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The Lives of Others
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The Hungarian Parliament, Budapest.(Brandon Doran/Flickr)
Hungary has made a hard turn to the political right, but Holocaust survivor Karl Pfeifer, who in three decades of journalism has assailed Hungarian communists and Austrian fascists, refuses to let anti-Semitism return unchecked
James Kirchick
Speaking to a group of teenagers in Austria some years ago, the journalist Karl Pfeifer was asked if, in the depths of his sorrows as a young survivor of the Holocaust, he had ever contemplated suicide. "Suicide never," was his reply. "But occasionally, murder." Far from seeking vengeance, however, Pfeifer's motivation arises from a passion for liberal values learned through personal experience with the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century. This has made him vigilant about threats to freedom that other people may be too comfortable to notice and brought him repeatedly back to Austria and Hungary, the countries from which he escaped during the war. Living through these periods made him brave—he has since assailed Hungarian communists and Austrian fascists and is today taking aim at Hungary's controversial right-wing government—but it also gave him a distinctive sense of humor.
Traveling by train to Budapest, Hungary, from Vienna in the summer of 1980, Pfeifer was questioned by a female customs official who entered his compartment and asked him politely if he had anything to declare. Pfeifer replied that he did not, but the official looked inside his bag, where she found several dozen photocopies of a review of the memoir Seven Thousand Days in Siberia by Karlo Stajner, published in a Hungarian-language Yugoslavian newspaper. An Austrian-born, Croatian Communist, Stajner had traveled to Moscow in 1932 with dreams of building the international socialist revolution. But like so many others, he became a victim of the cold realities of Stalinist paranoia and was condemned to the gulag.
"I'm going to take away this dirt," the border official told Pfeifer.
"I draw your attention to the fact that this is not dirt," Pfeifer calmly replied in Hungarian, a language he'd had learned while living in Budapest from 1938 until fleeing for Palestine in 1943. "This comes from the official paper of the Socialist Youth of Yugoslavia," he said, in which bristling critiques of the Soviet system were not uncommon.
Thus began Pfeifer's troubles with the Hungarian Communist regime. (He would later discover from Austrian diplomats briefed about the circumstances that it was his use of the phrase "I draw your attention" and not "I beg to draw your attention" that drew the customs officer's ire.) Pfeifer was taken off the train and brought to the customs station, where a higher-ranking officer informed him that he had "provoked" the official and would be deported back to Austria. Told that the Hungarian government would pay for his return ticket, he replied: "Finally, at 51 years of age, the Hungarian state pays something for me? Very good."
Until his final deportation from the country in 1987, Pfeifer acted as a courier between Hungary's dissidents and the West. "Through Karl Pfeifer we obtained real, normal contact with the democratic, liberal, outside world," Attila Ara-Kovacs, a Hungarian dissident, said in a 2008 interview for an Austrian documentary about Pfeifer's life, Somehow in Between. "This contact was very important for us. It naturally changed our lives."
Pfeifer's courier work started in May 1979, when a friend in Vienna asked him to deliver medicines to acquaintances in Budapest. Meeting those Budapest acquaintances, a group of sociologists, Pfeifer remarked that Hungary, then practicing a form of "goulash communism"—which allowed for a small degree of private enterprise, greater personal liberties, and easier travel to the West—was "quite free for a communist country." Afterward, one of the sociologists, Tamás Földvári, took Pfeifer outside and said that his impression of Hungary was false. For instance, he said, workers in rural areas who complained about conditions were targeted for physical violence by the secret police.
Back in Vienna, Pfeifer got in touch with the editor of the social democratic newspaper Arbeiter Zeitung, or Worker's News, who expressed interest in having Pfeifer publish dispatches from Hungary. Writing under the pseudonym Peter Koroly, Pfeifer began traveling back and forth to Budapest, banging out stories on his Hermes Baby typewriter about everything from the country's periodic economic crises to the tide of young men refusing military service.
In 1982, two years after that first deportation from the Hungarian train, Pfeifer became editor of Die Gemeinde, or The Community, Vienna's Jewish newspaper. Pfeifer, whose youthful energy belies his 83 years, told me recently at a Vienna café that this assignment changed his situation, "insofar as for the Austrians it was very uncomfortable" that he be denied entry to a neighboring country. Pfeifer sent a letter of protest to Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, an assimilated Jew who nonetheless had former Nazis in his Cabinet. "I said, 'Look, Waffen SS men, Arrow Cross men"—from the far right Hungarian party—"can go to Hungary. They get a visa, and I have family that are survivors and I cannot get in. It's against human rights.' " Soon after sending the letter, Pfeifer got his visa.
Because the Hungarian regime of János Kádár was trying to present itself as practicing a more reformed version of communism, it tolerated Pfeifer entering the country. But that didn't stop authorities from deporting him three more times over the ensuing years. "The more they did it, the more I hated their guts," he told me. The last straw was a 1987 meeting in Budapest with a high-ranking official from the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, who informed Pfeifer that the Hungarian government would no longer allow him to meet with any members of the opposition. Pfeifer responded that, as "a modest Austrian journalist and not a Hungarian policeman," he did not know whether the Hungarians he interviewed were members of the opposition. "Would you be so kind as to give me a written list and I promise you I won't meet anybody on the list?" he asked. This sly retort led to Pfeifer's last expulsion. When Hungary opened the archives of its Communist-era secret police following the democratic transition in 1991, Pfeifer discovered that he had a 100-page file in which regime agents accused him of "ideological subversion," an allegation that today makes him "incredibly proud," he told me.
Anti-Semitism was not, at least initially, a major concern for Pfeifer in his early journalism about Hungary. "I was of the opinion that this problem had more or less solved itself in the people's republics," he recounts in the documentary. "Whereby I was terribly wrong." In 1982, he decided to report on the 100th anniversary of the "Tiszaeszlár Affair," an incident involving the disappearance of a young Christian girl in a northern Hungarian village that had led to a Jewish blood libel, pogroms, and the formation of a political faction called the National Anti-Semitic Party. Meeting with a high-level official in the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Pfeifer was told, "We won't allow you to import anti-Semitism from Austria to Hungary. We have solved this problem once and for all in 1945."
Living under regimes that denied the particularly Jewish aspects of the Holocaust and the continuing evils of anti-Semitism within their own societies, the people of the Eastern Bloc did not experience, in the same way Western Europeans did, the decades-long, postwar process of atonement and recognition for the crimes committed against their Jewish populations. This is the battle for historical truth that Pfeifer has fought for decades.
Born in the Austrian spa town of Baden bei Wien to Hungarian parents in 1928, Karl Pfiefer fled with his family to Hungary following the Nazi Anschluss of 1938. In Budapest, Pfeifer was recruited into the Hashomir Hatzair socialist Zionist youth movement. Paradoxically, he believes that the anti-Semitism he experienced as a young boy saved him from a far worse fate. "Somehow, one has to be thankful for Austrian anti-Semitism," Pfeifer says with a chuckle in Somehow in Between. "Of the 180,000 [Austrian] Jews, 120,000 fled thanks to Austrian anti-Semitism."
Things were not much better in Budapest. "In Hungary, people had illusions," he says in the film. Every morning, students in his Jewish school rose to recite a nationalistic poem, which went something along the lines of, "I believe in one homeland. I believe in one God. I believe in a divine justice. I believe in the resurrection of Hungary." That "resurrection" was a not-so-thinly veiled reference to the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, the post-World War I agreement that broke up the Austro-Hungarian Empire and left about a third of ethnic Hungarians living outside the Hungarian successor state and that remains a curse word among latter-day Hungarian nationalists. "I always said it the other way round," Pfeifer recalls in Somehow in Between. "I do not believe in one God. I do not believe in divine justice. And I certainly do not believe in the resurrection of Hungary." Pfeifer's ardent Zionism and disavowal of Hungarian identity led to fierce fights with his father, who beat him repeatedly.
Continue reading: "Nazi tones," a controversial suicide, and the new Hungarian right. Or view as a single page.
In November 1942, shortly before departing on a kindertransport headed for Palestine, Pfeifer asked his uncle why he wouldn't sell his lumber business. "Haven't you heard that Jews are being burned in gas ovens in Poland?" Pfeifer asked.
"What?" his uncle replied. "Where did you hear that?"
Pfeifer said that the source of the information was the BBC, but it was actually his comrades in Hashomer Hatzair who had told him. Regardless, this revelation had little effect on his uncle, who replied that he bad been a decorated officer in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I and that such things could never happen to patriotic Jewish Hungarians. "You're an adult," Pfeifer responded. "You have to decide for yourself." Pfeifer's uncle and his family, including his wife, two sons, daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild would be deported to Auschwitz. Only his uncle's son-in-law survived.
After joining the Palmach and fighting in the 1948 Israeli war of independence, Pfeifer had an itinerant, 30-year career working in the shipping and hotel industries. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he continued his journalism career but turned his attentions from Hungary to Austria, where his anti-fascist credentials proved useful. Writing for newspapers, reporting for Kol Israel International radio, and appearing on television, Pfeifer became a leading figure in the campaign to correct the historical misperception that most Austrians continued to hold about their nation's innocence during World War II and to reconcile that myth with its deep complicity in the Holocaust. "For the Austrian political establishment, the argument was a simple one: from 1938 to 1945 Austria did not even exist," Pfeifer has written. "Thus Austrians could not be held responsible for what happened to their Jewish compatriots and only the Germans were to blame for the Holocaust. Quod Erat Demonstrandum." Austria's continuing inability to come to terms with the nation's role in the crimes of the Third Reich became evident in the rise of a man who would become a Pfeifer nemesis, Jörg Haider, the late leader of the far-right Freedom Party.
In 1995, Pfeifer published a review in Die Gemeinde of a Freedom Party "yearbook," accusing it of possessing "Nazi tones." More than half of Pfeifer's article consisted of quotations from an article written by an Austrian academic named Werner Pfeifenberger, who alleged that Germany had not started World War II because "in 1933 Judea had already declared war on all of Germany." Pfeifenberger had written that "this world war" started by Jews "is by far not yet over" and cited as evidence "the hate tirades of the slander campaign against Kurt Waldheim," the former United Nations secretary general who was elected president of Austria in 1986 despite his having participated in Nazi atrocities. Pfeifenberger sued Pfeifer for libel and lost.
In 1999, the Freedom Party finished second in nationwide legislative elections, with 27 percent of the vote. At a press conference in which Haider announced that he would join a coalition government, a move that eventually led the European Union to impose sanctions on Austria and Israel to recall its ambassador, Pfeifer directly confronted Haider. Citing Haider's association with a wide variety of Holocaust deniers and Nazi enthusiasts, Pfeifer asked, "What kind of credibility do you have if you are unable to cut ties to these people?" By chance, two weeks later, the Vienna Public Prosecutor's office announced that it would press charges against Pfeifenberger for violating the country's National Socialism Prohibition Act for the claims made in his 1995 article. On May 13, 2000, days before he was to stand trial, Pfeifenberger committed suicide.
The following month, a far-right Vienna magazine accused Pfeifer of being part of a 10-man conspiracy that "opened up a man hunt, which was to result in the death of the hunted." Pfeifer sued the paper for defamation, and he initially won in a Viennese court. The magazine appealed the verdict to Austria's highest tribunal, however, which overruled the earlier decision. One justice on the three-judge panel, Doris Trieb, pointed her finger at Pfeifer while telling him that he bore "moral" responsibility for Pfeifenberger's suicide.
In 2003, Pfeifer brought the case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Four years later, in a landmark decision, the Strasbourg panel ruled against the Austrian government, finding that "the reasons advanced by the domestic courts for protecting freedom of expression outweighed the right of the applicant to have his reputation safeguarded." The European Court ordered the government of Austria to award Pfeifer a settlement of 5,000 euros in damages and 10,000 euros for legal expenses. "It was hard enough to stand three years in Austrian courts because I did not believe that 'the Jews declared war in 1933 on Germany,' " Pfeifer told Haaretz at the time. "But then to see Dr. Trieb point her finger at me and accuse me of being responsible 'only morally' for a man's suicide was even harder."
In the nationwide Hungarian elections held in April of last year, the right-wing Fidesz Party of Viktor Orbán won a landslide victory: Its 53 percent of the popular vote, due to the country's electoral system, translated into two-thirds of the seats in parliament. The previous Socialist government, which had ruled for eight years, had been tainted by countless scandals, and its incompetence was largely blamed for the country's being one of the hardest hit by the 2008 economic crisis, during which it was forced to borrow $25 billion from the International Monetary Fund. With Fidesz's overwhelming victory, Hungary became the first country in Central Europe since the breakup of the Soviet Union to be governed by a single party not in coalition.
Since taking power, Orbán—who first earned fame in Hungary as a student activist when he gave a speech in 1989 calling for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from his country—has introduced a series of nationalistic and centralizing measures that have earned international opprobrium as signs of creeping authoritarianism. The first was his decision to grant passports to ethnic Hungarians who are citizens of other countries—a sop to those within Hungary who continue to view the 90-year-old Treaty of Trianon with resentment and shame, and a major provocation to neighbors, like Slovakia, where sizable Hungarian minorities reside. In June, the speaker of the Hungarian parliament said that the use of arms to settle a border dispute in the 1990s with Slovakia would have been justified.
In January, Orbán's government launched what many claimed was a politically motivated investigation of five Hungarian academics for the misuse of research funds. The academics, including the Jewish philosopher Agnes Heller, are all vocal critics of the Fidesz party and were accused of misappropriating portions of the $2 million in government money they had received in support of various research projects. Attacks in the right-wing press have taken on an anti-intellectual tone, demanding to know, for instance, why one of the researchers used funds for new translations of Plato when the works had already been translated into Hungarian.
Continue reading: Hungary's new constitution, the far-right Jobbik Party, and the resurgence of anti-Semitism. Or view as a single page.
In April, the Hungarian parliament approved a constitution, the first since the country's democratic transition, in a vote that was boycotted by the Socialist and Liberal parties. In addition to changing the name of the country from the Republic of Hungary to Hungary—which critics allege is an example of Fidesz's lack of respect for democracy—the new constitution also reduces the powers of the country's highest court. (The constitution also defines marriage as between a man and a woman and states that life begins at conception.) The Venice Commission, the E.U.'s legal advisory body, criticized the process by which the constitution was adopted for its "lack of transparency, shortcomings in the dialogue between the majority and the opposition, the insufficient opportunities for an adequate public debate, and a very tight time-frame." The constitution's preamble declares that "the state sovereignty of Hungary" was "lost on March 19, 1944" (the day Germany occupied Hungary) and not restored until "May 2, 1990, when the first freely elected representative body of the people was constituted." Thus, Hungary and Hungarians are rendered not responsible for the crimes that took place during this 46-year period.
The most controversial aspect of the Orbán agenda, however, is a series of media provisions that many critics say will cement Fidesz's authority over the press. The first has been the abolishing of a constitutional provision "preventing information monopolies." The second involved the creation of a media council—with members all chosen by Fidesz—that has the ability to regulate and potentially penalize newspapers, television, radio, and Internet outlets for coverage determined to be "unbalanced" or offensive to "human dignity." The commission can fine news outlets and journalists up to $1 million for violating the law and compel journalists to reveal their sources. Adding to the law's notoriety was the fact that the Hungarian parliament passed it on Jan. 1, 2011, the day Hungary assumed the presidency of the European Union. The country's entering the continental spotlight just as it was going about passing highly controversial laws was a major setback for Hungary's international stature. (After sharp E.U. criticism, the Hungarian parliament amended the provision requiring all media outlets to provide "balanced" coverage.)
Concomitant with the ascension of Fidesz has been an unambiguously sinister development: the growing power of the far-right Jobbik Party, which won 17 percent in last year's election and entered parliament for the first time. (In 2009, the party picked up three seats in the European Parliament, where it has since formed an alliance with the far-right British National Party.) All of these developments recently led U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, co-chairman of the congressional Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to issue a statement titled "Democracy at Risk in Hungary," in which he said that though "in 1989, Hungary stood as an inspiration for democracy and human rights advocates around the globe," now "I hope that other countries looking for transformative examples will steer clear of this Hungarian model."
It has become fashionable to label any right-of-center European tendency "neo-fascist," but to apply the term to Jobbik is not hyperbolic. With slogans like "Hungary belongs to the Hungarians" and a campaign promise to put an end to "Gypsy crime," Jobbik members regularly engage in anti-Semitic incitement. (The use of the latter term, which came about during the Communist era is, Pfeifer says, "bloody awful.") Accused of being a Nazi by a newspaper interviewer last year, a Jobbik party leader replied proudly that he was a "Nazi, a fascist, an anti-Semite if that is what is necessary to represent the 'true Hungarian' interests and the sanctity of the thousand-year-old Hungarian state." In 2009, the Hungarian Supreme Court outlawed the party's paramilitary wing, which wore uniforms eerily redolent of the war-era fascist Arrow Cross party and whose members terrorized Roma neighborhoods. "Jobbik's rowdies make the late Jörg Haider and his Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) sound like a harmless bunch of choirboys in retrospect," wrote journalist Walter Mayr in Germany's Der Spiegel.
Jobbik occasionally tries to mask its anti-Semitism behind virulent criticism of Israel, but to call its attempts half-hearted would be a vast overstatement. The cover of the current issue of its magazine, Barikád, or Barricade, features the face of accused Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Breivik, who expressed sympathies for Israel, in front of an Israeli flag and under the headline "Zionist terrorism." The cover story from last March featured a doctored image of a statue of a Catholic saint in Budapest holding a menorah, next to the caption, "Wake up Budapest! Is this what you want?"
So obsessed is it with the supposed perfidy of Jews, Jobbik cozies up to some of the most obscurantist forces in the Muslim world. Earlier this year, a Jobbik MP praised the Iranian government at a reception at its embassy in Budapest, decrying the "ruthless Western propaganda against Iran," a nation that "shows today a mirror for the West, through which it can see its own hypocrisy, cynicism, corruption, as well as the double standards and lies of its civilization." In late 2009, the left-wing organizers of a pro-Palestinian conference in London booted a Jobbik European Parliament Member, Krisztina Morvai, who had been scheduled to attend; earlier in the year, Morvai had written an open letter to the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, in which she revealed that she had "rejoiced" upon hearing about Israeli casualties incurred during Operation Cast Lead. "The only way to talk to people like you is by assuming the style of Hamas," she wrote in the letter. "I wish all of you lice-infested, dirty murderers will receive Hamas' 'kisses.' " Jobbik's positions have become so extreme that the Palestinian Authority ambassador to Hungary not so subtly distanced himself from the party, telling a Jewish Hungarian magazine that we "do not wish to be in partnership with racist people."
Such affinity for reactionary Islam might seem strange for a Christian nationalist party that hates immigration, and it puts Jobbik at odds with the rest of its allies on the nativist, European far right, whose aversion to Islam of all kinds has come under a harsh spotlight in the wake of the massacre in Norway. But Jobbik's turn east is part of a broader foreign policy vision, increasingly popular due to the current financial crisis, that rejects the post-Communist Hungarian consensus of Atlanticism and closer E.U. ties. It is, in this sense, a more extreme shade of Orbán's own nationalistic impulses.
In late 2008, Hungarian anti-Semites seized upon a humorous aside that Israeli President Shimon Peres made at an economic forum about the skill of Israeli real estate agents: "We are buying Manhattan, Hungary, Romania, and Poland," he joked. As Pfeifer documented, Jobbik created an election poster featuring Peres' face and a Star of David, promising that Israel would never "occupy" Hungary. In a 2010 speech, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona claimed that the "Jewish buy-up has started, openly encouraged by the prime minister [sic] of Israel, Shimon Peres." Barikád, meanwhile, warned of the "free-for-all looting in Judapest."
The resurgence of anti-Semitism is hardly limited to Jobbik supporters; on the contrary, the party seems to be feeding off sentiments that are accepted by a majority of Hungarians. Last year, a leading Hungarian rabbi told the Times of London, "Insulting Jews on the street is nothing new here, but now it's done more brazenly." A 2009 poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League found that 67 percent of Hungarians agreed with the statement that "Jews have too much power in the business world," 56 percent with "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust," and 40 percent with "Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country."
Last month, in a move that some say struck a blow against the country's attempts to come to terms with its Holocaust past, a Budapest court acquitted a 97-year-old Hungarian man, Sándor Képíró, of war crimes that he allegedly committed while conducting anti-partisan raids as a member of the Hungarian gendarmerie in the Serbian city of Novi Sad in 1942. He had twice been convicted of participating in the massacres, once by a pre-Nazi-occupied Hungarian court in 1944, and again by a Communist one in 1946, by which time Képíró had already fled to Argentina. He did not return to Hungary until 1996; 10 years later, made aware of his resurfacing, the Simon Wiesenthal Center listed him as its most-wanted war criminal.
Continue reading: hate speech, "a stinking excrement," and a test of the media law. Or view as a single page.
On the first day of his trial in May, Képíró was wheeled into court bearing a sign reading, "Murderers of a 97-year-old man!" After his acquittal was announced two months later, Jobbik members cheered the verdict.
Pfeifer had gradually come to realize the prevalence of anti-Semitism in Hungary in the course of his reporting during the 1980s. But the Communist-era suppression of free speech largely kept a lid on the sort of crude expressions that are now so depressingly common and that find their root in Hungary's fascist past. "I knew there was anti-Semitism and I knew there is racism," he told me. "I never doubted it. But it was a big surprise how, at the moment it was possible to have free speech, it became really tolerated by the public." Today, in addition to writing for various Austrian newspapers and as the Vienna correspondent for the Budapest weekly Hetek, Pfeifer surveys the Hungarian political scene for the popular British political blogs Harry's Place, which covers European extremist movements, and Engage, which addresses European racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism.
The rise in anti-Semitism is a consequence of a fiercely nationalistic victim narrative—hardly unique in Central Europe, but especially noxious in Hungary—which sees any outside forces, particularly those that are liberal and cosmopolitan, as threats to the country's well-being. As characterized in a recent paper by the Hungarian scholar Magdalena Marsovszky, "One dreads the loss of 'national unity' and ultimately the 'death of the nation,' considering oneself the victim of modernization, European integration, and Western liberalism, and believes that what the communists did not destroy, will finally be accomplished by the liberals." Not for nothing is George Soros—whose identity as an American, Hungarian-born, Jewish international financier makes him the very epitome of what Hungarian nationalists hate—at the center of many Hungarian anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Over 500,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the vast majority of them at Auschwitz. Many, however, were slaughtered by their fellow Hungarians, their bodies dumped into the Danube. Today, about 100,000 Jews live in Hungary, giving the country the largest Jewish population in Central Europe. While Orbán and Fidesz officially condemn anti-Semitism, are pro-Israel, and decry Jobbik's thuggery (a Fidesz Party spokesman has condemned Jobbik as "a party of violence"), there appears to be at least one prominent exception to that reprobation: Zsolt Bayer, a journalist, co-founder of Fidesz, personal friend of the prime minister, and a man who is regularly given to anti-Semitic outbursts.
A 2008 column is demonstrative; Bayer wrote of the "limitless hunger of the Jewish financiers in Brooklyn and Wall Street yuppies, which plunged the American and as a consequence the global monetary world into depression." But Bayer outdid himself in an article published earlier this year. On January 4, following a series of attacks on the media-commission law by journalist Nick Cohen in London's Observer, by Hungarian-born concert pianist Andras Schiff in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, and by E.U. parliament Green faction leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Bayer wrote a column for Magyar Hirlap, a leading pro-Fidesz paper, comparing the commission's critics to supporters of the old, Soviet-backed regime:
A stinking excrement called something like Cohen from somewhere in England writes that "foul stench wafts" from Hungary. Cohen, and Cohn-Bendit, and Schiff. [The social democratic newspaper] Népszava appears with the red figure of the man with the hammer and demands freedom of the press. Most people think that this is something new and that war like that didn't take place before. Nonsense. There is nothing new under the sun. Unfortunately, they were not all buried up to their necks in the forest of Orgovány.
Orgovány was the site of a 1919 massacre of Hungarian Communists, some of them Jews, some nonpolitical Jews caught up in the general terror, by followers of Admiral Miklós Horthy, who later became regent of Hungary and formed an alliance with Adolf Hitler. Two weeks after this article appeared, a Fidesz-controlled county government gave Bayer an award for his cultural contributions. And two months after the article was published, as Pfeifer reported, Bayer appeared in a photo sitting comfortably next to the prime minister at a retreat marking the 23rd anniversary of Fidesz's founding.
In response to Bayer's piece and the award he received, Pfeifer wrote a commentary for Die Presse, a major conservative Viennese daily, titled "Fecal Anti-Semite Honored." Later that day, Magyar Hirlap published a summary of Pfeifer's article, translating it into Hungarian, and noted at the bottom that the author's "parents escaped from the Anschluss in 1938 to Hungary. He lived a long time in Israel and returned to Austria to become a journalist."
What followed in the comments section astonished Pfeifer. Some samples:
You rotten Jewish lice. I understand that you think it is natural that the Gypsies are killing Hungarians every week, since you are a rotten, lice-infested foreign pushy Jew, an enemy.
I see that you are disgusted by the bloodsucking parasitical Jewish lice and you are glad that these lice-ridden Jews go home.
A characteristic example of the people of vengeance, a [gas] oven deserter.
Yes, we are anti-Semites! Yes, the Hungarians hate the Jews like scabs! Our anti-Semitic fame should spread the more! And then the local Jews who hate the Magyars will leave the quicker and the Israeli Jewish occupiers will settle here in far fewer numbers. Because they bring only conflict and ruin, while sucking our blood like parasites and draining our vigour.
Vitriolic anti-Semitism in the anonymous comments section of a website is hardly limited to Hungary, as Lee Smith wrote in Tablet Magazine last year about the popular followings of writers in the United States like Stephen Walt and Glenn Greenwald who are critical of Israel. But in the context of Hungary's media law, which mandates that news outlets must be "free of hate speech … attacks on human dignity or human rights, as well as free of any social exclusion of a person or a group," the comments are certainly within the commission's purview. Given the poisonous rhetoric that has become so prevalent in Hungary, with the rise of Jobbik being only the most visible expression, one can at least understand the motivations for, if not necessarily support the implementation of, such a law, were it actually intended as a response to racist rhetoric. But, as Pfeifer's case would demonstrate, whatever inspired the law in principle, it is not being applied fairly in practice.
The first test of the media law had arrived on the day it went into effect: July 1. Following an anonymous complaint, Media and Communications Commissioner Jenő Bodonovich wrote to the editors of Népszava, a social democratic newspaper strongly critical of Fidesz, to inform them that he would launch an investigation into 18 reader comments that had been posted under an article, published June 8, about a speech that Hungarian President Pál Schmitt had delivered about Ferenc Mádl, a predecessor who had died suddenly. The complainant did not cite any particular comment, which ranged from someone calling Schmitt a "clown" to another wishing that Orbán would soon follow Mádl into the afterlife. In reaction to news of the commission's investigation, a host of Hungarian news websites disabled their comment sections entirely.
Upon hearing news of the investigation, Pfeifer immediately sent a complaint to Bodonovich, citing the defamatory comments that were made about him in the comment section of Magyar Hirlap. "As a Journalist and Austrian citizen I ask for your opinion and want to know how you are going to proceed in this case," he wrote. "The public outside the borders of Hungary is interested to find out how the new media law is going to be implemented against anti-Semitic, racist and homophobic hate speech." He wanted to challenge the commission and see if it would be consistent in applying its mandate.
On July 26, Bodonovich wrote back, informing Pfeifer that he had no legal right to take measures against Magyar Hirlap and that he should take his complaints to a Hungarian court if he sought further redress. "You use a different measure in the case of Népszava and Magyar Hirlap," Pfeifer concluded. "All this is eloquent evidence that equality of rights has been abolished in Hungary and one will also not be able to speak about freedom of speech and opinion."
James Kirchick, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, is a columnist at Tablet magazine and the author of The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues and the Coming Dark Age. He is writing a history of gay Washington, D.C. His Twitter feed is @jkirchick.
James Kirchick is a Tablet columnist and the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington (Henry Holt, 2022). He tweets @jkirchick.
#Antisemitism
#Austria
#Communism
#dissidents
#Holocaust survivors
#Hungary
#Jobbik
#Jorg Haider
#Karl Pfeifer
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byUgo Bardi
Barry Horowitz Pats Himself on the Back
byJay Deitcher
The Death of Sport
byHirsh Chitkara
Blessing Afrifa
byHillel Kuttler


Eight years ago this month, my expectations met their death.
Like millions of parents before us, we rejoiced at the faint pink line that showed up on our positive pregnancy test in the early morning hours. We went to work as different people that day. We went hopeful. We went excited. We went with smiles on our faces, knowing we had a secret.
I made my first OB appointment in my car while on my lunch break, lest anyone find out I was pregnant. I wanted to tell people on my terms, in my way.
Instead I had to tell my boss that I was pregnant and miscarrying all in the same breath. Just like that, it was over. I was pregnant, and then I wasn't.
Month after month after month passed until the months became years, and we still didn't have another faint pink line. Tests and medicine and more tests and more medicine and surgery all promised something—a baby. All failed us, until one morning we saw the line again.
Our story is a broken one. We miscarried, we were infertile, and then we had twins. We miscarried again, we had Seth, we nearly lost Ben (and me), but we are here—a family of six, with two in heaven.
Is a Normal Birth Too Much to Ask?
I resonate with that question. It's a visceral response to a poor outcome, one we've been told over and over shouldn't be the case: We shouldn't have to settle for a C-section. We shouldn't have to settle for formula-feeding our babies. We shouldn't have to settle for a body ravaged by the childbirth process. We shouldn't have to settle for a doctor or nurse not listening in a moment of great pain.
These are the gut responses to things not working out the way we wanted. I can sympathize. My responses to my babies' births ranged from disappointment to severe depression.
Perhaps we are asking too much of our birth stories. . . . Every birth story is broken.
It's no small thing to bring a baby into the world, even more so in ways you didn't expect. But I'm not sure the question being asked by the documentary is the right one. I'm concerned that when we talk about birth we forget that, while our bodies are doing something amazing when we bring forth life, we are doing it in a post-Genesis 3 world.
What this means is that everything can go wrong (from doctor error to our bodies failing us). It doesn't excuse bad behavior from medical professionals. It doesn't remove the pain women endure because of horrifying and traumatic deliveries. It doesn't even remove the disappointment women feel when it doesn't go according to plan. But it does give a theological framework for understanding it.
We aren't in Eden anymore. This means our births and bodies don't always do what they were made to do.
There's a lot at play when we talk about birth, far beyond the scope of this article. There are systemic issues that contribute to poor outcomes for women of color, as The New York Times recently highlighted. Doctors and nurses are human, and sometimes they sin against us. There are also insurance complexities, family dynamics, hospital regulations, and a whole host of things that can contribute to a birth going poorly. On top of this, all women must confront the fact that our bodies are broken.
What do you tell the woman whose body clearly can't? Whose body doesn't do what it was "made" to do? What about her? Or what about the woman who doesn't have a choice about how she births her baby? Is there room for her?
Perhaps we are asking too much of our birth stories. Perhaps in Eden, birth would've been two pushes and warm feelings as the baby latches on moments after delivery. But this just isn't the case now. For every perfect story there are probably five where something went wrong. Welcome to life this side of Eden, life in a cursed world.
As believers, we can rejoice in the birth stories that go well and weep over the ones that don't. We understand that every birth story is broken, since every one of us is tainted by the effects of sin. As we mourn imperfect hours in the delivery room, we cling in hope to the One who suffered in our place, removed the sting of death, and unites us to himself in his resurrection.
While we often feel frustrated and disappointed when we experience physical pain—and it's not wrong to desire relief—we often fail to see our suffering through the lens of our theology. We live in a world where systems and tools fail, births can be deaths, and everything is crying out for the redemption of all things (Rom. 8:22). On the hospital bed or in the birthing tub, we groan with pain, adding our voice to the universal groan of all creation.
Let's not pretend that birth always makes for a picture-perfect post. Instead, let's tell the truth. This world is broken, and so are we. But Jesus is coming again, and when he does, he will make all things new—even our broken birth stories.
A version of this article first appeared on the author's personal blog.


text:
Q: Display the month and number of quotations received in each month Display the month and number of quotations received in each month.
I used this query but the final output is differnet than my output.
select distinct To_char(QDate,'Month') as Month,count(QuotationId)as QuotationCount
from Quotation group by Qdate

A: SELECT TO_CHAR(Qdate,'Month') AS "MONTH",
       COUNT(*) AS "QUOTATIONCOUNT"
       FROM quotation
       GROUP BY TO_CHAR(Qdate,'Month');

A: You need to add To_char(QDate,'Month') in group by clause
select To_char(QDate,'Month') as Month,count(QuotationId)as QuotationCount
from Quotation group by To_char(QDate,'Month')

A: If you want the data ordered by chronological month, then:
select to_char(QDate, 'Month') as Month, count(*) as QuotationCount
from Quotation
group by to_char(QDate, 'Month')
order by to_char(QDate, 'MM);

In some databases, you can use the column alias defined in the SELECT:
group by Month

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
How We're Improving
As an organization committed to the public good, I believe Brookings has a moral imperative to produce research and policy recommendations on issues of race, equity, and justice. The lingering challenges of COVID-19—from worsened income inequality, public health, unemployment, and so much more—have continued to highlight the many hard truths about the legacy of American slavery, and the systemic racism and inequity that permeates many facets of our society. Even as the public health environment improves, if slowly, Black and Brown Americans continue to lose a disproportionate number of lives and livelihoods. This is an unacceptable reality, and the many injustices of the moment compel us to take a stand.
For Brookings's part, we have again committed ourselves to championing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, both internally and across all aspects of our work. This year in particular, we were proud to welcome a new class of David M. Rubenstein Fellows—ten outstanding early- and mid-career scholars with diverse backgrounds and experiences who contribute dynamic, new dimensions to our community. So too did we take advantage of the realities of remote work to feature voices and perspectives from across America and the world—something we will continue to incorporate into our programming for all future events and convenings. How We Rise, a virtual space that not only addresses issues of structural racism, but also promotes diverse voices from inside the institution and beyond, has thrived as well. We have provided new opportunities for our scholars to reflect on and engage with concepts and questions of diversity in their research work. And our latest Presidential priority—Race, Justice, and Equity—has continued to advance Brookings's public commitment to equity, and to making efforts to combat biased policies and practices that have perpetuated injustice.
At the same time, we recognize that in order to produce high-quality research that informs innovative, practical policy recommendations, we must strive for a workplace that represents diversity of experience, thought, and personal background. Increasing and supporting our staff's diversity enhances the relevance, perspective, and substance of our work. To that end, we continue to publish our workplace and Board of Trustee demographics with the aim of keeping ourselves accountable on our continued journey towards greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. In the four years since we began publishing this data in 2018, we have noted both exciting improvements and areas where continued, sustained effort is needed. Furthering this commitment, we have also sought to identify tangible, measurable goals for our community in these and other important areas, which we have included with each year's publication and can be found below.
Brookings strives to continuously offer an inclusive and welcoming workplace that values the experiences, ideas, and efforts of all contributors. This means ensuring that each individual is heard, appreciated, and empowered to fully participate in Brookings's mission, and holding ourselves accountable whenever and wherever we can improve. While we have so much more to do, I remain optimistic that through hard work, transparency, and accountability, real progress on measures of diversity and inclusion can be achieved over the long term.
I hope you'll take a moment to read on and learn about the efforts that Brookings is undertaking to ensure the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I encourage you to explore our updated workforce demographics data and a selection of stories, commitments, and goals for the coming year. The road ahead will be long, and our work in this area is an evolving effort in which are learning and adapting. Together, we can lay the foundation for a stronger institution and a brighter, better world.
– John R. Allen
The source of this data is based on the affirmative action questionnaire completed by all Brookings employees. The categories for race and gender are determined by the federal government for workforce reporting.* The categories used for generation identification have been defined by Pew Research Center.
Generation Z: born 1997 to 2012
Millennials: born 1981 to 1996
Generation X: born 1965 to 1980
Baby Boomer: born 1946 to 1964
Silent Generation: born 1928 to 1945
*Brookings is required to report the race and gender for all employees. Thus, in compliance with federal EEO requirements, employees who opt out are visually identified. We intend to fine-tune our systems in the future to include those who opt out of identification in our workforce data.
As of July 1, 2021, our staff headcount was 398 employees in Washington, DC. This includes:
Our Leadership Team (12): President, Executive Vice President and Vice Presidents
Our Fellows/Senior Fellows (96): Brookings Resident Scholars
Our Research Support (67): Research Assistants, Research Associates and Research Analysts
Our Operational Teams (223): Central and Program positions in Management, Operations, Communications, Development, Facilities, Finance, HR, Library, Legal, and Information Technology
This data does not include our nonresident scholars, as they are not employees. As our inclusion and diversity efforts evolve, we plan to capture and report on additional data.
Role All Roles Leadership Fellows Research Operational Board of Trustees
1 Gen X
1 Baby Boomer
1 Silent Gen
41 Female
21 Male
1 Black/African American
1 Hispanic/Latino
1 Hawaiian/Pacific Islander
1 American Indian/Native Alaskan
1 Two or More
Lalal
2020 and 2021 Highlights
Diversifying our Public-Facing Work
Brookings's mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national, and global level. Ensuring that a diverse range of people and voices can offer perspectives on the challenges facing our world and proposals to address them is central to our work.
David M. Rubenstein Fellows
In 2017, Brookings launched the David M. Rubenstein Fellowship, made possible by a generous gift from Brookings Lifetime Trustee and Chair Emeritus David M. Rubenstein. These two-year appointments are for ten outstanding early- and mid-career scholars with diverse backgrounds and experiences who contribute dynamic, new dimensions to the Brookings community and nurture a pipeline of policy talent that reflects America and the world. We welcomed a second cohort in 2019, and roughly half of the first two classes remain affiliated with Brookings in a permanent capacity; several other fellows retain non-resident affiliations. A third class, studying topics from artificial intelligence to health equity, joined us in the fall of 2021.
New voices in our public events
Like organizations around the world, Brookings was forced to reimagine and adapt our operations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic—which included moving our vibrant public events programming from in person to online platforms. Though this shift was novel territory for our institution, it helped us feature new voices in Brookings's convenings, such as frontline workers facing acute safety hazards during COVID-19, and secure participation from a broader set of regions of the world, including Africa. Moving our events online has also allowed us to reach new audiences, with more than 23,000 viewers signing up for their first Brookings event between July 2020 and July 2021. Brookings intends to incorporate these important lessons learned into future activities and is in the process of revamping our physical event and conference locations for virtual and hybrid programming.
Research on race and racial equity
All five research programs at Brookings are committed to producing research from diverse voices and on policy challenges created by racism. One major contribution in this area is How We Rise, Brookings's blog devoted to policy solutions to upend structural racism, which has featured 84 posts from 29 different Brookings authors and 40 outside experts since its launch in June 2020. In 2021, Brookings experts testified on Capitol Hill on racial disparities in home prices, equity in transportation safety enforcement, and the impact of student debt on racial justice. Our series on American renewal and prosperity, aimed at providing policy ideas for the new Congress and for the Biden administration, featured seven reports on issues related to racial justice and worker mobility. More examples of Brookings research on racism and equity in the economic recovery, housing, education, entrepreneurship, and other policy issues are available here.
Supporting an Inclusive Workplace
Acknowledging the impact of racism on and within Brookings and supporting our staff
In 2020, as stories of hate crimes and violence against Black communities dominated the media, and protesters took to the streets in cities throughout the country, including Washington, D.C., we recognized the deep pain and injustices felt by the Brookings staff—particularly people of color. To address our workplace culture, as well as better support and uplift staff members of all backgrounds, we worked alongside The Winters Group to design and deliver four learning opportunities. The series was titled "Creating an Inclusive Culture: From Theory to Practice" and included: a keynote address by Mary-Francis Winters on structural racism, a session for Black employees to affirm and honor their experiences and challenges, a session for staff with HR-related responsibilities on strengthening organizational culture and processes, and finally, a conversation with Brookings leaders and executives on centering equity and leading with an inclusive, justice-focused lens.
Integrating DEI principles into our professional development strategy
This past year we have focused on the strategic development of the staff learning curriculum, ensuring that there are consistent and ongoing opportunities for staff to learn and grow at all levels. In early 2021 Brookings HR hired its first Learning & Development Manager. The role connects the development and design of staff learning experiences with DEI themes and topics. The goal is that each engagement opportunity builds towards a more inclusive and welcoming workplace that recognizes the diverse needs and backgrounds of our community. Training experiences are developed collaboratively with staff at a variety of levels and often with the advisement of the Inclusion & Diversity Committee.
A greater emphasis on equity
In 2020, Brookings HR led two key projects that center on equity in the workplace: the job framework and pay transparency. The job framework was a multi-year effort to develop a tool to describe the competencies and corresponding levels of contribution required for each role at the Institution, including pathways for growth over an employee's career. The framework covers all roles at Brookings: entry-level to executive, and operational to scholarly to research support positions. The development of the framework ensures consistency in titles as well as in hiring and promotion decisions and underscores our commitment to professional growth and skill-building for all.
Related to this framework, and with input from employee focus groups, we are adopting new practices to increase pay transparency in 2022. We plan to provide information and briefings for staff about the key components of the pay program, post pay equity information, and provide training for supervisors on compensation decisions and professional development to ensure greater equity for all staff.
Building Pathways for the Next Generation
Pathway building in the Economic Studies program
Our individual research programs are also leading important inclusion, equity, and diversity efforts in support of our broader intuitional commitments. Our Economic Studies program (ES), for example, has invested in building pathways that ensure that our future work, and that of the economics profession more broadly, is informed by diverse perspectives so that the reach and impact of our work continues to grow. This year, ES planned the opening event for the American Economic Association (AEA) Summer Training Program at Howard University. Speakers from ES, Global Economy and Development, and the Metropolitan Policy Program highlighted the lived experiences of women and people of color in economics and related fields for students beginning a PhD journey. In addition, in her capacity as the D.C. representative for the AEA Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession, ES Research Vice President Stephanie Aaronson organized sessions, co-sponsored by Brookings, for early career economists to share their research at major economic conferences and organized networking opportunities for women economists in government, policy, and academia.
Our internship program
Brookings was able to successfully transition its long-standing internship program during the COVID-19 pandemic from in-person to fully virtual. This decision allowed us to broaden and ensure accessibility to college students and recent graduates from underrepresented backgrounds, and included establishing a set of strategic partnerships to provide summer internship opportunities in each of our research programs to students from schools that had not historically participated in the program. Here, too, we will continue to evaluate possible improvements within the program and, as appropriate, incorporate lessons we learned amidst the pandemic.
Core Commitments
In 2016, the Brookings Inclusion and Diversity Committee was formed. The committee consists of 25 staff members at all levels – from early career to executive – with representatives from every business unit, research program, and employee network. Members serve as ambassadors and liaisons to their teams and are the thought leaders behind the work we do. The committee's mission is to advance the strategic priority on inclusion, equity, and diversity at Brookings through:
Promoting an ongoing process of cultural change;
Robust recruitment outreach to traditionally underrepresented communities;
Engaging formal and informal leaders throughout the Institution;
Challenging or changing practices and policies that inhibit inclusion and diversity; and
Working to ensure that the public face of Brookings is representative of the world in which we live and work.
In the ensuing five years, the Committee, staff working groups and others around the Institution have undertaken the following core, ongoing activities to support this mission:
Continuing Race, Justice, and Equity as a Presidential Research Priority
Improving gender and racial diversity of the invited speakers at Brookings events and work to eliminate all-male panels
Providing training opportunities unconscious bias, respectful workplace, managing with an equity lens, micobehaviors, and cross-generational work environments
Embedding inclusion, equity, and diversity in our human resources practices, including the regular analysis of the recruitment and selection processes
Developing and implementing a jobs framework that seeks to ensure equitable treatment across the institution
Celebrating the diversity of our staff through Heritage Months and other cultural observances
Priorities for the Year Ahead
Over the next year, we are committed to building on the highlights from 2020 and 2021 and to continuing to advance our core commitments. In addition, we will prioritize the following activities in the year ahead:
Creating guidelines and a support mechanism for employees to establish and lead new diversity-based affinity groups
Assessing Brookings's DEI progress based on established global diversity benchmarks and tools
Supporting program goals
Continuing to support the development and implementation of DEI goals within our research programs and business units
Committing to a timeline by which all of our internship opportunities are paid
Adopting new practices to increase pay transparency
Continuing to host a new internal seminar series on racial equity in research
Incorporating equity
Revising the mission statement of our Inclusion and Diversity Committee to incorporate equity as an important component of our inclusion and diversity work
As we work to make progress within our own institution on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we seek to apply the same rigorous, research-based principles that guide all of our work. In that spirit, we conduct ongoing research to help inform our inclusion and diversity objectives and priorities.
Diversity and Inclusion at Brookings: What Does the Research Tell Us?
Not just a typographical change: Why Brookings is capitalizing Black
A public letter to the Associated Press: Listen to the nation and capitalize Black
Gender and racial diversity of federal government economists
2019 Career Day photos from Sharon Farmer Photography
Other event photos by Paul Morigi

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


GoodBye 2011 you shall be missed!
There is no doubt about it, 2011 is one for the history books of Sam. This year has hands down been the most eventful year of my life. It all started off with a bang at the stroke of twelve, while Pete and I rang in the New Year with some of our closest friends. We didn't know it at the time but our lives were about to be taken on a wild adventure across 10 countries.
Although 2011 hasn't been so great for some people, Kim Jong Il and Amy Winehouse just to name a few, Pete and I have been lucky enough to make some our wildest dreams come true. We've drank champagne in the Champagne region, we've been bums in Europe, watched the sunset in Oia, partied it up in Ibiza and walked along the last pieces of the Berlin wall. How on earth are we ever going to top the memories we made? Quite frankly, we're not. We are only going to build up from here. Yes, I'm sad to see 2011 go, but oh boy, am I excited for the adventures of 2012! A new year, a new start, new goals and dreams to achieve. This is our first full year with no school and a steady income. Sure we have some bills and school debts to pay off but we're only young once. We might as well make the best of our time without the responsibility of cars, insurance, mortgage, babies, etc.
So let's get to the down and dirty. What does Samantha have cooked up for her 2012 resolutions?
1) Oh, you know the usual; lose 10 pounds (and keep it off). Except I'm going to go a little nontraditional at this point; I want run a consecutive 20 K by the end of 2012. I love running but up until Pete's discovery of Nike +, our running regime was Pete runs a lap and walks the other 15 while saying "I'll always hate running" and "I'm a sprinting athlete", while I lightly jog my 10k. Now, Pete strives to beat his five minute mile, outruns me without even breaking a sweat and talks nonstop about how awesome he is. Yes, I know what you're thinking, annoying! But I finally have someone to run with, someone to challenge me, someone who no longer "hates running". So needless to say I have made an executive decision and added this to Pete's resolutions, he just may not know it yet. So OUR resolution is to run 20k….and hopefully lose 10 pounds while in the process.
2) So for my (our) second resolution, I want to visit 10 new countries by 2013. This would put my total countries visited to around 30. After our contract is up, Pete and I are planning to backpack South East Asia for a few months. Like I said, we are only young once. I cannot imagine leaving this side of the world without further exploring it. So many experiences and countries to wonder through. I'm so excited about this resolution. It will take a lot of saving and a lot of planning but nothing excites me more, and quite frankly is the reason why I wake up in the mornings and go to work.
3) And my third new years resolution is to create a bucket list. I have always made short term goals with the future rarely in mind. Yes, graduating and getting a job was on my mental check list, but still the thought of being in a career seems too grown up for me. Everyday I think of new things I want to do, or accomplish before I leave this world but my thoughts are always so scattered that these rarely make it to my long term memory. So alas, I am determined to make a list of everything I wish to accomplish. In a way, this is a spin on the old resolution to get organized.
So that pretty much sums up my plans for 2012. I know it will never top last year but if you keep living life trying to outdo each year you will find yourself frequently disappointed. Hopefully I can live each day to the fullest and just add to my great memories of the world as Pete and I discover it.


text:
Seeking Expressions of Interest for next Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Thursday 1 December, 2022
The Australian Government is seeking expressions of interest from suitably qualified persons for appointment to the full-time statutory position of Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The Sex Discrimination Commissioner is responsible for the promotion and advancement of rights on the grounds of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, and protected attributes in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Sex Discrimination Act; full suite of functions conferred on the Commission is available at section 48).
The Commissioner undertakes this work through research, education, and inquiries. The Commissioner would also have a role in supporting the implementation of the Respect@Work Report, including chairing the Respect@Work Council. The Commissioner is also required to perform other statutory functions, including under the Fair Work Act 2009.
Applicants for the position of Sex Discrimination Commissioner will have appropriate qualifications, knowledge or experience, as required under subsection 96(2) of the Sex Discrimination Act.
The appointment will be for up to five years and the anticipated start date is April 2023. The Commission's offices are located in Sydney. Further information about the Australian Human Rights Commission is available at https://www.humanrights.gov.au.
Information about the position, including remuneration, eligibility and selection criteria, and details on how to apply, is available on the Attorney-General's Department website: https://www.ag.gov.au/about-us/careers/statutory-appointments/australian-human-rights-commission-sex-discrimination-commissioner
Expressions of interest close at 5.00pm AEDT on Friday, 16 December 2022.
Enquiries can be directed to appointments@ag.gov.au
Tags Sex Discrimination
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text:
Will OBOR contribute to the full circle of history's clock?
We know that the new technology, AI, will be based fundamentally on philosophical principles from Greece.
We know that a global conscience is possible, a result of the interweaving of individual consciences (interwoven with groups' consciences), that seeks a more equitable society without the need to overthrow any system but taking advantage of the system, to improve it and to improve its members.
We know of an economic theory, where the concepts dance according to the point of view, that is, without fixed formulas, but specific functions according to the case inside their general case.
We know, we can do it, and we will do it, right here, in SYlodium.
The Domestic Consequences of China's 'One Belt One Road Initiative'
Last year, the Xinhua News Agency said that OBOR has already made 76 major achievements and had more than 270 specific results, which included all sorts of international treaties, cooperation, projects, funds and aids. This year is the fifth anniversary of OBOR and the propaganda machine of the CPC has produced a lot of articles to praise its greatness. However, they hardly ever mention any benefit brought back to the Chinese people. No figure about any relevant increases in terms of jobs, foreign exchange reserves or domestic living standards has been found. Maybe it's too slapdash to conclude that there are no significant positive domestic consequences, but the reality in today's China——economic slowdown, social instability and intensified repression, shows that OBOR has not been able to push the country in a bright direction.
China – Israel – Africa
Create your own circuit, route inside Sylodium's system to tap our global IoT – IIoT, and AI platform for bilateral, triangular, circuits trade, as China – Africa AI CYBERNETICS, SHENZHEN – Singapore - SADC 4.0, SHANGHAI – Keifang - Dubai - IGAD FIR, Ningbo Tel Aviv – Nairobi – Cape Town - West Africa China South – Israel - Kenya Shipping 4.0, China – India - ECOWAS AI – IoT-IIoT,
The Unavoidable Route of Chinese Capitalism
Capital must generate profits. This is the golden rule of capitalism. After three decades of high-speed economic growth in China, both state and the private capitalists have accumulated incredible amounts of capital. For example, China's foreign exchange reserves were only US$2,262 million in December 1980, but in June 2014 they had reached an all-time high of US$3,993,212.72 million.
This incident is a miniature of China's domestic economic hardship. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Leiyang had racked up 2.464 billion yuan of outstanding debt at the end of 2017, or 111% of revenue. Government spending on areas such as education, medical care and social welfare were inevitably affected. Another article pointed out in June that the city's educational resources were insufficient, and the phenomenon of oversized classes was worsening.
China's Belt and Road Initiative: What Role for Latin America?
Chinese officials have also highlighted a few Latin American countries as participants in the BRI. Mexico was singled out as an "important node" in the initiative's extension during the September 2017 BRICS Summit. Panama became a "natural extension" of the BRI during Wang Yi's visit to the Central American nation. Also, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, and Bolivia are among the approximately seventy countries to have signed Belt and Road Cooperation Agreements with China, with more expected to sign on in the coming months.
Growing reference to Latin America and the BRI is also the result of the initiative's own conceptual transformation. Initially billed as a synthesis of the Silk Road Economic Belt and Twenty-First-Century Maritime Silk Road, with five main routes traversing Asia and Eastern Europe, the BRI has since evolved into what Chinese officials describe as a geographically inclusive platform.
Yet, despite growing Chinese interest in extending the BRI to Latin America, and sustained enthusiasm in LAC about this prospect, it is unclear what, if anything, stronger LAC ties to the BRI will do for the region
Rexiology of "The Jew's Empire" form Latin World towards Africa, where all can be represented by maps, from the commerce to the intentions of businesses men.
X axis
X1. Flow of trade from the exchange between states, economic blocks and large corporations to the business fabric to the subjects to the bottom of their consciences. X2. Empires, States, Stock Exchanges, Multinationals, Lobbies, Unions, governments, groups, etc X3 Balance of payments, Large accounts Companies X4 Wars, FIR companies, megatrends, future X5 New intermediaries Can the banking, the stock market, the insurance companies really survive the fourth industrial revolution?
Y1 Earth, Mundi Map, Borders, Capital, Work Y2 Biocenosis, every entity is allied and rival to others and in its group and with itself. Y3 Power relations and their various positions in 3D Y4 Economic interweaving, even consciences. Y5 Artificial Intelligence, which is in robotics, Big Data, 3D technology, etc
Z axis
Z1 Jews Empire, there is a new social class, with great knowledge, that wants its piece of power, where ideas, be money, because ideas, colonize the new virtual land of SYlodium. Z2 Politics, Economics, Sociology, Psychology Z3 Individuals, Groups, Crowds, Z4 USA; China, and budding economic blocs. Geopolitical game. Z5 Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Technological Revolution based on Greek philosophy, the return of the clock, the eternal return. Rome - and the Jews
Chinese manufacturers building brands for future success
Chinese businesses have been good at manufacturing but now we have to change our mindset. Brands are the future.
Many factories have been able to overcome the technical challenges of producing certain products, from drones to smartphones to solar panels (and more). This technical capability reflects China's drive to rise up through the value chain. And coupled with the Made in China 2025 initiative, it's likely that some factories will become increasingly sophisticated and better able to produce advanced goods.
But even though you can make a great product doesn't mean everyone will buy it.
By forging their own brands, and using the marketing expertise of overseas firms, Chinese companies are positioning themselves for future growth and competition against international businesses. Chinese companies have realized that right now their understanding of foreign markets is insufficient, so they've hired foreign talent to level the playing field. And in the years to come, that might just make all the difference in the competition against those importing from China.
Google executive to explore history of artificial intelligence, machine learning
Do you really think that Google is in the right way?
In fact, the way was shown by Greek Philosophers.
By te waym, Penn State alumnus Jay Yonamine, head of data science and global patents at Google, will deliver a lecture titled "A History of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning" at 11:15 a.m. on Friday, March 29, in Paterno Library's Foster Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Yonamine, who earned a master's degree and a doctorate in political science from Penn State in 2011 and 2013, respectively, is widely recognized as one of the pioneers and thought leaders in the data science field. He is at the forefront of efforts to use "big data" to make policy decisions and at balancing human experience and big data to achieve optimal results.
But we ask you again, do you really think that Google is in the right way?
Not really, in fact, the way was shown by Greek Philosophers.
By the waym Prior to joining Google, Yonamine held data science and product management positions for assorted legal, insurance and social media companies. He also has consulted for various e-commerce organizations and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Other news from Rexiology
History - 01/04/2019


The Brooklyn Fashion + Design Accelerator is offering a WHOLEGARMENT workshop for knitwear designers of all levels. In this intimate one day workshop you will design and produce a knitted WHOLEGARMENT and create a simulation of your sweater design. This workshop will appeal to those actively involved in knitwear design, those who wish to venture into knitwear for the first time, and anyone involved in the design and specification of knitwear ranges.
The workshop introduces you to Knitpaint and the emergent technology of WHOLEGARMENT Knitwear. Designed garments are produced in one entire piece, three-dimensionally, directly on the knitting machine. These garments do not require expensive, time-consuming and costly post-production labor and there is zero waste. At the end of the workshop, you will leave with a WHOLEGARMENT of your pattern design created in class.


text:
What IVF Looks Like IRL
Story from Body
Everything I Didn't Know Before Walking Into An IVF Clinic
Anna Hecker
Photo: Spike Walker/ Getty Images
What do you think of when you think of in vitro fertilisation? Is it babies growing in test tubes; hospital gowns and needles and operations; grim prognoses delivered via medical mumbo-jumbo? Is it the Octomum?
To me, once upon a time, it was all of these things. Which is why, when I first stepped foot in a fertility clinic last April, I had already drawn a firm line in the sand: no IVF. Granted, I didn't have a totally firm grasp of what the process actually entailed. All I knew was that it was unnatural, invasive, and expensive.
A year later, I'm doing IVF. Not just willingly. gladly. Today, I'm shocked at how little I understood when I wrote it off: not just about the medical side, but about the people who do it. People like your friends and family and neighbours. People like me.
In 2012, the most recent year for which the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology offers data, fertility doctors performed 165,172 IVF procedures, resulting in 61,740 babies. But although IVF now accounts for 1.5% of live births in the U.S., the number of misconceptions about it is staggering.
But this isn't about statistics. It's about me.
Because behind every IVF statistic, there are real people who want a child more than anything in the world. We all have a story. Today, in honour of National Infertility Awareness Week, I'm sharing mine.
behind every IVF statistic, there are real people who want a child more than anything in the world.
I always knew it might take me a while to get pregnant. In college, I was diagnosed with PCOS, or Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, which can cause irregular periods and lack of ovulation (among other fun things, like sudden obesity and excessive body hair). It can make getting pregnant hard — but, I was told, certainly not impossible.
Personally, I was optimistic. I'd heard great things about Clomid, a drug that can induce ovulation and is often considered the first line of defence in infertility treatment. It supposedly worked wonders for women with PCOS, and I personally knew at least two who had gotten pregnant on it right away.
When I first visited a fertility clinic at the age of 33, after trying to get pregnant naturally for over two years (twice as long as doctors recommend, because I was bullheaded and naïve), I honestly believed that Clomid was the answer. My doctor seemed to think the same. When the pregnancy test came back negative, I was shocked. So I tried again. And again.
After five cycles of Clomid (two with timed intercourse and three with intrauterine insemination, in which my husband's sperm was manually inserted into my uterus with a catheter), I was no closer to motherhood than before.
At this point, I was told I had "unexplained infertility." On paper, there was nothing wrong. All my hormone levels fell within normal range. I was growing good-sized follicles (the sacs on your ovaries that usually contain eggs) and ovulating within a normal timeframe. My husband's sperm were little super-jizzers, above average in every sense. The next step, we were informed, was IVF. And suddenly, we had a really big decision to make.
When the pregnancy test came back negative, I was shocked. So I tried again. And again.
I'm sitting with my husband in a noodle bar in Chelsea, crying into my ramen because I just waited an hour to have a conversation with my doctor about IVF, only to be told that my (terrible) fertility clinic had mixed up my appointment, and she couldn't see me until the following week.
It's a month during which I'll cry almost daily. Clomid, that supposed miracle drug, has wreaked havoc on my hormones. I burst into tears whenever I see a stroller: problematic, since I live in Brooklyn's notoriously family-friendly Park Slope neighbourhood.
"Can we please consider adoption?" I beg, trying to hide my bloated, tear-stained face from the concerned waitstaff. I know that adoption is another rocky road, paved with uncertainty and heartbreak. But if Clomid is this bad, I can't imagine what IVF will do.
My husband looks pained. He confesses that he's always wanted his own biological children. Our biological children. I thought we talked about everything before we got married, but somehow we missed this.
"What if we try just one cycle?" he suggests. "And if it's really bad, we can start filling out adoption paperwork and I'll never bring it up again."
Through my hormone-saturated haze, I think maybe that could work. I've tried a lot of seemingly terrifying things "just once," like SCUBA diving and a tantric sex workshop I won in a raffle. Usually they turned out okay, and one time I even saw a sea turtle.
I agree to try IVF. But I'm done waiting an hour for a doctor who never shows. If I'm going to invest that kind of time and money, I'm finding a new clinic.
if Clomid is this bad, I can't imagine what IVF will do.
IVF stands for in vitro fertilisation. It's a blanket term for the process of introducing a sperm and egg outside of the body, in a petri dish. Although in vitro is Latin for "in glass," the term "test tube baby" is a bit of media sensationalism that, in my opinion, isn't doing any of us any favours. Mixing some DNA in a petri dish doesn't sound so bad, but Frankensteining a human baby in a test tube? Horrifying.
After choosing a more user-friendly fertility clinic, I scheduled a meeting with their full-time financial specialist. This was a necessary evil, since IVF is expensive as f*ck. It's also, infuriatingly, covered by almost no insurance plans, despite the fact that infertility is a verified medical condition and the success rate of treatment with IVF can be as high as 77%.
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the average cost of an IVF cycle is $12,400. Since I'd be paying out-of-pocket for a service my insurance plan didn't cover and, realistically, may need more than one cycle before I saw success, the financial specialist offered me an intriguing option: a package deal that allowed me to pre-pay for multiple cycles upfront. This plan would even return a percentage of our investment if we didn't, in the brochure's words, "take home a baby."
The package was offered through a third party, and I had to meet certain age and health requirements to qualify. Essentially, this third party is betting on IVF getting me knocked up, and fast. I took the bet.
I pre-paid $26,800 for three rounds of IVF. It was more money than I'd ever spent on anything, but ultimately it wasn't a hard decision to make. I liked that I only had to pay it once and wouldn't have to deal with billing for every procedure (something that had been a nightmare at my last clinic). Psychologically, it gave me peace of mind to have an end-point: If my three cycles didn't pan out, it would be time to try something else.
I put it all on a brand-new Delta Amex (which I immediately began paying off by working 60-hour weeks at two different ad agencies), and was instantly bumped to Gold status on the airline — something I couldn't enjoy, because from the time I signed on that dotted line I was essentially tethered to NYC by the hope of an umbilical cord.
IVF is expensive as f*ck. It's also, infuriatingly, covered by almost no insurance plans.
Ironically, the first prescription my new IVF doctor wrote was for the birth control pill. This would put my reproductive system into a neutral state where it wasn't producing eggs or ovulating and, because I've always had irregular periods (thanks, PCOS!), I would need its help to trigger a period within a normal timeframe. At that point, we'd start me on the serious IVF drugs: the hard stuff.
In a typical IVF cycle, you take a bunch of hormones that essentially trick your ovaries into freaking out and producing as many eggs as possible. In a normal, non-medicated cycle, a woman will produce one mature egg. With the help of these drugs, you can get up to 20. The more viable eggs you have, the more are available to mix with sperm and turn into embryos. This is a numbers game, and it's important to start strong.
But here's the thing about those drugs: they're shots. Like, with needles. That my husband and I had to somehow finagle into my body every morning and night.
When my ice-packed, mail-order package of IVF drugs arrived, it was so big I could barely get my arms around it. It contained a bewildering assortment of glass vials and terrifying-looking needles, pill bottles and cotton pads, alcohol wipes and a red sharps disposal container covered in menacing logos. Some of the vials had to go into the fridge right away. Everything else took over a closet.
I'm pretty squeamish, so my husband was in charge of mixing the potions, prepping the syringes, and inserting them into my belly. All I had to do was stand there and wince. To my surprise, the pain wasn't anything to write home about. The needles, though sharp, were small, and for the first time in my life I was happy about the extra padding around my midsection: It provided more real estate for the injections. In addition to two shots a day, I was also taking a prenatal vitamin and an extra pill of folic acid, and midway through my cycle I began progesterone suppositories (little goop-filled pods that I inserted twice a day like a tampon) and oestrogen pills.
And it was working. Every two to five days, I visited the clinic for a blood draw and vaginal ultrasound. As the doctor penetrated my most intimate places, I watched her count and measure the egg-containing sacs on my ovaries: 16 good-sized follicles on my right ovary, 10 on my left, and growing. My doctor was psyched, and so was I. If this was a numbers game, I was winning.
I lay on a table in a vaguely pornographic position as a nurse pressed down on my belly with an ultrasound wand.
After two weeks of doing shots (and not the fun kind that make you show your tits at Mardi Gras), it was time for my "extraction": the clinical term for getting knocked out and having the doctor go all up in my business to collect my eggs.
To prep for this, I had to take a trigger shot of HCG, a pregnancy hormone that signalled my body to release the eggs. The injection had to be timed exactly 36 hours before the extraction — a moment which, as luck would have it, fell on a Saturday night when we were throwing a massive birthday bash for one of our friends. This wasn't the first time my husband and I had disappeared into a bathroom at a party together (we like each other, okay?), but it was the first time we emerged carrying a vial and a syringe. This was also around when I started coming clean to friends about my IVF treatment. It was either that or have them think I was a junkie.
My extraction was that Monday. I woke from a blissed-out anaesthetic haze to learn that my doctor had harvested 11 eggs. Of those, nine were considered mature enough for fertilisation. An embryologist manually inserted sperm into each egg under a microscope, using a process known as Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI, pronounced "ick-see", for short). A day later, I got a phone call telling me that eight of the fertilszed eggs had made it to the first stage of embryo development.
Again, this was a numbers game. I knew that some of the embryos would develop abnormalities or simply stop growing, indicating that they probably would have made a not-so-healthy human and been rejected by my body very early on. But the more healthy embryos we had, the more chances we had of growing a baby. Because having a goal seemed important, I prayed for a 50% success rate.
Theoretically, multiple embryos can be transferred back into the female body: That's what happened with the Octomum. For patients over 40, doctors may transfer up to five embryos in the hope that at least one will stick. But because I was relatively young and healthy, this was my first IVF attempt, and multiple pregnancies carry a higher risk, my doctor recommended transferring just one. The rest would be frozen for future use. When the time came, all they had to do was thaw one out and pop it in, like a microwave burrito.
In an ideal scenario, doctors wait five days between the extraction and the embryo transfer. This gives them time to track the development by keeping an eye on things like cell division and symmetry. For me, those five days were both nerve-wracking and delightful: nerve-wracking as I waited for news about our precious embryos, and delightful because, since I wasn't currently hosting any potential humans, I could have a glass of wine.
When I arrived for my embryo transfer, I was told that I had two beautiful, perfect embryos, and three that may or may not make it. I was devastated. All that work, for just two chances? And if only one-fifth of our embryos were viable, what did that say about us? All the statistics I'd tried so hard not to read about egg quality declining sharply in your mid-30s came swooping down on me, re-opening questions I thought I'd put to rest about my suitability to be a mum. The transfer was not off to a good start.
I also had to pee, viciously. I was told to arrive with a full bladder, which helps push the uterus into a position that enables the doctor to insert the embryo via a catheter. I have to pee every half-hour, religiously, and my transfer was running 40 minutes late. A nurse instructed me to go to the bathroom and "let it out for the count of three," which is one of the strangest and most unpleasant sensations in the world. Finally, it was time to enter the operating room.
I lay on a table in a vaguely pornographic position as a nurse pressed down on my belly with an ultrasound wand. I could see my bladder, shaped like a big black jellybean, and a staticky mess that was supposedly my uterus and vaginal canal. The embryologist entered the room carrying what looked like a tiny white wand: this was the catheter, and our maybe-future-baby was nestled in its tip. My husband and I held hands and watched on the ultrasound monitor as the doctor threaded it up inside of me, a slim white line among all that static. When she removed it, a glowing white dot remained. This wasn't really the embryo (it's too small too see), but the dye surrounding it, telling them it had hit its mark.
If IVF has taught me anything, it's to be patient with my body and myself.
My clinic's IVF success rate for women my age is about 50% per transfer: a coin toss. I'd prepared myself mentally for the possibility of the first round not taking, so I was sad, but not completely devastated, when the news came back that my pregnancy test was negative. Since all four of my developing embryos had made it to maturity, I was comforted by the fact that I had four more chances before my next round of egg-harvesting.
But that's when I learned one of the most surprising — and hardest — lessons about IVF: the cycles take twice as long. In order for my hormones to return to a neutral state, I had to go back on birth control for three weeks, get another period, and then begin a new five-week ordeal of shots, pills, and monitoring. What used to be 30 excruciating days was now stretched to 60. Yeesh.
My doctor assured me that this cycle would be easier, but I think she must have meant easier for her. Because we were suppressing my system in preparation for a frozen embryo transfer instead of pumping it full of egg-producing hormones, I only had to go in for monitoring once a week.
My home life was a different story. Thanks to a barrage of new tests that my doctor ordered after my first transfer failed, I had some fresh diagnoses and a whole new regimen of drugs. These included 10 pills a day, a painful injection of blood thinners that left giant bruises on my abdomen, and daily hormone shots, which required my husband to shove an inch-and-a-half long needle into my butt every night. IVF was becoming a pain in my ass — literally.
But it would all be worth it if it resulted in a child.
IVF was becoming a pain in my ass — literally.
By the time you see this post, I'll either be celebrating my IVF success with sparkling cider and a onesie shopping spree or weeping into a bottle of Jack. Even if it's the former, my joy will be cautious: Because of my new diagnoses and encroaching "advanced maternal age" (I turn 35 in a month), I'll be facing a high-risk pregnancy fraught with as much fear as hope.
If it's the latter, I'll dry my tears and start the whole process over again.
If IVF has taught me anything, it's to be patient with my body and myself. Every cycle is an opportunity to learn something new, whether it's about my body's autoimmune responses, the correct way to inject a blood thinner, or my own seemingly bottomless capacity for resilience. I've learned that I can go to the very depths of despair and resurface a few days later, ready for more. I've learned what it is to want something so badly that nothing will stand in your way.
Ultimately, the hardest thing for me about IVF was the decision to do it. To get there, I had to let go of my dream of conceiving easily and spontaneously. I had to come to terms with the fact that I was going to need medical intervention to have a child, and that wanting to try IVF before adoption isn't necessarily selfish: It's about giving my body a chance.
Mostly, I've learned to speak out. Women have suffered infertility in silence for centuries, steeped in shame over something that simply isn't their fault. It's that silence that leads to myths and misinformation, and it's one of the things that prevent us from seeking treatment when we need it the most.
IVF, though certainly no picnic, hasn't been nearly as horrible in real life as it was in my head. And while I wouldn't wish infertility on anyone, my hope is that someday, everyone who needs this level of care to start a family will be able to receive it.
IVF Fertility Clinic, Getting Pregnant With PCOS
written by Anna Hecker
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