to be there," said Harris. "Let's say you're a peer specialist working for 'X' agency, and you're seeing some extreme problems going on. If you're drawing a paycheck, there's a level of fear of repercussion that might keep someone from speaking honestly about what they're observing."
While the peer support field strives to define itself, others stress that the peer support experience is bound to be as individual, and as difficult to circumscribe, as the peers themselves.
"Peer support is a person-to-person lived experience, an experience of meeting individuals where they're at, in reference to their illness at the time," said Ginny Thomas, a certified peer specialist and rights protection officer at Spindletop MHMR in Beaumont, Texas.
Thomas recounted a series of traumas in her life — a rape that resulted in a pregnancy and an abusive marriage among them – that not only gives her gravitas as a peer specialist but also makes her an avatar of what a recovery-centered ethic can achieve. She is involved with the RESPECT Institute, which trains mental health consumers in the skills and coaching necessary to transform their mental illness, treatment, and recovery experiences into educational presentations. This is in keeping with peer support's larger emphasis on transforming illness sagas into recovery narratives.
"The 'qualified mental health professional' is the person who believes that the consumer doesn't know anything, or doesn't have the ability," said Thomas. "Everybody needs to understand that everybody is on a level playing field, and have that respect." Thomas even points to basic issues of workplace culture, such as the commingling of professionals with consumers in spaces — think restrooms, offices, break room refrigerators — that highly degreed clinicians might see as their sole preserve.
"There is a lifetime of education, and the education you do receive you can use and take throughout your life, throughout your recovery," said Thomas. "If you want to be a peer provider, you have to take care of yourself first so you can assist somebody else."
Ike Evans
Ike Evans is a public affairs specialist for the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin, a position he has held since December 2012. Prior to that, he was a freelance writer.
Evans, I. (2018). Peer Support, Peer Problems. Psych Central. Retrieved on July 19, 2019, from https://psychcentral.com/blog/peer-support-peer-problems/


Internet security is one of those responsibilities we're all aware of, but it's beginning to go beyond protection of a computer or smartphone, as gamers deal with people keen on making a dent on their fun.
According to a new report from Symantec, hacking services are now being employed to people who want to bring down gamers playing video games as part of either pleasure or competitive gaming, with denial of service attacks bringing down game networks.
You might be enjoying your time with a new game, competing for money in e-sports, or even streaming the games you're playing to a captive audience, but if there's a bounty on your head for either of these, the server you're playing on might now be a target.
"So called "Booter" services can be hired for as little as US$5 to perform DDoS attacks for a few minutes against any target," said Nick Savvides, Senior Principal Systems Engineer at Symantec.
"Longer attacks can be bought for a few hundred dollars," he said, and that services like these are often used to take down competitors in gaming events.
While that can mean gamers engaged in e-sports will have their bread and butter dented, so too are the experiences of people gaming for fun, with servers from Sony and Microsoft also affected by some these attacks in recent months.
Unfortunately, we're told that there isn't much a person can do, and while internet security software can help stop security attacks from affecting your computer, it may not stop a server from going down altogether, with much of this happening at the company running the server.
Ultimately, if a server you rely on for multiplayer-only games like "Destiny" goes down, it might be because it's being targeted, and while you might be cranky, it's not just you that is, with the company dealing with attack also in the grumpy books as well.


Finally, a mushroom recipe to silence the mushroom skeptics out there. This is for your relatives who only know rubbery grocery store criminis and portobellos and won't even touch a mushroom - cooked or uncooked. They've decided they're better off without mushrooms and this Thanksgiving, you're going to prove them wrong!
Show up to dinner with this oyster mushroom dish and you'll have the mushroom-hater in your family finally admit to what you've known for a while. That mushrooms are a satisfying burst of umami and add a special savory element to the rest of the meal.
Grab an Oyster Grow at Home Kit, grow your own mushrooms for Thanksgiving, and show your mushroom-adverse relatives just how delicious mushrooms can be.
Converting a mushroom hater into a mushroom enthusiast is easy when you give them a fork full of properly cooked Oyster mushrooms. The main trick is to not to undercook the mushrooms and to make sure you salt them generously. Oyster mushrooms like long and slow heat and taste best when crisped slightly.


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LIMA (Reuters) - First a mural in downtown Lima that depicted indigenous Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Katari was painted over. Then one of a boy stacking bricks on top of books suffered the same fate.
Lima's arts community was incensed. And suspicious: The yellow paint covering the works evoked the hallmark color of the new mayor's political party.
On Wednesday, after a third mural turned yellow, Mayor Luis Castaneda confirmed his government was behind the effort, literally covering up the traces of a predecessor who had welcomed the pieces.
"They don't go with the historic center," Castaneda said in a televised news briefing on Wednesday, shrugging off criticism.
The now-deleted murals were painted in Lima's gritty downtown district during the 2011-2014 term of former Mayor Susana Villaran, Castaneda's archrival, whose government helped secure permits.
The dispute has touched a nerve in Lima, where an emerging arts scene often struggles for space as rents rise in the fast-growing city of 10 million.
Castaneda, a conservative and populist leader, said erasing the artwork was merely part of his government's bid to revamp the historic center.
But that plan might now backfire, said 36-year-old designer and arts advocate Elliot Urcuhuaranga.
The controversy has already inspired a slew of memes and caricatures online. One depicts the Mona Lisa covered in yellow paint.
Castaneda said his government would paint over more murals, including one he said was linked to the political arm of the nearly defunct Shining Path insurgency.
Castaneda beat Villaran by a landslide in municipal elections last year after branding the center-left politician as elitist and out-of-touch.
Villaran had emphasized expanding cultural programs and cracking down on Lima's unruly transportation sector, plans she says Castaneda is working to reverse.
Also mayor from 2003 to 2010, Castaneda has said he wants to use his new term to resume the kind of public works projects that he said Villaran abandoned.
Lima, a nearly 500-year-old city founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on the Pacific coast, is the traffic-choked capital of Peru. Its sprawling shantytowns lack basic services like water and electricity.


text:
Peru - The National Question by Chairman Gonzalo
Speech by Chairman Gonzalo at the conference organized by the Teacher's Union of Humanga, Ayacucho-Perú, 1974
Contemporary Peruvian Society
The character of our society.
The character of the revolutionary process of Peruvian society.
Bureaucratic Capitalism
What do we mean by bureaucratic capitalism?
Three lines within bureaucratic capitalism.
The Contemporary Situation of the Country
The conditions under which the current regime grows.
The plans and characteristics of the regime.
Evidently, it is very important and necessary to analyze the character of Peruvian society; because if we do not have a clear understanding of it, we cannot comprehend and explain adequately the process we are living in today. Thus, it is not possible to understand concrete problems of today and the current political situation, such as the law of education or law of mines, without understanding what the character of contemporary Peruvian society is. Unfortunately, little is known about the national question and this get worse with the gross disinformation campaign launched by the state on this matter lately.
The Character of Contemporary Peruvian Society
Peru is a semifeudal and semicolonial society. Our country became independent in the last century. More than 150 years ago, we were a colony of Spain. We lived subjugated by this metropoly and had no political independence at all. On the other hand, at the beginning of the XIX century Peru was a feudal country and our society was fundamentally based on agriculture, which was the economic base. Of course, there was trade and incipient industrial modalities, but the economic base was feudalism. The society was based on the existence of big latifundios (TNF: large farms or haciendas) that belonged to a handful of people, and upon this kind of property, servitude existed. The peasants were cruelly exploited , and had to give personal services such as working the land of the feudal lord and others, including domestic services, in order to have a plot of land.
Our country was backward, where the norm was the practice of old forms of production and modalities of government that were totally decrepit. At the beginning of the XIX century, the country had two problems, which with certain minor modifications still persist today. First, the the land question, the problem of feudalism, of the servitude of the peasantry based on the latifundia property; and the second was the problem of national sovereignty (our nation was a colony of Spain.)
The struggle for independence raised these two problems. The issue of sovereignty was present in parliamentary debates in which it was proposed that independence could only be assured if the land was handed over to the peasants, also this is proven by the decrees of Bolivar on territorial property.
However, independence only meant breaking the chains with Spain. Soon thereafter the country found itself controlled and dominated by England. This great capitalist power dominated all of Latin America. What is the importance of the domination of England in our country? Up until independence, we were a feudal and colonial country, but once we became independent although we maintained our feudal base, we achieved a certain political independence. We became a republic despite of the problems inherents to emancipation. England introduces higher modalities of development in the country, capitalist modalities, fundamentally in trade which was tied to the world market of the fertilizer guano (TNF: seabird excrement). As a result, the destruction of feudalism advanced because England brought merchandise and introduced capitalist method of production. On the other hand, England began to control the country and introduced a process of colonialization. The British domination resulted in the beginning of a change: a step toward the formation of a semifeudal and semicolonial society.
In the XX century the United States (U.S.) displaced the English domination in the Americas and becomes the master, around the 1920's. Thus, our country sees itself dominated by another world power, an imperialist power. The U.S. came when it was already an imperialist country, with a developed system of monopolies, and big corporations that concentrate the U.S.'s economy. It was already a power undergoing a colonial expansion in Latin America and even in parts of Asia.
Under the Yankee imperialist domination, our society evolves further its semifeudal character. However, it is not totally destroyed. It continues to survive. In the same manner that under English domination (especially after the war with Chile), there has been a major push toward the destruction of feudalism under the development of a form of capitalism tied to the big monopolies and dependent upon imperialism. In addition to maintaining its semifeudal character, our country continues to be a semicolony; a dominated country that even though has declared its political independence is under the domination of an imperialist power in economic, diplomatic, cultural, and military affairs. This domination turns Peru's declared political independence into a formality.
In syntheis, since the XIX century, Peruvian society has evolved from a feudal society into a semifeudal one, and from a colonial society into a semicolonial one. In this long process, three powers have dominated and exploited us: First Spain until 1821 (although it continued its dominattion for many more decades.) Then England dominated us in a more subtle way. The British even fabricated for us political parties of a bourgeois nature, and organized a better state apparatus in order to subjugate us better with its subbtle domination. It was a subtile domination but no less exploitative than the previous one. Finally, the U.S., which continues to oppress and exploit us, an imperialism that despite all that is said (about "independence,") dominates us on all levels.
When we were a colonial country we had two problems: the land problem and the national question. Under English domination we were a semifeudal and semicolonial society (less developed than the present time), and had two problems: the land and the nation. The land was concentrated in a few hands and servitude continued to exist in the country. In the XX century under U.S. dominattion, we continue to be a semifeudal and semicolonial society (undoubtedly much more evolved than before) but the basic problems of the country continue to be the two mentioned before: the land and the nation. The land question is because the feudal modalities of exploitation still survive and grip our entire society. Thus, our unscientific and superstitious mentality, our ideology in general, as well as our social and political relations, still have many feudal aspects.
The national question is because we are an oppressed nation, apparently free, but at the bottom, subjugated in many ways.
Therefore, the nation's history from the XIX century to today is the feudal and colonial class struggle that under the domination of English capitalism and Yankee imperialism in succession, has evolved and transformed into a semifeudal and semicolonial society with two basic problems still unresolved: the land question and the national question.
The character of the revolutionary process of Peruvian society
In laying down the character of Peruvian society a question arises: which is the path of revolutionary transformation? Concretely, what is the character of the Peruvian revolution? We have established that today there are two problems: the land question and the national question, from whose resolution the solution of the rest of the nation's problems will derive. The entire national question is tied to the semifeudal and semicolonial character of Peruvian society. Hence, in order for Peruvian society to change, to be truly revolutionary, these two problems must be resolved:
The land question, whose solution demands that semifeudalism be swept away, unless this is done, the land question cannot be resolved;
The national question, whose solution demands sweeping away Yankee imperialist oppression, because if this semicolonial domination is not swept away the national question will not be resolved.
Therefore, without eliminating semifeudalism and semicolonialism it is not possible to genuinely transform Peruvian society (despite all what they'd been telling us.) Furthermore, what it (TNF: by the ruling classes) being proclaimed today is nothing new. For instance, in 1919 we heard similar siren songs. Consequently, the two tasks that must be carry out in the process of transformation of Peruvian society, scientifically called the Peruvian revolution, is to completely destroy semifeudalism and semicolonialism. These are the two tasks of the Peruvian revolution in its first stage. This means that the Peruvian revolution is antifeudal and antiimperialist. It must destroy the feudal remnants and the imperialist domination. For this reason, the Peruvian revolution is necessarily democratic and national. Scientifically speaking the character of the Peruvian revolution is a national-democratic revolution; democratic because it will destroy the feudal relations of the nation; and national because it will destroy the Yankee imperialist oppression. Thus, in the contemporary semi-feudal and semi-colonial Peruvian society, there is only room for a national-democratic, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution.
Let us analyze the character of the Peruvian revolution in relation to the concrete historical conditions. The two problems of the country (the land and the nation), during the XX century as compared to the XIX century, have big differences. In the last century there was no imperialism like there is today, and there was no international working class capable of leading the revolution, nor was there a developed working class in our country, whereas today, we have a triumphant working class (TNF: the October revolution, China, etc.) and in our country we have a working class with a long history of struggle. These are very important differences in the revolutionary process of our country.
Until the 1920's, the bourgeoisie in our country was in the capacity of leading the process of transformation towards the solution of these two problems, but they didn't. Nevertheless, in our country, before the 1920's, there were great struggles, heroic struggles and continuous uprisings of peasants, mobilizations, and student struggles, and powerful actions of the working class. All of this generated a great process of political struggle in which the ideology of the proletariat began to be spread out and be applied to our reality. The extraordinary figure of Jos' Carlos Mari tegui emerges, whose tireless work as a "thinker and activist man" marked a milestone in history. In 1928, Mariategui founded the Communit Party, the Party of the working class in Peru. This period determined a fundamental change in our revolution through which the bourgeoisie, under the conditions of imperialist domination and the existence of a working class forged in struggle, could no longer lead the revolutionary process of our nation.
Thus, the working class has sprung forward and developed, and beyond disputing the leadership of the revolution with the bourgeosie, it is the only class capable of carrying the Peruvian revolution to its triumph. The bourgeois revolution in the country has two periods:
The old bourgeois revolution that was able to be completed towards the beginning of this century, under bourgeois leadership; and The new bourgeois revolution or national-democratic revolution, or bourgeois revolution of a new type, under the leadership of the proletariat which is the only historical perspective for the country.
After 1928 the proletariat achieved political organization and displaced the bourgeoisie from the historical leadership of the revolutionary process, as the only class that can complete the national democratic revolution. Thus, after 1928 the revolution in the country, the destruction of feudalism and imperialist domination, can only be completed under the leadership of the proletariat, a class that in order to fulfill its historical role must unite with the peasantry in a solid worker-peasant alliance, since the peasantry as a majority, although it does not lead the revolution, is the principal force.
We uphold the position that in the country the proletariat, with its party, must lead the movement, or else there is no national-democratic revolution. If not, let us not fool ourselves, directly or indirectly, we would be serving the enemies of the class.
To conclude, we must point out that there are other theses opposite to what we have explained. For example, there is a thesis that states that Peruvian society is capitalist. This is the most dangerous. If the country is capitalist, the revolution must be socialist, and the proletariat and not the peasantry would be the principal force. This thesis fundamentally changes the extremely important problem, which is the road of the revolution. As we have seen here, there are two revolutionary paths:
The path of the October revolution which is from the city to the countryside, and this is the path of the capitalist countries by way of a socialist revolution, the path that old Russia took or that France would have to take today, for example; and
The path of the Chinese revolution, which is from the countryside to the city, and this is the path that semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries follow by way of a national-democratic revolution, the path the Vietnam, among others, is following today. As such, the question of whether the country is semi-feudal or capitalist is not simply a Byzantine discussion, because if we err about the character of society we err on the course of the revolution, and consequently it will not triumph.
The thesis of the capitalist character of Peruvian society has been and continues to be upheld by Trotskyism and positions close to it, nevertheless such typifications begins to be upheld by revisionism in order to deepen its surrender to the regime.
This question is important for the comprehension of Peruvian society, and ignorance of it is the root of grave political errors. The thesis of bureaucratic capitalism is found in the classics and in Mariátegui, although he used another term.
This is the capitalism that imperialism promotes in a backwards country; the type of capitalism, the special form of capitalism, that is imposed by an imperialist country onto a backwards country, whether it is semi-feudal or semi-colonial. Let us analyze this historic process.
How did capitalism develop in the old European nations? Consider France; toward the end of the XVIII century it was a feudal country, with 20 to 22 million peasants while workers numbered only around 600,000 (from which we can see the feudal passage it had); it was based on servitude of various forms. Nevertheless, within the feudal entrails of France new productive forms, of manufacturing, and capitalist forms were generated, and a class, the bourgeoisie, was gaining ever more force, more economic power, including political influence. We ask: Was France a nation subjugated by another? No. France was an absolute monarchy that contested with England for global hegemony, it was not oppressed by anyone. Its socio-economic and historical conditions had made it develop that way. Did imperialism exist in that era? No. Imperialism is of this century. What existed were countries undergoing capitalist development, like England for example, and France was independently developing a capitalist society. Other countries followed the same path, and when they reached the XIX century, France, England, Belgium, Holland, etc. were capitalist countries that developed independently.
What was the situation of Latin America in the XIX century? When the emancipation of America began (1810), the nations of Europe were already powerful, whereas the Latin American ones had only recently begun to structure their nationalities, a problem that has not yet been concluded. Moreover, soon after becoming independent these nations fall under the domination of a power, namely England; thus their capitalism will develop under English domination, a kind of dependent capitalism. Thus, there is a well-known historical, economic, and political difference compared to the European process.
On another side, the bourgeoisies that develop in Latin America begin to link themselves more and more to the dominant country, in such a way that these weak bourgeoisies, instead of developing independently like the Europeans did, serving the national interests, they evolve as subjugated bourgeoisies, dependent, given over body and soul to the imperialist powers (England or the U.S.) to the extent they even believe in converting themselves into rich men and developed intermediate bourgeoisies, as our history in this century shows.
This latter path is the one taken in Peru. As we have seen, in the second decade of this century Yankee imperialism surplanted English domination.
Three lines within bureaucratic capitalism
Bureaucratic capitalism develops three lines within its process: a landlord line in the countryside, a bureaucratic one in industry, and a third, also bureaucratic, in the ideological sphere. This is without pretending that that these are the only ones.
It introduces the landlord line in the countryside by way of expropiatory agrarian laws that do not aim to destroy the feudal landlord class and their property, but rather progressively evolve them by means of the purchase and payment of the land for the peasants. The bureaucratic line in industry aims at controlling and centralizing industrial production, commerce, etc., putting them ever more in the hands of monopoly with the goal of sponsoring a more rapid and systematic accumulation of capital, to the detriment of the working class and other workers, naturally, to the benefit of the biggest monopolies and consequently imperialism. In this process the forced saving which workers are subjected to plays an important role, as we can see in the industrial law. The bureaucratic line in ideology consists of the process of molding the people, by means of the massive diffusion, especially in political conceptions and ideas, that serve bureaucratic capitalism. The general law of education is a concentrated expression of this line, and one of the constants of this line is its anti-communism, its anti-Marxism, whether open or concealed.
These three lines form part of the bureaucratic path which is opposed by the DEMOCRATIC PATH, the revolutionary road of the people. If the former defends feudal property, the latter proposes its destruction, and it opposes the buying of lands with confiscation; if the former recognizes and fortifies imperialist industrial property, the latter denies it and struggles for its confiscation; if the former fights to ideologically subjugate the people, the latter strives to arm them ideologically; if the former attacks Marxism, the latter upholds that we must guide ourselves by Marxism as the only scientific instrument to understand reality. They are thus two absolutely contrary paths. The history of the country in this century is a history of struggle between these two paths: the bureaucratic path, that is capitalism submitted to imperialism, and the democratic path, the road of the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and under certain circumstances, the national bourgeoisie. In order to understand bureaucratic capitalism it is very useful to study and analyze the decade of the 1960's, during which the process of the destruction of feudalism advanced more; in this period industry and capitalist relations in agriculture are strengthened. From another side, the class struggle developed greatly; the trade union movement, the peasant movement, and the student movement reached higher levels. Thus a strong trade union movement developed that in a particular moment took localities and bosses as hostages; the peasant movement also had a great apogee, in the second half of 1963 it ran from the center of the country to the south like a trail of gunpowder; and the student movement rose rapidly. In synthesis, the mass struggles have lived through great experiences in this period of political struggles.
Thus, party politics had a great apogee, on the one hand the reactionary political parties entered into grave difficulties and struggles leading up to the crisis of the so-called "representative democracy" in 1967 and 1968, and on the other the left developed a vigorous political life, within which it unleashed the struggle between Marxism and revisionism, which later re-took the path of Mari tegui as a condition to develop the revolution.
Another very important deed which is not sufficiently studied is the question of the guerrillas: in 1965 there was a outbreak of guerrilla warfare, including this zona. The guerrilla movement in the country is part of the national process. It is a primary question that must be highlighted because due to sectarianism, sometimes it is considered as simply the experience of an organization and it is not seen as the experience of the Peruvian people. It is a movement intimately linked to the political process of the country, developed according to petty bourgeois conceptions; it is a great experience that needs to be analyzed from the point of view of the proletariat in order to draw fruitful lessons.
It is impossible to understand our situation and perspective since 1970 without understanding the concrete conditions of the 1960's. There is a good thing: in the last few years, the Peruvian intelligentsia begins to understand the necessity of studying the decade of the 1960's. Only by understanding this period will we be better armed ideologically, in order to understand the current situation.
The problem of bureaucratic capitalism is important because it allows us to understand which is the dominant path that imperialism imposes on a backwards country, on a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country; by understanding this problem we will be armed and equipped to combat the thesis of the capitalist character of the country and its political derivations.
In order to conclude this theme we will deal with the following: some maintain that to hold that bureaucratic capitalism is in the country is to ignore its semi-feudal and semi-colonial character; they say it proposes that the nation is capitalist in a hidden manner. This is an error ignores the laws of social development of our country and of the backwards countries; precisely because bureaucrat capitalism is no more than the path of imperialism in a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country and without semi-feudal and semi-colonial conditions there would be no bureaucrat capitalism. Thus, to propose the existence of bureaucrat capitalism is to propose as a premise that the country is semi-feudal and semi-colonial.
Under what conditions does the current regime arise? Let us go back to the end of the 1960's. What was happening? Economic problems: in 1967 the currency devaluation, freezing of credits, etc. An economic crisis. On another side, the struggle of the masses was rising, strong worker and peasant struggles, and we saw daily that characteristics similar to those in the first year of the decade were beginning to present themselves; a future rise in the movement of the masses was within sight. In politics, confrontations and fractionalizing between and within the political organizations of the ruling classes; the famous dispute between parliament and the executive. Furthermore, the elections drew near, creating the junture for many of the nation's problems to be illuminated, even for the parties in dispute, because in their eagerness to get votes the "dragged out their dirty laundry". Ideologically our country had passed through a profound debate of ideas and this greatly clarified what is Marxism and what is revisionism. Furthermore the path of Mari tegui began to be retaken by applying Marxism to the concrete conditions of the country. Aside from the above we must highlight two situations:
1. The economic situation of the country, which is the development of bureaucratic capitalism could no longer continue developing itself in the old way, urging its deepening. It needed to open a wider path so that this process in the form of imperialism would advance; with the previous forms it could not advance. We must not forget that for many years the agrarian problem was discussed, there were even agrarian laws: the Beltran project, the laws of P'rez Godoy and of Bela£nde. Another question: in the industrial problem the law of the second government of Prado was now insufficient and raised again the necessity of making industrial parks, give a priority to the state role in planning, etc. There is the plan of Bela£nde of 1967 to 1970 that stated the necessity of changing the social condition of the country in order to construct a "new society, national, democratic, and Christian". In conclusion, the process of bureaucratic capitalism needed to deepen itself.
2. In the country there was the so-called "representative democracy", but parliamentarism did not satisfy the needs of the exploiters; the popular masses advanced with relative ease putting the exploiting classes in difficult, although temporary, positions. Thus, they needed to substitute the representative modality, parliamentarism. Was this a typical case that only happened in our country? No. The decade of 1960 implied the fragility of the so-called "regime of representative democracy" in Latin America, the crisis of parliamentarism, and consequently the need to substitute it for state modalities more efficient for reaction.
In synthesis, the economic necessities of deepening bureaucratic capitalism and the fagility of parliamentarism, in the conditions indicated, presented the exploiting classes and imperialism with the necessity of a new political establishment for the country. Thus, the current regime arises from economic, social, and political necessities of deepening bureaucratic capitalism.
The plans and characteristics of the regime
There now exists a socio-economic plan which is little talked about. In synthesis it establishes: the need to reinvigorate bureaucratic capitalism, by way of the efforts of workers and peasants, the former brought about by means of the industrial law and the others by means of the agrarian law. At the same time it proposes the direct and primordial action of the state to open conditions of investment for private capital; the financing of which necessarily comes from imperialism and since this financing is insufficient, it must fundamentally take root from its own resources. This plan clearly illustrates its linkage with the process of bureaucratic capitalism in the country; daily this play is linked to Bela£nde's, and with this the entire system of bureaucratic capitalism of the country.
Very deep between the economic plan and social mobilization, this is another thing that is not very clear. The regime, sanctioning its fundamental measures (in agriculture, industry, and education), has passed to an organizational stage. Today and in the immediate future we develop within organization, mobilization, and participation that the regime is promoting. The social mobilization must be understood linked to the economic process; the same government says that without social mobilization it will not be able to complete its socio-economic plan, and proposes that the social mobilization has a basis, the participation in property ownership. Lately the representatives of the regime talk about social property: what does this serve? This property serves, behind the decoy of participation in property ownership, to mobilize the masses to the benefit of bureaucratic capitalism. For this reason the basis of social mobilization is social participation.
What does this social mobilization serve? Social mobilization is a political instrument in the hands of the regime to strengthen its conceptions and open a "neither capitalist nor communist road", that is, to spread its ideas. Upon spreading its ideas it seeks to "avoid that foreign, exotic ideas become embedded in the masses"; what ideas are they refering to? Marxism. This ideological process is to avoid that the masses learn about Marxism and thus tie them to the bureaucratic capitalist road. Thus, the mobilization is a means of organizing, starting from the property modalities, the masses and channel them into a vertical authority. This is what they mean by social mobilization; it is a masterpiece of the system at the service of their economic and political plan. One of the reasons why the economic plan doesen't advance like they hoped it would is the lack of their so-called social mobilization.
From the above, we derive: the current political situation of the country is centered around the problem of the mobilization of the masses, now and in the immediate future we move within this juncture, which is: who mobilizes and how are the masses mobilized. The government pretends to move them according to their conception; their actions prove it. The regime aims to organize the peasant masses. The law 19400 serves this end, and it aims to organize the workers with the so-called CTRP. "Nationalists, revolutionary participationists"; among the students they create organizations that are born one day and disappear the next. All of this signifies the intention to organize the worker, peasant, and student masses, and it reveals that the contention is happening on and organizational plane.
Nevertheless, despite the propaganda and efforts of the regime and their followers, the struggle of the masses is alive and develops; why? Because the living conditions of the masses worsen as a consequence of the very system. For this reason, no matter how much they scream that it is the "ultra-left" that moves the masses and agitates them, what is certain is that the masses are mobilizing around their own interests, and defend them to the extent that they are conscious. Synthesizing, the social, economic, and political conditions lead to the sharpening of the mass struggle, and the organizational question is one of confronting the serious difficulties before the organizational offensive of the regime, the same one that is incapable of imposing its total control and will have to appeal more to systematic repression (of which there are many and rapidly growing examples).
In conclusion: the ideology and politics of the regime, including organizationally, express a fascist character. The regime's measures, as expressed by their leaders, their style of organizing, their attitudes towards the representative regime, their manner of treating civil liberties, only show one thing: the abandonment of the demo-liberal and representative system and adherence to fascism. The very chief of the sinamos [paramilitary squads set up by the Velasco regime] said that we are in a pre-revolutionary period, and that all the regimes and political organizations have become invalid in the new social conditions.
From another side, the measures applied in politics, economics, and organizationally truly prove that they are laying the foundations for a CORPORATIVIST system. The essence of this question are the organizations on different levels, in which the bosses, the workers, and the state should participate. Three parts in the organizations, which has been defined as a corporation since the last century. This is the way it has been proposed by those who have upheld corporativism since 1920 and this is the way it is upheld today in Spain and Portugal.
Thus, the current regime is a system that has an ideological orientation of a fascist bent and is laying the foundations for a CORPORATIVIST system. It will be said that here is another thesis. It is very clear. There is a thesis that says that this is not certain, some maintaining that we are dealing with a revolutionary bourgeois regime that is completing a stage of the revolution; if we recall what we have seen this is a position without a political, ideological, or economic basis. Another thesis maintains that it is a bourgeois reformist regime, that it is applying reforms. What are reforms? Reforms are the concessions that the people win with their struggles, or they are the by-product of revolution, as Lenin said. Are the agrarian, industrial, or educational laws concessions to the people? This is enough to show the inconsistencies of this thesis.
Finally: when we emancipated ourselves we had two problems, of the land and of the nation, the problem of feudalism and the problem of domination by a foreign power. Many years have passed, and our society has advanced. The people of today are not the people of yesterday. We consider that today, after so many years, we continue having two problems: the land question and the national question. From this the process of transformation in our country is scientifically called a NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION, and this can only be lead by the proletariat.
"All debates are open for those who voice opinions, not those who remain silent." J.C. Mariátegui
"Polemics are useful when they are truly set out to clarify theories and actions, and when only clear ideas and motives are introduced." J.C. Mariátegui
Posted by nickglais on 10/31/2017 08:05:00 AM
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