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Eight students finalists for national college broadcasting awards
GREENVILLE, Pa.—Eight Thiel College students are finalists in five categories for Intercollegiate Broadcasting System Golden Mic awards.
Thiel College's campus television station TCTV has three shows as finalists, while the radio station WXTC had two nominees.
Winners will be announced during the 77th Annual International Conference on March 3-5 in New York City. The event annually features 150 speakers, 100 sessions and tours, and more than 1,400 U.S. and international attendees.
Khari Bess '16, of Waldorf, Md.; Lucas Blacka '18, of McKeesport, Pa.; Kara Bussard '16, of Moon Township, Pa.; Kyle Hockenberry '18, of Kittanning, Pa.; Joe Pouliot '17, of Linesville, Pa.; and Rob Thompson '18, of Youngstown, Ohio are finalists for two awards. The students are among five finalists for a Best Comedy Program award for "Two-finger Discount" and one of four finalists for Best Variety Program for "Dorm Room Dining: Pepperoni Pizza Bagels." Blacka and Pouliot were also nominated for Best Program Promotion for "Greek Week Sports Compilation: Thiel College 2016."
"Thiel's multiple nominees for national awards in both television and radio programming show what great work our faculty, students and staff are doing in our Department of Media, Communication and Public Relations," Dane S. Claussen, Ph.D., Thiel's James Pedas Professor of Communication, said. "We are thrilled to receive this kind of recognition from our peers around the country."
Claussen also is department chair and Executive Director of the James Pedas Communication Center.
Dan Wagner '17, of Espyville, Pa., and Aelita Ferrante '17, of Warren, Ohio, were nominated for a radio award for Best Talk Show for "Teamwork," a specialty topic show about gaming. Ferrante's program "Limitless," a twice-weekly show that explores pushing past societal labels and limitations, was also nominated as a Most Innovate Program. The two shows are among the five finalists in each category.
"I am so excited about the two shows nominated by IBS for Golden Mic Awards: Aelita's 'Limitless' and she and Dan's show 'Teamwork.' Of the 40-plus hours of student-generated programming WXTC broadcasts, these shows are ones that emphasize tolerance and collaboration, and those are great representations of our school and student body," WXTC adviser Peg Watts said. "Our WXTC students are dedicated, motivated, creative bright spots on campus and on the radio."
This is Wagner's second year with an IBS nomination. He was named best production director at last year's event for his work at WXTC.
About the James Pedas Communication Center
The 20,000 square foot Pedas Center is home to the high-definition television studio; radio station; College newspaper; Department of Media, Communication and Public Relations; and the Office of Admission. The academic spaces in the $6.8 million building include the amphitheater-style Stamm Lecture Hall, flexible classrooms and collaborative areas, and a 24-hour computer lab with more than 20 computers. Trustee emeritus Dr. James Pedas '50, H'89, is a movie and music producer, real estate developer, and entrepreneur. The Farrell, Pa. native provided the lead gift for the Pedas Center. Students from all majors benefit from the Pedas Communication Center as they get instruction and guidance on how to incorporate modern communication methods into their professional lives. The Pedas Center was recognized in February 2015 as Thiel College's first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certified building for its conservation techniques and commitment to renewable resources.
Department of Media, Communication and Public Relations
Thiel College student wins national intercollegiate radio broadcasting award (March 15, 2016)
Three Thiel College students finalists for national college radio station awards (January 12, 2016)
Thiel student radio station manager Hunt recognized, students attend IBS Conference (March 17, 2015)


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Let's Hope That Match Day Brings Us Lots Of Foreign-Born Doctors
By John Henning Schumann
Published March 17, 2017 at 10:18 AM CDT
Doctors who trained in foreign medical schools often end up practicing in rural or low-income areas in the U.S. with a shortage of physicians.
This Friday is Match Day, an annual rite of passage for seniors in medical school, when they find out at noon if they've "matched" with a residency in the specialty and location of their choice.
But many of those being matched will be happy to go pretty much anywhere. They are international medical graduates — either U.S citizens who've attended school out of the country (think the Caribbean or Mexico) or doctors who are citizens of other countries and want to train here.
Though getting into medical school in the U.S. is highly competitive, the simple fact of the matter is that there aren't enough graduates of those medical schools to fill all of the residency training slots, especially in the less-desired primary care fields. It's been this way for decades, and we've depended on foreign-born doctors to fill out our training cohorts.
Nationwide, 24 percent of medical residents are graduates of foreign medical schools, many of them at urban hospitals that serve low-income patients or hospitals in rural areas.
Throughout my medical career, I've benefited greatly from working with doctors from other nations. Regardless of their country of origin, doctors who come to the U.S. to train and work are ambassadors of humane values, learning the mores of American culture while sharing their skills and knowledge. A recent study even suggests that patients do slightly better when treated by doctors born and educated outside of the United States.
In my days as a medical student in Cleveland, my favorite rotations were at our county hospital. There the mission was clear: Treat any patient who walked through the door. There were no insurance requirements or other barriers to patients seeking help. Another benefit was that as a student, I could get the most hands-on experience.
As a third-year medical student, I had to learn to draw blood from patients, usually the ones with the hardest-to-find veins that the regular lab techs and nurses couldn't get. I was blessed to work with a resident named Ahmad who was originally from Pakistan, where he'd trained as a surgeon.
Ahmad gave up his dreams of performing surgery when he obtained a student visa and matched in internal medicine in Cleveland. He moved his family to Ohio, where they shivered through their first experience of real winter.
Ahmad's dexterity skills were in high demand among his American-born fellow residents, who were happy to learn procedures like intubation and inserting central lines from him.
One night on call, a patient with an IV drug habit had a fever, which made us worry that he had a bloodstream infection. The problem was that his veins were so scarred that drawing blood to verify our hunch was a real challenge.
It was no problem for Ahmad. He coached me through a couple of tricks like obtaining blood from a leg vein and the external jugular vein in the neck. And he did all of this while talking the patient through it to distract him from the unpleasantness. Ahmad's skill made it easier for both of us — the patient, who didn't even flinch, and me, a wet-behind-the-ears student.
Residents like Ahmad who train in the U.S. often decide to stay here, where physician incomes are higher and educational opportunities for their children are more abundant. Because of their visa requirements, doctors like Ahmad often move to locales that find it hard to attract health care professionals, including rural and low-income areas.
I see this as a win-win: highly skilled foreigners move along the pathway to becoming permanent residents or U.S. citizens, and areas with a shortage of health professionals get doctors willing to ply their trade and become members of the community.
Such is the American melting pot in the medical profession. However, the recent rise in anti-immigration sentiment in our country threatens to undermine this balance — which leaves us vulnerable to worsening doctor shortages in smaller cities and community health centers.
The president's revised immigration executive order, which was slated to go into effect Wednesday, would cloud the picture for those who would come here to train. Foremost are those from the six countries that are temporarily banned. But other visa holders, while still allowed to travel to the U.S., may find a less welcoming environment, too.
Foreign medical graduates already undergo rigorous screening as part of the visa process, notes Darrell Kirch, CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He said of the executive order in a statement: "This order will not only have short-term negative implications, but will have a lasting impact on our nation's patients, particularly those in rural and urban underserved areas."
Here's hoping that brings more Ahmads to our country's training programs. The medical profession could sure use more of that skill, worldliness and wisdom.
John Henning Schumann is an internal medicine doctor and serves as president of the University of Oklahoma's Tulsa campus. He also hostsStudio Tulsa: Medical Mondayon KWGS Public Radio Tulsa. You can follow him on Twitter:@GlassHospital.
John Henning Schumann
John Henning Schumann, M.D., is an internal medicine physician and writer (). He has contributedto Slate,The Atlantic,Marketplace, and National Public Radio's health blog,Shots.
See stories by John Henning Schumann

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Margaret Thatcher's legacy should be a Conservatism For Bolton West
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This article was first published on ConservativeHome shortly after the death of Margaret Thatcher. It was written in the hope that the Party would, in learning from her, present a programme to voters that could win seats from Labour in 2015 – including the marginal one of Bolton West.
In honour of Chris Green's victory in the seat last Thursday, we republish the piece today.
The Conservative Party is itself in poor health as it gathers to bury Margaret Thatcher. It hasn't won an election in over 20 years. The effects of vote distribution and out-of-date boundaries conspire against it breaking the habit next time. It has lost Scotland altogether, and is the third party in much of the urban north. It won 16% of the ethnic minority vote in 2010: by 2050, ethnic minority members will make up one in five of the total. It has a serious political competitor on the right, UKIP, for the first time in living memory.
Labour's rout on welfare earlier this month, and its squabbles over leadership and policy last week, have cheered up some Tory MPs – unduly so, all considered. A doctor's diagnosis of their party's condition would find serious illness, perhaps terminal decline. And the structural obstacles to a Conservative majority would remain even were this not a Government of which the whole is much less than the sum of the parts. So what can the Conservatives learn from the most potent election-winner in their history – the woman who they will honour today?
Like Shakespeare's imaginary Caesar, like many real titans, Mrs Thatcher (as I'll always think of her) can be viewed in irreconcilable ways and is subject to fiercely clashing interpretations. To David Owen, she was a cautious politician. To Martin Durkin, she was a revolutionary. She was outside the mainstream of the Compassionate Conservatism tradition, but I was struck, when I re-read the 1983 and 1987 Conservative manifestos last week, by how big the gap between myth and fact is – the child benefit rises, the new allowance for widows, the teachers' pay increases, the huge hospital-building programme after Labour had slashed it by a third.
The mighty Caesar who is "constant as the northern star" is also frail and vulnerable: "come on my right hand, for this ear is deaf, and tell me truly what thou thinkst of him". In trying to say everything about Mrs Thatcher, there is a danger of saying nothing. Instead, it's best to acknowledge that some truths about her stand out as sharply as a cliff-face. The party has been at its most successful electorally when it projects both a sense of standing for the whole country and of capturing a growing part of it – what Marxists sometimes call "the rising class". Since one of these appeals unites and the other can divide, there is an inevitable tension between them.
Macmillan covered both bases in his 1959 victory, scooping almost half the nation's vote. The two-party system was beginning to creak as early as the 1970s, but Mrs Thatcher won a very creditable 44% in 1979, which declined slightly to 42% in 1983 and 1987. Her kind of conservatism was in many ways a reaction to his. Last week's Ding Dong versus I'm In Love head-to-head is a reminder, were one needed, that her style of politics was divisive and confrontational – a reaction to her times, since Galtieri and the IRA hunger strikers and Scargill and Soviet communism and Tony Benn were divisive and confrontational.
She was right and they were wrong, and a generation of young Tory activists gloried in her courage and victories. Brian Monteith, an old election rival of mine, now a friend, and a Thatcherite when I was not, speaks for them in his article on this site this morning. Council house sales and share ownership and beating trade union bullies brought a wave of activists into the party from backgrounds that were often anything but conventionally conservative. But twenty years later, in a statistic that should be engraved on every party member's heart, 72% of voters are open to supporting Labour, but only 58% to the Conservatives.
Some Tories blame Mrs Thatcher for masking long-term problems for the party with short-term success – and others point a finger at her less electorally successful successors. What Tim Montgomerie called Soho Modernisation (same-sex marriage, social liberalism, rapid carbon reduction) and Easterhouse Modernisation (Iain Duncan Smith, social conservatism, tough love) were, to their advocates, both ends in themselves and means of getting the Conservatives back in the game. But the lesson that Margaret Thatcher can teach today's Tories is that neither of these strategies will deliver winning results on their own, or even together.
For while neutralising opposition in Soho is useful, and winning support in Easterhouse a noble ideal, neither will gain David Cameron in 2015 the victory that eluded him in 2010. To do that, he must hold and win a mass of midlands and northern marginals – the Conservatives' position in the south being, on the whole, very well entrenched indeed. The Mrs Thatcher whose party held Bolton West in the 1980s – now the Labour-held non-southern seat with the smallest majority over the Conservatives – would face different challenges in that constituency now, in post-crash Britain. But she would knuckle down to championing the would-be rising class as she did then.
That might not mean council house and share sales, though the Government is again easing conditions for the former, and Allister Heath today makes an eloquent case for the latter. But it would mean taking the kind of position sketched out in Policy Exchange's Northern Lights report – one aimed at voters on relatively low incomes (well below £26,000 or so), who are particularly pressed by relatively high prices, especially when it comes to the cost of heating a house or running a car, and who live in a part of the country in which the public sector is bigger than it is in the south.
These voters are economically cautious (nervous of losing their jobs, wary of plans for regional pay), but socially conservative (tough on immigration and welfare reform and Europe – especially the ECHR). Mrs Thatcher would have recogised at once that it makes no sense for such voters to pay higher heating bills than they can afford to pay because of the carbon price floor, or for workers earning below living wage levels both to pay income tax and be trapped in Gordon Brown's cats-cradle of tax credits, or for them not to be able to afford to buy houses until they reach their late 30s.
She would also have grasped that the combination of the EU plus "human rights" plus judicial review helps to drive the sense that the political class is all the same, and that however you vote, nothing changes – and would articulate the Common Market Or Out position that she gravitated very slowly towards in Downing Street and much more rapidly after she left it. No doubt she would work her way towards her goal in the gradualist way that characterised her, particularly over trade union reform. None of this is particularly novel or surprising, but all of it looks more like real modernisation than some of the ideas which that word has been forced to bear.
You can call this programme Blue Collar Conservatism or, like Dominic Raab, Underdog Conservatism or, like Tim Montgomerie, Conservatism for the Little Guy (But what about the women?) There is no catch-all label, but it represents the kind of rising class – or would-be rising class – conservatism which Margaret Thatcher captured with such daring and imagination. With its belief in strong families and good schools and the work ethic, it has the capacity to appeal to those ethnic minority communities which hold conservative values – in particular, the Indian-origin voters identified by Lord Ashcroft's research.
Mrs Thatcher would have seen that a big slice of Britain's ethnic minority voters are part of today's rising class, and pitched her electoral tent accordingly. ("Labour say he's black, Tories say he's British," a Thatcher-era Tory election poster declared.) But the heartland of her appeal today would be where it always was – among the kind of battling, striving, hard-pressed, C1 and C2 voters for which David Cameron's Conservative Party has, to date, shown very little feel, if any. Soho and Easterhouse are important, but Margaret Thatcher's true legacy would be a conservatism for Bolton West. I hope that Christopher Green, the party's candidate for that seat, will be writing on this site later this week.
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The Arc of Ocean County will be holding on the spot interviews on Tuesday, February 12th from 11a-1p at our office in Lakewood: 815 Cedar Bridge Ave, Lakewood NJ 08701.
Please bring a copy of your resume or completed application.
We are excited to announce that we are now offering a $1,000 sign on bonus to new hires!


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BBT: Why we Changed Prabhupada's Bhagavad Gita
BBT, Changes — By jayadvaita swami on October 25, 1982 9:48 am
A Note About the Second Edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is
(from page 866 of the "Revised and Enlarged Edition," 1983 printing.) For the benefit of readers who have become familiar with the first edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, a few words about the second edition seem in order. Although in most respects the two editions are the same, the editors of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust have gone back to the oldest manuscripts in their archives to make this second edition even more faithful to Srila Prabhupada's original work. Srila Prabhupada finished Bhagavad-gita As It Is in 1967, two years after he came from India to America. The Macmillan Company published an abridged edition in 1968 and the first unabridged edition in 1972. The new American disciples who helped Srila Prabhupada ready the manuscript for publication struggled with several difficulties. Those who transcribed his taped dictation sometimes found his heavily accented English hard to follow and his Sanskrit quotations strange to their ears. The Sanskrit editors were hardly more than beginners in the language. So the English editors had to do their best with a manuscript spotted with gaps and phonetic approximations. Yet their attempt to publish Srila Prabhupada's work was a success, and Bhagavad-gita As It Is has become the standard edition for scholars and devotees around the world. For this second edition, however, Srila Prabhupada's disciples had the benefit of having worked with his books for the last fifteen years. The English editors were familiar with his philosophy and language, and the Sanskrit editors were by now accomplished scholars. And now they were able to see their way through perplexities in the manuscript by consulting the same Sanskrit commentaries Srila Prabhupada consulted when writing Bhagavad-gita As It Is. The result is a work of even greater richness and authenticity. The word-for-word Sanskrit-English equivalents now follow more closely the standard of Srila Prabhupada's other books and are therefore more clear and precise. In places the translations, though already correct, have been revised to come closer to the original Sanskrit and to Srila Prabhupada's original dictation. In the Bhaktivedanta purports, many passages lost to the original edition have been restored to their places. And Sanskrit quotations whose sources were unnamed in the first edition now appear with full reference to chapter and verse.
Jayadvaita's Explaination of the Changes to Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita As It Is
Bhagavad-gita As It Is Second Edition
From: Jayadvaita Swami
To: Senior ISKCON Devotees
Dear Prabhus,
Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada! Everyone wants to know, "When will the new unabridged Gita be coming out?" According to the latest I've heart, the BBT plans to begin work on the new Bhagavad-gita As It Is right after Gaura Purnima.
The book itself should be available for distribution several months later. I've finished revising the purports. The revisions clear up various mistakes and mysteries. (For example, you'll finally see the last sentence this way in the purport to 2.1: "This realization is made possible when one works without attachment to fruitive results and is situated in the fixed conception of the real self.")
You'll also find lots of new material retrieved from the original manuscript, including numerous Sanskrit quotations and even entire paragraphs formerly left out. The Sanskrit department has also carefully gone over the synonyms. (So, for example, the synonym for asat in 17.28 will at last say "false" instead of "falls".)
And finally the translations. In one sense, the translations are the least important part of the book. Other scholars had already translated the Gita before Srila Prabhupada. (Dr. Radhakrishnan's translation, Srila Prabhupada said, was basically all right.) And Srila Prabhupada always said that the most important thing was his purports. (He even told the original editor for Bhagavad-gita As It Is that he could have some freedom in editing the translations "to convey a poetic flavor" but warned that he should be careful not to make needless changes in his "personal ecstasies," his purports.)
On the other hand, in some ways the translations are far more prominent.
For each verse, those one or two sentences stand out alone, inviting scrutiny. They give us our English version of Krsna's original words.
And of course many devotees memorize these translations verbatim.
Changes made to the translations stand out. So I want to be especially cautious in making them.
Specifically, I want the senior devotees in ISKCON to have a chance to examine all the changes before the book comes out. I want you to see the changes, to understand what's behind them, to have a chance to raise questions or make suggestions about them–and, finally, to satisfy yourself that the changes are prudent, legitimate, and worthwhile.
So here they are–all the changes I have proposed for the translations in the new edition.
Some of them, you'll see, are quite small–a matter of a comma, a colon, or a semicolon. Others are major. And all of them are here.
For most of the revisions, I've given only those portions of the verse where the changes occur. This lets you spot the changes quickly. (But you have to compare these sheets to the book itself to see how the revised verse reads.)
Now, you have a right to ask, how and why were these changes made? First of all, why?
Several reasons: Sometimes (most often) to make the text more faithful to what Srila Prabhupada originally said. Sometimes to make it closer to the Sanskrit (coming closer to Srila Prabhupada's original manuscript often made this happen automatically). And sometimes it was merely a question of grammar.
How did we go about the work?
I went through every page of the oldest manuscript we have. (For the first five or six chapters these are Srila Prabhupada's original typed pages, for the middle chapters they're the original transcripts of his tapes, and for the last chapters they're the old retyped manuscripts from which the present book was edited.)
Comparing each verse in the book with the text of the manuscript, I made only those changes that to me seemed worthwhile. I tried to be conservative and not make needless changes. At the same time, I kept in mind that whatever changes we are to make we should make now, so that the book will never need to be revised again.
Gopiparanadhana Prabhu of the BBT Sanskrit Department also carefully examined each verse and made his suggestions, which I consulted throughout.
Whenever difficult questions arose, Gopiparanadhana and I met to consider them, and we consulted the original books Srila Prabhupada consulted when he wrote Bhagavad-gita As It Is–the Bengali translations and commentaries by Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Srila Baladeva Vidyabhusana.
To give you further insight into the reasons for some of the changes we made, here are some examples.
First, here are some of the verses I revised to make them closer to Srila Prabhupada's original manuscript: 2.1-7, 2.13, 2.16, 2.20, 2.24, 2.26-27, 2.34, 2.45-46, 2.48-49, 2.51, 2.55, 2.65-66, 3.1, 3.5, 3.7, 3.10-12, 3.16-17, 3.23-24, 3.30, 3.32, 3.34, 4.15, 4.35, 5.24, 7.29-30.
And many others.
In some of the later chapters (especially 17 and 18), the abridged edition gives translations closer to the original manuscript than the unabridged does. So I've preferred those translations from the abridged edition.
As you examine the translations, keep in mind that in some places I have also revised the synonyms or purport, or both. (For example, 9.6. The revised version more closely follows the original manuscript. And note, in the purport, that "Space is not beyond the sky" is nonsense.)
For some verses we added extra words or sentences to translate Sanskrit words left untranslated in the original manuscript. (This is something Srila Prabhupada, while present, approved of our doing routinely on Srimad-Bhagavatam.)
1.35 nihatya dhartarastran nah ka pritih syaj janardana --"O Janardana, what pleasure will we derive from killing the sons of Dhrtarastra?"
7.6 etad yonini bhutani sarvanity upadharaya – "All created beings have their source in these two natures."
9.34 bhava mad bhaktah – "Become My devotee" (!)
18.54 prasannatma – "He becomes fully joyful."
For some verses, the original editor (new at the job and with no access to a Sanskrit department) misunderstood what Srila Prabhupada intended to say. When unsure which way to go, the editor sometimes made a wrong turn.
1.4 (Yuyudhana and the others are the great fighters equal to Bhima and Arjuna.)
1.18 (The son of Subhadra was "great-armed," not "greatly armed.")
4.26-30 (I had never been able to figure out these verses. Have they ever been clear to you?)
10.12-13 (The editor tried his best to make the translation fit the Sanskrit–but without knowing Sanskrit.)
In Chapter 11, the manuscripts were difficult to understand. Without knowing Sanskrit, the editor had a hard time figuring out the translations and matching them to the synonyms. So this chapter has the most extensive revisions.
Sometimes (very cautiously) we changed the text on the grounds of the Sanskrit alone. (This helps considerably when you try to study the translation with the synonyms.)
2.10 (The revised translation loses no meaning, and it clears up the puzzle in the synonyms.)
15.14 (Again, the English wasn't clear but the Sanskrit is: It's the fire, not the air, that digests food.)
Sometimes the person who transcribed the tape heard things wrong or scrambled things. For example:
10.12 (There's no "all-pervading beauty" here. Perhaps what the typist heard was vibhum.)
11.5 (There's no "sea" in this verse. Only pasya–"Just see!")
14.17 (What comes from passion, Krsna says here, is not grief but greed.)
Some verses had problems in grammar (like 2.17, 2.22 , 4.3). And here's something really strange:
In the original manuscript, Chapter 8 text 18 was missing. So the Sanskrit editor supplied the synonyms. But the English editor thought that the translation and purport he saw for text 19 belonged to text 18.
So he put them for text 18 and put in a new translation for 19. (So all this time, our book has had the translation and purport for text 19 in the wrong place, we've had two translations for text 19, and text 18 had been missing!)
Now you have some background for the revisions you now hold in your hands. A GBC committee has reviewed the translations, and the whole GBC will have a chance to consider them one last time in March before the book goes to press.
Please examine these revisions carefully. And if you feel you want to say something about them–if you have any questions, suggestions or opinions about any or all of them–please get in touch with me, through the mail or in person, at my address in Philadelphia. (Even if I'm traveling, you can get in touch with me through the BTG offices in Philly.)
This new Gita (along with its translations in other languages) will be the main book our movement will be preaching from for whatever time we have left in this yuga.
Now is the time to make sure we are presenting Srila Prabhupada's Bhagavad-gita As It Is in the most authoritative fully satisfying way.
And I invite you now to contribute whatever thoughts you have on this work.
Hare Krsna.
Hoping this finds you in good health.
Jayadvaita Swami
Date: July 1986
To: Amogha Lila
His Grace Sriman Amogha Lila Dasa, 188 New Chetty Street, Colombo 13, Sri Lanka
ISKCON Padayatra Sankirtan Bhavan, P.O. Jhusi Allahabad, 221 506, U.P., India
Dear Amogha Lila Prabhu,
Please accept my most humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
I am in due receipt of your letter, dispatched June 21, and have noted the contents carefully.
You've heard strongly expressed objections to the second edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, and you've written to me because you want to investigate the matter more fully.
I've been silent about this, so as not to overindulge in the animalistic propensity of defending. But since you've raised good questions, it's my duty to answer.
First: To my knowledge, Srila Prabhupada never asked us to re-edit the book.
As you know, and as we kept in mind while doing the work, Srila Prabhupada staunchly opposed needless changes.
You write that Kirtanananda Maharaja told you I regretted having done the editing and that if I'd known of his feelings or read his paper commenting on the work I wouldn't have done it at all.
This is a misunderstanding. What I regret is that I didn't have the benefit of Kirtanananda Maharaja's comments while the work was still going on, long before the book was published.
In fact, a full year before the book went to press, I sent Kirtanananda Maharaja a letter telling exactly what I was doing and why. I included a copy of every change I had made in the translations. And I earnestly asked for any comments, questions, or suggestions he might have. To save us from exactly the kind of controversy he has now raised, the letter pleaded that doubts be voiced then, while time was ample and the work was still on our desks.
I sent the same letter not only to Kirtanananda Maharaja but also to every other member of the GBC, most English-speaking ISKCON sannyasis, various other senior ISKCON devotees, and every ISKCON temple president in the English-speaking world.
What I regret, therefore, is that those who now speak out were silent when their wisdom was sought.
I do *not,* however, regret undertaking the task of revision, and now I shall tell you why.
As mentioned in the "Note about the Second Edition" that appears in the book, the editors of the first edition are to be praised. They did a fine job of making a tough manuscript ready to print.
They also, however, made lots of omissions, goofs, and blunders, which I see no need to immortalize in print.
I suppose that what disturbs some devotees most is the changes in the translations. As you know, Srila Prabhupada considered the translations less important, and so do I. For me the more important revisions, therefore, are the ones in the purports. Of these there are easily several hundred.
To answer your letter, I spent an hour or so going through the book to pull out some samples for you. To examine them you should have before you a copy of both editions–the old one and the new. To look at the samples carefully may take you a couple of hours. But it's the best way I know to answer your questions, and I'm sure you'll find your time well spent.
Here goes.
There are different categories of corrections.
SIMPLE BOO-BOO?SFor example, simple obvious spelling errors. Who would be willing to insist that the reference to the province of "Behar" (old edition, page 185) should not be changed to "Bihar"?Chapter 16, verses 1-3, purport. Read the first line of the last paragraph in the old edition. Despite what the purport says, the transcendental qualities add up to 26, not 16. Someone typed a "1″ instead of a "2," so the count is off by 10.
MISSING EVIDENCEHere's something more serious. In the old edition, dozens and dozens of Srila Prabhupada's Sanskrit quotations–Vedic evidence, sastra-pramana–have simply been edited out.In the Introduction of the new edition, for example, here are some of the quotations you'll find restored:
pg. 8: mayadhyaksena prakrti, etc.
pg. 12: muktir hitva anyatha rupam, etc.
pg. 14: parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate
pg. 17: yad gatva na nivartante, etc.
pg. 26: visnu-sakti para prokta, etc.
pg. 28: kirtaniyah sada harih
pg. 30: tad vijnanartham, etc.
These are Srila Prabhupada's words. The Introduction is still available on tape, and you can hear them for yourself.
And if you want something bigger, how about this: The old edition, on page 27, adds a verse Srila Prabhupada didn't speak (nehabhikrama-naso 'sti) and then leaves out every one of the renowned verses from the Gita-mahatmya with which Srila Prabhupada's original Introduction concludes.
I'm not even slightly sorry that these verses have now been restored.
Throughout the new edition the editors have restored dozens and dozens of Sanskrit quotations, large and small, the old edition simply scratched out.
For a few more examples, you can look at the purports to the following verses: 2.43, 2.56 (two quotations), 2.63, 9.4, 9.6 (three quotations), 9.7, 9.9, 9.11 (new edition, pg. 469–three quotations), 9.12, 10.15, 11.43 (three quotations). In 11.54, no fewer than eight quotations have been restored.
And there are dozens and dozens more. The verses you now see are not editorial speculations, guesses, helpful additions or any other such nonsense. They are the very words of our acarya, jumbled by typists and scratched out by editors in the 1960′s, now restored to their place in Srila Prabhupada's book.
POINTS WITHOUT PINSHere's another, related sort of omission. Sometimes when Srila Prabhupada comments on a Sanskrit word, the editors have kept the comments but edited out the word. For example see the references to avasam (9.8) and udasina-vat (9.9). Or, at the end of the purport to 13.12: "The beginning of knowledge, therefore, is amanitva, humility." To me, these references add immensely to the value of Srila Prabhupada's purports. With these references, we can clearly see how Srila Prabhupada's comments directly illuminate specific words of the verse.And, again, these are not editorial whimsies–they're Srila Prabhupada's original words.
GLOSSES TOTALLY LOSTSometimes Srila Prabhupada's comments on a word are *entirely* left out.For example, see his comments on the word na (11.54) and tad-arthiyam (17.27). And these are but examples–there are more.
SANSKRIT SLIPSSometimes the Sanskriteditors just goofed.
Example: In 7.18, the Sanskrit quoted in the purport doesn't match the English translation that follows it. Why? Because the Sanskrit editor supplied the wrong Sanskrit verse. (If you check in Ninth Canto, you'll see for yourself.) The new edition has it right.
7.25. A tired typist or sleepy English editor may have helped screw this one up. The prayer the old edition attributes to Queen Kunti was never spoken by Kunti at all. It's from the Isopanisad! The new edition follows the original manuscript and sets things right.
9.29. The Sanskrit editor guessed which verse to put in–and guessed wrong. The correction is obvious.
10.4-5. Is bhayam (old edition, pg. 498) really the word for "fearlessness"?
13.15. Sarvatah pani-padam is not from the Svetasvatara Upanisad at all. It's from the previous verse of the Gita. When the mistake is corrected, you get the brilliant Bhaktivedanta purport of the famous, often misused verse apani-pado javano grahita..
MANGLED MEANINGSSometimes the inexperienced editors just misunderstood the meaning of a Sanskrit verse.Example (a small one). 5.2. Aside from being a pretty tough sentence to read, the old editing of Srila Rupa Gosvami's verse scrambles the meaning. The verse doesn't mean that things related to Krsna, "though they are material," should not be renounced. The point is that because they're related to Krsna, they're not material at all. *That's* why giving them up, as the Mayavadis do, is dry renunciation.
GENERAL BLUNDERSThen there's what you might call good old-fashioned screw-ups.
2.1. Have you ever had to explain the last sentence of this purport?
"This realization is made possible by working with the fruitive being situated in the fixed conception of the self." It's just an editorial mistake, and it doesn't make a damn bit of sense.
2.43. In the last paragraph, what are the "four monthly penances?" It should be "four-month penances" (caturmasya).
3.35. In the old edition, look at the second sentence of the purport.
>How often we've heard devotees insist that their prescribed duties must "complement their psychophysical condition." That may be a good idea.
But look in the new book and see what Srila Prabhupada actually said.
7.15. The old purport (bottom of page 383) talks about "the swine who eat the soil." I always thought that strange. Do hogs really eat soil?
What the original text says is "the hogs who eat the *night* soil." But some editor put a question mark next to "night," and out it went. What in the world is "night soil"?
Srila Prabhupada knew–it's a polite name for that good old stuff we all know hogs love to eat.
7.15. Two sentences later, a typist has left out a line. If you want to find out what Srila Prabhupada said the foolish worker will untiringly continue to hear of, you have to look in the new edition.
10.27. They once took a "sea journey." Hardly. Our old friend Neal the typist, the college kid who walked into 26 Second Avenue and volunteered to type, simply heard things wrong. It was "sea churning." But back in the old days in the storefront, no one knew the real story.
10.29. A "planet of trees"? Fa-aar out! But if the Swami says so, it must be right. Sorry, boys. Srila Prabhupada never said so. It's Neal the typist again. It's a planet of ancestors (pitas), or pitrs (pronounced "pi-trees").
10.35. Where has the Lord "already explained" that the Sama-veda is "rich with beautiful songs"? Ask Neal the typist. Or else look in the new book and read things right.
13.2. In the old edition (page 621) you'll read "Sometimes we understand that I am happy, I am mad, I am a woman, I am a dog, I am a cat; these are the knowers." This is straight-out nonsense. It's not right, it's not sacred, and it's not the words of my spiritual master.
15.2. Is the old second paragraph of this purport supposed to stay screwed up and incomprehensible forever?
18.31-32. Back in the 60′s, the editors somehow changed the word "ignorance" to "passion" and put the purport in the wrong place. Should it stay there?
TOO HELPFULIt's the job of the editor to try to help the reader. But sometimes an editor can be too helpful.
Example: 5.28. In the old second paragraph you'll find a reference to the pratyahara (breathing) process. On the manuscript you can clearly see that the editor, for the benefit of readers new to yoga, has penned in the parenthetical word "breathing." But pratyahara is not the breathing process at all–it's the process of withdrawing the senses from their objects. The breathing process is pranayama. Should this goof be granted sanctity merely for its presence on the page?
15.2. "The Gandharvas (fairies)." The editor is being helpful again. But is Narada Muni really a "fairy"?
9. THE RED-PENNED PURPORT
When our editors back in the 60′s came to a passage too hard for them to figure out, they did what was expedient–crossed it out and kept going.
Sometimes it was just a few words, sometimes a sentence or a few sentences, sometimes a whole paragraph.
Sometimes, while trying to prune a paragraph, they cut off valuable fruits and flowers. Sometimes they seem to have thought that Srila Prabhupada was being too heavy. Or sometimes a passage just got inadvertently left out.
8.11. The old edition loses the first two sentences of the purport.
8.6, 8.13, 8.14, 8.19. When Srila Prabhupada spoke the whole mahamantra, the typist often just typed some shortcut, like "HK etc." The new edition restores the full mantra: Hare Krsna, Hare Krsna, Krsna Krsna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. Just see how in this chapter–"Attaining the Supreme"–Srila Prabhupada repeatedly emphasizes the chanting of these 16 holy names.
8.28. In the new edition, start reading on page 445, from "The words idam viditva…" and go on till the purport ends. Just see all that has been restored. And appreciate, especially, Srila Prabhupada's beautiful exposition of how Krsna consciousness grows, from sraddha up to prema.
9.26. The first edition loses the whole first paragraph.
11.52. In the new edition, page 599, on the last few lines of the page, the fool who offers respect only to the impersonal "something" within Krsna finally gets what he deserves–Srila Prabhupada's boot in his face.
13.5. Srila Prabhupada's gloss on chandobhih has returned to the page, the next paragraph now makes proper sense, and the last paragraph has been recovered.
13.19. Two whole paragraphs lost! For me, Srila Prabhupada's summary of verses 6 through 18 opened up a new understanding of a chapter that had long perplexed me.
16.7. The history of religious editing is not without its humor. Srila Prabhupada's manuscript clearly says, "One should always be careful to keep his body clean by bathing, brushing teeth, shaving, changing clothes, etc."
But back in the 60′s, we kept our beards–and trimmed off the word shaving.
You've now had a glimpse of the hundreds of omissions and mistakes in the first edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is. Should what was lost have stayed permanently lost? Should what was screwed up in the 1960′s have stayed screwed up forever? I leave it to you to decide.
One final point. The first edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is not only preserved errors and omissions but actually *multiplied* them when the book was translated into other languages. What does a translator do with something like "the fruitive being situated in the fixed conception of the self?" A translator faced with a passage that seems wrong or doesn't make sense does just what the English editors did in the 1960′s–he leaves it contradictory or confusing, he guesses and speculates, or he scratches it out.
If you'd like any more information about the second edition of Bhagavad-gita As It Is, please feel free to ask.
I'm grateful you've taken the care to inquire.
Since both Sridhara Maharaja in Bombay and Ravindra Svarupa Prabhu have asked me for similar information, I'm sending copies of this letter to them.
Mail can reach me here at Jhusi up to September 25. Then I'll go to Bombay to renew my visa. Padayatra will be starting by then, and our mailing address will be c/o ISKCON Delhi.
Hoping this finds you in good health and a joyful mood,


There is so much to enjoy and to explore in Sweden. On a sunny day, the water sparkles in the strong, clear, clean light, the days are endless, the sunsets memorable.
But what I also love is the Swedish sense of style which perfectly suits the Swedish climate and the strong light. So simple but so beautiful.
The morning after the storm that brought us to the town of Strangnas on the shores of Lake Malaren was my husband's birthday and luckily the day was fine and clear, so we spent the morning exploring the town. We came across the pretty Cafe Grassagarden which dates from the 17th century and used to be an inn.
The interior was just as charming and I loved the windows. I have a big love affair with Swedish windows.
Another favourite spot on the mainland is the KutterKonfect, a lovely shop and cafe in the town of Trosa not far from Stockholm. The speciality is chocolate-covered marzipan, the presentation is amazing and the temptation is huge!


An editorial of an educator, with some facts thrown in….
I often wonder if I am talking to myself, if people think I am paranoid or some conspiracy nut. I get really frustrated because I see a picture, I see if unfolding and growing, and I see the path that has to be followed to get to an outcome I can live with.
We all have such unique perspectives and the way we interpret information is just as unique. Those individual perceptions can take people in different directions, and that is necessary for a diverse and productive society.
That said, it makes moving forward as a cohesive unit very difficult. And right now, the wild horse advocacy has failed as a cohesive unit. But that's not something I want to address here, I just can't focus on the negative.
I once asked my husband, "Why is it so damn hard to protect these wild horses? People protect bears, wolves, birds, all kinds of things. WHY can't we fight for and get anywhere for our wild horses?
Mull that over a bit…….makes sense right? So we have to show these wild horses, and HOW they are different from domestic horses. Wait? Can we? No. why? Because domestic horses are the same species, the same genus, equus caballus. When you take a horse from the wild, you can tame it to make a domestic animal, but if you set it free again…it forgets everything you have done and is once more wild.
Again….digest that…..get it now? Wild horses, domestic horses, really all horses are wild, tamed perhaps, bred in captivity yes, certain physical traits bred in or out yes, but has it change the horse? NO…all horses technically are wild, tame maybe in captivity, but all came from the horses that were here for 58 million years…it doesn't matter if they left and were brought back, and the ecosystem changes here were the same in Europe, wild horses evolved with plant changes, animals species change. They evolved and adapted and are surviving and thriving on this continent.
People compare wild horse to domestic horse as they do wold to dog. The two situations are completely different. When wolves began being bred in captivity they changed. As certain traits were bred in our out dogs underwent physical, biological and behavior changes that created a new genus. That has never been the case with horses. Their ears never flopped, but are instead still erect with a slight inward curl. Their tails never curled , but most of all, the never became unable to survive in the wilds on their own. You may see stray dogs that form a pack and hunt, and sometimes they are successful. However, most of the time a dog will stay close to people when they do not have a home, they look to people to help them, feed them etc.
So where do we go from here, what is the biggest obstacle? We need to be a bigger, louder voice than we are. Why can't we be? How do opponents of wild horses gain so much control and have so much success?
These were things that had to be answered in order to see the path forward that I believe will work. This is when I researched the livestock industry, the Bundy's and their claims that just were outlandish to me. I was stunned to find what I did. These people, and there are MANY MANY MANY of them. are so organized, and very well funded, and they have a lot of power.
I realized that most wild horse opponents are ranchers, there are some others, oil, gas, etc., but most of them are ranchers. The reason they have decided to focus on wild horses I believe is two-fold. I believe it is a battle that appears to be over land…but it isn't. It is also a battle to stop what they see as a 'slippery slope' leading to more and more animal rights which flies in the face of using cows simply to make a profit.
Let's look at the first again, Is it or isn't it a battle over our public lands? Is it because they want all the land? Is it because they want all the forage for their livestock? I don't think so. I believe if they could not make the claims they do about wild horses destroying riparian areas and delicate western lands, they would be in the spotlight even more for all the damage being done by the livestock. Think of it as one sibling blaming the other when caught by their parents doing something wrong. The wild horses are just being used as a scapegoat for the livestock damage.
The second is the fear of animal rights gaining any momentum. They fear any progress humans make in respecting any animal as a sentient being, as having the right to freedom. It threatens their way of life, and if these wild horses win they have stated it is a beginning of a slippery slope that will be the end of their livelihood. I think they are a bit dramatic. What wild horse advocates, at least the ones who walk in my journey with me, want corporations off public lands. We have no issue with a small family farm, THAT was the way of the west, the culture, and heritage we love. But that is NOT the common case out here now. We have the majority of permits for grazing on public lands being handed to huge corporations.
Why would a family whose been using public lands to graze cows and support their family, need over 2 million acres of public lands? The don't, but a corporation does! As a taxpayer, I am not ok with paying for the land management which in turn wants to gather, remove and kill my wild horses.
I am not ok with paying for an agency whose only mission is to kill predators of livestock (wolves, mountain lions, bears). And I am not ok with paying billions of dollars in subsidies for ranchers, the majority of which are corporations. I don't eat the product, I don't use the leather, very little of it is even kept in this country. But while I lose value of the property they damage, and I lose my wildlife, I am not being subsidized for those losses by receipt of some of their profits am I?
I elect people who are supposed to represent ME, not corporate, special interest groups. So why have I found connection after connection that started at the boots of Cliven Bundy, and worked it's way to POTUS. Why didn't anyone hear me when I started screaming about the connections and power these thugs had 2 years ago?
How does the Public Land Grab movement, or the Bundy situation affect our wild horses and burros?
It was only a matter of time … by Caren Cowan, exec. director, NM Cattle Growers Assoc.
TAKE ACTION NOW – TELL EPA TO KILL WOTUS – a livestock industry reaction to court ruling in favor of wild horses.
Resolutions made at a CLOSED, Illegal Meeting Where member groups have formed a steering committee.
I get it! Your right. But how can we stop the BLM and the corporation? I love this country I don't want to loss the wild horses.
That is so true. There can be a fair decission if the top people will allow consideation to the iconic mustangs.


Last month the muse landed in your brain and you were astounded at what came out.
That one particular blog post seemed to flow effortlessly from your fingertips.
A host of people loved what you had to say.
Now share it with us.
In the comments section below, please let us know the link to your most-read OR your own personal favorite blog post from June – either one you wrote, or one you read, or one of each. Next week I'll compile my own favorites from the list and announce the best of June.
My last one turned out to be the favorite: http://perichoreticlife.blogspot.com/2011/06/where-im-from-poem.html. It's called the "Where I'm From" Poem where you describe people, place and things that are unique and important to you. I borrowed the idea from a friend, Kathy. Her site is http://plumbingdemons.blogspot.com/. A couple of my friends have also reproduced their own on Facebook. The poetic format originates with George Ellalyon. See his site at http://www.georgeellalyon.com/where.html.
but that post was one in which i merely edited an old essay and republished it. so i'm not sure if that counts.
Wonderful post. I love Romans 3, but your post means I'll sit down with the whole book, thanks.
My most read post was Exodus 4 where I turned Moses into a snooty New York Hipster and also used the phrase "fantastic foreskin flaying." Yeah, it was a good one.
I don't have a favorite blog post this month, but if this fits, I got a very good response from this piece that I wrote for the Duluth News Tribune. I feel good about what I was able to share.
http://crazywidow.info/?p=3480 Tuesday's blog was my most popular of the month and was a guest blog from my friend Shanelle about her journey through miscarriage. It turned out to land on the perfect day as it nicely reflected your own blog that day, Shawn!
Despite what it might seem on the surface, the post has almost nothing to do with Buddhism (or Shintoism) but a whole lot to do with authenticity and visiting a special place on a summer afternoon. Which means the photos might be the best part.
This is fun Shawn and a great idea!
When looking at my stats, I was reminded that I'm approaching the 1 year anniversary of my biggest post of all time, one that got over 10,000 hits. Whoo-hoo!
You have had some stellar posts this last week, let alone the last month. In terms of my readers, this post has struck a cord with the most: http://timthurmansblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-disappointment-and-faith-hebrews-111.html. I guess people are dealing with a lot of disappointment.
My most read (and honestly, my favorite as well) of last month was when I wrote about my first day of doing the Couch to 5K program. It falls very firmly into the "it's funny because it's true" category.
The beauty of it is that once I wrote it, my traffic soared even more, and June shattered all sorts of traffic records for me to the point of actually quadrupling my traffic. That post is still performing very well, and got a lot of great comments. I expected it to do well, but not this well. And here in the first few days of July it's still outperforming even my new posts! I'll be writing a follow up to it next week.
I almost hesitate to share this one, because it has a different tone than most of the stuff I post, but it was by far my most read post in June … actually it's in the top ten of my most read posts ever.
I'm bookmarking this page for Sunday afternoon reading material.
But I think I may have lured people in with the title….
I was kind of fond of this one. Not my most-read, but I liked it.


The ACGS, or ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard, is a corporate governance rating system designed to raise the corporate-governance standards of the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It is implemented to all publicly-listed companies across member-countries by the ASEAN Capital Markets Forum (ACMG), a body composed of the region's capital market regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is the official Philippine representative to the ACMF, and has appointed the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD) as the domestic ranking body of the Philippines for the ACGS.
The Audit Committee Company submits on annual basis a certificate of corporate governance compliance to the First Pacific Company Limited based in Hong Kong. The confirmation statement covers review of material controls, including financial, operational, and compliance controls and risk management functions; the identification, evaluation, and management of all material risks related to enterprise risk management (ERM). This is signed by the chairman of the Audit Committee and the head of Internal Audit Department.
The Corporate Governance (CG) Guidelines of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) are designed to complement the Code of Corporate Governance of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The CG Guidelines of the PSE define the concepts and best practices that characterize a well-governed listed corporation, and are designed to guide listed corporations on how to improve their corporate governance practices. The CG Guidelines Disclosure Survey (Survey) of the PSE is under a Comply or Explain regime wherein listed companies are required to affirm their compliance with the best practice recommendations under each guideline, or explain the reason for their non-compliance and/or state any chosen alternative action or variation. The accomplished Survey is signed by the Company's independent director and the CEO and submitted to the PSE.


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The trial version has certain limited functions.


Alan Derek Jernigan told investors he had deals with the governments in the Philippines and Malaysia to sell them testing kits and other medical supplies.
But Jernigan never exported any medical supplies nor did he have any contracts, according to the Texas State Securities Board.
He did send something overseas, however, according to the agency. At least some of the $463,000 he collected from six investors in 2008 and 2009 went to a bank in West Africa, according to authorities.
Jernigan, 55, pleaded guilty to securities fraud last year.
He was sentenced to 10 years probation this week in Brazoria County State District Court with the first 60 days to be spent in the Brazoria County Jail.
Jernigan lived in Manvel during the time he sold the investments and later moved to the Austin area.
Jernigan has repaid five investors the $341,000 he took from them, according to the agency.
He must make monthly payments to repay the sixth investor under the terms of his sentence.
His lawyer did not return a call for comment this week.
At the time Jernigan was selling the investments, he did not disclose his own financial difficulties, according to the board. He filed for bankruptcy in 2007.
Jernigan also failed to reveal an unpaid $53,847 civil court judgment against him in Maryland, according to the securities board.
That case was brought by an investor in a sim-ilar medical supplies program.


Last week was quite a week. I want to mention some of the things that took my breath away and damn, I know I'm heading into The Danger Zone. I remember my son's kindergarten teacher. "That's why I don't name people individually. Someone is invariably forgotten."
First, I had the opportunity to meet a fellow Long Island resident, Tobey Young who founded and runs an all volunteer not for profit organization called Previvors and Survivors. With my family cluster of disease and two wacky BRCA genes, I am constantly on high alert for any news about genetic risk or familial risk factors. It's what moms do. The watchful eye. Tobey has a fabulous website packed with information. There is something so magical about stepping from behind the computer and having the virtual hugs we send each other turn into a face to face meeting and a warm embrace. And there is something so special about Tobey. She is genuine and sincere and her efforts are truly from a place of love.
I was scheduled to meet Evelyn, another NY neighbor who was on Long Island last week but the time was tight. One missed train and a doctor appointment I could not reschedule derailed that meeting. I'm sure we will meet sometime soon.
On Wednesday, Idelle Davidson, co-author of Your Brain After Chemo gave me her blog space for a day. We swapped blogs and she shared her personal experience from her cancer diagnosis through the trials and tribulations of her issues with chemobrain leading up to the publication of her book. I decided that we will be the Abbott and Costello of Chemobrain. Come to think of it, "Who's on first" could have been written by someone WITH chemobrain. That's the zig zag thought process, that is the confusion.... it's the epitome of chemobrain!
On Thursday, I went into outrage mode when someone took some really cheap shots in the comments section of one of my newer blogger buddies. Certain things just push the wrong buttons and when that happens, I can't hold back. That same day, I found out another buddy had her entire BLOG stolen. What? The whole world lost its collective mind in a span of 36 hours??
By the time Friday rolled around, I had nothing left. Not an ounce of wit. And even less on the intelligence scale. I received a couple of emails from Army of Women, including a "Call To Action" for which I was eligible and I did participate in an online study. I know everyone that is involved with Army of Women is trying to figure out how to get Dr. Love her pool of one million women. The text option was introduced in November. Last week, I noticed there is a new sign up method embedded within their Facebook page. Anyone on FB doesn't have to leave the application. The Facebook link is a great idea. Someone MUST explain to me how The Pink Ribbon page on Facebook has over 1.6 million fans and Army of Women has little more than 360,000 enrolled "volunteers."
On some level, I suppose that irritates me a bit which is why I asked for help in my Friday blog. I threw out some suggestions and I want to extend a public and most heartfelt thanks to one of my twitter friends, Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, a Health Communications Specialist. She wrote a blog she titled Motivated By Love and in that blog, she included my You Tube video. Wow. WOW! I hope you will stop by her Facebook page and become a fan. Bookmark her blog. I don't know how else I can express the depth of the gratitude I feel. What an unexpected thrill...... that's a ripple.
I connected with Lori and there's a good shot we will be sharing a room in Washington DC at the NBCC Summit in May. We will squeeze in an evening of dancing and I apparently have a bit of an issue with weak bones in my ankles. I just realized this ankle thing over the weekend so the dancing will have to be in some sort of flat shoes... or, if I'm in appropriately stylish heels, it will be chair dancing. On Saturday evening, my right ankle began to weaken. I felt it ever so slightly and within seconds, it went from being a bone to feeling like it was a strand of cooked spaghetti. Wobble-right, wobble-left, wiggle-right.... and then I found myself on the floor. The femara is doing a number on my bones. This is how elderly people break bones by DOING NOTHING??
I wish I could say I had a few too many cocktails. I didn't. Or, that I wasn't dressed appropriately (for my age) and the shoes were too high. They were on the high side, but as Diane tells it, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do to keep up 42 year old appearances. I love Diane. And I love Stephanie, too. We have become Triple Trouble Twitter People. Stephanie is my clothing stylist. She will outfit me and accessorize me via the airwaves.... or the "cloud" or however things happen to get around on the internet.
Lastly, for today..... I would be remiss if I didn't thank Marie for including me in her Friday Round Up. I do believe a good many of my new friendships were borne of her very first mention of my blog.
Well now..I must say I really enjoyed this round-up of events in your life and those of the lives of others we care about. My heart has skipped so many beats for our dear friend Terri - but she will grow in wisdom, strength and courage through all these experiences, and isn't it wonderful that thanks to the amazing advances in technology, we can all partake in some small way in her adventures!
Hi Marie and thank you for sharing you thoughts and for sending out a tweet....And in case anyone does NOT know... this is "The Marie" from that almost last paragraph. I was so fried last night but I felt I really wanted to thank a couple of people (yes, that would be you as part of the "I need to say a public thanks" group). Then I began to review the events of last week and realized how my life was touched on so many different levels by the group of people I met via twitter and this blog. Face to face meetings, joking around on twitter and of course, Terri-who is teaching all of us how to set a goal and make it happen! Then, the stuff that outraged me..... I morphed into Activist AnneMarie..... A smorgasbord of stuff..... Hope you are well!
Anne Marie: I have been off the blog world for several days and just now catching up. What an info-packed and juicy read this post was! Thanks for turning me on to previviors and survivors (I added them to my favs) as well as to the fact that Nancy's blog was hijacked. ERGH! You had me laughing at the image of you chair dancing. I do hope your ankle feels better my dear!!
Hi Renn... I've missed you! I had a thought about adding a wisecrack along the lines of "chair dancing not to be confused with pole dancing.. or for that matter, jumping on a table top which my very dear friend has done on more than one occasion" ...... Ankle still QUITE swollen. I guess I'm lucky I didn't snap the bone. Yikes!
You sure can pack a lot into one little blog post! How do you do it? I know what you mean about the ankle thing. I, too, have that issue. I keep telling myself I just have to work my way through it when they hurt... Many people just don't realize the abuse our bodies take as a result of cancer treatment. The side effects linger on. But then of course you know this don't you? After all, you did decide to call your blog Chemobrain! Thanks for the mention of my "stolen blog" and thanks for pointing out some new sites for me to check out.
Hi! Just got this link from "Journeying Beyond Cancer." I was not familiar with the term chemobrain, but I do know what you are referring to. I had it BAD when undergoing chemo. I could barely string a sentence together. It has been 6 weeks since my last chemo and still some chemo fog. Does it ever go away?


but what he has caught when he has caught no fish."
On Mother's Day I went fly fishing with Bek & Molls.
We caught lots of laughter, trees, and brush.
It was better than a 15" trout.
I guess that's why they call it fishing, not catching.
So much goodness!! So thankful for two amazing friends that can laugh at my craziness. I adore you sweet Em.


text:
KASHMIR MEMORY
VISIT & SHOP KASHMIR
Two persons missing, another injured as truck falls in Nallah ...	Gunmen Kill 2 Female Supreme Court Judges in Afghanistan	Srinagar locals protest against 'forcible' occupation of playi...	Major Nocturnal Blaze Breaks Out in Old-Chowk Kupwara, Several...	Massive blaze devastate dreams of six families of Fateh Kadal ...	COVID-19 vaccination drive kick starts in J&K, 4000 vaccinated...	7 DCs Among 13 Officers Transferred in J&K	Jammu-Srinagar Highway Reopens For one way Traffic After 6 Day...	Five youth indulged in pasting threatening posters arrested: P...	Police officer dies of cardio-pulmonary arrest
Election for chairperson, vice-chairperson of DDCs to be held in next 20 days
By Press Desk on December 28, 2020
Srinagar, Dec 28: The election for chairperson and vice-chairperson of district development councils (DDCs) in Jammu & Kashmir Union Territory will be held in next 20 days.
According to Jammu & Kashmir Panchayati Raj Rules, the election for chairperson and vice-chairperson of DDCs shall not be held later than 20 days after administering of oath to members.
"As soon as possible but not later than twenty days after oath or affirmation of allegiance under sub-rule(1) is administered or made, the deputy commissioner concerned shall call under his presidentship a meeting of all elected members to elect one of its members to be the chairperson and another member to be the vice-chairperson," reads the Rules.
As per the Rules, the election for chairpersons and vice-chairpersons can be delayed only due to natural calamities and severe law and order.
But in these cases, elections shall be held not later than one month from declaration of result of election of the elected members of the DDCs.
It is worthwhile to mention that all elected DDC members were today administered oath by deputy commissioners in all 20 districts of J&K Union Territory.
In the DDC elections held recently, the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration(PAGD) emerged victorious on 110 seats. The Bharatiya Janta Party, which fought elections on 230 seats, won 75 seats.
The Kashmir Press believes in the motto "Everything in Black and White." It thus promises readers to provide real-time news with accuracy, fairness and impartiality.
In a break from tradition, the Kashmir Press news website will feature varied opinions so as to present multiple perspectives of all major developments throughout the turbulent region.
↑ The Kashmir Press


text:
Golden Visas, Dreamers, & Ethics in Immigration, with Ayelet Shachar
Ayelet Shachar, John Krzyzaniak | June 2018
CREDIT: Images Money (CC)
To read Ayelet Shachar's essay in the spring 2018 issue of Ethics & International Affairs, click here.
Um eine verkürzte Version dieses Interviews auf Deutsch zu lesen, klicken Sie hier.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Ethics & International Affairs author interview series sponsored by the Carnegie Council. I'm John Krzyzaniak, assistant editor here at the journal, and joining me over the phone today is Ayelet Shachar, who is professor of law and political science at the University of Toronto and director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.
Ayelet, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.
AYELET SHACHAR: Thank you, John, for this invitation. I have been a big fan of Ethics & International Affairsfor years, so it's really quite a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you and also to connect to your broader audience.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: Thank you. That's very nice of you to say.
Our topic today is ethics in immigration. Immigration is obviously a very important and contentious topic. When I think about immigration and immigration debates in the United States, many of these debates revolve around whether certain immigrants are good for our country in some sort of narrow, self-interested way. People might debate whether a particular group of immigrants will benefit our economy in the long term, whether certain immigrants will pay into social safety net programs more than they draw on them, or maybe whether certain groups have higher or lower rates of crime than the native population, etc. These questions are no doubt important, but it seems like they are mostly devoid of moral content, they are more like empirical questions.
Today we want to actually set those aside and focus instead more on the purely ethical questions. My first question for you is: What are some of these major ethical questions, and what questions are people arguing over in immigration ethics, and maybe what are some common answers to those questions?
AYELET SHACHAR: I would like to highlight three main questions that have occupied me and many other scholars in the field in recent years. In introducing these questions I'll be wearing two hats, so to speak, that of the lawyer and that of the theorist because I think we really need both perspectives if we wish to make any progress in this difficult field.
The first question is the famous, "Who belongs?" question, which we might rephrase as, "Who gets in and according to what criteria?" I will refer to this question as the "access" question. It has quite significant ramifications for democratic theory and for global justice debates, but even if we just explore it for the more technical legal side of citizenship and immigration law, it's quite clear that if you lack access, that is, if you can't get into a particular country, it will be very difficult for you to establish the required links to that particular community if you ever wanted to become a full member. If you came in without permission in the current restrictive environment, it will be close to impossible for you to adjust your status. That is really the first question, the access question.
The second main theme that has occupied scholars in the field is the question that we might refer to as the "civic integration of immigrants." Unlike the preliminary access question, which determines who gets in, here we're really zooming in and exploring the situations of those who are already on the territory, that is, people who are within the boundaries of the state. The main question encountered here is what level or what kind or what degree of integration a host society can legitimately ask of those who have entered its jurisdiction. Conversely, from a different perspective, you might ask what degree of accommodation or leeway might newcomers legitimately expect if they wish to preserve or express certain aspects of their cultural or religious identity, for example.
If you think about immigration as a two-way street, which is the standard way to think about immigration, then we expect immigrants to change, but also the societies into which they have entered also change, and it is really that latter aspect which has become a major source of contention and anxiety in a good number of societies around the world.
The third and final question that I will mention refers to ongoing disagreements between proponents and opponents of open-versus-closed borders. This has been a longstanding debate, a flourishing debate, especially in political and legal theory, but in recent years it has proven to be somewhat detached from the kind of deep political and often exclusionary pressures that we are witnessing on the ground.
These pressures appear to affect almost all categories of would-be entrants, people who might wish to enter, so people who are facing the initial access question, and really the only kind of exceptions that we are seeing are the super-wealthy, who are increasingly benefiting from fast-track access, whereas everyone else seems to be facing much more restrictive kinds of rules and regulations.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: You mentioned the super-wealthy. You wrote an essay for the Spring 2018 issue of Ethics & International Affairs, and the essay is titled, "The Marketization of Citizenship in an Age of Restrictionism," which is a bit of a mouthful. But the essay is about "golden visa" programs like the EB-5 visa in the United States or the Tier 1 (investor) visa in the United Kingdom. Can you tell us a little bit more about these golden visa programs?
AYELET SHACHAR: Of course. We are really witnessing globally quite a surge, and what I would refer to as tailor-made, exclusive, and expedited pathways for the world's super-rich to acquire citizenship. They can acquire citizenship now quickly and simply without any disruption to their life, and this is the way that a leading law firm has put the process.
The details may vary across different countries but these golden visa programs rely on a shared premise. That is, they create a link between money transfers in large quantities and an expedited and simplified procedure for acquiring citizenship, and here it is literally "acquiring" citizenship. In certain cases, these new citizens, people who have benefited from these golden visa programs, do not even need to set foot in their new home country.
Clearly something dramatic is going on here. For me, as a scholar of citizenship and migration, what is fascinating to explore is the fact that states themselves, governments themselves, seem to be reshaping the answer to the first question that I mentioned, the who gets in, the access question. They seem to be saying something along the following lines: "Bring us your wealthy." On civic integration, the second question, they say, "If money is the currency for access, then we are more than willing to waive or bypass the standard civic integration requirements that otherwise are jealously enforced," and indeed they are becoming more and more restrictive or demanding in recent years.
In terms of the sums involved, as you know, John, they're quite significant. You mentioned the EB-5 visa, the American golden visa. This visa formally requires an investment of $1 million. In practice, typically that amount is reduced to $500,000 if you invest in specifically designated areas.
In the United Kingdom, the Tier 1 (investor) visa requires an even higher sum. The minimum investment there is ₤2 million, and if you invest that, you establish what in UK law is referred to as a "leave to remain," basically a right to stay. The UK Tier 1 category also has an interesting mechanism built into it: the more money you pour in—the greater the investment—the shorter the time that the investor has to wait to establish their residency.
Just to give you an example: If someone is wealthy enough to have, say, ₤10 million that they can invest in the United Kingdom instead of just the standard minimum ₤2 million or ₤5 million, they will secure permanent residency within two years instead of the standard five. So there seems to be a trade-off here: the more you pay, the less time you need to wait to establish your membership goods. Similarly, if you bring in the currency as money, if you bring in investment, then the standard civic integration, linguistic requirements, and residency requirements are waived. That seems to be the basic logic of these programs.
Just to give you a few other examples: In Europe investors can gain residency in countries such as Spain or Portugal for roughly €500,000, again coupled with extremely reduced minimum stay requirements, so again we see that kind of a trade-off.
Just to provide one last example, which was a controversial example in Europe, Malta, which is the smallest Member State of the European Union, has gone a step further beyond these programs that I have just described, putting not just its residency for sale, but actually its passport per se in exchange for what was in the law referred to as a "donation" or an investment of a little over €1 million.
Given that citizenship in the European Union is derivative, it means that if you actually purchase Maltese citizenship, you're also gaining a gilded backdoor to establish and to gain a European passport. To some extent here we're seeing an unusual kind of structure where a country is not only selling its own passport but really an easy-pass to European citizenship, and this occurs precisely at the same time that Malta and other European countries are putting tremendous resources into border control and into "closing the door," so to speak, making it harder for people who are in dire need of international protection, such as refugees, to get in. So we're seeing the two processes occurring simultaneously, and obviously this in and of itself raises some significant ethical questions.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: You're getting a little ahead of me because you're already pointing to some of these really interesting and problematic tensions.
It sounds like golden visa programs from what I can tell were originally aimed at solving some of the questions I mentioned at the very beginning about making sure that immigrants are "high value" and that maybe they will bring some long-term economic benefits to whatever country they seek to settle in to gain permanent residency or citizenship.
What are some of the other problems maybe that you haven't mentioned yet that you see with golden visa programs, either on the ethical side or referring to some of the questions I mentioned at the beginning?
AYELET SHACHAR: These are actually great questions and very pressing questions.
I would say that for me—and again this is my own perspective. You can take different angles on this. You can think about this as an economist, as a theorist, and as a lawyer. I take here the angle of thinking about this as a window to explore the kind of deeper transformations that we are witnessing in the world in relation to the ideal and institution of citizenship, and these golden visa programs become very revealing and really quite fascinating.
I also want to point out that for some people the main interest is that the individuals who purchase these golden visas or golden passports—and I can see why they would have an interest in that, but for me the more crucial question is trying to understand why and also how governments, that is, our public trustees, are now willing to commodify a core aspect of sovereignty and self-determination by putting visas and passports for sale.
I already alluded to one major ethical problem with these golden visa programs, and this is a concern that arises in a world like our own, that is, a world where there are high levels of wealth inequality both across borders and in countries, and here the concern is that these programs exacerbate inequality. Obviously they do not create these inequalities, but golden visa programs exacerbate rather than alleviate the kind of impact of preexisting inequalities, and they do so because they provide preferential treatment or preferential mobility opportunities to the global 1 percent. That would be one line of argument or critique that you could raise.
A second set of concerns we might highlight or mention are concerns that deal with the intrusion of the market into the political sphere. This is an interesting introduction of market processes into the political in the sense that we're dealing with the heart of the sovereign act of defining who belongs, again referring to the first question that I mentioned earlier. Here some economists might say: "Finally! We finally got to the wisdom of introducing a market mechanism," which they might argue is a better mechanism than other distributional or allocational ways of deciding who should get in and who should stay outside.
But if you take citizenship to track something which is different—it's not just economic relations, it's political relations and the special bond between an individual and her fellow citizens and their relationship to a given government—or if you think about it as a civic bond, then I think the picture seems a little bit more problematic, especially given that we might want to say there is something unique about citizenship as a political relationship, and we might want to maintain that as the core rather than shift it into a host of other possible relationships that we might think about.
We can think about emperor-subject, producer-consumer, supply and demand, master-slave. There are various relationships which are quite different from the kind of equality and participation that we hope having the status of citizenship would at least encourage and to some extent protect. If you turn citizenship or partly permit at the margins the opportunity of thinking about citizenship as a market good, you might be worried about these kinds of values and relationships which at least historically or at least in the literature on citizenship are seen as quite significant and unique.
The concern here is that if you detach any kind of meaningful connection between the individual and the political community that she joins—that kind of relationship could be extended residency, it could be an emotional attachment, it could be a personal commitment, there are various ways to think about this—again, all of these are seen as more political rather than just purely economic.
If you put a price tag on citizenship, the concern is not just that you're sending a clear message about who is wanted and who is seen as a valuable future citizen, but you're really recasting something deeper, something about political membership or membership in the political community which for many still remains the ultimate non-market good, and if you turn it into a purchasable commodity—and again, it is a very specific market, governments are still controlling access to citizenship—then the concern might be that you're transforming something deep and substantive about citizenship and you're giving too much to the economic side at the expense of the political side.
Just to push this point a little bit further, you can say that if the golden visas proliferate, we might come to a situation where we know "the price of everything but the value of nothing."
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: Right. Just as a side note, do the programs actually accomplish their purported goal of bringing economic investment or providing long-term benefits to the economy?
AYELET SHACHAR: This is interesting because the programs for which we have more data are the ones that ran for a longer time, the investor visa programs that, say, Canada and the United States have had. Interestingly enough, the kind of reports that we have—again, remember in both cases the idea was to stimulate the economy, it was job creation and capital investment by foreign investors and so on—both the United States and Canada, and again, these are recent governmental studies, the conclusion is that the government, which should have the best data, cannot demonstrate—and this is in reference to the United States—I'm quoting now: "The government cannot demonstrate that the program is improving the U.S. economy and creating jobs for U.S. citizens."
Canada, which has had a very successful investor visa program for a good number of years—it was canceled in 2014—that particular program as well was reported to have a very high regulatory cost, and it was determined to be economically inefficient. That again seems to be counterintuitive if you're bringing individuals who are high value, so to speak, who have a high net worth. But at least in the Canadian example the situation was such that many people actually acquired citizenship and then left, so in the long term they were really non-citizens. Rather, they had formal citizenship, but they were not active in any way either in the society or in the economy.
Of course, this is a generalization, some people did remain. But as a general trend, this was a trend that was identified at least in these two countries that have had a longer track record.
You might say that in a very small economy having the benefit of this foreign investment might provide a significant increase in the amounts that a government has at its discretion, which could be a positive thing. It could also potentially be negative if you don't have enough regulatory measures to ensure the control or distribution of these funds. I would say the economic record is definitely not as strong as the proponents would present it to be, but I think you do need to be much more nuanced in the sense of which countries, at what time period, what's the time horizon that you are taking into account.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: Right. I want to shift gears if we can and talk about the group of people known colloquially as the "Dreamers" in the United States. Can you talk to me about what's interesting to you about this case?
AYELET SHACHAR: The Dreamers are a real special category. Of course, they have been at the center of attention in the United States. This group refers to individuals who were brought to the United States at a young age without authorization, and they have been in the country for a good number of years. Sometimes you will see the literature refer to them as individuals who were "raised as Americans." For many Dreamers, the United States is really the only country that they know as their home.
Despite the fact that the Dreamers have become part and parcel of American society, its culture, its economy, etc., they have no legal pathway to secure formal membership status in the United States, and without having the possibility to adjust their status there is no way for them to be protected from the threat of deportation that is hanging over their heads. If you don't have status in the United States, potentially you're subject to deportation. Definitely this is true now since Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which was a program that partly protected the Dreamers, was rescinded.
What is interesting for my purposes here is that if we look at the Dreamers, clearly they have a connection or nexus to the United States. Nevertheless, they have no way to regularize their status. Again, this is not god-given, this is a policy decision that was made.
If you contrast the Dreamers who have such a deep connection to the country which, as I said, is the only country they know as home but have no right to stay with the EB-5 "Parachuters," individuals who have no real effective ties to the country but are nevertheless fast-tracked to membership, I just want to show this again as one of these moments where we can see something significant about citizenship is occurring here, and we might want to observe these kinds of inconsistencies. Arguably, you can say it also seems unfair to impose roadblocks that prohibit the Dreamers from becoming members while at the same time privileging the "Parachuters," who really have, at least at the beginning of the relationship, no connection to the country other than a wire transfer, the ability to press a button, and pass a significant sum of money across borders.
I think this is why to some extent if you want to think about citizenship as a political membership that has some kind of a genuine connection at its root which is the way which courts would put it, "real and effective links," etc., or ties rather than money transfers, then just looking at these two cases side by side is quite revealing.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: Yes. Someone might look at the contrast that you just mentioned between a group that has a very deep connection to this society but can't gain membership versus the golden visa folks who don't have that connection but can gain access. Somebody might look at that and conclude that a lot of immigration policy just boils down to wealth. It seems like if you are very rich, you essentially get your own set of rules. Do you think that's a fair conclusion?
AYELET SHACHAR: I think descriptively you're correct to point out that it does seem that the very rich clearly have special rules that apply to them, and we have known this in different fields. I think it's quite new and to some extent surprising that we also see it in the heart of citizenship.
But even if we take that as a given—and I think again, given the number of countries that are now offering these various golden visas or golden passports, we have to take this as a serious development in the world around us—you could still step back and say: "Where did these rules come from? They did not fall from the sky."
As I mentioned earlier, they are written by government officials, they're introduced in many cases through official primary legislation or through secondary regulatory changes. They are enforced. These rules are enforced through our laws, through our public institutions.
I think once we call attention to these kinds of golden visa programs, which is really the reason I wrote this piece and published it in Ethics & International Affairs, then we could step back and ask: Do we think they are just? Do we think they are fair? Should we contest these rules? Should we challenge them? If so, how? Might we demand a better fit between rules that govern access to membership and some connection to the political community? Might we want to say that in the way that we think about immigration and inclusion of newcomers we might have to include some consideration for justice and equality and not just self-interest?
I think de facto most countries do wish to have a blend, and we might just say perhaps we need to rebalance the kind of distribution that we currently see in the different programs that we're witnessing across a very wide range of political communities.
JOHN KRZYZANIAK: This has been a fascinating discussion, Ayelet. Thank so much for speaking with me today.
AYELET SHACHAR: A pleasure. I look forward to hearing more from you and from your readers.
Category: Interview, Migration, Podcast
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