Welcome Students, Graduates, Parents, Grandparents, Co-Signers, and others who may be impacted by student loans. Our firm is dedicated to helping you navigate,understand, and create strategies regarding your student loan issues. Each student loan issue is unique and each person's circumstances are different. That's why our law firm takes a one-on-one approach with you personally. Below are a few of the services we offer and can provide assistance with your student loans.
Managing your student loans and understanding your repayment options can be confusing and overwhelming. We can help. We will conduct a thorough review of your options for student loan assistance programs (including consolidation, income-driven repayment, loan forgiveness, and more). Based on your unique goals and circumstances, We will design a comprehensive student loan management plan that makes sense for you. We can also help you complete program applications, submit required paperwork, and troubleshoot bureaucratic problems related to student loan servicing, which are unfortunately common. If you are looking for more comprehensive assistance, we can also help you optimize your finances and budget around your student loans so you can live the life you want to live, even with your student debt.
Handling your student loan debt is scary if you've fallen behind on payments. The ominous phone calls and letters from lenders certainly don't help. We will evaluate your options for getting back on track, and together we can work on a game plan. We can also help you complete forms and applications for programs that are designed for borrowers in distress, and directly represent you in communications with your loan holders. Loan servicers often provide incomplete or inaccurate information about your legal rights. We will make sure you get accurate, up-to-date information and advise you on the best course of action.
If you've defaulted on your student loans, you know how terrifying it can be. Debt collection agencies are not exactly known for being pleasant. With our help, we can figure out your options to resolve the default. We can directly represent you in communications with debt collection agencies so that you no longer have to deal with them, and we can protect you from harassing, abusive, and unfair conduct. Depending on your goals and circumstances, we can work out solutions to stop a wage garnishment or tax refund intercept, negotiate a settlement or default resolution plan, and defend you in court. Whatever your situation, we will be your guide, advisor, and advocate during the entire process.
Not every borrower's situation fits neatly into one of the above categories. Perhaps you have a dispute with your loan servicer about a misapplied payment, or you were denied access to an income-driven repayment program. You could be a parent or a cosigner, and you're unsure of your rights and options. Maybe one of your loan holders is reporting inaccurate information about your student loan to credit bureaus, or you just want to sit down and talk about your unique student loan situation with an expert. Just send us an email or give us a call, and we'll figure out how we can help.
We have provided the following for helping you obtain specific information on your student loans. Once we have this information, we can discuss if you would like to move forward and retain our services to analyze all of your loans and determine which payment plans you are eligible for and the best plan for your unique situation. Once we are retained we will analyze each loan that belongs to you, advise you what to do with each and the options available to you. We ask you are committed as much as we will be during this process to help solve your student loan issues. This process takes time and effort, but it is the best and most efficient way of helping to solve your student loan issues.
Please follow the following procedures as described below for best results.
The first thing we need to look at are your credit reports. The best source to obtain all 3 credit reports from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian is www.annualcreditreport.com . Please go to this site and obtain each credit report or as many as you can.
As of May 10, 2015 the NSLDS report access system was changed.
You will need to Log onto https://nslds.ed.gov/nslds/nslds_SA/ by using your User Name or Verified E-mail address and a Password.
b) You will hear back from FSA once they verify your information with the Social Security Office. This should take a day or two.
c) Once everything is verified, follow the directions below.
The starting point to begin an analysis of any Student Loan issue is to obtain any and all information that the U.S. Department of Education has regarding all Federal Student loans that pertain to you. We need this information to be able to explain any and all options.
From this website, we will need two things.
We look forward to reviewing this report with you and assisting you with the management of your Student Loan debt.
You can use a student loan get the education you need to reach your professional goals and expand your horizons. Interest rates and terms may vary based on your credit score and other factors. Compare your options based on multiple lenders and learn more about student loans.


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Posted inTheater
by Janet Hopf November 4th, 2005 August 29th, 2020
When a play is as well-known as Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, a theater company can experiment with the interpretation, knowing the audience will be able to follow. The Keegan Theatre's production, under directors Eric Lucas and Mark A. Rhea (who also star as Mitch and Stanley, respectively), explores the play's comic potential. The entire first scene is especially humorous, whatever the directors intended, because it introduces three familiar archetypes: The first thing he-man Stanley Kowalski does when he sees his ripe, pregnant wife, Stella (Susan Marie Rhea), is to throw a package of meat at her. Their rough but happy life is disrupted by the arrival of Stella's prissy, boozy sister, Blanche DuBois (Kerry Waters). Her affectation, apparent in her reaction to Stella's apartment—"Oh, I'm not going to be hypocritical; I'm going to be honestly critical about it! Never, never, never in my worst dreams could I picture—only Poe! Only Mr. Edgar Allan Poe!—could do it justice!"—should and does get laughs. When Stanley hits Stella in a drunken rage in Scene 3, however, the frivolity has to end. The rest of the play dramatizes the struggle between two worldviews, Stanley's blue-collared American aggression and the DuBoises' faded French gentility, and it's not much of a contest. The Keegan production, recently returned from a tour of Ireland, takes advantage of the home court to mount a cluttered, realistic set; Shadia A. Hafiz's costumes are particularly apt. Susan Marie Rhea gives us a frisky Stella, avoiding the pitfall of playing her as a frump or doormat. She fairly leaps against Stanley whenever she kisses him, reminding us that sexual desire runs in the DuBois family. Lucas' Mitch, the mama's boy who is Blanche's last suitor, is also well-played; self-effacing, he bows his head in embarrassment when Blanche pours her treacly flattery on him. Unfortunately, Mark Rhea the director fails to generate enough heat between Mark Rhea the actor and Waters. When the rape scene arrives, Waters essentially lays herself on the bed, and Stanley's "We've had this date with each other from the beginning" is thrown away while he concentrates on undoing his silk pajamas. Part of the reason may be that Waters doesn't act or look as fragile as most Blanches—she's tall, and plays the early scenes knowingly, as if her neediness is all an act—so she doesn't convince us in the final scenes that she really feels helpless and trapped. At least we can laugh with her, though, for a while.—Janet Hopf

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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When Does 1883 Series Start
'1883' premieres sunday night, december 19 "1883" episode 1 premieres on sunday night, december 19, at 9:04 p.m. So, when can we expect the next two installments?
When Does Yellowstone Season 4 Start On Amazon Prime
You can stream 1883 premiere on fubotv:
When does 1883 series start. After the big debut of episode 3 today on paramount+, why not take a look ahead at 1883 season 1 episode 4 right now? Here's how to watch paramount's new yellowstone prequel series, 1883, with tips for navigating paramount+ and peacock.given the significant popularity of yellowstone over its three seasons so far and its ongoing fourth, it's no surprise that paramount has decided to offer dedicated viewers a new angle on the story with 1883.the tricky part, however, will be figuring. This was confirmed by lamonica garrett, who plays thomas in the show.
Journey northwest with the ancestors of yellowstone. James and margaret dutton embark on a journey west through the great plains toward the last bastion of untamed america as they are fleeing poverty to seek a better future in america's promised land — montana. 1883 season 1 episode 4 air date for yellowstone prequel on paramount+.
1883 will premiered sunday, dec. The paramount+ series 1883 premieres its first two episodes today and i got a chance to see them in advance. A teaser trailer for 1883 was released to first announce the series in early 2021.
The series is set to premiere in the paramount network's streaming partner paramount plus on december 19, 2021. Meet the entire dutton family december 19, 2021. The show is taking a break on january 2, 2022.
The first episode of 1883 will also air sunday, december 19 at 9:04 p.m. Season 2 episode 4 release and preview trailer revealed The show is taking a break on january 2, 2022.
1883 brings yellowstone back to the wild west. Paramount+ is currently $4.99 a month with ads, or $9.99 a month for premium. "1883" finally premiered on sunday, dec.
Yellowstone tv 'yellowstone' star kevin costner is ready for an intense episode with rip in new pic december 19, 2021. Created by taylor sheridan, 1883 is the highly anticipated prequel to the emmy(r) nominated yellowstone. 101 studios and bosque ranch productions will serve as production partners on the series. Full recap of series premiere, season 1, episode 1, '1883' december 19, 2021.
The debut season of the series reportedly comprises ten. Like yellowstone, 1883 follows the dutton family. With sam elliott, tim mcgraw, faith hill, isabel may.
'1883' episode 4 will premiere on january 9, 2022, at 3 am et on paramount+. 1883 takes audiences back to the start of the dutton dynasty as we know it. 1883 follows the dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the great plains toward the last bastion of untamed america.
Additional 1883 live stream options: Premiere date mark your calendar: Well, episodes 1 and 2 were made available on paramount+ with the premiere.
The first order of business is diving a little bit further into the release schedule. Fans will have to wait for another week to view the next episode of '1883' as episode 4 will release next sunday, january 9. Et on paramount network, with an encore presentation at 11:32 p.m.
1883 is a western series that premieres on december 19, 2021 on paramount+. 1883 stars country singer and actor tim mcgraw as james dutton. 1883 premieres on sunday, december 19th 2021 on paramount+.
We know that the first two episodes arrived. Follows the dutton family on a journey west through the great plains toward the last bastion of uncolonised america. 19, and we're already chomping at the bit for episodes 2 and 3.
Everything you need to know to watch the yellowstone prequel series 1883, premiering on paramount+ and the paramount network on dec. It focuses on the history of the dutton family that was introduced in yellowstone. In other news, power book 2:
The series follows the first generation of duttons to come west and.
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Welcome everybody to another the Neoscream's Life post. This is my weekly post of life, what games I have been playing, what I have been painting and what I have watching and reading. This week's opening pictures is of the King's Man from Kingdom Death. I had been trying to stick with art work, however I could out find one online. So I have to use a picture of the figure. Please note that this is not my figure as mine is waiting to be undercoated.
On Thursday I had an interview for a Sunday job at Wargames Workshop MK. Sadly I did not get it, however they are hoping to expand in the future. So they will probably need to hire more stuff then.
Work have really began messing me about. I was meant to have Wednesday and Saturday off. I got my day/time for my Interview with Wargames Workshop on Monday night which was Thursday morning. Work change my Wednesday day off to Thursday. However due to an injury the person I they changed my shift with, I had to come into work straight after the Interview. They said they might be able to give me Friday off but that never happened. Then on Saturday in the middle of coffee I ended up being called in as according to them two members of staff had called in sick (In fact it was just one). I had to go all the way home to pick up my bag and uniform as well as changing my shoes and coat, and then go to work. I did ended up having Sunday off. It was bad enough I had to work with the Brat for two days, but the messing about of my hour was a real pain. And now they are messing up my schedule for the next two weeks, as I cannot go to this week's Cardfight Vanguard tournament. C'est la vie.
Like normal on a Thursday night I went down to York House for some HeroClix. The scenario was "Out of this World". 500 points. At least one figure must be from another planet.
Like normal Darren S won. Also Michael won his game against his brother Adrian.
I managed to win this game with only losing Fandral. Also Darren S won his game against Michael.
Sadly I lost this game. The two critical misses was a pain. Also shockingly Adrian won his game against Darren S.
This week's scenario will be a standard 500 points. However all specials rules on maps are in play.
During the week I managed to finish paining a Kingdom Death Monster figure and an XCOM board game figure.
Watched: Episodes 33 to 35 of GaoGaiGar.
Watched: Part of Big Hero 6.
Brought: Something to replace the missing arm of the Wizard of my Frostgrave warband.
Watched: That week's episode of WWE Smackdown, episode 12 of Cardfight Vanguard G Gears Crisis and part of that week's episode of Weekenders.
eBay: Won the Convergence Warcaster Father Lucant.
Brought and Received: Two Superplay Castles.
eBay: Won a hard plastic version of the Kingdom Death figure Messenger of the First Story.
The fix for my Wizard for Frostgrave.
Messenger of the First Story from Kingdom Death Monster.
The Convergence Warcaster Father Lucant.


A Cottage Holiday on he Isle of Wight is the perfect way to enjoy this beautiful island's family friendly resorts, lovely safe beaches and exciting leisure facilities. As you'd expect from an island with 60 miles of beautiful, unspoilt coastline and famously sunny weather, you'll find an excellent range of water sports and other thrilling activities within easy reach of our holiday parks. The Isle of Wight is a favourite with sailors and deep sea anglers, but you can also try your hand at windsufing, jet skiing, sailplane flying and hang gliding. And the Blackgang Chine Fantasy Park or breathtaking chairlift rides at Needles Park offer plenty of adrenaline boosting fun.
Whevever you stay you'll never be far from great attractions for all the family. Explore the island's amazing prehistoric legacy at the Dinosaur Farm and Dinosaur Isle Museum or search out living wildlife at the zoo and at Parkhurst Forest, one of the few remaining habitats of the British red squirrel. There's lovely coastal and country walking and cycling too – the more energetic might like to follow the round island route.
Located on the Isle of White, this attractive and spacious single storey holiday home is ideal for Large Groups Self Catering with stunning panoramic views over the countryside and downs.is perfect for large Groups self Catering, offering light and airy accommodation.
Offering panoramic Sea Views, Chine Bluff Cottage, is situated on Shanklin's Esplanade, Isle of White. The cottage has fantastic views across to Sandown Bay on the left and Luccombe on the right – plus there is the beautiful award winning beach stretching out in front of you.
Tucked away in an elevated, sylvan setting, this Chalet enjoys distant Sea Views over beautiful, well-tended, sub-tropical gardens at the South of the Isle of White. This end-of-terrace, single-storey chalet is set in a small, peaceful, private development of twenty-six similar properties on the southernmost tip of the island.
This idyllic, Luxury detached, Holiday cottage on the Isle of White sits back from the road in a wonderful flower-filled garden with a summerhouse overlooking tranquil fish ponds.
This Isle of White self catering holiday bungalow has stunning Sea Views and benefits from being in superb countryside a moment's walk away, and its position offers a peaceful escape. This semi detached bungalow is ideal for walkers, cyclists and families alike, and provides stunning sea views and dramatic coastal scenery.
Offering a beautiful Holiday Cottage on the Isle of White. Elgin is situated in a quiet residential area of Freshwater Bay, Elgin is a semi-detached holiday property with all home comforts.
Offering a Luxury Holiday Cottage on the Isle of White with Hot Tub and Swimming Pool. Wychwood is set on the cliff-top in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty between the pretty yachting port of Yarmouth and the spectacular Needles on the western tip of the Isle of Wight.
This holiday Cottage enjoys stunning Sea Views and extensive countryside views and its elevated position offers a peaceful escape on the Isle of White. The area is ideal for walkers, cyclists and families alike, and provides stunning sea views and dramatic coastal scenery.
This stunning Country Holiday Cottage oozes an abundance of character and detail, Priory Cottage is a period, thatched, stone cottage dating from the 19th century and appearing on maps and censuses of the 1830s.
Perfect for Ramblers and Walking Holidays these Cottages are surrounded by woodland and attractive gardens with distant Sea Views in a secluded peaceful setting on the Isle of White surrounded by woodland, gardens and enjoying sea views.


Only 8 days before Election day and a new president will be born from its ashes like the 100 year-old phoenix. The event is treated by people like the ghost of a village clown that everybody knows and ignores. An election, in theory and practice, is the time when power holders pretend to dialogue with people. Power holders don't fancy doing that here, possibly never have since independence, but hey, the media have got to make a living so they're doing the dialogue all among themselves. People, as per usual, are completely ignored, and they give it back so well.
No matter, we can still have some fun and some British fun: bets! C'mon. Roll the dice.
9 April – How many public letters are in the mix?
Public letters from a variety of Algerian personalities abound these days in the press. Love mail. Hate mail. Especially content-poor mail. The spaghetti Western between Benouari and Hanoune continues in a face-off fashion. Ali Benouari's latest challenge to Hanoune: you've got 10 days to write or… I'll write back.
10 April – Who will Sellal insult next?
It would seem that only his own person is left on the list.
11 April - Where is Algeria's Texas?
Tlemcen was hailed as the capital of Islamic Culture in 2011. In 2015, Constantinawill be celebrated as the capital of Arab culture. Algiers will soon become a new Mecca with the Grand Mosque and its world tallest minaret, with an opening scheduled in 2015. Now, Mascara has been promised the sore fate of becoming Algeria's California. When all the barrels are counted… where is Algeria's Texas?
12 April - In which building entrance will Nekkaz get stuck in Bab el Oued?
The non-presidential candidate Rachid Nekkaz continues his travels around various cities and regions of Algeria taking selfies. His planned visit to Bab El Oued's Atlas Hall area last Saturday was a lot more confined that he'd planned for. The interior of Bab El Oued's Atlas Hall was booked for Bouteflika's campaign director Abdelmalek Sellal. The exterior of Bab El Oued's Atlas Hall was also booked... by Sellal's police protection. This only left Nekkaz with a small spot in a building's entrance facing the Hall. Undeterred, he promises to be back on Saturday 12 April, this time round, facing the sea.
13 April - Will the President be standing in another television appearance and for how long?
He just might, during a public appearance scheduled for 13 April.
14 April - "Can you spot your leader"?
Almost two weeks since Brussels' EU-African summit held on 2 and 3 April, and which counted Algeria as a member, at least on paper, to discuss the future of people's nations, or something. No one seems to care nationally. Internationally, BBC Africa seemed the most interested in engaging with people on this subject and asked "can you spot your DZ leader"? Well, can you?
15- Will Algeria's press publish photos of protests picturing other people than Barakat's four members?
Protests and marches, small in number but large in spirit and media coverage, are likely to continue until 17 April but who gets photographed in these peaceful protests? Demos in Bejaia offer some fresh faces alledgedly committing crimes against public property. Photos of marches planned from 15 April might actually show people peacefully screaming their frustration.
16- After Barakat, and Barra, will a shorter protest movement's name be born?
Barra (Out!) is a protest movement calling for demos in and from Paris. Will a four-letter movement follow?
17- Will bigger than XXL-size posters of the next President be printed and where will they be displayed?
XXL size posters of the current President have been hung on buildings around the country. How much bigger than these XXL size can the flanks of Algerian buildings take when the future President's turn come?


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Home :: Bachlaw Smallholding
For more information and the latest updates about our smallholding, please visit our Bachlaw Smallholding Facebook page – https://en-gb.facebook.com/bachlawsmallholding/
Bachlaw Smallholding rehomed 6 rescue chickens. They settled in quickly and after just a couple of days, they laid some eggs!
We also got eggs locally to incubate. We successfully hatched 7 chicks.
We welcomed 2 Friesian horses and a colts sports horse named Stassy, Sally and Meco in November 2017. We also have 2 Shetland Ponies – Benny and Pixie. Pixie was in foal when she arrived at the Smallholding and she gave birth in May 2019. Her foal was given the name 'Disco' after a much-loved friend.
Bugsy our chestnut coloured Belgium Warmblood horse joined us in December 2018.
In March 2019, we also welcomed Billy-Lee who is a cob horse.
We welcomed 3 Shetland Ponies at the start of October 2019 to join the others in our yard. Georgie, Lyrical and Violet settled in quickly! Georgie gave birth to her foal Eryn in April 2020.
In February 2020, Angus joined us who is an Irish Sports horse.
This year we also said goodbye to Sally and hello to Monty who is a Warmblood horse.
As of August 2020, we currently have 13 horses at Bachlaw Smallholding.
Scottish Blackface Ewes and Lambs
In March 2017, our blackface sheep lambed and we got our first Scottish Blackface lambs! By April 2017, we got 15 lambs from our Blackface Sheep. Bachlaw introduced their first herd of Scottish Blackface Sheep to their smallholding in October 2016 from Lanarkshire. A total of 11 sheep arrived at Upper Seaview. The clear majority of blackface sheep live in Scotland. They can survive, adapt and fit into any farming situation. These are their key qualities in the farming life. They have changed over the years due to climate, grazing quality and environment, bringing all this to their advantage. Blackface ewes and lambs mostly have horns, have a black or black and white face and legs.
We sold our Blackface sheep in early 2019.
Suffolk Sheep
In September 2016, Bachlaw Smallholding decided to branch out and add breeds of sheep to Upper Seaview. Our first Suffolk Sheep arrived from the Essie Flock based at Strichen. They quickly settled into their new home.
The history of Suffolk sheep –
The Suffolk sheep is one of the oldest British breeds and have been here since the late 1700's. They are found all over the world in sheep producing countries. They originally developed around the East Anglia farming system. The Suffolk sheep came from the Norfolk Horn ewes along with Southdown rams. Suffolk sheep can adapt to any environment with their features of hard back feet and strength. We chose Suffolk sheep at Bachlaw because of their gentle and tameness which benefits handling them by the young people. They also fit the popular image of sheep, so they were a must have!
We sold our Suffolk sheep in early 2019.
Belted Galloway Cows
Belted Galloway Cows arrived at Bachlaw in August 2016. The Belted Galloway's appealed to us because they are a distinctive breed of cattle. They stand out in appearance and are known for their hardiness, managing to survive in any climate they are faced with. They originate from the Galloway Hills in the South West of Scotland in the tough climate. They adapt well to wet, cold winters and boggy soft terrain, just like the North-East of Scotland! They have both great outer and under coats to keep them warm in the rain and cold weather. The average life span of this breed is in the twenties, producing calves until late on.
We sold our Belted Galloways in 2017.
Soay Sheep – Where it all started for Bachlaw Smallholding…
In the Spring of 2016 we decided that we would bring some rare breed sheep to our 33 acres of land at Upper Seaview. We felt that bringing animals to Bachlaw Projects would bring a new dimension to our offering here at the project and they duly arrived in July and August 2015. It has enabled us to expand our work experience offering to our young people, as they can now become involved in animal husbandry. This project has been immensely popular and the excitement of the lambs arriving has been a constant source of conversation and delight with the young people choosing names for all the new lambs.
So why did we choose Soay Sheep and what is it about them that appealed to us?
Soay sheep originate from an island called Soay, which is located in the St Kilda group. Its means "island sheep" in Norse and would suggest that there were sheep on the island since the Vikings. In 1932, two years after the last human inhabitants left the island of Hirta, 107 Soay sheep were transported to the island to live a feral existence . This was successful and there are now in excess of 1500 sheep on the island today, the population are part of an ongoing scientific study researching evolution, population dynamics and demography. Soay sheep have been imported to the mainland, however they remain a rare breed on the mainland.
They are the most primitive looking of all the breeds of sheep, being very athletic with a look of a Gazelle about them. Soay sheep are exceptionally hardy and can survive in the most adverse conditions. The ewes typically weigh around 25kg and the rams around 40kg and are brown in colour ranging from tan to chocolate in hue. They have lighter patches around the eyes, jaws, rump and under the belly. Soay sheep are known for general resistance to most health problems that affect the more developed breeds. During lambing season, which is April and May, they require little assistance to "lamb" and can also shed their own fleeces. Ewes can produce lambs up to the age of 10-12 years, the lambs are small but are born easily and are quick to rise and feed after. This was all taken into consideration in our decision to go with a flock of Soay sheep, as they required much less intervention and were a great starting place for us.
All of our sheep are registered with the Rare Breeds Society Trust and our young people are involved not only in their care, but take great delight in showing them at local agricultural shows and winning rosettes!
For more information on Soay Sheep, please see their websites below.
Soay Sheep – https://www.rbst.org.uk/Rare-and-Native-Breeds/Sheep
If you wish to speak to a member of our team about the services we offer or alternatively to make a comment or raise a complaint, you can contact us by phone, email or using the contact form on this page.
Bachlaw Projects
Upper Seaview
AB45 2HJ
Email: admin@bachlawprojects.co.uk


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Government shrugs its shoulders over lending rules
Thu, 17 Feb, 2022
"Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister David Clark has shown how out of his depth he is once again – this time on the Credit Contract and Consumer Finance Act," says ACT's Associate Finance spokesperson Damien Smith.
"Since the law came into effect, we have heard from people in banking, mortgage broking, and people trying to get credit. They've been frustrated with needless red tape since it came into effect on December 1.
"When asked what he'd say to the man who applied to have his credit limit increased by $500 and was confronted with fifteen pages of forms, despite never having missed a payment in the seven years he'd had the card, the Minister flippantly replied that he should change banks, rather than taking responsibility for it.
"ASB Chief Executive Vittoria Shortt has said "we are seeing an impact of around 7 per cent of customers that we would have liked to lend to, but have not been able to, given these changes." CoreLogic says the law is locking out first home buyers.
"For many people this has meant huge amounts of stress and anxiety as they worry whether their Netflix subscription will ruin their dream of homeownership.
"Nobody believed that the law would affect every single person seeking credit, whether they were vulnerable or not, but that's exactly what's happened.
"ACT asked the Finance and Expenditure Select Committee for an independent inquiry but this was rejected.
"The Minister has handed it over to the Council of Financial Regulators, which includes the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). MBIE were the officials that advised the Committee passing this law change in 2019. It should be Parliament seeking testimony from industry practitioners, rather than the officials from MBIE behind closed doors. This inquiry needs to be independent.
"It's time for our politicians to step up, take responsibility and fix the problem. The occasional flat white shouldn't exclude you from the Kiwi dream of homeownership and David Clark needs to show some maturity and start taking this issue seriously."


RSVP invites adults age 55 and over to use their life experience and skills to solve problems close to home. Since 1974 Oneida County RSVP has matched problems to be solved with people willing to help solve them. Today over 200 volunteers have served at over 20 stations in Oneida County. Getting involved is the key to RSVP. Your skills and talents can solve problems and you'll get back even more than you give.


I am a teacher at a business school, speak English and French fluently and after separating from my partner for the last 10 years am looking for a new and culturally fascinating relationship.
Ein Mensch mit viel Energie und Humor. Ich liebe Blumen und Lateinamerikanische Rhythmen.


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Zdenek Stybar snaps up 17th win for Etixx-QuickStep ahead of Classics
Belgian squad Etixx-QuickStep has been the most successful team of the 2016 season so far
Gregor Brown March 10, 2016 5:53 pm
Zdenek Stybar attacks to winw Stage 2 of the 2016 Tirreno-Adriatico
Zdenek Stybar took Etixx–QuickStep's 17th win so far this season today in Tirreno-Adriatico. It is the most successful team and most diverse too, with 10 cyclists contributing to those victories. Stybar's first 2016 win comes after his Strade Bianche near miss and just ahead of the important classics campaign.
The Czech attacked around three kilometres away from the finish in Pomarance, sat in the sunny hills of Tuscany. Despite Tinkoff pulling behind for World Champion Peter Sagan, Stybar held an eight-second gap through twists in the road, and on the descents and rises. After the small kick to Pomarance, victory was his by one second over Sagan and Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimension Data).
"It's very important to win, but most importantly, it's good to be in shape. You can see that Fabian Cancellara is in good shape, Greg Van Avermaet is going well, Peter Sagan too. Oh, and also Edvald Boasson Hagen. Many guys who will compete in the spring classics are winning now, you see that they are in really good shape," said Stybar, who also took over the leader's blue jersey.
>>> Zdenek Stybar attacks to win Tirreno-Adriatico stage two and take overall lead
"It's very important to win ahead of the spring classics. I knew after Strade Bianche, it was confirmation that I was on a good way and my strength was improving. I trained very hard."
Etixx's sports director Davide Bramati called Stybar two weeks ago and said, "Zdenek, this stage is for you." Stybar explained that he had to get the timing right, though, or the chance could slip away as it did to Cancellara in Strade Bianche on Saturday.
Zdenek Stybar on the podium after winning stage two of the 2016 Tirreno-Adriatico
The Belgian super-team planned well. It leads the win count of all top teams, 17 compared to Astana with 11 in second and Sky with nine in third.
"We train in the winter to a certain schedule, and I think it works because we start the year well usually," sports director Rik Van Slycke told Cycling Weekly last month.
"Now, we have new riders who are excited. For sure, that's an advantage, not that we push for that, but it happens. Then if one starts winning, it stimulates the other one. Then we tease them a bit, 'Hey, he won. Now, it's your turn. Come on!'"
>>> Secrets of the toolbox: Etixx-Quick Step (video)
Etixx's list of winners now includes Fernando Gaviria, Gianluca Brambilla, Marcel Kittel, Dan Martin, Stijn Vandenbergh, Bob Jungels, Davide Martinelli, Petr Vakoc, Niki Terpstra and after today's stage to Pomarance, Stybar.
"Maybe it was that desire to prove oneself in a new team, but it's also that new environment that spurs you on," Martin said.
Watch: Men's WorldTour contenders for 2016
He added that the pre-season training camps in Etixx felt more intense than what he had in seven years at Cannondale/Garmin. "I've never done as many hours as I did this winter. It's been a big step up, not harder, but different. We were away on three training camps, we never did that with Garmin."
Stybar, who took his biggest win yet the Tour de France's Le Havre stage last year, hopes that the confidence today carries through to the classics. Though the team also has Tom Boonen and Niki Terpstra, Stybar should have his chance in Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
"I trained very hard. This is the first time in my life I was really struggling for a few weeks between over-training and just to keep on training," Stybar said. "Now, I have that freshness back in my legs, and my shape should grow."
Yves Lampaert rounds out classics season with victory at the Three Days of De Panne
Remco Evenepoel forced to take more time off bike as recovery continues


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Tag Archives: NATO
Shared Responsibility in North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led Operations
Marten Zwanenburg
Book chapters, Research papers
This chapter is forthcoming in the third edited volume of the SHARES book series: André Nollkaemper and Ilias Plakokefalos (eds.), The Practice of Shared Responsibility in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
The chaos in Libya is also the responsibility of Europe
Karin Wester
In December 2014, the United Nations reported that in the previous months hundreds of civilians had been killed in the struggle between armed militias in Libya, and that the acts of the militias might amount to crimes against humanity. It seems like a déjà vu. In February 2011, a popular uprising started in Libya and was brutally repressed by the regime of Colonel Qadhafi, who was eventually charged with committing crimes against humanity. The UN Security Council decided to authorize the use of military force on humanitarian grounds, in order to protect civilians. The ensuing NATO operation, which lasted from March to October 2011, resulted in the fall of the Qadhafi regime and in the establishment of a transitional government, which pledged full respect for human rights and international law. So, what has gone wrong – and what responsibility does the international community carry? (more…)
Ten NATO states form coalition to fight the Islamic State
On 5 September, at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Wales, President Obama announced that nine NATO allies have agreed to join the US in order to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State. (more…)
Source: The Guardian | US forms 'core coalition' to fight Isis militants in Iraq
Source: Al Jazeera | US announces coalition to fight Islamic State
Source: New York Times | Obama Enlists 9 Allies to Help in the Battle Against ISIS
Seven NATO states to create a new rapid reaction force
According to the Daily Mail, Britain is to spearhead a 10,000-strong NATO joint expeditionary force, aimed at bolstering the West's capabilities in response to Russia's recent actions in Ukraine. Other countries involved at the present time include Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and the Netherlands. Canada has also expressed an interest in taking part. (more…)
Source: Financial Times | Nato states create new multilateral force
Source: Daily Mail | Britain to spearhead 10,000-strong Nato rapid reaction force with mission to halt Putin's 'Tsarist expansionism'
Source: The Sunday Times | New Nato reaction force aims to deter Russian aggression
UK personnel stationed on US base from which drone strikes are launched
On 12 May, The Guardian reported that the British Ministry of Defence revealed that British officers are based on the US military base in Djibouti, from which drone strikes against presumed terrorists in Yemen are launched. According to the Minster of Defence Mark Francois, '[the three officers] work within the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and are responsible for planning and supporting US military operations in the region. As embedded military personnel within a US headquarters they come under the command and control of the US armed forces, but remain subject to UK law, policy and military jurisdiction.' (more…)
Source: The Guardian | UK troops working with US military at base for Yemen drone operations
Source: Human Rights Watch | A Wedding That Became a Funeral - US Drone Attack on Marriage Procession in Yemen | 2014


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'Terminator: Dark Fate' red carpet premiere canceled due to California wildfires
Posted October 28, 2019 5:00 p.m. EDT
CNN — Paramount Pictures and Skydance have canceled the red carpet premiere for its new film "Terminator: Dark Fate" due to wildfires impacting Los Angeles.
The premiere for the movie had been scheduled to take place Monday in Hollywood and bring together stars of the film, including Linda Hamilton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Luna and Mackenzie Davis.
"In light of the ongoing, active fires being battled in the area, Paramount Pictures and Skydance have canceled tonight's Los Angeles premiere of 'Terminator: Dark Fate,'" a statement provided to CNN said. "We will be donating food intended for the after-party to the American Red Cross, which is serving those affected by the fires."
The former California governor said he was among those evacuated, exiting his home around 3:30 a.m. Monday morning.
"If you are in an evacuation zone, don't screw around. Get out," he wrote on Twitter. "Right now I am grateful for the best firefighters in the world, the true action heroes who charge into the danger to protect their fellow Californians."
California is contending with a number of large fires, prompted in part by strong winds and also by other trends, such as overall drier conditions, relating to the climate crisis.
On Monday morning, the Getty Fire, located on the west side of the busy 405 Freeway in Los Angeles, affected neighborhoods known for their high-value homes and celebrity residents.
NBC star LeBron James was also among the evacuees.
"Terminator: Dark Fate" is the latest film in the franchise that began in 1984.
It reunites Hamilton and Schwarzenegger for the first time since 1991's "Terminator: Judgment Day."
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Power out, many left in cold and dark in Moore County


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Can We Jump-Start A New Space Age?
By Adam Frank
Published September 9, 2014 at 7:04 AM EDT
BoldlyGo Institute, Inc.
An artist's view of BoldlyGo's SCIM mission in which a probe would skim the Martian atmosphere capturing dust particles and returning them to Earth.
Jon Morse, former astrophysics division director at NASA, can remember the exact moment he knew things had to change.
It was the late spring of 2011. After one particularly long planning meeting, Morse headed to the elevators with some high-ranking budget officials. As they waited for the next car, Morse asked the officials about a draft plan he and his staff had been working on for months; its goal was implementation of recent National Research Council recommendations for a menu of exciting new space science missions. The plan, however, was going to require extra resources.
Morse says he can still remember the sting of their response. "[They] laughed, got on the elevator and said, 'Don't even bother.' Then the elevator doors closed."
That was when Morse decided he'd seen enough doors closing on the "high frontier." Fast-forward to today, when he and a group of other space science experts, including a former astronaut, are taking off in a new direction. Together, they created the BoldlyGo Institute whose mission is to chart a new path for getting space science into space.
After "living and breathing the federal budget process" for seven budget cycles, it was clear to Morse where things were headed. At the exact moment when the U.S. could lead bold missions like robotic-boats sailing the methane lakes of Saturn's moon Titan, we were pulling back.
"Flat was the new up," Morse says of the NASA budget. "It was clear that we could expect space science budgets to be level for the balance of the decade and beyond."
All of those groundbreaking, epoch-making, kid-inspiring missions were ending up on the cutting room floor. All lost due to limited resources.
So the idea behind the non-profit BoldlyGo was simple — create dramatic new ways to fund, manage and execute space exploration. The advent of private space companies like , , and had already started what many are calling — a new ecosystem of players involved in the human exploitation of Earth's orbital environment. And it's not just that these new companies own their own rockets. They've also changed how rockets are designed and built. They've brought an entirely different kind of management perspective to the entire process. NASA still plays a critical role but NewSpace has unleashed a reservoir of vital creative energy into thinking about human beings and the near Earth environment.
BoldyGo aims to tap that same energy for space exploration missions taking us far beyond Earth's orbit. To begin, BoldlyGo is focused on developing two very different classes of space science missions.
The first, called Sample Collection to Investigate Mars or SCIM, is focused on the solar system. As Morse describes it, "It's going to be the first robotic round trip to the Red Planet. SCIM's going to make a daring transit of the Martian atmosphere, collect a precious cargo of dust grains and then return to Earth."
You can see their plans, here:
By analyzing each individual dust particle — tearing them apart atom-by-atom — Morse says we'll finally be able to explore Martian surface materials with cutting-edge technologies found in terrestrial labs. That data will teach us about the geological history of Mars, including information about possible conditions for life and its evolution.
The second mission, called ASTRO-1, will be a large space-based telescope for looking at the universe in visible and ultraviolet light (NASA's successor for the Hubble, the , will focus on longer wavelength infrared light). As Morse explains:
"This one is particularly exciting to me because it follows closely in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope, enhancing its powerful legacy in some areas and reaching to make unique observations in others. It's going to address some really compelling questions like 'Are we alone in the universe?' by directly detecting exoplanets orbiting nearby stars using multiple techniques."
Both of these projects are bleeding-edge space science missions that any space agency would be happy to fund.
But they can't.
So the real question is: How does BoldyGo intend to get the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to make these projects into realities? That's where you and I and some aerospace companies and some very rich folks come in. As Morse says:
"I think it's important to note that all cutting-edge research in space astrophysics and planetary science is funded by the federal government (i.e., NASA). This is not true in other scientific fields such as medical research or even ground-based astronomy, where significant facilities that have large scientific impacts are supported outside of the federal realm. Moreover, there will always be more outstanding ideas than any plausible government budget can support."
So what BoldlyGo imagines is a mix of funding sources that include large grants from individuals or foundations, or even corporate sponsorships. Support from aerospace companies can come in a variety of forms including in-kind. Corning has already donated $1.8 million worth of mirror components for the ASTRO-1 project. And while crowd funding will play its role, Morse thinks the general public can also play even more important roles through citizen science projects that will come once data are taken.
Looking over the state of U.S. science funding these days, it's hard to not to get depressed. But the BoldlyGo Institute challenges us to remember that the stakes are too high to give up. When it comes to stepping more boldly through the doors that space science has already opened, we should keep that old NASA motto close to heart:
Failure is not an option.
You can keep up with more of what Adam is thinking on Facebook and Twitter: @adamfrank4
NASAspaceBoldlyGo Institute
Adam Frank
Adam Frank was a contributor to the NPR blog 13.7: Cosmos & Culture. A professor at the University of Rochester, Frank is a theoretical/computational astrophysicist and currently heads a research group developing supercomputer code to study the formation and death of stars. Frank's research has also explored the evolution of newly born planets and the structure of clouds in the interstellar medium. Recently, he has begun work in the fields of astrobiology and network theory/data science. Frank also holds a joint appointment at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, a Department of Energy fusion lab.
See stories by Adam Frank
As NASA Considers New Spacecraft, Ukraine Complicates Russian Relations
A New Space Race To Replace the Shuttle


Page 7 - Gallery Design of Home Design And Ideas | Groundswellplayers White Thermal Curtains. Ottoman Storage Bench. Oceanside Glass Tile.
collection of galleries from Home Design And Ideas like White Thermal Curtains. Ottoman Storage Bench. Oceanside Glass Tile. and other designs you might like Giant Wall Clock. Shower Wall Kits. Full Bedroom Sets. Pine Chest Of Drawers. Led Replacement Bulbs. Kitchen Led Lighting. Baby Changing Tables.


Jackie Mertens is one of the most successful amateur retriever trainers and breeders in North America.
She has trained and titled numerous FC/AFC retrievers. She is a six time finalist at the National Open/National Amateur Retriever Championships.
She won the National Amateur Championship with her NAFC FC Topbrass Cotton, who is also the all time high point Golden Retriever in field trial history.
Preparing Your Pup for Advanced Training.


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This blog now updates at http://www.penny-red.com/.
It's been a fun four years at blogspot, but the new site is much shinier. Update your bookmarks! :)
Posted by Penny Red at 25.5.12 1,077 comments:
Men, sex, journalism, armageddon and radical papier-mâché: what I've been writing.
As you can see, I'm still in New York, I have a marvellous new hat, and here is another round-up post. This month I've been writing about, amongst other things, sex, politics, the future, nerd guns, protest policing and the mating rituals of the young and foolish in New York City. Here's the worst of the damage:
My guest post on WarrenEllis.com about Journalism, Activism and Honest Reporting went viral - it's a piece that was very important to me, and was based on a speech I gave at Left Forum in March.
My review of William Gibson's new essay collection, 'Distrust That Particular Flavour', is up now at The New Inquiry. Almost certainly my favourite thing I've written this month: The Future, Probably.
Last week, I wrote for the Independent on men and their attitudes to sex, women and feminism - based on a survey I posted on this blog, which some of you were kind enough to help with. I'll be using those survey answers more in the future - stay tuned.
The piece I wrote right here at this blog about Lena Dunham, Katie Roiphe, kink and the politics of oppression was widely read (and led to a very interesting discussion over at Metafilter!)
Two short pieces for the Independent's notebook section: one on Trenton Oldfield, the boat-race anarchist swimmer, and one on dating in New York, in which I am possibly slightly unfair to writers, Brooklynites and coffee-shop lurkers like myself. Please note that am not, nor have I ever aspired to be, Carrie fucking Bradshaw.
And finally, this week's column on the run-up to Occupy Wall Street's planned May Day General Strike.
Incidentally, this month, which has involved me starting an exciting new job at The Independent, has also been full of more than the usual catalogue of attacks, rapebombing, slut-shaming, death threats, professional slanders, right-wing trolls, libertarian trolls, soi-disant radical trolls and mad people with vendettas, including former comrades, trying to push false stories about me into the gossip press. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes it does get difficult. Despite all this I've managed to keep producing, but that might not have been the case without the support of a lot of wonderful people, friends and colleagues and near-strangers. I am massively grateful to everyone who has offered me their solidarity over the past few weeks - you know who you are, and I hope you know that your efforts are more than appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I love you.
Posted by Penny Red at 29.4.12 329 comments:
Chains of oppression: Katie Roiphe, Lena Dunham and the sexual counter-revolution.
(Image via The Daily Beast)
Things that Jean-Jacques Rousseau really liked included: the philosophy of universal liberty, and having young ladies spank him into a frenzy. In "The Confessions", he wrote: "To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments, and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination the more I acquired the appearance of a whining lover."
Like a great many wealthy, important men throughout history, Rousseau was a humiliation slut. He loved to have women boss him around in bed. He was also a flasher, and liked to moon unsuspecting ladies in the street and then prostrate himself for punishment. Nobody has ever suggested that this meant that the great enlightement philosopher secretly wished men didn't run the world. In fact, Rousseau had some very specific things to say about women's place in the social order. "Woman was specifically made to please man," he wrote in "Emile." "If man ought to please her in turn, the necessity is less direct. His merit lies in his power...If woman is made to please and to be subjugated to man, she ought to make herself pleasing to him rather than to provoke him."
Kink has been part of the sexual menu for so long that it's hard to pretend anyone is shocked anymore when it turns up on the table. The practice of male masochism, for example, has become almost idiomatic when one is discussing Wall Street workers, or the British aristocracy - despite Rousseau and De Sade, the French still refer to sadomasochism as 'La Vice Anglais.'
At no point, however, has anyone implied that men who want to be sexually dominated by women also want to be dominated by them socially and economically. Quite the opposite, if the long history of powerful men paying poor women to beat them up in backrooms is anything to go by. Apparently, though, a few smutty books about naughty professors wielding handcuffs are meant to prove that modern 'working women' (sic.) aren't really as into all this liberation schtick as we make out.
In a cover story for Newsweek, noted rape apologist Katie Roiphe argues that the recent success of pop-porn bestseller 'Fifty Shades of Grey' proves that even feminists secretly want to be shagged into submission by great, big, whip-wielding brutes. Not just in spite of our feminism, but because of our feminism. Roiphe argues that modern "working women" - I'm sorry, was there ever a time when women actually did no work? - find "the pressure of economic participation... all that strength and independence and desire and going out into the world"..."exhausting." Roiphe goes on to theorise, based on precisely one film, one tv show and one novel, that "for some, the more theatrical fantasies of sexual surrender offer a release, a vacation, an escape from the dreariness and hard work of equality."
I'm not going to waste my time being mean to Roiphe, the unfortunate straw-lady who was encouraged to write this woeful piece of drivel. Suffice it to say that her piece says a lot more about the sadomasochistic relationship between female freelancers and their editors than it does about any other so-called 'trend'. The article seems crafted to do one thing well, which is to make a lot of people angry, which, hella, it has: having supper with a dear friend and her girlfriend last night, I showed her the article on my phone, and was genuinely frightened for the device after she slammed it down and muttered, simply, "fuck you". But just because a piece of bait is obvious doesn't mean it's not worth a nibble. So let's have a conversation - a real conversation - about what women want, and what that means.
The first thing to note is that sexual submission is is the acceptable face of female perversion: pliable, obedient and all about pleasing your man. Most of the available submissive fantasies that Roiphe and others have cited as part of a 'trend' insist on their protagonists' initial unwillingness to be tied to enormous beds and rogered by wealthy professionals. In "Fifty Shades of Grey", the protagonist only acquiesces to the kink because she wants to please her dominant lover. In "The Story of O" - which, although hardly part of a 'trend,' having being written in the fifties, is still one of the only dirty books written for women that you can buy in respectable shops - 'O' agrees to be whipped and fucked by rich anonymous strangers to please her partner, Renee. These women may learn to love being spanked, but they certainly don't seek it out: they are passive, rather than just submissive.
In real life, men and women enjoy being bossed around in bed for lots of reasons - sometimes it might be about being punished, sometimes it might be about working out personal baggage, sometimes it might be about taking the break from all the responsibilities you have outside the bedroom, and sometimes it might just be about wanting someone else to do the work. And sometimes, yes, it might be about wanting to experience sex without having to take responsibility for your own desires - it's not as if we live in a culture where women who want to have sex are encouraged to have it in a shame-free way. Both Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight, the teen series the adult erotic novel was based on, are fantasies of pursuit, of the responsibility for sexual agency being entirely in the hands of a man, who desires the point-of-view-protagonist completely.
In a culture where women who express sexual agency are punished, humiliated and threatened with real rather than ritualised violence, that sort of fantasy is entirely comprehensible. What is more significant is that submission - alongside, from time to time, sex work - is the only kind of female sexual 'unorthodoxy' that is currently deemed worthy of discussion - unorthodoxy trussed up tight by the bondage tape of patriarchal expectations. Unorthodoxy that happens to involve fantasies of being dominated by men. Unorthodoxy practiced exclusively, if we go by the 'examples' Roiphe's investigation turns up, by women who are young, and white, and straight, and middle-class, and, most importantly, fucking fictional.
INCIDENTALLY - why is it that young, white, straight, middle-class, fictional women are the only type of women that routinely interest the trendmaking mainstream press? And why is it that women are not permitted to be creative without having to speak for the entire condition of womankind? The most exhaustively discussed new cultural artefacts in recent weeks - 'Fifty Shades of Grey' and Lena Dunham's new HBO show 'Girls' - are being treated as if they were straight memoirs, rather than, in one case, a piece of redrafted fan-fiction based around a story that was originally about vampires? Is it because we don't believe that a woman can truly create fiction or write meaningfully without drawing entirely on her own experience? Is it because mainstream culture still lacks a language to talk about women's issues and women's lives that is not at once confessional and riddled with lazy stereotypes? Is it because most 'fictional' women are still created, cast and directed by men? Is it because we don't believe women can actually be artists? DISCUSS.
Anyway. Fantasies about pretty young white women being controlled, hurt and dominated by men have always been the the part of kink that nobody ever really had a problem with. During the crackdowns on the fetish and kink communities in the 1980s and early 1990s, submissive heterosexual women and their play partners were rarely targeted for prosecution. Today, when you think of 'fetish', many people think of Jean Paul Gaultier models strutting the runway in elegant leathers, and arty snaps of willowy girls doing Japanese rope bondage in low-lit loft apartments . You might not be quite so quick to picture middle-aged gay couples in matching latex, or enormous, hairy men called Nigel waddling around fetish clubs with joysticks up their bottoms and big grins on their faces, but kink has always been as much about them as it has been about the beautiful young girls, breakable or pretending to break others, who tend anyway to have less disposable income to spend on rubber.
Here are some non-standard sexual trends that editors at Newsweek, Glamour and Cosmopolitan are less keen to make headlines out of: poor women fucking. Black women fucking. Queer women fucking. Old women fucking. Fat women fucking, ugly women fucking, bossy, arrogant women fucking. Women who are dominant in bed. Women who like to penetrate men with big pink strap-ons. Women who want multiple sexual partners at once or in succession. Women who just want to go to bed early with a cup of tea, an Anna Span DVD and a spiked dildo the size of an eggplant. Here are some more: sex workers who want to be treated like workers, rather than social pariahs. men who want to get fucked. Men who are gentle and submissive in bed. Men who don't enjoy penetrative sex. Men for whom sex is an overwhelming emotional experience. I guarantee you that all of these things go on, but any of them might actually destabilise for a second our cultural narrative of sex, gender and power, so none of them are allowed to be 'trends'.
In truth, there has never been anything controversial about the fantasy of female submission. These days, most of the 'mainstream' pornography readily available online involves some variation on the theme of outrages against young, prone, fuckable females. The rituals of whips, leather and safe-words are not part of the language of 'normal' porn, but otherwise the horny prospect of prone pretty girls having violent sex done to them and learning to love it is a dialect of desire everyone understands - so much so that lots of young men grow up knowing no other box to put their lust in. In Lena Dunham's 'Girls', the protagonist's useless hipster quasi-boyfriend spouts 'dirty talk' that Katie Roiphe identifies as specifically sado-masochistic - but actually, it could be lifted off the commentary on any 'vanilla' porn site. Check it out on RedTube.com if you don't believe me. Actually, don't. Actually, do.
Female sexual submission has never really been shocking. Right now, we are in the middle of a sexual counter-revolution. The backlash is on against even the limited amount of erotic freedom women have won over fifty years of hard campaigning: abortion and birth control are under attack, sexual health clinics are kitted out with bomb detectors and staffed by doctors who come to work wearing bullet-proof vests, and a fully-grown woman is denounced as a slut and a whore by male commentators across America by suggesting as part of a congressional hearing that yes, she may once or twice have had intercourse for pleasure rather than procreation. And until very recently, Rick Santorum, a man who considers contraceptives morally wrong, was a semi-serious contender for leader of the free world.
The sexual heresies that truly upset the pearl-clutchers of middle America have nothing to do with whips and chains. That's just faux-outrage, a bit of editorial baiting designed to upset feminists and titillate everyone else who likes to get cross and horny over the idea of dirty little girls tied up with tape.
No, what really gets social conservatives angry still happens not in swanky fetish clubs, but behind the closed doors of abortion clinics. It's women who want to be able to choose to terminate a pregnancy. Women who want to control their own fertility. Women who want sexual autonomy, which is what any attack on abortion rights is fundamentally about. Women who want to live independently or raise children without the help of men. Women who want sex on its own merit, whether it comes wrapped in black bondage rope or scattered with rose petals.
Female sexual autonomy itself is what's really unorthodox today. Agency and self-determination, the right to own our own desire - those are the kind of forbidden fantasies women across the world still pant over in private, unable to pronounce for fear of being slut-shamed. As Rousseau might put it : "Whether the woman shares the man's desires or not, whether or not she is willing to satisfy them...the appearance of correct behavior must be among women's duties."
In Syntagma Square....
"24
The Tsolakoglou [a reference to a wartime Nazi collaborationist in Greece] government has literally wiped out my ability to survive, based on a decent pension which I paid for myself over 35 years with no help from the state.
If one Greek had taken a Kalashnikov into his hands, I might have followed him and done the same but because I am of an age that makes it impossible for me to take strong action on my own, I can find no other solution than to put an end to my life before I start sifting through garbage cans for my food.
I believe that young people with no future will one day take up and hang this country's traitors in arms in Syntagma Square just as the Italians hanged Mussolini in 1945.
— The suicide note of 77-year-old Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in Syntagma Square, in protest against the austerity policies hitting Greece.
Via Molly Crabs and everyone else. Not a lot to add, really.
ETA: The funeral of Dimitris Christoulas erupted into an anti-austerity rally, the Telegraph reports.
Posted by Penny Red at 7.4.12 340 comments:
Labels: austerity, crisis of representative democracy, no future, tragedy
Women, activism, anger, and other things I've been up to..
I write and publish a great deal these days, and sometimes, like this week, there'll be a publication run where pieces I'm reasonably proud of will come out almost every day. Not only do I not want the hard work I put into these articles to go to waste, you can get a better sense of where my politics are and what I'm interested in right now from looking at what I'm writing all in one place. So here are this week's offerings, which appear to be about feminism, trolling, the state of the left, personal and political revolution and Rush Limbaugh's terrible face.
So, it turns out that feminism is a CIA plot to undermine the left - blog for New Statesman. In which I encounter the American dudeleft and pull some strange faces in a New York bookshop. Video editing by Willie Osterweil.
Eating disorders and the White Strike - when youthful dissidence cannibalises itself - column for New Statesman. This was quite a personal piece and harder to write than I thought it would be. I could write a whole book on the topic, so getting to the point in 600 words was a good exercise.
A report from Occupy AIPAC - for The Independent. In which I go to Washington DC and watch peace activists pretend to be doing something new, and learn more about lobbying.
Sugar Daddies - for Salon.com. A report on the trend of older, rich men looking to pay financially desperate, 'non professional' women for sex, affection and maybe a bit of tidying. In which I troll the hell out of some creeps on the internet for fun and feminism.
Rush Limbaugh, Sexist Shit and the Art of the Decoy - a blog for New Statesman. Written mostly in a rage-fuge in the back of a friend's play, having just drunk some absinthe by accident (I can't have absinthe since that night in 2005 of which we do not speak). Features a metaphor about arses I'm quite pleased with.
Deeds, not Words: a column for International Women's Day 2012 - For the Independent. The effervescent Molly Crabapple did an illustration to go with this piece, which I am stupendously excited about, and you should all go to her Kickstarter and get involved in redefining gallery art for the 99% or some aesthetic revolution or other, I don't know, I'm all tuckered out after this week and should probably have more coffee absolutely right this minute.
Ciao, L
Labels: articles, international women's day, linkdumpage, molly crabapple
A love letter for London
In some ways it was the first place I ever knew. Seventeen, sick and living in a box-room belonging to an octogenarian friend of the family, every day once I was just about well enough not to have to sleep in hospital overnight I would wake up at five and tiptoe down the street and go underground. I've always thought of the London Underground as not quite of this world. It has its own newspapers and its own weather, its strange warm winds blowing from tunnels deep in the groaning belly of the city. Step out of the tube and you are older, by twenty minutes or a whole lifetime; you are different; you have left something of your old self, your anxious, night-time, dreaming self down in the racket and thunder of the trains and the harsh bright never-dawn of rolling rubbish and advertising hoardings.
I was born in London, and though my family moved away when I was small, I grew up longing for the city. Some of us do. The rabbit-bitten fields and sun-kissed cycle paths that my parents were so thrilled for their daughters to grow up with held no interest for me. I wanted the smell of diesel and the rain throwing up soot on the pavements. I wanted lights that never went out and streets to swagger down. I went to sleep in the owl-hooting dark, dreaming of the syphilitic rattle of urban pigeons.
More than anything, I wanted the tube. Every time we went to London for a visit, I could happily have ridden the underground all day. I wanted to lose myself in the dark and mouse-running scramble of crammed-together humanity and come up again in the light. I liked being one of the sardine people, even in rush hour, even at my height, which was and remains about armpit height on the average commuter. Late at night, the platforms echo with the memory of thousands of city dwellers huddled together for shelter with the bombs of the Blitz overhead. Catching the last Bakerloo line home, you can almost see them, out of the corner of your eye, through the cracks in history: propped against one another, mindlessly tired.
The tube is London's psychic sewer system. The somatic debris of life in a late capitalist megatropolis drifts through and drains away here down tunnels garish with adverts for car insurance and cosmetic surgery. Knackered commuters grip their seats or cling to the upright poles, avoiding one another's eyes. And yet it's also the one place in the whole county where the power of organised labour can and does bring a city juddering to a halt on a regular basis, the one place where workers, by and large, expect to be treated like dignified human beings. Tube strikes are as regular and marvellous and irritating as the yearly snowfall which turns London into a hushed, glittering white fairyland of treacherous ice and broken transport links and adults freaking out like excited toddlers, turning up their faces to catch the fat flakes before they soak into the grime.
London is a place of contradictions.
The process of living here is one big game of unseeing. I have not visited another world city where different lives mesh and interweave so intricately without ever touching, rich and poor. In China Mieville's novel 'The City and The City,' two cities occupy the same physical space, and citizens must avoid 'breaching' the psychic gap at all costs. When the book came out in 2010, there was much speculation as to what city it was supposed to represent - Belfast? Jerusalem? Berlin as was? - but for me it's clearly about London, consciously or unconsciously, the city of parts which breaks into all of Mieville's work, as it does with any writer who lives here for very long.
London is more than two cities. It is many cities. It is the city and the city and the city and the city, a delicate, dirty palimpsest of history layered on history. A city where kids with hoods and hopeless eyes can start burning police cars and looting the high streets and the question on the lips of the broadsheet writers and politicians who live and work a few streets away can still be: where the hell did these people come from?
They come from London, just like you.
I have been in love with this city all my life, and it has taken me on marvellous adventures and it has come close to crushing me. No lover has ever betrayed me like London. Being poor and homeless and despairing here is not like being poor and homeless and despairing anywhere else. I have seen this city swallow friends whole, chew down its young for the meat and life under the skin and spit them out old and traumatised. London does this. You plonk your youth like an offering on the steps of Liverpool Street Station and you just have to hope the city will leave you a life worth living as it slurps up the marrow of your dreams. I will never forgive it. I will never stop loving it.
But it's all got a bit much lately, what with the total policing and the hysterical run-up to the Olympics. I need a break, and I'm fucked if I'm going to the country. London and I need some time apart. I've saved up some money and I'm leaving today tooff to see other cities for a while, starting with New York, which is a great floozie of a town with a far inferior subway system. But I'll be back, because it'll take more than godawful tea and all-night cupcake shops to make me forget where I come from. I come from the best city in the world ever. I come from London.
Labels: adventures in foreign lands, london, navel-gazing
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text:
namespace media_message_center {
class MediaNotificationView;
}  // namespace media_message_center

namespace global_media_controls {

// MediaSessionNotificationItem manages hiding/showing a media notification and
// updating the metadata for a single media session.
class COMPONENT_EXPORT(GLOBAL_MEDIA_CONTROLS) MediaSessionNotificationItem
    : public media_message_center::MediaNotificationItem,
      public media_session::mojom::MediaControllerObserver,
      public media_session::mojom::MediaControllerImageObserver {
 public:
  class Delegate {
   public:
    // The given item meets the criteria for being displayed.
    virtual void ActivateItem(const std::string& id) = 0;

    // The given item no longer meets the criteria for being displayed, but may
    // be reactivated.
    virtual void HideItem(const std::string& id) = 0;

    // The given item should be destroyed.
    virtual void RemoveItem(const std::string& id) = 0;

    // The given button has been pressed, and therefore the action should be
    // recorded.
    virtual void LogMediaSessionActionButtonPressed(
        const std::string& id,
        media_session::mojom::MediaSessionAction action) = 0;

   protected:
    virtual ~Delegate() = default;
  };

  MediaSessionNotificationItem(
      Delegate* delegate,
      const std::string& request_id,
      const std::string& source_name,
      mojo::Remote<media_session::mojom::MediaController> controller,
      media_session::mojom::MediaSessionInfoPtr session_info);
  MediaSessionNotificationItem(const MediaSessionNotificationItem&) = delete;
  MediaSessionNotificationItem& operator=(const MediaSessionNotificationItem&) =
      delete;
  ~MediaSessionNotificationItem() override;

  // media_session::mojom::MediaControllerObserver:
  void MediaSessionInfoChanged(
      media_session::mojom::MediaSessionInfoPtr session_info) override;
  void MediaSessionMetadataChanged(
      const absl::optional<media_session::MediaMetadata>& metadata) override;
  void MediaSessionActionsChanged(
      const std::vector<media_session::mojom::MediaSessionAction>& actions)
      override;
  void MediaSessionChanged(
      const absl::optional<base::UnguessableToken>& request_id) override {}
  void MediaSessionPositionChanged(
      const absl::optional<media_session::MediaPosition>& position) override;

  // media_session::mojom::MediaControllerImageObserver:
  void MediaControllerImageChanged(
      media_session::mojom::MediaSessionImageType type,
      const SkBitmap& bitmap) override;

  // media_message_center::MediaNotificationItem:
  void SetView(media_message_center::MediaNotificationView* view) override;
  void OnMediaSessionActionButtonPressed(
      media_session::mojom::MediaSessionAction action) override;
  void SeekTo(base::TimeDelta time) override;
  // This will stop the media session associated with this item. The item will
  // then call |MediaNotificationController::RemoveItem()| to ensure removal.
  void Dismiss() override;
  media_message_center::SourceType SourceType() override;
  void SetVolume(float volume) override {}
  void SetMute(bool mute) override;

  // Calls |Raise()| on the underlying MediaSession, which will focus the
  // WebContents if the MediaSession is associated with one.
  void Raise();

  base::WeakPtr<MediaSessionNotificationItem> GetWeakPtr() {
    return weak_ptr_factory_.GetWeakPtr();
  }

  void SetController(
      mojo::Remote<media_session::mojom::MediaController> controller,
      media_session::mojom::MediaSessionInfoPtr session_info);

  // This will freeze the item and start a timer to destroy the item after
  // some time has passed. If and when the item unfreezes, |unfrozen_callback|
  // will be run. If the item does not unfreeze before timing out, then
  // |unfrozen_callback| will not be called.
  void Freeze(base::OnceClosure unfrozen_callback);

  bool frozen() const { return frozen_; }

  void FlushForTesting();

  void SetMediaControllerForTesting(
      mojo::Remote<media_session::mojom::MediaController> controller) {
    media_controller_remote_ = std::move(controller);
  }

 private:
  bool ShouldShowNotification() const;

  void MaybeUnfreeze();

  void Unfreeze();

  bool HasActions() const;

  bool HasArtwork() const;

  void OnFreezeTimerFired();

  void MaybeHideOrShowNotification();

  const raw_ptr<Delegate> delegate_;

  bool is_bound_ = true;

  // Weak reference to the view of the currently shown media notification.
  raw_ptr<media_message_center::MediaNotificationView> view_ = nullptr;

  // The |request_id_| is the request id of the media session and is guaranteed
  // to be globally unique.
  const std::string request_id_;

  // The source of the media session (e.g. arc, web).
  const Source source_;

  mojo::Remote<media_session::mojom::MediaController> media_controller_remote_;

  media_session::mojom::MediaSessionInfoPtr session_info_;

  media_session::MediaMetadata session_metadata_;

  base::flat_set<media_session::mojom::MediaSessionAction> session_actions_;

  absl::optional<media_session::MediaPosition> session_position_;

  absl::optional<gfx::ImageSkia> session_artwork_;

  absl::optional<gfx::ImageSkia> session_favicon_;

  // True if the metadata needs to be updated on |view_|. Used to prevent
  // updating |view_|'s metadata twice on a single change.
  bool view_needs_metadata_update_ = false;

  // When the item is frozen the |view_| will not receive any updates to the
  // data and no actions will be executed.
  bool frozen_ = false;

  // True if we're currently frozen and the frozen view contains at least 1
  // action.
  bool frozen_with_actions_ = false;

  // True if we have the necessary metadata to unfreeze, but we're waiting for
  // new actions.
  bool waiting_for_actions_ = false;

  // True if we're currently frozen and the frozen view contains non-null
  // artwork.
  bool frozen_with_artwork_ = false;

  // True if we have the necessary metadata to unfreeze, but we're waiting for
  // new artwork to load.
  bool waiting_for_artwork_ = false;

  // The timer that will notify the controller to destroy this item after it
  // has been frozen for a certain period of time.
  base::OneShotTimer freeze_timer_;

  // Called when the item unfreezes.
  base::OnceClosure unfrozen_callback_;

  mojo::Receiver<media_session::mojom::MediaControllerObserver>
      observer_receiver_{this};

  mojo::Receiver<media_session::mojom::MediaControllerImageObserver>
      artwork_observer_receiver_{this};

  mojo::Receiver<media_session::mojom::MediaControllerImageObserver>
      favicon_observer_receiver_{this};

  base::WeakPtrFactory<MediaSessionNotificationItem> weak_ptr_factory_{this};
};

}  // namespace global_media_controls

#endif  // COMPONENTS_GLOBAL_MEDIA_CONTROLS_PUBLIC_MEDIA_SESSION_NOTIFICATION_ITEM_H_

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub