text:
San Francisco Development News
Pier 70 Project Finally Finds a Taker
By Alex Bevk Nov 5, 2012, 11:25am PST
Pier 70's Building #21 Electric Shop/Substation #5, built c1900 [Photo: Liz Henry]
The Board of Supervisors is expected to approve a $100 million development deal with Orton to restore the 65-acre pier. This comes hot on the heels of the Mayor's announcement of the city's $58 million investment in the site. The project will restore the core of the 65-acre pier, rehabbing six historic buildings into space for office workers, retailers, artists and manufacturing companies. The plan for the shipbuilding center has been in the works for a long time, but no developer had pulled the trigger to start a project. Orton has experience with major industrial sites like Pier 70 - they headed a restoration project on the old Ford Assembly Plant on Richmond's waterfront. If all gets approved, work is tentatively scheduled to start next spring, with the first tenants moving in by late 2014. According to SF Gate, Forest City is also in negotiations for a 25-acre site on the pier that could turn into offices, biotech facilities, studios and other areas for the arts, along with open space, although a final agreement is probably two years down the road.
· Plan to bring Pier 70 back to life [SF Gate]
· Previous coverage of Pier 70 [Curbed SF archives]
300 20th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 Visit Website
Next Up In San Francisco Development News
7 SF neighborhoods everyone should be watching
SF could ban (almost) all new office development in the Mission
Plan for 1,100 homes at Balboa Reservoir finally moves forward
How SF neighborhoods got their names
New legislation would bar COVID-19-related commercial evictions
SF's chief building inspector named in fraud scandal


increment/decrement, it doesn't really matter which version you choose. But if you use this operator in part of a larger expression, the one that you choose may make a significant difference.
// using postfix '++' operand which show result from incremented by one.
// using prefix  operand which show result from incremented by one.
// using postfix  operand which show result from incremented by one.


text:
Pareuchiloglanis prolixdorsalis är en fiskart som beskrevs av Li, Zhou, Thomson, Zhang och Yang 2007. Pareuchiloglanis prolixdorsalis ingår i släktet Pareuchiloglanis och familjen Sisoridae. Inga underarter finns listade i Catalogue of Life.

Källor

Malartade fiskar
prolixdorsalis

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Protecting Against the Effects of the Extraterritorial Application of Third Country Legislation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 - Motion to Approve
– in the House of Lords at 9:02 pm on 26th March 2019.
« Previous debate
All Lords debates on 26 Mar 2019
Next debate »
Moved by Baroness Fairhead
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 7 March be approved.
Link to this item In context Individually
(Citation: HL Deb, 26 March 2019, c1802)
Baroness Fairhead The Minister of State, Department for International Trade
My Lords, EU Council regulation 2271/96, which protects,
"against the effects of the extra-territorial application of legislation adopted by a third country, and actions based thereon or resulting therefrom", is commonly known as the EU blocking regulation. It seeks to protect UK and EU businesses from the harmful effects of the extraterritorial application of legislation adopted by another country.
Extraterritorial application of legislation refers to a situation where a country has enacted certain laws, regulations and other legislative instruments which purport to regulate activities of natural and legal persons outside its jurisdiction who are not its citizens or legal persons incorporated in that jurisdiction. This could, for example, result in penalties against a UK citizen for carrying out activities in the UK which we consider to be fully legitimate under our law. The UK and EU have long opposed the extraterritorial effect of sanctions legislation on our businesses and the dissuasive impact that this can have on legitimate trade. In fact, the UK's opposition to such actions predates the blocking regulation. We have had regulations on our statute book since 1980.
The blocking regulation seeks to protect UK businesses in two key ways. First, Article 4 of that regulation guarantees that courts in EU member states will not recognise or allow the enforcement of judgments against EU businesses for fines that they incur in a third country for breaching sanctions with extraterritorial effect. Secondly, its Article 6 enables businesses to seek damages through the courts in any member states, should they be negatively impacted by the application of extraterritorial legislation in scope of the regulation.
Of course, there may be occasions where compliance with third-country sanctions regimes is necessary. Where these instances arise, the EU has the power to issue authorisations for businesses to comply with third-party sanctions regimes. Such compliance can include seeking permission from a third country to continue doing business with countries affected by that third country's sanctions, such as approaching OFAC for a licence to continue operating in Iran. This form of compliance preserves and increases trade, although without such authorisation it is technically illegal under the blocking regulation. For this reason, compliance authorisations may need to be issued by Her Majesty's Government after Brexit. Currently, requests for such authorisations are considered by the EU Commission in accordance with the process and criteria set out in Commission implementing regulation 2018/1101 of 3 August 2018, referred to as the implementing regulation.
This SI amends the blocking regulation and the implementing regulation as retained in UK law, using powers under Section 8 of, and paragraph 21(b) of Schedule 7 to, the EU withdrawal Act 2018, and fixes it for the UK-only context. It ensures that the UK statute book on leaving day remains equivalent to that on the day before we leave. The SI, generally speaking, transfers the functions of the European Commission to the Secretary of State, as would be expected of SIs made under the EU withdrawal Act 2018. For instance, once the SI enters into force, UK businesses will be able to apply to the Secretary of State for permission to comply with extraterritorial sanctions, and the Secretary of State will be able to grant this permission if he or she judges the application to be consistent with the criteria set out in legislation.
Currently, the Commission defines the scope of the blocking regulation—which specific pieces of legislation it applies to—through tertiary legislation amending and updating the annexe to the blocking regulation. The SI transfers this power to the Secretary of State through the mechanism of laying of a negative SI. As we leave the EU we must ensure that we continue to protect UK businesses from the effect of extraterritorial legislation. We firmly believe that our operators should be able to continue legitimate trade free from the harmful effects of the extraterritoriality that we consider illegal under international law. This statutory instrument is a key part of this policy stance and is particularly relevant given our foreign and trade policy stances on Cuba and Iran. I welcome the opportunity for scrutiny of it and I look forward to hearing the contributions of noble Lords.
Link to this speech In context Individually
Lord Purvis of Tweed Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (International Trade)
My Lords, I do not think there will be any difficulty on these Benches about ensuring the continuity we will require in order that there is certainty for British businesses that they can operate on the correct side of international law. The only areas that I hope the Minister will clarify—her introductory remarks were quite helpful—concern, first, the application process that will be required if we are to have a stand-alone position outside European regulations. The applications for authorisations will have to be made to the Secretary of State, as the regulations state. Will the Minister indicate what process such applications will involve?
The second area, which the noble Baroness will not be surprised that I raise, concerns the matter of another judiciary within the United Kingdom. While, as part of Scottish criminal law, this will be a reserved power, nevertheless the criminal penalties that may well apply on the potential breach of some of these things by Scottish businesses would have to be prosecuted by the Scottish courts. One of the examples the Minister raised, that of Iran, is very relevant for the very large Scottish oil and gas industry that trades across the whole region, including within Iran. It is a relevant point, given the not-so-subtle threats from the United States that it will consider breach of its sanctions policy by those British businesses that continue to trade with Iran under a perfectly legal framework. If we are to have a stand-alone approach, absolute certainty, clarity and reassurance would be very helpful. The Government indicated that no consultation was necessary in bringing forward the statutory instrument. I was slightly surprised about that, given that we have two distinct judicial systems in the UK.
The Government also indicated that before the UK leaves the EU, guidance on how a blocking regulation would apply to the UK would be published. Given that when this instrument was drafted the intention was that, potentially, we would leave on Friday without an agreement, can the Minister say whether this guidance has been published? If it has not, when will it be, to offer that reassurance?
Finally, the Explanatory Memorandum states:
"The Blocking Regulation currently provides that the Commission is to regularly report on the effects of the extraterritorial third country legislation. This will become a requirement on the part of the Secretary of State in the retained version".
Through what mechanism do the Government intend to do that? Will it be through Written Statements to Parliament, or will a public document be laid before Parliament to provide that transparency? I hope that the Minister can clarify all those aspects.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Opposition Whip (Lords)
I, too, am very grateful to the Minister for her very full introduction to this SI. It took us into areas new to me, such as the intersection between foreign policy and trade policy. That is an interesting issue and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was right to focus his remarks on how these things will work in practice. I look forward to the Minister's response.
When the Minister introduced the SI, she pointed out that much of the regulation that has been transposed was originally introduced in 1996 in response to the extraterritorial reach of certain sanctions imposed by the US in relation to Cuba in the 1990s. Obviously, it has been updated since then, particularly with reference to Iran. It set a train of thought in my mind about how exactly our current foreign policy meshes with these regulations. With particular reference to Iran, the commentary I have been reading seems to suggest that the package of measures that is being transferred across would encourage the European Investment Bank and banks in the UK—possibly even the Bank of England—to finance activities in Iran and to strengthen ongoing sectoral co-operation and assistance to Iran. That would include financial assistance through development corporation or partnership instruments, and encouraging the UK to explore the possibility of one-off bank transfers to Iran's central bank, which would allow Iranian authorities to receive oil-related revenues.
I suppose this is all right—I do not really understand very much of this; it is way above my head—but when the Minister responds perhaps she could explain exactly how that meshes with our current policy towards Iran, which I understand is not as sympathetic or supportive as might be suggested by the rather large cash transfer opportunities which were being discussed.
This statutory instrument follows on from activities that have been going on in Europe for a number of years in relation not just to Cuba but to the other countries that were mentioned. It requires companies to notify the Commission within 30 days whenever renewed US extraterritorial sanctions directly or indirectly affect the economic or financial interests of the company in question. Various other things apply. EU companies can recover damages in EU courts from persons causing damage as a result of the sanctions, and it nullifies the effect of any court judgments or decisions of administrative bodies that are based on the reinstated US sanctions. My question here is: has anything happened in that regard? Do we have details on the number of companies that have notified the Commission within 30 days, as required? How much money has been recovered, and how many times have the courts been subject to recovery requests? I am sure that it will not affect the way in which we respond to the SI, but it would be interesting to have on the record whether this has been an active process or one that is more observed in the absence of activity than in the reality.
My attention was drawn to a quote from what is in some senses a rather unusual source, since I do not often quote this person. The UK Foreign Secretary at the time that this instrument was brought in, Boris Johnson, said that he thought it was rather difficult to protect European businesses due to the extraterritorial effect of US sanctions and the difficulties companies have when they touch the live wire of the American financial network—they find themselves sanctioned almost immediately. So my third request for more information is to ask whether the former Foreign Secretary is right that this has been rather difficult for companies to access and use.
I suppose I am leading to this question: what rationale do the Government give for continuing this transfer? It would clearly be inappropriate to have a situation in which an EU regulation had legal effect in the UK when we had not properly transferred it. If the ends do not justify the means, I am rather surprised that the Government are taking this step forward, so could the Minister reassure me when she comes to respond that this is a necessary instrument, that it fits with our current foreign policy operations and thoughts and that there is no concern in that respect?
Baroness Fairhead The Minister of State, Department for International Trade 9:15 pm, 26th March 2019
I thank noble Lords for their contributions in this short but useful debate. I hope I have been clear about the Government's commitment to the continuation of these regulations. To address the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, about why we are doing this, we believe that if we do not retain and amend this legislation, we will no longer be able to offer protection to UK businesses from the harmful effects we consider to be illegal under international law. We would in effect be acknowledging the superiority of the sanctions regime of a third country relative to our own. Successive Governments since the 1980s have agreed that this is unacceptable and our Government is no exception.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, also highlighted some of the real challenges of these regulations. Yes, they provide protection, but there is also a challenge for companies who find themselves in that spot between being blocked from complying and failing to comply, and therefore being in breach of sanctions. This instrument is not a perfect solution. In application it is probably to be used more as a tool to dissuade companies and individuals from complying with extraterritorial sanctions. In terms of usage, only about 14 applications have been received by the Commission. I hope that answers the hard point of the questions.
The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, asked some questions about the application process for the exemptions. At the moment businesses apply to the European Commission for exemptions; we will try to make that a bit more straightforward by providing a dedicated mailbox for our businesses to apply for exemptions once the SI enters into force. We hope that that will be a much more readily accessible approach.
On the question of when guidance will be published, over the coming months we will start with the EU guidance and update it to make sure that it complies with the UK context.
In terms of the devolved Administrations, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, acknowledged that this is a reserved power. We have kept the devolved Administrations informed of the policy on this matter and have sent them the Explanatory Memorandum. In terms of criminal proceedings in Scotland, this has been permitted under the 1996 order, so I hope that that is relatively straightforward.
My final response is to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. He asked how this fits in with current foreign policy with regard to Iran in particular. There are sanctions that we support against Iran. However, as I have said before to the House, we believe that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is the best plan to make sure that we prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. We believe that protecting trade with Iran, supported by this blocking regulation, is important to show that we are committed to legitimate trading with Iran. We are firm believers in the importance of the JCPOA.
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister's flow and I am grateful to her for giving way. I was trying to make a slightly different point, which is not the broader case about the JCPOA but on the British national currently held in detention in Iran for whom diplomatic efforts have been made to create a major issue with Iran. I do not see how this instrument helps. The point I was trying to make is that other issues are at play here.
I do not deny that other issues are at play. For the purpose of this debate, the question is whether the blocking regulation supports our approach to the JCPOA, and I think it absolutely does.
I thank the Minister for giving way. On the JCPOA, the core members of the EU, including the UK, have established a financial mechanism which will effectively protect British businesses conducting business with Iran. If we are moving to having a distinct system outside that mechanism, which is protected through the European process, if the SI is passed and we leave without a deal, where will British businesses be with regard to that mechanism set up through the aegis of the European Union? If British businesses cannot have the reassurance that they will have that European Union protection, they will feel vulnerable and be in a weaker position than they are now.
Let me address that head-on. We are absolutely clear that we want certainty and protection for businesses. It is a difficult issue: support comes through banks, many of which choose not to engage given their dependence on their licence to operate in the US or for other commercial reasons. That is their choice to make.
Protection is not actually an EU event, it is an E3 activity—the UK, France and Germany. We have created a special purpose vehicle, the official name of which is INSTEX. It is designed to help businesses conclude legitimate trade. We believe that it has the potential to support the delivery of the sanctions relief that we committed to under the JCPOA and will facilitate trade under European and international law. It is part of the E3, and I think that that will be maintained. I acknowledge that it is not a perfect situation, but we are trying to make sure that we are clear that we are protecting businesses as much as we can in a difficult situation.
To conclude, I thank noble Lords who have participated for their constructive and challenging input to the debate. I hope that I have been able to provide further clarity and I commend the regulations.
Motion agreed.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


SUP ATX Youth Pro Carbon Fiber Paddle | Graphic: Checkers | FREE SHIPPING!
The new Youth Pro offers the same top-quality ultra-lightweight construction as our R-series paddles! The world's best paddle has been scaled down for the smaller paddler at a phenomenal price! A smaller blade, size appropriate handle, and narrower shaft make this paddle perfect for children and petite paddlers who are tired of cutting down full size paddles to maintain performance. The 100% carbon fiber blade comes with an ABS edge for increased durability and cool new graphics! FREE SHIPPING in the Continental USA!


As leaders are increasingly implementing technologies into their districts and schools, they need to understand the implications and risks of doing so. Cyber Security for Educational Leaders is a much-needed text on developing, integrating, and understanding technology policies that govern schools and districts. Based on research and best practices, this book discusses the threats associated with technology use and policies and arms aspiring and practicing leaders with the necessary tools to protect their schools and to avoid litigation.
A Cyber Risk Assessment Checklist and Questionnaire helps leaders measure levels of risk in eight vital areas of technology usage.
Case vignettes illuminate issues real leaders have encountered and end-of-chapter questions and activities help readers make connections to their own practice.
Chapter alignment with the ELCC standards.
An entire chapter on Copyright and Fair Use that prepares leaders for today's online world.
A Companion Website with additional activities, assessment rubrics, learning objectives, and PowerPoint slides.
Richard Phillips is Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Curriculum and Instruction at Delaware State University, USA.
Rayton R. Sianjina is Chair of Education, Director of Graduate Education Programs, and Professor of Education and Instructional Technology at Delaware State University, USA.


text:
Child struck, killed in pedestrian accident with gas company truck in downtown Kansas City
By: 41 Action News Staff
A child was struck and killed in a single-car crash Wednesday in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. According to police, the deadly incident involving a company truck for Spire happened shortly before 1:30 p.m. near 11th Street and Grand Boulevard.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A 3-year-old boy was struck and killed in a single-vehicle crash Wednesday in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
Police on Thursday identified the boy as Jayden Courtney, of Kansas City.
According to the Kansas City Police Department, Jayden was exiting a store with his father shortly before 1:30 p.m. near 11th Street and Grand Boulevard.
The father and son were walking eastbound on the sidewalk on the south side of 11th Street when the child broke free from his father's hand and ran between two parked cars and into the street.
Jayden was struck by the left side westbound commercial truck owned by Spire — a natural-gas company that operates in Missouri, Alabama and Mississippi — and suffered serious injuries. He was taken to a local hospital, where he died a short time later.
The driver stopped and remained at the scene.
"We are devastated by what happened today and our thoughts and prayers are the with the child's family," Spire Communication Manager John Mink said. "We are cooperating fully with KCPD and will continue to do so throughout the investigation."
Police said that accident investigators plan to reconstruct the crash scene and detectives will gather additional evidence.
Anyone who witnessed the crash is asked to contact the Traffic Investigations Section at 816-482-8190.


Your subscription automatically renews after its term expires. You can turn off the auto-renewal feature on your "Billing History & Credit Card Info" page or by contacting customer service.
Auto-renew extends your subscription to a month to month membership at your existing monthly rate (exclusive of any bonus or free time that you may have received).
In the event that your credit cards are ever denied, we reserve the right to resubmit your credit cards for approval within ten days of the initial decline or to the maximum extent permitted under applicable credit card rules and regulations. We will not resubmit your credit card if you have made payment through another source.
We may use a credit card processor outside the United States to process your transactions. In some instances, your bank or credit card issuer may charge you a small "foreign transaction fee." Before purchasing any service, please check with your bank or credit card issuer for more information about its policies regarding foreign transaction fees.
Products purchased using mobile billing payment may be more expensive than other payment methods due to third-party network fees. Orders through mobile billing might not be refundable.


text:
Centre publications
China in the Urban Age
Sydney China Visitors program
China Studies Centre
Sydney China Visiting Fellows
Study abroad, exchange and field schools
Sydney China Business Forum
"How to ..." series
Research_
Centre and member publications
Recently published books, articles and papers
A selection of papers from the Sydney China Business Forum and our members' most recent publications about China.
2018 Year in Review: What Do We Talk About When We Talk About China?
The China Studies Centre is the University's strategic hub to connect local and disciplinary knowledge and help devise University-wide research strategies to best deal with the increasing importance of China in our social and economic future. The Year in Review highlights how the China Studies Centre directly funds top-quality research on China and facilitates collaborative research relationships across the University and with institutions worldwide.
The Centre has vowed to become a 'China home' for the diverse community of students who are exploring important issues related to China. This report will look at the important research our staff and students are doing that will make a difference for China, Australia and the wider world.
Demystifying Chinese Investment in Australian Healthcare
Published in January 2018 by KPMG and the China Studies Centre
Chinese investment in healthcare has soared over the past 3 years. Australia is becoming a highly sought after destination for healthcare investment due to the expertise of health professionals, availability of cutting-edge technology and high regulatory standards. As China's aged care industry develops and its healthcare service delivery sector matures, there will be a greater need for these high quality products and services and more demand for the businesses providing them.
This report is the latest in a series of 'Demystifying Chinese Investment in Australia' reports, by KPMG and The University of Sydney's China Studies Centre. It analyses Chinese outbound direct investment into Australia in 2017, and includes in-depth research into the sentiments of Chinese investor companies investing in Australia.
See the full series of reports
Urbanization and Public Health in China
Edited by Professor Mu Li
Published by Imperial College Press, supported by a China Studies Centre grant
Urbanisation has dominated China's development landscape in recent decades, yet the human costs of this economic achievement are largely ignored in commentaries on the subject.
Urbanization and Public Health in China seeks to redress this imbalance by bringing together academics and researchers from across China and Australia to offer fresh perspectives on public health issues resulting from urbanisation. The analyses focus on issues of unequal access to health services by the most vulnerable groups: the elderly and rural-to-urban migrants. The book explores these issues through demographic, epidemiological and environmental change in China over the past three decades and identifies solutions to create a healthier living environment in urban China.
Other countries undergoing similar rapid urbanisation can learn vital lessons from these challenges and solutions. This book provides a comprehensive overview for academics and researchers working on urbanization in developing nations, as well as a reference point for policy makers and public health practitioners.
Floating Time: Chinese Prints, 1954-2002
Edited by Dr Stephen Whiteman
Published by Power Publications, supported by a China Studies Centre grant
Floating Time: Chinese Prints 1954–2002 brings together, for the first time, the University of Sydney Art Collection's 93 modern and contemporary Chinese prints. One of only three major collections of twentieth-century Chinese prints in Australia, this substantial collection includes national-prize winning prints and works by internationally acclaimed artists, including Zhao Zongzao and Su Xinping.
The half-century represented here reveals not only the development of the powerful woodcut tradition under Mao, but also the rapid expansion of printmaking as artists embraced a broader set of themes and more experimental techniques. Such developments reflect the tumultuous periods in which these works were produced and offer a unique and intimate glimpse into the lives of these fifty artists – a vastly different perspective from the familiar forms of contemporary Chinese art seen in better known international art circuits
Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China
By Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson
Published by Routledge, London, UK
In the first half of the twentieth century, a diverse community of Australians settled in Shanghai. There they forged a 'China trade', circulating goods, people and ideas across the South China Sea, from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Sydney and Melbourne. This trade has been largely forgotten in contemporary Australia, where future economic ties trump historical memory when it comes to popular perceptions of China. After the First World War, Australians turned to Chinese treaty ports, fleeing poverty and unemployment, while others sought to 'save' China through missionary work and socialist ideas. Chinese Australians, disillusioned by Australian racism under the White Australia Policy, arrived to participate in Chinese nation building and ended up forging business empires which survive to this day.
This book follows the life trajectories of these Australians, providing a means by which we can address one of the pervading tensions of race, empire and nation in the twentieth century: the relationship between working-class aspirations for social mobility and the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of white settler societies.
Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier
By Dr David Brophy
Published by Harvard University Press
The meeting of the Russian and Qing empires in the nineteenth century had dramatic consequences for Central Asia's Muslim communities. Along this frontier, a new political space emerged, shaped by competing imperial and spiritual loyalties, cross-border economic and social ties, and the revolutions that engulfed Russia and China in the early twentieth century. David Brophy explores how a community of Central Asian Muslims responded to these historic changes by reinventing themselves as the modern Uyghur nation.
As exiles and émigrés, traders and seasonal laborers, a diverse diaspora of Muslims from China's northwest province of Xinjiang spread to Russian territory, where they became enmeshed in political and intellectual currents among Russia's Muslims. From the many national and transnational discourses of identity that circulated in this mixed community, the rhetoric of Uyghur nationhood emerged as a rallying point in the tumult of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War. Working both with and against Soviet policy, a shifting alliance of constituencies invoked the idea of a Uyghur nation to secure a place for itself in Soviet Central Asia and to spread the revolution to Xinjiang. Although its existence was contested in the fractious politics of the 1920s, in the 1930s the Uyghur nation achieved official recognition in the Soviet Union and China.
Grounded in a wealth of little-known archives from across Eurasia, Uyghur Nation offers a bottom-up perspective on nation-building in the Soviet Union and China and provides crucial background to the ongoing contest for the history and identity of Xinjiang.
A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy
By Associate Professor Justin Hastings
Published by Cornell University Press
North Korea has survived the end of the Cold War, massive famine, numerous regional crises, punishing sanctions, and international stigma. In A Most Enterprising Country, Justin V. Hastings explores the puzzle of how the most politically isolated state in the world nonetheless sustains itself in large part by international trade and integration into the global economy. The world's last Stalinist state is also one of the most enterprising, as Hastings shows through in-depth examinations of North Korea s import and export efforts, with a particular focus on restaurants, the weapons trade, and drug trafficking. Tracing the development of trade networks inside and outside North Korea through the famine of the 1990s and the onset of sanctions in the mid-2000s, Hastings argues that the North Korean state and North Korean citizens have proved pragmatic and adaptable, exploiting market niches and making creative use of brokers and commercial methods to access the global economy.
North Korean trade networks which include private citizens as well as the Kim family and high-ranking elites accept high levels of risk and have become experts at operating in the blurred zones between licit and illicit, state and nonstate, and formal and informal trade. This entrepreneurialism has allowed North Korea to survive; but it has also caused problems for foreign firms investing in the country, emboldens the North Korean state in its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and may continue to shape the economy in the future."
Handbook on Class and Social Stratification in China
Edited by Professor Yingjie Guo
Published by Edward Elgar Publishing
This comprehensive, interdisciplinary handbook illustrates the patterns of class transformation in China since 1949, situating them in their historical context. Presenting detailed case studies of social stratification and class formation in a wide range of settings, the expert contributors provide valuable insights into multiple aspects of China's economy, polity and society. The Handbook on Class and Social Stratification in China explores largely neglected contemporary topics such as women's social mobility in relation to marriage and the high school entrance exam as a class sorter, placing it at the forefront of progressive literature.
Book: Class Work: Vocational Schools and China's Urban Youth
By Dr Terry Woronov
Images of Chinese teens with their heads buried in books for hours on end, preparing for high-stakes exams, dominate understandings of Chinese youth in both China and the West. But what about young people who are not on the path to academic success? What happens to youth who fail the state's high-stakes exams? What many — even in China — don't realize is that up to half of the nation's youth are flunked out of the academic education system after 9th grade.
Class Work explores the consequences for youth who have failed these exams, through an examination of two urban vocational schools in Nanjing, China. Through a close look at the students' backgrounds, experiences, the schools they attend, and their trajectories into the workforce, T.E. Woronov explores the value systems in contemporary China that stigmatise youth in urban vocational schools as 'failures', and the political and economic structures that funnel them into working-class futures. She argues that these marginalized students and schools provide a privileged window into the ongoing, complex intersections between the socialist and capitalist modes of production in China today and the rapid transformation of China's cities into post-industrial, service-based economies. This book advances the notion that urban vocational schools are not merely 'holding tanks' for academic failures; instead they are incipient sites for the formation of a new working class.
Paradoxes of Post-Mao Rural Reform: Initial Steps Toward A New Chinese Countryside, 1976-1981
By Emeritus Professor Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun
Published by Routledge
The decollectivisation of Chinese agriculture in the early post-Mao period is widely recognized as a critical part of the overall reform program. But the political process leading to this outcome is poorly understood. A number of approaches have dominated the existing literature: 1) a power/policy struggle between Hua Guofeng's alleged neo-Maoists and Deng Xiaoping's reform coalition; 2) the power of the peasants; and 3) the leading role of provincial reformers. The first has no validity, while second and third must be viewed through more complex lenses.
This study provides a new interpretation challenging conventional wisdom. Its key finding is that a game changer emerged in spring 1980 at the time Deng replaced Hua as CCP leader, but the significant change in policy was not a product of any clash between these two leaders. Instead, Deng endorsed Zhao Ziyang's policy initiative that shifted emphasis away from Hua's pro-peasant policy of increased resources to the countryside, to a pro-state policy that reduced the rural burden on national coffers. To replace the financial resources, policy measures including household farming were implemented with considerable provincial variations. The major unexpected production increases in 1982 confirmed the arrival of decollectivization as the template on the ground. The dynamics of this policy change has never been adequately explained.
Paradoxes of Post-Mao Rural Reform offers a deep empirical study of critical developments involving politics from the highest levels in Beijing to China's villages, and in the process challenges many broader accepted interpretations of the politics of reform. It is essential reading for students and scholars of contemporary Chinese political history.
Our China studies community
from the Sydney China Business Forum
Capitalising on China's Digital Revolution (PDF 458KB)
Demystifying Chinese Investment in Australia (English) (PDF 3.8MB)
Demystifying Chinese Investment in Australia (Chinese) (PDF 2.6MB)
The Development of Financial Services in China: The role for Australia (452KB)
Australia-China health care opportunities (English) (PDF 550KB)
Australia-China health care opportunities (Chinese) (PDF 1.5MB)
Domestic Services: the unsung heroes of our China export story (English) (PDF 1.5MB)
Domestic Services: the unsung heroes of our China export story (Chinese) (PDF 2.1MB)


Two years ago I was convinced to get the flu shot for the first time ever because I had been feeling unwell. Guess who got the flu, shortly thereafter, for the first ever in my life that year?
Last year? I didn't get the flu shot or the flu.
While there are a bunch of "recommended" and whatnot shots that are "suggested" before going for hajj, the only required one is the flu shot. So I got it.
Guess who got the flu?
No, I am not saying that the flu shot causes the flu.
All I am saying is: I have better luck without the flu shot. And if I am going to get the flu anyways, why bother getting said shot?
I think I'll take my chances.


text:
Posted on February 21, 2017 by Delaware Gazette
Group asks Tiberi for town hall meeting before voting on health care measure
Constituents from Ohio's 12th Congressional District delivered a petition to Congressman Pat Tiberi's Worthington office Thursday afternoon demanding that he hold a town hall meeting to discuss his efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The petition includes 1,080 signatures, according to a news release issued by organizers of the petition. The petition effort was spearheaded by John Russell, owner of Fall Creek Farm in Galena.
It was delivered to Tiberi's staff.
"The Affordable Care Act played a key role in helping me start my small business," Russell said. "I was able to keep my coverage under my parents' plan until I turned 26. Over three years, I saved about $8,000, which I was able to invest in the business."
For some who signed the petition, the ACA has been a vital source for health insurance coverage.
"As a Type 1 diabetic, I have no other choice for health insurance," said Delaware County resident Mindy Hedges.
"There are more than 700,000 other diabetics living in Ohio and many of us have been turned down by insurance companies because of this pre-existing condition. Without the ACA, I would not be able to afford the $700 per month of prescription drugs I need or the additional costs for doctors' visits and bloodwork. We need Representative Tiberi and Senator (Rob) Portman to help us, even if it means crossing party lines to do so," Hedges said.
For Julie Houston, of Delaware, the ACA provides critical ongoing support.
"I had aggressive breast cancer last year that spread to my lymph system. I might have died if not for the ACA," Houston said. "I continue to rely on the ACA to help cover the costs of life-saving medication and check-ups. I need physical and occupational therapy to manage the damage done by surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation.
"I'll need to continue that therapy for at least five years. Without that ongoing treatment, there's no doubt I would have a poorer quality of life and a higher risk of recurrence. My life depends on the affordable healthcare that the ACA provides."
Constituents have asked that Tiberi's office provide "a yes or no answer by Monday, Jan. 30 at 10 a.m., to their request for a town hall."
Repealing the ACA before a new bill is ready could result in nearly one million Ohioans losing their health coverage, according to an Urban Institute study. Link: http://www.urban.org/research/publication/implications-partial-repeal-aca-through-reconciliation.
http://aimmedianetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2017/02/web1_ACA_petition_1-1.jpg
Hi! A visitor to our site felt the following article might be of interest to you: Group asks Tiberi for town hall meeting before voting on health care measure. Here is a link to that story: https://www.delgazette.com/news/50025/group-asks-tiberi-for-town-hall-meeting-before-voting-on-health-care-measure-2


Trillion Cut Diamond Cz. Solitaire Trillion Cut Diamond Cz. Solitaire [E520C] - $36.95 : Jewellery store .com.au!
This is a petite 'trillion cut' Solitaire Engagement Ring!
Compare it to real diamond. They won't be able to tell the difference. The gorgeous 'Trillion cut' centre stone can't be discerned from real Diamond by the naked eye.


text:
Read Next New Evidence Shows Trump 'Personally Implicated' In Potential Fraud, Including Lying About the Size of His Manhattan Apartment
March 1, 2016 9:42PM ET
Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump
Bush was just an appetizer — Trump would be the main course
@mtaibbi	Follow
Matt Taibbi's Most Recent Stories
Forgiving Student Debt Alone Won't Fix the Crisis
Trump's Gone, So What's Next for the Democrats?
Big Pharma's Covid-19 Profiteers
To hear GOP insiders tell it, Doomsday is here. If Donald Trump scores huge on tonight and seizes control of the nomination in the Super Tuesday primaries, it will mark the beginning of the end of the Republican Party, and perhaps the presidency.
But Trump isn't the beginning of the end. George W. Bush was. The amazing anti-miracle of the Bush presidency is what makes today's nightmare possible.
People forget what an extraordinary thing it was that Bush was president. Dubya wasn't merely ignorant when compared with other politicians or other famous people. No, he would have stood out as dumb in just about any setting.
If you could somehow run simulations where Bush was repeatedly shipwrecked on a desert island with 20 other adults chosen at random, he would be the last person listened to by the group every single time. He knew absolutely nothing about anything. He wouldn't have been able to make fire, find water, build shelter or raise morale. It would have taken him days to get over the shock of no room service.
How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable
70 Greatest Music Documentaries of All Time
Bush went to the best schools but was totally ignorant of history, philosophy, science, geography, languages and the arts. Asked by a child in South Carolina in 1999 what his favorite book had been growing up, Bush replied, "I can't remember any specific books."
Bush showed no interest in learning and angrily rejected the idea that a president ought to be able to think his way through problems. As Mark Crispin Miller wrote in The Bush Dyslexicon, Bush's main rhetorical tool was the tautology — i.e., saying the same thing, only twice.
"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce" was a classic Bush formulation. "Our nation must come together to unite" was another. One of my favorites was: "I understand that the unrest in the Middle East creates unrest throughout the region."
Academics and political junkies alike giddily compiled these "Bushisms" along with others that were funny for different reasons ("I'm doing what I think what's wrong," for instance).
But Bush's tautologies weren't gaffes or verbal slips. They just represented the limits of his reasoning powers: A = A. There are educational apps that use groups of images to teach two-year-olds to recognize that an orange is like an orange while a banana is a banana. Bush was stalled at that developmental moment. And we elected him president.
Bush's eight years were like the reigns of a thousand overwhelmed congenital monarchs from centuries past. While the prince rode horses, romped with governesses and blew the national treasure on britches or hedge-mazes, the state was run by Svengalis and Rasputins who dealt with what Bush once derisively described as "what's happening in the world."
In Bush's case he had Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove thinking out the problem of how to get re-elected, while Dick "Vice" Cheney, Donald "Rummy" Rumsfeld and Andrew "Tangent Man" Card took care of the day-to-day affairs of the country (part of Card's responsibilities involved telling Bush what was in the newspapers he refused to read).
It took hundreds of millions of dollars and huge armies of such behind-the-throne puppet-masters to twice (well, maybe twice) sell a voting majority on the delusion of George Bush, president. Though people might quibble with the results, the scale of this as a purely political achievement was awesome and heroic, comparable to a moon landing or the splitting of the atom.
Guiding Bush the younger through eight years of public appearances was surely the greatest coaching job in history. It was like teaching a donkey to play the Waldstein Sonata. It's breathtaking to think about now.
But one part of it backfired. Instead of using an actor like Reagan to sell policies to the public, the Svengalis behind Bush sold him as an authentic man of the people, the guy you'd want to have an O'Doul's with.
Rove correctly guessed that a generation of watching TV and Hollywood movies left huge blocs of Americans convinced that people who read books, looked at paintings and cared about spelling were either serial killers or scheming to steal bearer bonds from the Nakatomi building. (Even knowing what a bearer bond is was villainous).
The hero in American culture, meanwhile, was always a moron with a big gun who learned everything he needed to know from cowboy movies. The climax of pretty much every action movie from the mid-eighties on involved shotgunning the smarty-pants villain in the face before he could finish some fruity speech about whatever.
Rove sold Bush as that hero. He didn't know anything, but dammit, he was sure about what he didn't know. He was John McClane, and Al Gore was Hans Gruber. GOP flacks like Rove rallied the whole press corps around that narrative, to the point where anytime Gore tried to nail Bush down on a point of policy, pundits blasted him for being a smug know-it-all using wonk-ese to talk over our heads — as Cokie Roberts put it once, "this guy from Washington doing Washington-speak."
This is like the scene from the increasingly prophetic Idiocracy where no one can understand Luke Wilson, a person of average intelligence rocketed 500 years into America's idiot future, because whenever he tries to reason with people, they think he's talking "like a fag."
The Roves of the world used Bush's simplicity to win the White House. Once they got there, they used the levers of power to pillage and scheme like every other gang of rapacious politicians ever. But the plan was never to make ignorance a political principle. It was just a ruse to win office.
Now the situation is the opposite. Now GOP insiders are frantic at the prospect of an uncultured ignoramus winning the presidency. A group of major donors and GOP strategists even wrote out a memo outlining why a super PAC dedicated to stopping Trump was needed.
"We want voters to imagine Donald Trump in the Big Chair in the Oval Office, with responsibilities for worldwide confrontation at his fingertips," they wrote. Virginia Republican congressman Scott Ringell wrote an open letter to fellow Republicans arguing that a Trump presidency would be "reckless, embarrassing and ultimately dangerous."
Hold on. It wasn't scary to imagine George "Is our children learning?" Bush with the "responsibilities for worldwide confrontation" at his fingertips? It wasn't embarrassing to have a president represent the U.S. on the diplomatic stage who called people from Kosovo "Kosovians" and people from Greece "Grecians?"
It was way worse. Compared to Bush, Donald Trump is a Rutherford or an Einstein. In the same shipwreck scenario, Trump would have all sorts of ideas — all wrong, but at least he'd think of something, instead of staring at the sand waiting for a hotel phone to rise out of it.
Of course, Trump's ignorance level, considering his Wharton education, is nearly as awesome as what Bush accomplished in spite of Yale. In fact, unlike Bush, who had the decency to not even try to understand the news, Trump reads all sorts of crazy things and believes them all. From theories about vaccines causing autism to conspiratorial questions about the pillow on Antonin Scalia's face to Internet legends about Americans using bullets dipped in pigs' blood to shoot Muslims, there isn't any absurd idea Donald Trump isn't willing to entertain, so long as it fits in with his worldview.
But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron. That's really what it comes down to.
And all of the Beltway's hooting and hollering about how "embarrassing" and "dangerous" Trump is will fall on deaf ears, because as gullible as Americans can be, they're smart enough to remember being told that it was OK to vote for George Bush, a man capable of losing at tic-tac-toe.
We're about to enter a dark period in the history of the American experiment. The Founding Fathers never imagined an electorate raised on Toddlers and Tiaras and Temptation Island. Remember, just a few decades ago, shows like Married With Children and Roseanne were satirical parodies. Now the audience can't even handle that much irony. A lot of American culture is just dumb slobs cheering on other dumb slobs. It was inevitable, once we broke the seal with Bush, that our politics would become the same thing.
Madison and Jefferson never foresaw this situation. They knew there was danger of demagoguery, but they never imagined presidential candidates exchanging "mine's bigger than yours" jokes or doing "let's laugh at the disabled" routines. There's no map in the Constitution to tell us how to get out of where we're going. All we can do now is hold on.
In This Article: Donald Trump,	Election 2016,	George W. Bush


There is no denying that Alexandra Rinder is paving the way for an entirely new generation of women bodyboarders.
The Canary Islands shredder has been pushing the limits of her sport by bringing an entirely new level of skill and difficulty on the women's world tour.
In 2014, at aged 16, she become the youngest world champion ever seen in bodyboarding, eclipsing the record set by Andre Botha. And in 2015, she backed that up with a second straight world title, again the youngest ever to win two back to back titles.
Who knows what she will bring in 2016, but looking back on this short highlight reel of her 2015 campaign, we know the future of women's bodyboarding is in safe hands.
Edit courtesy of the APB.


text:
MLS Cup Playoffs
MLS East
MLS West
NWSL Playoffs
NWSL Scores/Standings
January 2020 Youth Cup
May 2020 Youth Cup
Nashville SC unveils home kit for inaugural MLS season
C.J. Sapong: 2020 expansion likely is pivotal moment for MLS on global stage
Nashville SC emphasizes defense with 2020 MLS SuperDraft picks
2020 MLS SuperDraft selections Rounds 1 & 2
Inter Miami CF takes Clemson's Robbie Robinson with top pick in 2020 MLS SuperDraft
Orlando City determined to stop surrendering early goals
Jeff Shain, Pro Soccer USA
Orlando City goalkeeper Brian Rowe (23) dives to make a a save against Real Salt Lake at Rio Tinto Stadium Saturday. (Jeff Swinger-USA TODAY Sports)
SANFORD, Fla. — If there was a moment to embody Orlando City's slew of slow starts, Sam Johnson's goal last Saturday would be a good place.
The Real Salt Lake forward actually took a tumble while sprinting into the box, got up and still found enough space to get to the ball and squeeze a shot between Lions goalkeeper Brian Rowe and the near post.
Boom. Lions trail 1-0 in less than 20 minutes. Again.
"You think we're in a good spot," Orlando City coach James O'Connor said, "and then their first attack — goal. That needs to stop."
It's become endemic to the Lions' uneven opening stretch. Not only has Orlando City given up the first goal in five of seven contests thus far, each one has come within the first 20 minutes.
Johnson tallied in the 17th minute of RSL's 2-1 victory. One week earlier, Colorado's Kei Kamara scored just nine minutes in, though Orlando City eventually came back for a 4-3 win. And before that, D.C. United's Steve Birnbaum needed just six minutes to put the Lions down.
Add it up, and Orlando City has spent just 32 minutes on even footing during its past three games before having to start chasing a result. And that doesn't count going down in the 13th minute of its opener against NYCFC and the 14th minute against Montreal.
"We've made it very difficult to be in complete control," O'Connor said Wednesday. "We allow a goal at a really poor time, and then you're chasing the game. I think for our overall quality and level of performance, we've been really pleased. But that's a big factor that we have to stop doing."
Certainly the Lions' revolving situation on the back line hasn't helped. Lamine Sané, Alex de John and Carlos Ascues have been in and out of the lineup with injuries. None made the trip to Salt Lake City last weekend.
Swedish centerback Robin Jansson has started the past four outings, flanked on Saturday by Shane O'Neill and rookie Kamal Miller. It was Miller's hesitancy to go after the loose ball after Johnson fell that allowed the Liberian international to recover.
O'Connor, though, is quick to note that some goals have been the result of lapses higher up the field.
"Too often, we look back and it's been created by a poor decision from us and a knock-on effect," he said. "I think the attention in those transitional moments needs to be better."
Sané was fairly concise in his assessment.
"It's just mentality," he said Wednesday. "It's your head. We train hard all week for the game on the weekend. At that moment, we have to be ready."
The question is how to change that mindset – preferably in time for Saturday's home game against a Vancouver Whitecaps side still seeking its first win.
"I think you bring it up because you have to address it," O'Connor said. "We've had lovely passages where we've created a lot of chances during games. But quite often in the focus and the concentration, we get punished. So we need to stop that.
"We need to make sure we're way more intense and we're understanding the process."
As aggrieved as Lions fans might have been to see both Nani and Dwyer start on the bench at Rio Tinto, O'Connor remains resolute in his approach to make sure his most reliable scorers are options for the long haul.
"The easy thing as a coach would be to just play those guys every week," he said. "But you have to have a little more character and a bit more courage to make the big decisions. I'm not going to shy away from that.
"I'm going to make decisions that I believe is right for us longer-term and not just what is right for us that particular week."
That's of particular concern regarding Nani, who is 32 and began his European season last July. O'Connor has made a point of having regular discussions with the Portuguese international about pacing in essentially a 16- or 17-month double season.
"You need a common-sense approach," he said. "Playing at the level he has, with his intensity — and then you throw into the mix the travel — it's physically not possible. You need to understand from the outset how you're going to manage it."
Dwyer is a different case, O'Connor said, as he regains form after a quad injury. "He's definitely looking fitter, which is really positive," the coach said. "We just need to make sure that we manage it."
Sané, who didn't make the trip to Utah as he continues to nurse a calf injury, was back at training and indicated he's ready to step back into the lineup.
"It was a good moment to rest for me," the Senegal international said. "I worked hard this weekend with our fitness coach and I feel real good."
Sané had played the full 90 in Orlando City's previous two games, after coming on as a substitute against the New York Red Bulls. Miller got his first start on the back line since mid-March.
Ascues and de John, meantime, continue to make progress in returning from hamstring injuries. De John was set to do change-of-direction work on Wednesday, O'Connor said, and Ascues was likely to follow Thursday.
Related TopicsAlex De JohnCarlos AscuesfeaturedJames O'ConnorKamal MillerLamine SanéOrlando CityRobin Jansson
Orlando City Schedule
Get Lions Tickets
Don't miss a match this season. Click here to get your Orlando City SC tickets.
Don't miss the top MLS stories. Get a free weekly news digest from Pro Soccer USA:
Orlando City Gear
Support Pro Soccer USA by getting your team gear here
More in Orlando City SC
Orlando City rookie Daryl Dike looks to other young players for guidance during first week
As the rookie adjusts to his new team, Dike is looking to second-year players...
Returning Orlando City players try to help new signees quickly adapt to MLS
Returning Tesho Akindele and Chris Mueller look to use leadership and bilingual skills to...
Orlando City opens first training of preseason hungry, focused on playoffs
New coach Óscar Pareja set high expectations early as the Lions kicked off preseason...
FC Dallas midfielder Ryan Hollingshead excited to see Óscar Pareja back in MLS
The midfielder believes that Pareja will help Orlando City find its identity in its...
MLS Power Rankings Week 7: The West is the best
MLS clubs to seek training compensation, solidarity payments
Powered by Orlando Sentinel
Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Copyright © 2019 Pro Soccer USA.
MLS Referee of the Year Allen Chapman talks VAR, 'clear and obvious' errors
USWNT stars Ali Krieger, Ashlyn Harris to be featured in Budweiser Super Bowl commercial
North America-based African players learn 2022 World Cup qualification paths
DC United acquires midfielder Julian Gressel from Atlanta United


Existing users must upgrade their accounts before being able to use WinkerkOnline. This involves switching from their current username and password to an email address as username and a user selected password. To do this, just log in with your old username and password then the system will guide you through the steps of upgrading to your new account.


The NextGen Awards recognize individuals for their intelligence, exuberance and dedication to improving government. Community members were asked to nominate themselves or a coworker as an awards nominee.
All awards finalists were interviewed and included in the video.
NextGen is a movement. It's about inspiring government innovation. It's about providing training and leadership opportunities to people new in government. It's about helping managers bridge the generation gap to help develop and retain new talent. It's about creating the absolute best next generation of government.
A panel of government leaders reviewed and voted on finalists, and finalists received free VIP passes to the Next Generation of Government Training Summit, in addition to being publicly recognized.
See the rest of the event covered here.


text:
Posts Tagged 'speculative realism'
Where Is Your Labor Day Now Links
* Great local event alert: George Lipsitz (Black Studies, UCSB) will be speaking at UWM'S Golda Meir on Wednesday (September 9) at 4:30pm on "The Ferguson Conjuncture: Why the Humanities Matter Now."
* One of Jaimee's poems was on Lake Effect on Friday; her full interview on the program is coming soon.
* After meeting my class and talking a bit with them about their familiarity with Tolkien I've updated my syllabus with a few supplementary readings.
* There's a storm in the poetry world, this one set off by the bio in Best American Poetry 2015 of Michael Derrick Hudson, who has been publishing under the name Yi-Fen Chou. A pre-post-mortem from editor Sherman Alexie.
* @AcademicsSay: The Story Behind a Social-Media Experiment.
* Wikipedia Editors Uncover Extortion Scam And Extensive Cybercrime Syndicate.
* Iowa's New President Is Choice Faculty Opposed. Unpopular pick. On the Suborning of Free Speech and Shared Governance at the University of Iowa.
* UH shifts millions from academics to sports.
* Harvard as tax-free hedge fund.
* Speaking for the humanities.
* Instead of hoping that higher education should be the solution to all of our economic problems, we should follow Cassidy's advice and return to the notion that college is a public good and an end in itself: "Being more realistic about the role that college degrees play would help families and politicians make better choices. It could also help us appreciate the actual merits of a traditional broad-based education, often called a liberal-arts education, rather than trying to reduce everything to an economic cost-benefit analysis." If we focus on making higher education more accessible and affordable as we enhance its quality, we can at least make sure that it does not enhance inequality and decrease social mobility. The first step is to stop believing that college degrees produce good jobs.
* Meant to keep academics compliant, obedient, and domesticated, audit culture comes to Canadian universities at an otherwise exciting moment for research. Indigenous epistemologies and publicly engaged, participatory, and open forms of research are asserting their places in the academic landscape today. In response to rich debates about what constitutes knowledge, universities are being called to feature relationally and community oriented research outcomes. But with audit culture's narrow benchmarks and retrograde understandings of what counts as real research, there is little breathing room in the academy for public engagement, community-based research, and Indigenous forms of knowing, since these methodologies can't be easily captured in the audit forms. Indeed, academics are driven away from socially engaged scholarly activities in part because they are more difficult to measure, assess, and judge.
* Daniels seems mildly indignant at the extent to which he has been monitored by Disney, now the home of the Star Wars franchise. As well he might. He didn't just step off the first space-cruiser from Mos Eisley: he is 69 years old and has been playing C-3PO since before many of his current paymasters were born. "The secrecy has been beyond ludicrous," he sighs. "For heaven's sake, it's a movie. When I got the script, it was typed in black on paper of the deepest red so you couldn't photocopy it. I got a hangover just reading it." He was censured by the studio recently for mentioning on Twitter a fellow actor from The Force Awakens.
* Obamaism distilled: In Alaska, Obama warns against climate change but OKs drilling.
* Scientists Calculated How Much Lembas Bread Would be Needed to Walk to Mordor.
* The Privatization of Childhood: Childhood has become a period of high-stakes preparation for life in a stratified economy.
* The oceans are full of bodies. The things they carry. Migrants welcome.
* TNI, on the counterfeit.
* Assessing the Legacy of That Thing That Happened After Poststructuralism.
* Jacobin on Radical America and on the Ashley Madison bots.
* The earning power of philosophy majors.
* ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
* Paid Leave for Fathers Is Good for Everybody.
* The experience will be disheartening, but remember: it is you who chose to play Adjunct Sudoku.
* The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional. Someone tell Wisconsin!
* Deaf Culture and Sign Language: A Reading List.
* After all the media fawning over the nonprofit Teach for America, there are some veterans of the program who are now telling a different story. "Teach for America Counter-Narratives: Alumni Speak Up and Speak Out" contains 20 essays with anecdotes that seem too crazy to make up.
* 10,000 zines and counting: a library's quest to save the history of fandom.
* The end of overparenting. The end of workplace friendships.
* Wake up and smell the weird.
* "Stonehenge II: Archaeologists uncover true scale of 'superhenge' – discovered just a few miles from famous prehistoric monument."
* The total surveillance society, but with a human face.
* Toronto's parking ticket jubilee.
* Alzheimer's at 38.
* PC Comedy and Paul Revere vs. Putting Out Fire with Gasoline.
* Free your mind; start high school later in the morning.
* Course List for Rupert Giles, Master of Library Sciences Candidate, Michaelmas Term 1982.
* And of course you had me at The Alternative Universe Of Soviet Arcade Games.
Tagged with @AcademicsSay, academia, academic freedom, adjuncts, affirmative action, Alaska, Alexander Galloway, Alzheimer's disease, America, Anthony Daniels, apps, Ashley Madison, audit culture, austerity, Barack Obama, Best American Poetry 2015, Buffy, C-3PO, CEOs, charter school, chatbots, childhood, China Miéville, class struggle, climate change, college, college sports, comedy, counterfeit, deaf culture, Denmark, Disney, Episode 7, Europa, fanzines, Ferguson, free speech, friendship, games, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, George Lipsitz, Giles, high school, How the University Works, immigration, Iowa, Jacobin, Jaimee, jubilee, kids today, Lake Effect, librarians, libraries, Marquette, migrants, Milwaukee, neoliberalism, New Weird, Obamaism, oceans, OOO, our brains work in interesting but ultimately depressing ways, outer space, overparenting, parking tickets, paternity leave, philosophy major, poetry, political correctness, politics, privatize everything, race, racism, Sam Houston State University, science fiction, secrecy, shared governance, Sherman Alexie, sign language, social media, Soviet Union, speculative realism, standardized tests, Stonehenge, surveillance society, syllabi, Teach for America, The Force Awakens, the humanities, the Left, TNI, Tolkien, Toronto, trigger warnings, true crime, Twitter, UWM, what it is I think I'm doing, Wikipedia, Wisconsin, Won't somebody think of the children?, work
Wednesday Links!
* Marquette English's course offerings for summer and fall 2015, including my courses on Science Fiction as Genre, J.R.R. Tolkien, and American Literature after the American Century.
* Speaking of my courses, this is such an incredible answer to the last few weeks of my cultural preservation course I almost feel as though I somehow made it up.
* An amazing late comment on my Universities, Mismanagement, and Permanent Crisis post, including some great commentary on the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.
* My review isn't coming for a few months, but I really loved Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora. I can't wait to talk to people about it. I don't want to spoil anything so I'll keep my mouth shut for now.
* If you want a vision of the future: Sweet Briar College, Citing 'Financial Challenges,' Will Close Its Doors in August. (More, more.) Clarkson U., Union Graduate College Explore Merger. It's Final: UNC Board of Governors Votes To Close Academic Centers. Jindal cuts higher ed by 78%.
* Where has all the money gone? The decline in faculty salaries at American colleges and universities over the past 40 years.
* It's always "the end of college."
* "De-tenure." Don't worry, it's just another regrettable drafting error!
* Why we occupy: Dutch universities at the crossroads.
* The academic-fraud scandal at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has focused largely on how fake undergraduate classes helped athletes maintain their eligibility to compete. In an article in The News & Observer over the weekend, a former UNC official says athletics officials also sometimes asked the university's graduate school to bend the rules to admit athletes in order to extend their eligibility.
* This is the best Dean of Eureka Moments post yet. Maybe literally the best possible.
associate vice provost of failure successes
— Dean O. Eureka (@deaneureka) February 28, 2015
* College admissions and former inmates.
* Nine out of ten startups fail, which is why every institution in society should be converted to the startup model immediately.
* The Search for a Useable Past: An Interview with Paul Buhle on Radical America.
* The politicization of even the idea of knowledge.
* Michigan Frat's 48-Hour Rager Wrecks Resort, Causes $430,000 in Damages.
* Le Guin vs. Ishiguo: "Are they going to say this is fantasy?"
* The United States of Megadrought: If you think that California is dry now, wait till the 2050s.
* US sea level north of New York City 'jumped by 128mm.'
* A Major Surge in Atmospheric Warming Is Probably Coming in the Next Five Years.
* Vox considers the end of American democracy: 1, 2.
* Against the West Wing.
* Against "learning styles."
* Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules. Hillary Clinton's personal email account looks bad now. But it was even worse at the time.
* …whose frown / And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command / Tell that its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things…
* Why aren't the seven witnesses to Dendinger's nonexistent assault on Cassard already facing felony charges? Why are all but one of the cops who filed false reports still wearing badges and collecting paychecks? Why aren't the attorneys who filed false reports facing disbarment? Dendinger's prosecutors both filed false reports, then prosecuted Dendinger based on the reports they knew were false. They should be looking for new careers — after they get out of jail.
* When A Newspaper Gave Blade Runner's Replicant Test To Mayor Candidates.
* "An ode to Juiceboxxx, a 27-year-old rapper from Milwaukee no one's ever heard of."
* "When Your Father Is the BTK Serial Killer, Forgiveness Is Not Tidy."
* Scott Walker Wants To Stop Funding Renewable Energy Research Center. Of course he does.
* Defense Bill Passes, Giving Sacred Native American Sites To Mining Company.
* The forgotten masterpieces of African modernism.
* Man gets life in prison for selling $20 worth of weed to undercover cop.
* Justice department determines Ferguson is a terrible place.
* Wrong way Obama?
* The Americans and austerity.
* Two ways of looking at income inequality.
* How a French insurer wrote the worst contract in the world and sold it to thousands of clients.
* Teach students about consent in high school.
* Vermont Town May Allow 16- And 17-Year-Olds To Vote In Local Elections.
* Crunching the numbers: How Long Can A Spinoff Like 'Better Call Saul' Last?
* What Marvel Characters End Up Being Called In Other Languages.
* Panpsychism's Labyrinth.
* Careers of the future: professional dumpster diver.
* It's where those parallel lives diverge, though, that might provide a lasting new insight. Beginning on the day in 1968 when Jack was drafted and Jeff was not, Jack suffered a series of shifts and setbacks that his brother managed to avoid: two years serving stateside in the military, an early marriage, two children in quick succession, a difficult divorce, and finally, in the biggest blow of all, the sudden death of his teenage son. After these key divergences in their lives, Jack went on to develop not only Parkinson's but two other diseases that Jeff was spared, glaucoma and prostate cancer. The twins place great stock in these divergences, believing they might explain their medical trajectories ever since. Scientists are trying to figure out whether they could be right.
* The globalist sublime.
* Mars One colonists better off eating frozen pizza than local veggies.
* Local Lab In Berkeley Accidentally Discovers Solution To Fix Color Blindness.
* Things I Can Say About MFA Writing Programs Now That I No Longer Teach in One.
* How the MFA Glut Is a Disservice to Students, Teachers, and Writers.
But there's another breed of MFA program out there, proliferating constantly. These programs have nearly 100% admittance rates, fund zero percent of their students, collect outrageously high tuition, and often pay their instructors very little. And because there are so many people (rightly or wrongly) clamoring for MFAs, they have no incentive for standards, either—no incentive to reject any person, no matter how badly they write. One person's money is as green as the next, after all. If you've received an undergraduate degree and can type on a computer, you're in.
* 10-Year-Old Math Genius Studying for University Degree.
* The Last Man on Earth really shouldn't work. And yet…
* Officials at Arizona State University probably weren't expecting the full Stormfront treatment when its English department advertised a spring semester class exploring the "problem of whiteness."
* No shades of grey in teaching relationships.
* Pendulum keeps swinging: Now Americans Should Drink Much More Coffee.
* But not Keurig.
* It's been so long so I posted one of these I haven't even linked to anything about the dress yet.
* In 1971, William Powell published The Anarchist Cookbook, a guide to making bombs and drugs at home. He spent the next four decades fighting to take it out of print.
* Why Americans Don't Care About Prison Rape.
* Robear: the bear-shaped nursing robot who'll look after you when you get old. What could possibly go wrong?
* The invention of blue.
* In the 1800s, Courts Tried to Enforce Partnerships With Dolphins.
* The 16 Strangest Dragons In Dungeons & Dragons.
* Mark your everythings: Community comes back March 17.
* First the gorilla who punched the photographer, now this.
* Wes Anderson's X-Men.
* Abra kazam.
* LLAP.
* And the arc of history is long, but: North Carolina Legalizes Call Girls For Politicians.
Meanwhile, in heaven … #LeonardNimoy #LLAP pic.twitter.com/kn1a6RiDuA
— Kirsten Heffron (@KirstenHeffron) February 27, 2015
Tagged with academic fraud, administrative blight, Africa, America, American century, American literature, Anarchist's Cookbook, anarchists, animals, apocalypse, Arizona State University, Aurora, austerity, Barack Obama, Better Call Saul, Bill Clinton, Blade Runner, blue, Bobby Jindal, books, Breaking Bad, California, Clarkson University, class struggle, climate change, coffee, collapse, college admissions, college sports, color, color blindness, comedy, comics, community, consent, contracts, cultural preservation, Dan Harmon, deflation, defund everything, democracy, Democratic primary 2016, Department of Justice, dictatorship, dolphins, don't date your students, don't sleep with your students, dumpster divers, Dungeons & Dragons, ecology, eldercare, emails, epistemic closure, eureka moments, fantasy, fascism, Ferguson, fraternities, frozen pizza, genius, genre, health, Hillary Clinton, How the University Works, income inequality, insurance, Juiceboxxx, Kazuo Ishiguro, Keurig, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge, learning styles, lies and lying liars, live long and prosper, Louisiana, magic, Marquette, Mars, Mars One, Marvel, megadrought, MFAs, Michael Brown, Milwaukee, mining, mismanagement, modernism, Monica Lewinsky, MOOCs, moral panics, museums, Native American issues, NCAA, neoliberalism, Netherlands, New York City, North Carolina, nursing, obituary, octopuses, our brains work in interesting ways, Ozymandias, panpsychism, Parkinson's, Paul Buhle, pedagogy, permanent crisis, permanent cuts, photography, plantations, police brutality, police state, police violence, politics, prison-industrial complex, privatize everything, prostitution, race, racism, Radical America, rap, rape, rape culture, renewable energy, RIP, rising sea levels, Robear, robots, sabotage, sadness, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, Scott Walker, serial killers, sex, shock doctrine, slavery, speculative realism, Spock, St. Louis, Star Trek, State department, Steve Shaviro, Students for a Democratic Society, subjectivity, Sweet Briar University, teaching, television, tenure, the 60s, The Americans, the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice, The Buried Giant, the courts, the dress, the kids are all right, The Last Man on Earth, the law, the rich are different, Tolkien, Twitterbots, UNC, Union Graduate College, University of Wisconsin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Voight-Kampff Test, voting, war on drugs, water, Wes Anderson, West Wing, what it is I think I'm doing, whiteness, Wisconsin, words, writing, X-Men
Thursday Night Bummerwatch
* With all the bad news today, this is the one that really breaks my brain: Texas Says It's OK to Shoot an Escort If She Won't Have Sex With You. That's completely lunatic. I just can't believe it's a real event that happened.
* My friend Brent Bellamy has a working bibliography of U.S. post-apocalyptic fiction.
* Inequality, MOOCs and The Predator Elite.
Think about the writing-for-free model that has taken over journalism. His point can be supported by the millions made by Arianna Huffington, while many of her writers worked for little or nothing. Yes, writing is one of what Lanier is calling the "pleasant" jobs — as is teaching (I didn't say easy. But dedicated writers and educators alike see what they do as rewarding and important work.) Why should journalists or educators be working for little to no money, living at the edge of poverty, while the people at the top of this sort of economic structure are reaping enormous fortune? According to Lanier, this is a conscious breach of the all-important social contract that not only provides what he calls the "hump" of middle class citizens — that middle area surge on the economic chart where the majority of people fall — but that large, sustained middle class keeps the rest of the system going. Without it, the economy fails, as does democracy itself.
* A Dangerous Supplement: Speculative Realism, Academic Blogging, and the Future of Philosophy.
* Silicon Valley's Awful Race and Gender Problem in 3 Mind-Blowing Charts.
* And MetaFilter goes inside World War Z, a film "already being called the biggest flop in film history." So at least there's that.
Tagged with academia, America, apocalypse, blogging, capitalism, charts, class struggle, dangerous supplement, don't work for free, elites, gender, guns, How the University Works, inequality, misogyny, MOOCs, neoliberalism, oligarchy, OOO, philosophy, prostitution, race, rape, rape culture, science fiction, sexism, Silicon Valley, speculative realism, stand your ground, Texas, theory, true crime, World War Z, zombies
The Philosophy Beat
Speaking of definitive takedowns, Alex Galloway may have just posted one for speculative realism/OOO at An und für sich.
I cite this as a textbook example of the liberal bourgeois position that people from the likes of Zizek to Carl Schmitt have called "depoliticization and neutralization." It shows Harman's anti-political position quite clearly. Today we might even call this an anti-badiousian position (although Harman of course has no interest in being badiousian in the first place!). The reason is because he has no opposition to the state of the situation. By his own admission, he only expresses revulsion *after* the confrontation with the state has taken place, after he witnesses the excesses to which the state will go to hold on to power. That's a classic case of liberal neutralization ("don't rock the boat," "we just need to go along to get along," "this is the best of all possible worlds," "ontology shouldn't be political," etc.). This is thus not a political desire of any kind, merely an affective emotional response at the sight of blood. But such palpitations of the "sensitive" bourgeois heart, no matter how reformed, do not a politics make.
By contrast, Badiou's position is so useful today because he says that it's all about the *first* antagonism, not the last. To be political means that you have to *start* from the position of incompatibility with the state. In other words the political is always asymmetrical to the state of the situation. The political is always "trenchant" in this sense, always a "cutting" or polarization. Hence the appeal of Badiou's "theory of points" which forces all of the equal-footed-objects in OOO into a trenchant decision of the two: yes or no, stop or go, fight or retreat. Hardt and Negri say something similar when they show how "resistance is primary vis-a-vis power." For his part Harman essentially argues the reverse in this interview: ontology is primary (OOO "is not the handmaid of anything else"), power is secondary (Mubarak), resistance is a tertiary afterthought (the Arab Spring). Yes we should applaud the Spring when it arrives, Harman admits, but it's still just an afterthought that arrived from who knows where.
If you're still skeptical just use the old categorial imperative: if everyone in Cairo were clones of Harman, the revolution would never have happened. That's political neutralization in a nutshell. In other words there is no event for Harman. And here I agree with Mehdi Belhaj Kacem's recent characterization of Tristan Garcia's ontology, modeled closely after Harman's, as essentially a treatise on "Being Without Event."
Tagged with Alexander Galloway, Arab Spring, Badiou, definitive takedowns, Egypt, Events, object-oriented ontology, philosophy, politics, speculative realism, Tahir Square, theory
The Emperor Has No Objects – 2
Even if you don't care about all that you may get a kick out of the Speculative Realism blog generator. The best I got was "Dwindling Motifs."
Tagged with blogs, object-oriented ontology, philosophy, speculative realism, theory
The Emperor Has No Objects
The last time I mentioned speculative realism on this blog I promised to do some more serious reading and thinking it about as a penance for undue glibness. And in fact I'm doing this; not only am I reading through The Speculative Turn with some similarly skeptical Duke folks, I'm planning on attending the local Speculative Aesthetics working group with some people who are a bit more into it.
More on that later, maybe. In the meantime I think this set of posts [1, 2, 3] from Chris Vitale is something like an emperor-has-no-clothes moment for OOO, both in terms of its proposed philosophical content as well as its general tone and style of argument. At the very least it suggests important philosophical questions for which OOOists need (and aren't really providing) adequate answers, among them the self-defeatingly undefined definition of what actually constitutes an "object":
1) what determines when/if an object changes into another (genesis, dissolution, transformation)? To say 'it just happens' doesn't explain how. What is the process of change? Or do new objects emerge as if from a void, and the transition is ineffable, magical, etc? If not, why not? And where does this change come from? And if from inside objects, how then does 'the new' mediate what is between objects?
2) It seems that whenever two entities link, they are an object. But what determines the boundaries of objects, or their difference from things like process or flow? Why are objects, and jumps and distinctions between them superior to flow/process which congeal/uncongeal into objects?
3) How do we determine what to call can object? If I say 'my blue coffee mug' over there, is this a shorthand for 'that which appears to me as a blue coffee mug, but may in reality be different, to the point of even not 'really' being even a unified thing'? This is not asking whether or not qualities may be different, but whether the unity of what appears as a single object may be something which differs depending on one's relation to what is. Yes, there are infinite objects, nested in each other, one of which is the blue coffee mug, and this is split into phenomenal/real objects. But are the boundaries and distinctions between objects flexible? Is the blue coffee mug an object, but the blue coffee mug and one oxygen molecule next to it not (or a less important or real object somehow?) Is the blue coffee mug and micky mouse an object? The critique articulated by process-relation folks is that OOO imports human seeming categories into ontology, bypassing questions of episemtology, while OOO says it has shifted the terrain. How is this shift accomplished? Where do the essences which anchor qualities come from? Is the answer any better than those given by Kant/Husserl, and how might OOO get beyond the critique leveled against ding-an-sich/eidos for these figures?
Where I differ is that while I think we can say that something exists in the vicinity of the blue mug, we shouldn't say 'the blue mug exists,' at least not without a ton of qualifiers. For as soon as we say the blue mug exists, and call it the blue mug, we have qualified this existence with blueness, mugness, even a location in space and time, no matter how extended or fuzzy. And as soon as we do this, we move beyond ontology (sheer being, no?), and into the realm of qualities like blueness, mugness, etc. Now, aren't these epistemological issues? There's no denying the wavelengths emited by photons that bounce off the mug are in what humans call the blue spectrum. But this does not make the mug 'blue' to anyone but a human – and a human using the English language, for that matter.
Now, if you said 'that being, which this human describes as blue', I've got no issue. But as soon as you say the EXISTENCE of the blue mug, well, the blue mug AS SUCH does not exist anywhere except for those who have categories like blueness and mugness. Surely there's SOMETHING there. But to call it a blue mug, and to talk about the ontology of the blue mug, AS blue mug, well, unless you are talking about the ontology of the IDEA of the blue mug, rather than the blue mug as such, well, then you're taking over epistemology in the name of ontology, or, as I've said before, importing human categories into the realm of ontology.
If you follow Vitale's links you can find some opening answers to some of these issues, though none that really satisfy the objection, as well as some counter-critique about the tone and method of OOO critics themselves…
Tagged with object-oriented ontology, philosophy, speculative realism, theory
Links for the Day after Christmas
* I consider myself extremely skeptical about the overall theoretical usefulness of object-oriented ontology (see Vu's excellent Polygraph review for a primer)—frankly I consider claims like these to be so preposterous as to be self-refuting—but nonetheless I've downloaded the PDF for new anthology The Speculative Turn at the terrible risk of someday having to writing a conversion essay.
* Hippeism: pray for a cure.
* They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They? Informative, almost-SFW essay via this AskMe thread about the violence and ugliness of contemporary pornography.
* Biden says gay marriage is inevitable, and Obama is teasing that he may even soon stop pretending that he opposes it. Progress!
* Where Obama failed: Nearly One In Nine Federal Judgeships Are Now Vacant.
* Republicans say they just won't bend on the DREAM ACT. Obama's eleven-dimensional strategy of aggressive deportation hasn't brought them around at all; maybe it's time to give it up.
* UNC plans to take the fight to grade inflation. There's a pretty dramatic collective action problem here; more informative transcripts would disadvantage UNC's own students while doing little or nothing to combat any larger nationwide trends.
* The Scott Pilgrim Alternate Ending That Was Never Shot. The DVD also has the surprising original ending in which Scott goes back to Knives after all. I'm shocked this was really considered, much less lasted long enough to actually be shot.
* You had me at "Michelangelo painted a UFO."
* And, at long last, the death panels are real.
Tagged with Barack Obama, books, death panels, DREAM Act, gay rights, genetics, grade inflation, health care, hippies, immigration, Joe Biden, marriage equality, Michelangelo, object-oriented ontology, politics, Polygraph, pornography, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, speculative realism, the courts, the Senate, the truth is out there, theory, UFOs, UNC, Vu, zero-dimensional chess
RT @erichoov: Good analysis of GWU's plan to reduce enrollment: chroni.cl/2Spmnzz @stetyjohn 2 hours ago
Scenes from My Octavia Butler Book, Part 2: Parable of the Trickster


text:
Controversy · Panel Discussions · Russian Scandal · Smackdowns · Twitter
Watch Ana Navarro Calling Out Trump For His Latest Round Of BS – Video
Conservative Ana Navarro is at it again, calling bullsh*t on Trump's latest nonsense.
CNN commentator Ana Navarro is doesn't mince words when it comes to her disdain for Trump.
As CNN reports, Trump told reporters on Friday that he would not rule out military intervention in Venezuela. "We have many options for Venezuela. And by the way, I am not going to rule out a military option," Trump said following a meeting with US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
"This is our neighbor," he continued, adding: "You know, we are all over the world and we have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the people are suffering, and they are dying. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary."
Navarro took to her Twitter later that day, first remarking on a tweet Trump posted on 31 August 2013 stating: "Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III." Navarro responded: "If it wasn't so serious, it would be funny. There is an old Trump tweet for every occasion."
She then responded to Trump's statement about Venezuela with two tweets.
"In case you've been away from tv for the last 30 minutes, Trump now has us at brink of war w/North Korea AND Venezuela. Have a nice weekend," she tweeted, later adding: "Sweet Jesus. Bob Mueller better hurry the hell up before Trump ends up taking military action against at least 1 country in every continent."
Friday evening, Navarro was "calling bullsh*t," as Raw Story put it, on Trump's joke about Russia expelling U.S. diplomats during a panel discussion on CNN.
As the Los Angeles Times reports, "Trump waited a week and a half to comment on Russian President Vladimir Putin's order to cut the U.S. diplomatic staff in Moscow by hundreds of people," and "when he did, his response came as a joke."
"I want to thank him [Putin] because we're trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll," a grinning Trump told reporters on Thursday.
"There's no real reason for them to go back," Trump added, referring to the expelled diplomats. "I greatly appreciate the fact that we've been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We're going to save a lot of money."
Addressing Trump's remarks, Navarro told the panel:
There's going to come a time in this country where and it's not "if" but "when," there's going to be a natural disaster or a man-made disaster where we are going to need to hear from our president and we need to believe what he is saying.
If he wants to be funny, he can go to the White House correspondents dinner and try to be funny. If he wants to be funny, go to late-night. But being funny about U.S. diplomats getting expelled from Russia does not pass the smell test, should not be allowed, should not be justified and should not be explained away as a lame attempt at humor by the president of the United States.
You can watch Ana Navarro and the other panelists discussing "why words matter" with host Anderson Cooper. Navarro's remarks about Trump begin at about the 2-minute, 30-second mark.
Ana Navarro: Trump's 'joke' excuse about… por sarahburris