text:
Home Universal Values The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping's internet shutdown
December 2015, thousands of tech entrepreneurs and analysts, along with a few international heads of state, gathered in Wuzhen, in southern China, for the country's second World Internet Conference. At the opening ceremony the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, set out his vision for the future of China's internet. "We should respect the right of individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber-development," said Xi, warning against foreign interference "in other countries' internal affairs".
No one was surprised by what they heard. Xi had already established that the Chinese internet would be a world unto itself, with its content closely monitored and managed by the Communist party. In recent years, the Chinese leadership has devoted more and more resources to controlling content online. Government policies have contributed to a dramatic fall in the number of postings on the Chinese blogging platform Sina Weibo (similar to Twitter), and have silenced many of China's most important voices advocating reform and opening up the internet.
It wasn't always like this. In the years before Xi became president in 2012, the internet had begun to afford the Chinese people an unprecedented level of transparency and power to communicate. Popular bloggers, some of whom advocated bold social and political reforms, commanded tens of millions of followers. Chinese citizens used virtual private networks (VPNs) to access blocked websites. Citizens banded together online to hold authorities accountable for their actions, through virtual petitions and organising physical protests. In 2010, a survey of 300 Chinese officials revealed that 70% were anxious about whether mistakes or details about their private life might be leaked online. Of the almost 6,000 Chinese citizens also surveyed, 88% believed it was good for officials to feel this anxiety.
For Xi Jinping, however, there is no distinction between the virtual world and the real world: both should reflect the same political values, ideals, and standards. To this end, the government has invested in technological upgrades to monitor and censor content. It has passed new laws on acceptable content, and aggressively punished those who defy the new restrictions. Under Xi, foreign content providers have found their access to China shrinking. They are being pushed out by both Xi's ideological war and his desire that Chinese companies dominate the country's rapidly growing online economy.
At home, Xi paints the west's version of the internet, which prioritises freedom of information flow, as anathema to the values of the Chinese government. Abroad, he asserts China's sovereign right to determine what constitutes harmful content. Rather than acknowledging that efforts to control the internet are a source of embarrassment – a sign of potential authoritarian fragility – Xi is trying to turn his vision of a "Chinanet" (to use blogger Michael Anti's phrase) into a model for other countries.
The challenge for China's leadership is to maintain what it perceives as the benefits of the internet – advancing commerce and innovation – without letting technology accelerate political change. To maintain his "Chinanet", Xi seems willing to accept the costs in terms of economic development, creative expression, government credibility, and the development of civil society. But the internet continues to serve as a powerful tool for citizens seeking to advance social change and human rights. The game of cat-and-mouse continues, and there are many more mice than cats.
The very first email in China was sent in September 1987 – 16 years after Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in the US. It broadcast a triumphal message: "Across the Great Wall we can reach every corner in the world." For the first few years, the government reserved the internet for academics and officials. Then, in 1995, it was opened to the general public. In 1996, although only about 150,000 Chinese people were connected to the internet, the government deemed it the "Year of the Internet", and internet clubs and cafes appeared all over China's largest cities.
Yet as enthusiastically as the government proclaimed its support for the internet, it also took steps to control it. Rogier Creemers, a China expert at Oxford University, has noted that "As the internet became a publicly accessible information and communication platform, there was no debate about whether it should fall under government supervision – only about how such control would be implemented in practice." By 1997, Beijing had enacted its first laws criminalising online postings that it believed were designed to hurt national security or the interests of the state.
China's leaders were right to be worried. Their citizens quickly realised the political potential inherent in the internet. In 1998, a 30-year-old software engineer called Lin Hai forwarded 30,000 Chinese email addresses to a US-based pro-democracy magazine. Lin was arrested, tried and ultimately sent to prison in the country's first known trial for a political violation committed completely online. The following year, the spiritual organisation Falun Gong used email and mobile phones to organise a silent demonstration of more than 10,000 followers around the Communist party's central compound, Zhongnanhai, to protest their inability to practise freely. The gathering, which had been arranged without the knowledge of the government, precipitated an ongoing persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and a new determination to exercise control over the internet.
The man who emerged to lead the government's technological efforts was Fang Binxing. In the late 1990s, Fang worked on developing the "Golden Shield" – transformative software that enabled the government to inspect any data being received or sent, and to block destination IP addresses and domain names. His work was rewarded by a swift political rise. By the 2000s, he had earned the moniker "Father of the Great Firewall" and, eventually, the enmity of hundreds of thousands of Chinese web users.
Throughout the early 2000s, the Chinese leadership supplemented Fang's technology with a set of new regulations designed to ensure that anyone with access to China's internet played by Chinese rules. In September 2000, the state council issued order no 292, which required internet service providers to ensure that the information sent out on their services adhered to the law, and that some domain names and IP addresses were recorded. Two years later, Beijing blocked Google for the first time. (A few years later, Google introduced Google.cn, a censored version of the site.) In 2002, the government increased its emphasis on self-censorship with the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for China's Internet Industry, which established four principles: patriotic observance of law, equitableness, trustworthiness and honesty. More than 100 companies, including Yahoo!, signed the pledge.
Perhaps the most significant development, however, was a 2004 guideline on internet censorship that called for Chinese universities to recruit internet commentators who could guide online discussions in politically acceptable directions and report comments that did not follow Chinese law. These commentators became known as wu mao dang, or "50-cent party", after the small bonuses they were supposedly paid for each post.
Yet even as the government was striving to limit individuals' access to information, many citizens were making significant inroads into the country's political world – and their primary target was corrupt local officials.
In May 2009, Deng Yujiao, a young woman working in a hotel in Hubei province, stabbed a party official to death after she rejected his efforts to pay her for sex and he tried to rape her. Police initially committed Deng to a mental hospital. A popular blogger, Wu Gan, however, publicised her case. Using information gathered through a process known as ren rou sousuo, or "human flesh search engine", in which web users collaborate to discover the identity of a specific individual or organisation, Wu wrote a blog describing the events and actions of the party officials involved.
In an interview with the Atlantic magazine at the time, he commented: "The cultural significance of flesh searches is this: in an undemocratic country, the people have limited means to get information … [but] citizens can get access to information through the internet, exposing lies and the truth." Deng's case began to attract public support, with young people gathering in Beijing with signs reading "Anyone could be Deng Yujiao." Eventually the court ruled that Deng had acted in self-defence.
During this period, in the final years of Hu Jintao's presidency, the internet was becoming more and more powerful as a mechanism by which Chinese citizens held their officials to account. Most cases were like that of Deng Yujiao – lodged and resolved at the local level. A small number, however, reached central authorities in Beijing. On 23 July 2011, a high-speed train derailed in the coastal city of Wenzhou, leaving at least 40 people dead and 172 injured. In the wake of the accident, Chinese officials banned journalistsfrom investigating, telling them to use only information "released from authorities". But local residents took photos of the wreckage being buried instead of being examined for evidence. The photos went viral and heightened the impression that the government's main goal was not to seek the true cause of the accident.
A Sina Weibo poll – later blocked – asked users why they thought the train wreckage was buried: 98% (61,382) believed it represented destruction of evidence. Dark humour spread online: "How far are we from heaven? Only a train ticket away," and "The Ministry of Railways earnestly requests that you ride the Heavenly Party Express." The popular pressure resulted in a full-scale investigation of the crash, and in late December, the government issued a report blaming poorly designed signal equipment and insufficient safety procedures. As many as 54 officials faced disciplinary action as a result of the crash.
The internet also provided a new sense of community for Chinese citizens, who mostly lacked robust civil-society organisations. In July 2012, devastating floods in Beijing led to the evacuation of more than 65,000 residents and the deaths of at least 77 people. Damages totalled an estimated $1.9bn. Local officials failed to respond effectively: police officers allegedly kept ticketing stranded cars instead of assisting residents, and the early warning system did not work. Yet the real story was the extraordinary outpouring of assistance from Beijing web users, who volunteered their homes and food to stranded citizens. In a span of just 24 hours, an estimated 8.8m messages were sent on Weibo regarding the floods. The story of the floods became not only one of government incompetence, but also one of how an online community could transform into a real one.
While the Chinese people explored new ways to use the internet, the leadership also began to develop a taste for the new powers it offered, such as a better understanding of citizens' concerns and new ways to shape public opinion. Yet as the internet increasingly became a vehicle for dissent, concern within the leadership mounted that it might be used to mobilise a large-scale political protest capable of threatening the central government. The government responded with a stream of technological fixes and political directives; yet the boundaries of internet life continued to expand.
The advent of Xi Jinping in 2012 brought a new determination to move beyond deleting posts and passing regulations. Beijing wanted to ensure that internet content more actively served the interests of the Communist party. Within the virtual world, as in the real world, the party moved to silence dissenting voices, to mobilise party members in support of its values, and to prevent foreign ideas from seeping into Chinese political and social life. In a leaked speech in August 2013, Xi articulated a dark vision: "The internet has become the main battlefield for the public opinion struggle."
Early in his tenure, Xi embraced the world of social media. One Weibo group, called Fan Group to Learn from Xi, appeared in late 2012, much to the delight of Chinese propaganda officials. (Many Chinese suspected that the account was directed by someone in the government, although the account's owner denied it.) Xi allowed a visit he made to Hebei to be liveblogged on Weibo by government-affiliated press, and videos about Xi, including a viral music video called How Should I Address You, based on a trip he made to a mountain village, demonstrate the government's increasing skill at digital propaganda.
Xi Jinping at the World Internet Conference in Jiaxing, China, in 2015. Photograph: Aly Song/Reuters
Under Xi, the government has also developed new technology that has enabled it to exert far greater control over the internet. In January 2015, the government blocked many of the VPNs that citizens had used to circumvent the Great Firewall. This was surprising to many outside observers, who had believed that VPNs were too useful to the Chinese economy – supporting multinationals, banks and retailers, among others – for the government to crack down on them.
In spring 2015, Beijing launched the Great Cannon. Unlike the Great Firewall, which has the capacity to block traffic as it enters or exits China, the Great Cannon is able to adjust and replace content as it travels around the internet. One of its first targets was the US coding and software development site GitHub. The Chinese government used the Great Cannon to levy a distributed denial of service attack against the site, overwhelming it with traffic redirected from Baidu (a search engine similar to Google). The attack focused on attempting to force GitHub to remove pages linked to the Chinese-language edition of the New York Times and GreatFire.org, a popular VPN that helps people circumvent Chinese internet censorship.
But perhaps Xi's most noticeable gambit has been to constrain the nature of the content available online. In August 2013, the government issued a new set of regulations known as the "seven baselines". The reaction by Chinese internet companies was immediate. Sina, for example, shut down or "handled" 100,000 Weibo accounts found to not comply with the new rules.
The government also adopted tough restrictions on internet-based rumours. In September 2013, the supreme people's court ruled that authors of online posts that deliberately spread rumours or lies, and were either seen by more than 5,000 individuals or shared more than 500 times, could face defamation charges and up to three years in jail. Following massive flooding in Hebei province in July 2016, for example, the government detained three individuals accused of spreading "false news" via social media regarding the death toll and cause of the flood. Some social media posts and photos of the flooding, particularly of drowning victims, were also censored.
In addition, Xi's government began targeting individuals with large social media followings who might challenge the authority of the Communist party. Restrictions on the most prominent Chinese web influencers, beginning in 2013, represented an important turning point in China's internet life. Discussions began to move away from politics to personal and less sensitive issues. The impact on Sina Weibo was dramatic. According to a study of 1.6 million Weibo users, the number of Weibo posts fell by 70% between 2011 and 2013.
The strength of the Communist party's control over the internet rests above all on its commitment to prevent the spread of information that it finds dangerous. It has also adopted sophisticated technology, such as the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield. Perhaps its most potent source of influence, however, is the cyber-army it has developed to implement its policies.
The total number of people employed to monitor opinion and censor content on the internet – a role euphemistically known as "internet public opinion analyst" – was estimated at 2 million in 2013. They are employed across government propaganda departments, private corporations and news outlets. One 2016 Harvard study estimated that the Chinese government fabricates and posts approximately 448m comments on social media annually. A considerable amount of censorship is conducted through the manual deletion of posts, and an estimated 100,000 people are employed by both the government and private companies to do just this.
Private companies also play an important role in facilitating internet censorship in China. Since commercial internet providers are so involved in censoring the sites that they host, internet scholar Guobin Yang argues that "it may not be too much of a stretch to talk about the privatisation of internet content control". The process is made simpler by the fact that several major technology entrepreneurs also hold political office. For example, Robin Li of Baidu is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory legislature, while Lei Jun, founder and CEO of mobile phone giant Xiaomi, is a representative of the National People's Congress.
Yet Xi's growing control over the internet does not come without costs. An internet that does not work efficiently or limits access to information impedes economic growth. China's internet is notoriously unreliable, and ranks 91st in the world for speed. As New Yorker writer Evan Osnos asked in discussing the transformation of the Chinese internet during Xi's tenure: "How many countries in 2015 have an internet connection to the world that is worse than it was a year ago?"
Scientific innovation, particularly prized by the Chinese leadership, may also be at risk. After the VPN crackdown, a Chinese biologist published an essay that became popular on social media, entitled Why Do Scientists Need Google? He wrote: "If a country wants to make this many scientists take out time from the short duration of their professional lives to research technology for climbing over the Great Firewall and to install and to continually upgrade every kind of software for routers, computers, tablets and mobile devices, no matter that this behaviour wastes a great amount of time; it is all completely ridiculous."
More difficult to gauge is the cost the Chinese leadership incurs to its credibility. Web users criticising the Great Firewall have used puns to mock China's censorship system. Playing off the fact that the phrases "strong nation" and "wall nation" share a phonetic pronunciation in Chinese (qiangguo), some began using the phrase "wall nation" to refer to China. Those responsible for seeking to control content have also been widely mocked. When Fang opened an account on Sina Weibo in December 2010, he quickly closed the account after thousands of online users left "expletive-laden messages" accusing him of being a government hack. Censors at Sina Weibo blocked "Fang Binxing" as a search term; one Twitter user wrote: "Kind of poetic, really, the blocker, blocked." When Fang delivered a speech at Wuhan University in central China in 2011, a few students pelted him with eggs and a pair of shoes.
Nonetheless, the government seems willing to bear the economic and scientific costs, as well as potential damage to its credibility, if it means more control over the internet. For the international community, Beijing's cyber-policy is a sign of the challenge that a more powerful China presents to the liberal world order, which prioritises values such as freedom of speech. It also reflects the paradox inherent in China's efforts to promote itself as a champion of globalisation, while simultaneously advocating a model of internet sovereignty and closing its cyber-world to information and investment from abroad.
Adapted from The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State by Elizabeth C Economy, published by Oxford University Press
Great Firewall of China
Previous articleChina's social credit system 'could interfere in other nations' sovereignty'
Next articleMysterious source of illegal ozone-killing emissions revealed, say investigators
China social media: WeChat and the Surveillance State
Why China Silenced a Clickbait Queen in Its Battle for Information Control
For single mothers and lesbians in China, accessing fertility treatment is a nightmare
As Chinese honour dead ancestors, illegal practise of ghost marriages still...
After ex-Interpol chief's disappearance, his wife is publicly fighting Chinese authorities
U.N. denounces China crackdown on lawyers, seeks release
The struggles of reporting on China's secret Uighur 're-education camps'
Dropouts a concern for China's evolving economy
On Buddhist practice
Ban Official Chinese Student Organizations Abroad
China's women's movement has not only survived an intense crackdown, it's...


Children learn it like a nursery rhyme: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. That was when the first world war effectively ended, in 1918. After unbearable slaughter, at least twenty million people dead and millions more left as refugees, the war to end all wars was exhausted with a truce, an armistice. It became a day to remember.
Armistice Day became Veterans Day after the second world war. Children were brought to parades and gravesides, to honor the courage of graying men and to hear a bugle play Taps for those who should have been there, but were not. Children continued to grow up in a world of war, many to fight themselves.
So in this nation presently at war, too many families continue to face the tragic news that their sons and daughters will not come back from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from missions that divide the citizenry. More than 3,850 Americans who volunteered for service have been killed. More than 28,000 have been injured. Conservative estimates put the Iraqi civilian death toll at over 100,000 people. Parents today worry about children becoming unnaturally familiar with the terms suicide bomb and rocket attack.
This week, as conflicts in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey threatened to inflame global conflagration, at the Vineyard Haven ferry terminal celebrations greeted the safe return of Army Spc. Chris Brown after a tour in the Mideast. At least twelve Islanders have served in Iraq.
Monday is a day for all to reflect, to pledge compassion and care for those who survive, and to dare to hope for the relief of peace again for our children.


text:
Brave Shannen Doherty, Fighting Advanced Breast Cancer, Grieves Fellow Cancer-Warrior: 'She Is Wedged In My Heart'
"We were sisters," the 90210 alum has said of longtime friend, Deborah Waknin-Harwin who fought cancer beside her. Find out how immunotherapy changed the game for one stage 4 breast cancer patient.
The loss of a longtime friend is especially devastating when that friend is also a fellow-cancer warrior. Shannen Doherty shared her ongoing grief Sunday in a touching remembrance of Deborah Waknin-Harwin on Instagram. The pair met 28 years ago, forming an "instant friendship" Doherty wrote when Waknin-Harwin died in late March. "She was a constant.
RELATED: Shannen Doherty's Touching Tribute to Beloved Fellow Cancer Warrior
Thru my cancer and I for her when she got diagnosed 4 years ago," Doherty wrote then. "She smiled, a lot. She radiated beauty, intelligence and goodness. She was and is wedged into my heart so deeply. We were more than best friends. We were sisters."
A post shared by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jun 14, 2020 at 9:05pm PDT
The relationship began around 28 years ago, when Waknin-Harnin, a fashion stylist, "made me squeeze into very tight red patent pants." Doherty conceded that, her clothes-savvy friend, "taught me that when she dressed me, I looked better."
RELATED: 'You All Help Lift Me' — Shannen Doherty Posts Emotional Message of Gratitude After Her Breast Cancer Diagnosis
As their relationship deepened, Doherty said, "I was her maid of honor at her wedding to the love of her life Craig. We cried when she called to tell me she was pregnant with her extraordinary daughter Olivia." There may be another reason Doherty treasured the friendship:
"You two were always there to guide me," Sarah Michelle Gellar said of Shannen Doherty, on losing their mutual friend Deborah Waknin-Harnin.
While it's no surprise that friends can become tongue-tied when talking about cancer, many in the cancer community report that some people they once considered friends stopped speaking to them altogether.
RELATED: 'Cancer Ghosting' Is Real — Many Survivors Say Friends Suddenly Disappear After a Diagnosis
The phenomenon, known as cancer ghosting, is real: Informal research conducted by War on Cancer, a social networking app for survivors, found that 65% of surveyed survivors said they had friends or relatives who cut contact or pulled away from them after they were diagnosed.
Shannen Doherty's First Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Doherty was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. Early efforts to treat her cancer without a mastectomy or aggressive treatments were not enough, and the cancer spread to the lymph nodes. In response, the actress underwent estrogen therapy treatments, a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery before announcing she was cancer-free in 2018.
RELATED: 'We Got This Kiddo' — Shannen Doherty's '90210' Family Continues to Shower Her with Love After Cancer Diagnosis
At the time, she acknowledged that the treatment had caused her to enter menopause, making pregnancy impossible without taking hormone pills. She decided against it due to fear that estrogen levels can increase the chance of cancer returning.
Living With Late-Stage Breast Cancer
She received her new diagnosis — stage 4 — over a year ago, but opted to keep the news private while filming the "90210" reboot (since canceled). Doherty went public with her stage 4 diagnosis in a Feb. 4 interview with ABC's Amy Robach, herself a breast cancer survivor, "I definitely have days where I say, 'Why me?' And then I go, 'Well, why not me? Who else? Who else besides me deserves this?'" Doherty said. "None of us do."
RELATED: Shannen Doherty's Sisterhood Rallies Around Her Following Stage 4 Breast Cancer Diagnosis
Stage 4 breast cancer means that your cancer has metastasized and is no longer regionalized to the breast. While treatable, this cancer currently has no cure. While we don't know the specifics of Doherty's breast cancer, treatment options include hormone therapy, chemotherapy and targeted drugs. Sometimes surgery and/or radiation is considered. The goal is to keep you as stable as possible, slow the tumor growth and improve quality of life.
Immunotherapy Inspiration: Judy Perkins
Anyone battling metastatic breast cancer will want to know about Judy Perkins, the first person to be declared free of metastatic breast cancer after a course of immunotherapy. In the world of clinical trials, Perkins is known as an exceptional responder.
In 2003, Judy was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer and had a mastectomy. In 2013, the breast cancer back – and this time it was metastatic.
Judy Perkins is the first person to be declared free of metastatic breast cancer after a course of immunotherapy.
Standard treatment was not working and in 2015, Judy learned of an immunotherapy trial at the National Cancer Institute which is part of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
RELATED: Shannen Doherty Gives Update Amid Cancer Battle: 'Taking Care of Myself and Embracing Every Day'
Doctors removed some of her immune cells, identified the ones which could recognize the cancer and then harvested those in the lab. Several months later the cells were infused back into her body to attack the tumors. Judy has been cancer-free since 2016.
RELATED: "I Want to be Part of Finding the End of Cancer!" Olivia Newton John On Life With Stage Four Breast Cancer
"I feel like I'm cured and I'm not really looking behind me and waiting for it to come back. I've had a different treatment than people who have any residual disease. So I'm not worried about mine coming back, not that it couldn't, but that's not really where my focus is," Judy told SurvivorNet in an interview about life after her illness.
Dr. Steven Rosenberg, Chief of Surgery at the NCI is a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy
The experimental approach is called adoptive cell therapy, and while it is showing great promise, it's important to note that it doesn't work for everyone.
RELATED VIDEO: What's Next for Breast Cancer and Immunotherapy?
Judy was one of the first patients "to teach us that by carefully looking at (her) body's immune cells, we could identify cells that uniquely recognize her cancer and by growing them in a lab and giving her enough of them we could actually cause the cancer to regress completely," says Dr. Steven Rosenberg, Chief of Surgery at the NCI and a pioneer in the field of immunotherapy.
As Shannen Doherty, 49, Battles Advanced Breast Cancer, She Says Goodbye to 2020 and Looks to Brighter Days Ahead in 2021
Breast Cancer Transformed Christine Handy From Model & Housewife to Philanthropist & Mentor; Helped Her Find "True Joy"
'90210's' Brian Austin Green Calls Shannen Doherty a "Fighter" as She Battles Stage Four Breast Cancer
John Travolta's Bear Hug Photo With Son Ben Is Pure Joy; Those Smiles are Priceless After the Loss of Kelly Preston to Breast Cancer
Actress Shannen Doherty's Sisterhood of Support During Breast Cancer Fight Is Everything; 'Friendsgiving' Prep with Sarah Michelle Gellar
Shannen Doherty, 49, Says 'Byeeeeee' to Her Christmas Tree and 2020 as She Battles Metastatic Breast Cancer And Looks to the New Year
'90210's' Brian Austin Green Calls Shannen Doherty a "Fighter" as She Battles Stage Four Breast Cancer
John Travolta's Bear Hug Photo With Son Ben Is Pure Joy; Those Smiles are Priceless After the Loss of Kelly Preston to Breast Cancer
Actress Shannen Doherty's Sisterhood of Support During Breast Cancer Fight Is Everything; 'Friendsgiving' Prep with Sarah Michelle Gellar

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
How the Right-Wing Backlash That Elected Donald J. Trump Began
by Brett Stevens on August 30, 2017
Samuel Huntington predicted back in the 1990s that liberal democracy had reached its apex, and rather than being "the end of history" or the final evolution of humankind, the idea of human equality was in decline and soon to be replaced with innate group identifiers such as "civilization," or the mixture of race, geography, ethnicity, culture, and religion that defines an organic society.
As part of this, nationalism — the idea that a nation consists of the genetics of its founding group, and what united the Axis Powers during WWII — has come roaring back, mainly because people are realizing that ideology (ideas about how reality "should" be from a human perspective, usually based around "equality") is not just causing constant conflict, but has changed their societies for the worst during the years following the second world war.
One of the major drivers behind this was that the forces of freedom, equality, and democracy have contradicted themselves. Freedom is OK, until it conflicts with the ideology of the State and the vast faceless herd of angry lumpenproletariat behind it. Then, it is offensive and you will be destroyed for refusing to bake that cake, sell to that nice black fellow, hire Hispanics to do the labor Americans will do, or having that flag in your yard. They will not defend you with the police your taxes paid for, nor will they prosecute those who attack you. They will slander you in public, delete your websites, get you fired from your job, and immerse you in waves of angry messages. In other words, you only have "freedom" so long as it agrees with the herd and its government; the same is true of equality: you are equal unless you are from one of those majority groups that seem to succeed despite the legal restrictions we have imposed upon them in order to make the Others equal. And also of democracy: democracy is great until it goes against the Left, at which point the herd is justified in rioting and vandalism, and the "responsible adults" (cough) will attempt to impeach a president for violations he did not commit. And so, people have concluded correctly that freedom, equality and democracy are not just dead but were either never serious, or worse, never functional, in the first place.
In my recollection, the sign of this tipping point was Obergefell vs. Hodges, the case that established that a national interest in forcing equality on an unequal population was more important than the "freedom" of any person or group to escape the hive-mind that says equality is our only value and we must destroy anyone who disagrees. At this point, government made it clear that ideological (or symbolic) objectives were more important than practical ones. Having healthy nuclear families producing K-strategic children is how you build a great nation; following the Soviets into a world where symbolism and appearance are more important than reality and consequences is how you destroy that nation. Obergefell woke up a lot of people, and they started to see that not just was government bad, but that we now have a huge underclass of minorities and failed neurotic whites (most of them ethnic minorities like the Irish, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Poles and Russians) who are banding together to overthrow any vestiges of the old Western European America. They want something more like the third-world lifestyles of Ireland or Italy where nothing really succeeds but the individual can get away with a lot more. That underclass — those who feel powerless because this society was not designed for them — is what gives government its power, thanks to the Leftist immigration acts of the 1960s which changed the composition of this nation-state.
As a result, people are suggesting that we back up and sneak away from this precipice. We realize in our guts that this is democracy's endgame, and much like how the ideological mania of the Soviets led them over a cliff, it will lead us into the type of simultaneous crashes — social, economic, political, moral — that leave behind wastelands like Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Somalia and Libya. One path is Balkanization or secession, where groups drop out from the mainstream and have their own little communities based on the values they share, like a Western European Traditionalist community. The problem with this is that government takes money from these communities in taxes and distributes it to the underclass, much as it does in Brazil. This is why people talk about secession, so that they can conserve the money produced by their community without having government appropriate it. Mencius Moldbug approached this problem through "patchwork," where he considered the possibility of a libertarian world government where little corporate states, like the city-states of Venice, exist where citizens pay government for services. What is that you say? He did not mention a libertarian world government? That must have been an oversight, because one of those would be required to prevent the Chinese or Russians from invading and conquering these little states in sequence. That is sort of the gap in Moldbug's plan, and all libertarian thinking. States evolved for a reason. Naturally, what existed before them — kingdoms — worked better, but was less popular, and with humans, the weak eat the strong through the inversion magic of popularity (which Moldbug called "demotism": democracy, consumerism and social popularity are parallels of the same idea). In the long term, secession and Balkanization will not hold up.
This led us to a simple realization: there is a totalitarian Left which wants to complete its takeover of this country and more broadly, the remains of the collapsed post-1945 West, and the only way to oppose it is to entirely reject the roots of its power, which is the assumption by most people that "equality" and "pluralism" (including diversity, which is ethno-pluralism) are in fact "good" things at all:
And then, of course, there's a Supreme Court. You know, the more I think about it, I can't overstate the significance of the gay marriage decision. Regardless of the merits of the issue, the question is how it was arrived at. For the courts to find a right to homosexual marriage in the Constitution—if they can do that, they can do anything. They can do anything.
At this point, the Constitution is a shredded document used by politicians who go searching through the shreds for a fragment of a sentence that will justify whatever they want to offer to the herd, knowing that the herd votes only for more free stuff or fewer social standards, and so any legal change that combines those — welfare, Obamacare, gay marriage, transgender rights — will be a bit hit with the underclass. Smashing down the family, Confederate heritage, traditional religion including Christianity, heterosexuality, masculinity, and any other thing which is healthy and therefore sets a de facto behavioral standard, is good. They will vote for that, riot in the streets for it, engage in more silly protests with pink hats, whatever. That means the politician gets ahead, and in the Darwinistic world of politics, those who fail to get ahead are eliminated from the pool of those who will have power. You either leap forward or are destroyed. And so politicians will always drift to the Left because the Left's one idea — "equality" — appeals to the lowest common denominator, or what is weak in all of us, and that will win any election.
We have two choices: go with the totalitarian Left to a state like the USSR, or backpedal from Leftism entirely, and choose from a range of Right-wing options (monarchism, agrarianism, traditionalism, capitalism).
The Alt Right arose to oppose both the path to Leftism doom and the "Right"-wing politicians who were going along with it, empowered by a group of angry old men who like to throw fruit at the screens of their televisions playing Fox News, and then keep on writing checks, to the National Review, conservative book clubs, talk show hosts, and others who take their money and keep them outraged so they do it again. These people sell outrage and a refusal to do anything except be the Token Bad Guy who comes in to defend big business when the Left gets too crazy with its socialist dreams. They also write lots of checks to the government, in the form of taxes, and then impotently rage about it at the local bar, then get up the next day to go to work and do it all over again, because they are proud of "working hard" and "praying hard," and they always support business and the military. They are perfect tools, suckers and chumps, and they essentially have indulged in the image of being a counter-force to decay for seventy years while helping it along its way. This is why anyone on the Right finds the term "conservative" difficult; I choose it because the philosophy is separate from the people who have hijacked it, and since the Crowd hijacks every time, there is no point blaming the term for the people whose ideas were popular and therefore dominated it.
Following the Huntington path, the Alt Right started by affirming innate traits of the group instead of external ones like politics and economics. For this reason, the Alt Right was into Human Biodiversity (HBD) and nationalism both, but its motivation was to find a traditional method of unifying a civilization, and it found that racial and ethnic similarity was a prerequisite for a civilization to be cohesive; at least, homogeneous societies were the most cohesive over the longest period of time and with the best results. Similarly, the Alt Right affirmed other conservative ideals like the need for a strong nuclear family, traditional sexual roles, values including chastity, and some kind of existential purpose or transcendental viewpoint. It identified the wrong in modern society as individualism, or a type of atomization caused by withdrawal from a public sphere where whatever is popular wins, so only the idiotic prevails, driving people into a type of middle class obliviousness that the Left calls "bourgeois" but is in fact a response to the conditions of democracy when combined with the inherent human tendency toward hubris, or considering themselves to be the center of the world and more important than those who are naturally wiser, more talented or more capable:
De Tocqueville defines individualism as "a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself" (506), and asserts that it is an ill unknown in aristocratic countries, which have egoism, but not individualism.
Individualism and hubris come from the same root, which is placing self-interest before awareness of the greater world out there. People of lower intelligence are naturally inclined toward hubris; they believe themselves to be more intelligent, more capable and wiser than they are, and when their ideas fail, they rationalize those failures as being the fault of someone else, not their own. Civilizations die through caste revolt, and caste revolt consists of the lower castes — who are of low intelligence and thus inclined toward individualism — overthrowing their masters, usually after that higher group has suffered losses in war, disease or another calamity. In the West, we lost many of our aristocrats to the Mongol Wars and the plagues which followed, and this enabled our peasants to ally with our merchants and eventually dominate the leadership of our countries. Since that point, we have been going downhill.
As part of affirming nationalism, the Alt Right rediscovered that Western Civilization can only be formed through Western European people, and that if every other ethnic group will be given an ethnic identity and privileges, European-Descended People (EDP) deserve an identity and the ability to act in racial, ethnic and religious self-interest just like those other groups can do for themselves:
Consider: a generation of identitarian politics across the West has deliberately cultivated tribal resentments among non-whites. For decades white people have been blamed in media and academia for all the world's ills, while aggressive immigration policies have openly sought to make them minorities in every one of their homelands (a prospect that is widely celebrated in our mainstream institutions). In colleges and universities, white applicants are disfavored for admission, while curricula feature pugnacious courses on eliminating "whiteness". At the Academy Awards, a black actor says of his latest film "I get to kill all the white people! How great is that?", and the audience laughs and cheers.
Is it any wonder, then, that in this toxic climate, many white people are developing a sense of identitarianism themselves? This is not "supremacy"; it is nothing more than an perfectly natural (and, therefore, easily predictable) sense of unity and belonging, in an explicitly and increasingly hostile environment.
Equality programs can only work one way. Those who are not successful cannot be improved in ability, which per Darwin reflects our genetics and not our intentions. The only way to achieve equality, then, is to penalize those who are successful, so that those who are not successful are at the same level as the successful ones. This is why Civil Rights programs acted to penalize whites in order to advance others, and, in doing so, created negative conditions for whites, and despite conservatives ignoring this for decades, it has now become threatening enough that white response is to demand the removal of Civil Rights laws that penalize whites. These rules manifest in many ways: baking a gay cake, gay marriage, affirmative action, demands for quotas of women in leadership positions, and the like. All of these are necessary consequences of the idea of equality, since equality without exception requires penalizing the successful to subsidize the less successful.
This backlash has brought mainstream conservatives closer to the underground Right, which was always nationalist, because now the white ethnic groups in the United States and Europe see themselves as being penalized by government for actions out of their control, at a time when minorities are becoming the majority and have more legal protection than whites do:
"I distinguish it from white supremacy because the people who were involved [in the white nationalism movement] were more intellectual," said Swain, a graduate of Yale Law School. "They were not espousing racial violence or using epithets, but they had grievances. They felt that white people's rights were being trampled on and no one was speaking up or listening to their grievances."
…Swain said the white nationalism movement took off — long before Trump took office — because whites were being marginalized and disenfranchised after decades of affirmative action and other government programs designed to benefit minorities.
…"At the time, when [whites] were stressing about the racial double standards, I saw the potential for the argument to resonate among young people," she recalled. "The white community has its own problems. I knew the movement would grow unless we started addressing the issues."
This event creates a psychological backlash where people see that whatever is being forced on them is unjust, and therefore they do the opposite, which causes them to adopt a bias. When gay marriage becomes something forced on us, and diversity becomes the law, people rebel against it, and that can lead them to something more important: recognizing that diversity can never work, and that gay marriage is an attack on the family, and through that, to recognize at some level that Leftism and its philosophy, equality, are in fact destructive and not constructive.
American and European Civil Rights policy has failed because the method of creating equality, namely destructive of what which is above equal, causes an equal and opposite reaction which affirms inequality, and through that, hierarchy and a strong sense of social order:
It shouldn't be surprising that most diversity programs aren't increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they've used since the 1960s—which often make things worse, not better. Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job, hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions, and grievance systems to give employees a way to challenge managers. Those tools are designed to preempt lawsuits by policing managers' thoughts and actions. Yet laboratory studies show that this kind of force-feeding can activate bias rather than stamp it out. As social scientists have found, people often rebel against rules to assert their autonomy. Try to coerce me to do X, Y, or Z, and I'll do the opposite just to prove that I'm my own person.
This cultural longing for strong social order — referred to as a "fashwave" — comes from the recognition that dysfunctional ideas of equality are being forced on us because they are not realistic but symbolic, and therefore, forcing them on us destroys us and allows others to conquer us and rule us for their own purposes. Any idea which does not actually function is being used as a means to an end, and as always with equality-based ideologies, it seems to end up at a Communist-style totalitarian government. Our government, despite its Constitution and many smart people in our nation-state, has ended up at this stage through "soft totalitarianism," in which the mob destroys those who deviate from the official ideology. The recognition of this soft totalitarianism enabled a coalition of different groups to come together and oppose it.
For this reason, it is not sensible to refer to either the Alt Right or Trump's base as "racist," because many are simply reacting to the failure of the Clinton-Bush-Obama years, and are only incidentally discovering the problem of diversity because it has been forced upon them. We can see this coalition through the types of people who voted for Trump, and recognize the same patterns in the Alt Right:
One group of Trump backers, whom I call American Preservationists, comprise Trump's core base of supporters who propelled him through the primaries. They have lower incomes and education and are underemployed. Nearly half of those working age are on Medicaid. Out of step with Republican orthodoxy, Preservationists favor tax hikes on the wealthy, are deeply skeptical of immigration — both legal and illegal — and overwhelmingly support a temporary ban on Muslim immigration. They also feel less favorable toward immigrants and racial minorities, and nearly half think being of European descent is important for being truly American.
Free Marketeers are 25 percent of Trump's backers and they are the mirror image of American Preservationists, having the highest incomes and education levels. They are most skeptical of Trump, with most saying they voted against Hillary Clinton rather than for Trump. In contrast to the Preservationists, these are small government fiscal conservatives who embrace free trade. At the same time, they are as likely as Democrats to have warm feelings toward immigrants and racial minorities, and to support making legal immigration easier.
The largest Trump voter group is the Staunch Conservatives. They are 31 percent of his support and were the group that combined with the American Preservationists to give Trump the Republican nomination. They are loyal Republicans with conventionally conservative positions on social and economic issues. They also have warm feelings toward racial minorities in the U.S. However, although not as hardline as the Preservationists, they too are skeptical of immigration and strongly support a temporary travel ban on Muslims traveling to the U.S.
Had Anti-Elites, 19 percent of his voters, not turned against Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump may have lost the presidency. About half had positive views toward Clinton just four years ago. They support a more progressive tax code, a plurality support a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, and they are as favorable toward racial minorities as non-Trump voters. Why aren't the Anti-Elites Democrats? In addition to sharing Trump's disdain for elites, they soured significantly on Hillary between 2012 and 2016 and are more cautious of immigration than Clinton.
Finally, the Disengaged (5 percent) is a small Trump voter group. They don't know much about politics but what they do know is they are skeptical of immigration and believe the system is rigged against them.
Breaking this down, we can see how these groups correlate to Alt Right support bases:
Preservationists = Nationalists
Marketeers = Libertarians
Conservatives = Republicans and Paleoconservatives
Anti-Elites = former Leftists
Disengaged = Traditionalists, Reactionaries, National Socialists, neo-Nazis/White Supremacists and Neoreactionaries
We can see how this began long before Trump, and how Obergefell motivated quite a bit of it. Preservationists see that their nation has been altered at a fundamental level, both demographic and political, and realize that this clashes with the values they need in order to function in their physical or real-world occupations. Libertarians see how the financial model of this country has been contorted to support the underclass, resulting in conditions that will reduce our economy to a low-performance level. Conservatives oppose the general shift from "social order" to "equality" that has made this country neo-Communist. Anti-Elites, who believe fundamentally in equality, did not understand that equality would have to be imposed, and now are regretting the damage done in that name. The disengaged are those who took one long hard look at the toxic brew of equality, pluralism and tolerance that arose from "legal equality" and recognized immediately that any options on the democratic path would lead to failure.
The end result of this is that battle lines are drawn. You can be one of these two, but not both:
Leftist. You agree with the direction that the country is headed, generally, because you believe in equality.
Everyone else. You disagree with the direction the country is headed, and realize that "equality" always leads to this direction.
Those who have defected from equality find themselves also rejecting related ideas like democracy and civil rights:
Only a third of US millennials see civil rights as "absolutely essential" in a democracy, compared to 40% of older citizens. Poll results are slightly higher, but similar, in Europe.
Likewise, only 20% of millennials agreed to the statement "a military takeover is not legitimate in a democracy". A full 25% of American millennials said that democracy is a "bad" or "very bad" way to run a country, up 10% from 20 years ago, and double the rate at which European millennials responded in the same way.
…These millennials can only remember a time after Francis Fukuyama declared the "End of History" and the triumph of Western Liberal Democratic Capitalism. To some extent, they may take the social order for granted and not see much of an issue with reduced liberties, having no memory of the great totalitarian regimes of the past.
In addition, they have lost trust in institutions and recognize on some level that democracy produces bad behavior which manifests in helpless people and dysfunctional government, leading to a distrust of the ideas behind democracy or the theory of democracy, and through it equality, itself. People are starting to see the voters as the bad guys for always choosing the most simplistic, short-sighted, short-term, destructive and illusory options. These sensations motivated many of them to support Trump against those who, like Hillary Clinton and Bernard Sanders, proposed increasing equality through more civil rights and socialist policies. (Some) people are experiencing existential misery at the hands of those programs and policies, and they realize that adopting more of the same will make the problem worse, not better as their parents and grandparents presupposed.
The result is that we are in Civil War conditions. Right now it is a cold civil war, but eventually it will heat up, because it must. There is no reconciling the two groups, the ones who will do anything for equality and the ones who want anything else, and the different ethnic groups who are each vying with all others for dominance, even if only in local communities. The American Experiment™ has ended in confusion, disorder, enmity, violence, disorganization and corruption, and this is why we are heading for a big split which our leaders are powerless to stop:
What has changed since 1965?
It is not history. There have been no great new discoveries about Lee.
What has changed is America herself. She is not the same country. We have passed through a great social, cultural and moral revolution that has left us irretrievably divided on separate shores.
And the politicians are in panic.
For those who were wondering in the 1820s, 1860s, 1930s, 1960s and 1990s whether those new changes would have profound long-term effects, they now have their answer: they destroy society. And for those of us born among the ruins, the only option is to oppose all previous failed methods, and to look toward something both old and new that can send us in a direction away from the death that previously we chose for ourselves.
Anarchy, Confederacy and Tyranny | Hiring Mercenaries Signifies The Death-Cycle of The American Republic


Women without a history of cardiovascular events, who suffered from pre-eclampsia during their pregnancy, faced a higher risk of atherosclerosis during post-menopausal years.
Pre-eclampsia is a condition of high-blood pressure in pregnant women which poses a risk of heart disease later in life, shows a research. Researches at Mayo Clinic Minnesota have found that women with a history of this disease are more likely to suffer from atherosclerosis, a condition wherein the arteries become harder and narrower-at a later stage in life. Pre-eclampsia may start showing up in the 20th week of pregnancy and can either develop slowly or may occur suddenly. It is a serious complication in the pregnancy and may pose a serious threat to the mother and the foetus. Two to seven percent of the cases are affected by this complication.
Vesna Garovic from Mayo Clinic in the US said, "We've found that pre-eclampsia continues to follow mothers long after the birth of their child."
Garovic added to this, "The good news is that we can use these findings to apply earlier interventions for risk factors before cardiovascular disease presents."
Pre-eclampsia can cause damage to vital organs, fits and can be fatal for the woman and baby, if left untreated. Read here to know how a blood test can help in its diagnose.
Health records were taken from Rochester Epidemiology Project and the research team discovered that 40 post-menopausal women suffered from pre-eclampsia and the other 40 had a history of normal pregnancies.
"This makes pre-eclampsia a pregnancy complication that extends well beyond the pregnancy itself," says Prof Garovic.
Five to ten percent of women in Australia suffer from this condition which sums up to 30000 women each year. Given the condition in Australia, it is a matter of concern for them.
"Pregnancy is the ultimate stress test for the body. Basically when a woman's having a baby her blood volume increases by 30 to 50 per cent, her heart is working harder as the pregnancy advances so if there are any underlying issues they'll often appear or manifest in pregnancy," says Julie Anne Mitchell from the Australian Heart Foundation.
The American Heart Association has also stated pre-eclampsia as both a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.
Professor Dekker made his statement to this, "Our big query is; does the pre-eclampsia unmask the fact that you are at risk of these disorders anyway or does the pre-eclampsia have its own intrinsic add-on effect?"
Prof Dekker added, "The animal experience suggests that pre-eclampsia has a kind of second hit effect."
Ms Mitchell said that a woman who has had pre-eclampsia during pregnancy needs her blood pressure closely monitored post-pregnancy.
"The best that a GP or clinician can be doing now is to monitor those women on a regular basis," she added.


text:
Moyna Rani, Hawa Akhter and Shamsunnahar received Joyeeta award
Moyna Rani of Satkhira and Hawa Akhter and Samsunnahar of Netrakona recently received "Joyeeta Award" an award provided by the government for only the women for their contribution in women empowerment and socio-economic development.
Moyna Rani received this award for her contribution in inventing, expanding the use and make up of environment friendly oven. Moyna Rani received the award on 21 December from the district commissioner of Satkhira in an event escorted by many renowned people and big names. This woman has not only invented and practiced the oven but also trained other women so that they could use the woven to reduce pressure on fuel and reduce smoke during cooking. Including this Moyna Rani has received some other awards from the government, non-government and other organizations. Moyna Rani has been involved in the development works and facilitation of BARCIK for a long time.
On the other hand, Hawa Begum of Swarmusia village and Shamsunnahar of Matikata village of Netrakona received this award from the UNO of Atpara recently. Hawa Begum got this award for her contribution in the empowerment process of women including income generating activities while Shamsunnahar received it for her social works and good mother. Hawa Begum has been involved in different social, cultural and economic activities. With the objective to empower women, she formed Habada organization in 2006. Under this organization, women do handicraft works with bamboo cane and sell in the market that earn them financial solvency. Presently she acts as vice president of BARCIK project management and monitoring committee.
On the other hand, Shamsunahar also has been involved in different social works. She formed "Organic women farmer group" with the objective to encourage women practicing sustainable agriculture that allows them to have their own seeds and fertilizers. Under her leadership, the members of the organization train farmer on preparing organic manure and pesticides. They also exchange seeds, materials to other farmers so that they could have their own seeds for cultivation. Thus adopting sustainable agriculture Shamsunnahar has earned economic solvency.
Posts Next/Prev
The bravery of Jhirina Munda


23 questions about Hell comprises to-the-point solutions to the questions that invoice Wiese has so much been requested approximately hell on account that his best-selling 23 mins in Hell first published. every one solution relies at the notice of God, and the mixed solutions offer a clean realizing approximately a few of existence s Whys as they relate to hell and eternity. This booklet will solve misconceptions and presuppositions approximately God s personality, and approximately who is going to heaven, and who doesn t. It in actual fact demonstrates that we're held chargeable for our judgements in life.
The ebook encompasses a DVD -- with Bill's notable tale and the teachings he is discovered from his stopover at to HELL.
Note: The Kindle variation of this publication doesn't comprise any CDs or DVDs.
Autoridad cargada de poder. los angeles actividad satánica continúa aumentando a un ritmo explosivo. H. A. Maxwell Whyte aporta respuestas prácticas a las preguntas más frecuentemente formuladas acerca de los demonios, incluyendo: ¿Qué es exactamente un demonio? ¿Cómo se sitúa una character bajo influencia demoníaca?
Philadelphia used to be a urban that embraced the spirit of affection, yet as crime and poverty infiltrated the population, it progressively turned a urban that's this day full of desolation and hate. below a mandate from heaven to rebuild Philadelphia's fatherless, underprivileged society, writer Maurine McFarlane eagerly holds up the hands of latest ministries in Philadelphia whereas starting up clean biblical directives to rebuild and restoration.
Open your eyes to find the invisible global of the spirit realm! simply past what your eyes can see, there's a very actual spirit international. This unseen realm is accountable for many daily happenings—both stable and undesirable. This is why it's very important that you should know how to turn on the seer anointing and begin seeing into the spirit realm.
Your Mouth Is Your maximum WeaponThis is a narrative publication approximately Mr Fred Collins and Mrs Amanda Collins; they have been capable of use their mouth thoroughly to their virtue. The mouth is the reward given to guy by way of God; to start up the religious realm to get contain with the actual realm. The secret of lifestyles is the spoken observe of God to shape the heavens and the earth.


Online applications are saved at our database immediately. After registration you will receive confirmation via mail from our online partner "ActiveEurope.com". Offline Applications will be added soon (manually). For further questions about registration, please contact: astana70.3@ironman.com.


Drop Zone е среден размер, подходящ за всичко пад, предлагащ първокласна дунапренена подложка и една диагонална сгъвка с еластичен джоб, в който да носите обувките, магнезия и други неща.
An ideal daily driver for the dedicated boulderer, the Black Diamond Drop Zone features a redesigned, premium, multi-density foam layup for durable impact protection from Joe's Valley to Magic Wood. This mid-sized pad's taco-style fold offers a clean, continuous surface and easy padding over variable landings, while the quick-closure mesh flap lets you securely store your shoes, chalk and other essentials inside the pad when hiking to the blocs. Side grab handles make for quick pad shuffling when spotting.


But the Insight guide that the Discovery Channel published called it strange and exotic. We'll take a closer look at it and delve into its mysteries.
When ancient Laos's Lan Xang kingdom strengthened itself in the early 16th century, its royal family began to build large shrines in Luang Prabang, which was the capital then. One of the first, Thakmo (pictured below), was modeled after the massive stone stupas in Sri Lanka.
It surely impressed the locals, but Lan Xang had close diplomatic and commercial relations with the states in northern Thailand. It adapted the Sukhothai Buddha statue.
And it built monastic assembly halls in the Lan Na kingdom's style, which was based in Chiang Mai. Luang Prabang's Wat Xieng Thong (above), with its cascading roofs, is one of the best examples of Lan Na architecture anywhere.
All over Thailand stupa forms were becoming more narrow, tapering and indented. Laotians were doing the same with their shrines, including the above ones in Wat Xieng Thong. Thais and Laotians (Laotians are a Tai ethnic group, but they like to consider themselves independent from Thailand, which savagely bullied them, as we'll see in the next post) have felt that shrines have supernatural powers. So their graceful forms seem as though nature's power is benevolent.
Lan Xang's political situation intensified in the 16th century so that the kingdom needed benevolence. Burma was expanding and its troops were advancing through Thailand. Laos's King Phothisarat and his son, King Setthathirat, moved their court down to Vientiane, which was farther from the western tiger. Smart move–the Burmese took over Lan Na without a battle and ruled it for more than 200 years, and they conquered the most powerful Thai kingdom, Ayutthaya (in the south; its capital presided about 50 miles north of modern Bangkok, which was founded in 1782).
Setthathirat ordered the building of Vientiane's Wat That Luang. Most Thai and Lao stupas taper smoothly, as though the Buddha's grace is cascading from the heavens. But I felt that I was in two incongruent worlds at That Luang. The Insight guide said that it's like a fortress, and it's easy to agree.
It was built on the opposite side of Vientiane from where the Mekong River flows, so its area was open to invasions from land. Maybe Lan Xang's king thought that That Luang would give his state's elite monks physical shelter and his capital magical protection.
But Wat That Lang has an equally strong spiritual personality. Both of the above photos show a line of lotus petals along the protecting wall. Since the lotus grows from the bottom of a pond and blossoms on the water's surface, it symbolizes purity and the soul's liberation according to Buddhist beliefs.
Its central tower and the surrounding spires rise so suddenly and sharply that they add oomph to the desire to connect with spiritual realms. The builders of That Luang seem to have had mixed feelings. The mid and late 16th century was a stressful time in Laos and Thailand. The Lao king needed to assert his dominion over Lan Xang lands. People in Laos felt that it was necessary to have the land's spirits and the Buddha on their side in order to enjoy political security. Wat That Luang covers all bases by making strong appeals in both worldly and spiritual directions.
They worked for a while. The next century was one of the best times in Laotian history. Europeans who wrote about Vientiane were very impressed. We'll see how Laos was special in the next post, and how she fell on hard times afterwards. Wat That Luang still expresses reality for many Laotians.


text:
export LC_ALL=en_US.utf-8
export LANG=en_US.utf-8

diamond_add_taxonomy --help |grep DIAMOND_OUTPUT_FILE >/dev/null 2>&1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) an antiknock additive presently used in gasoline blends as a safer alternative to lead compounds, is currently synthesized industrially from methanol and isobutene over an acidic ion-exchange resin Amberlyst-15. This commercial catalyst, although very active, still suffers from several drawbacks such as thermal instability, acid leaching, and need of a high methanol over isobutene ratio. Zeolites for their higher thermal stability and shape selectivity, were thus proposed to remedy to such disadvantages. However, they did not show a surface acidity which is as high as that of the organic resin. In gas phase synthesis of MTBE, the incorporation of an organic superacid trifluoromethanesulfonic acid onto the zeolite surface have shown an important enhancement in catalytic activity and product selectivity for the large pore sized Y-type zeolite. However this method did not increase significantly the catalytic activity of the medium pore sized ZSM-5 zeolite, because of limited diffusion phenomena. ZSM-5 zeolite, when doped with fluorine species in relatively low concentration using ammonium fluoride as precursor, and subsequently activated stepwise at high temperatures, showed two maxima for the MTBE yield. The first maximum occurring at the final activation temperature 325C̕, corresponded to the positive effect of chemisorbed HF acidic species onto the zeolite surface. The second maximum occurring at 450C̕, provided the highest MTBE yield and is attributed to the increased Brønsted acid sites density and strength resulting from the reaction of zeolite surface with the proton from the ±proton-fluoride» ions pair. Data obtained from different characterization techniques such as FTIR, 27 Al MAS-NMR, XRD, NH 3 -TPD, BET, MeOH adsorption tests, Fluoride-SIE and Pyridine adsorption tests supported the proposed mechanism for the modification of the fluorine treated ZSM-5 surface as a function of final activation temperatures. Controlled desilication of ZSM-5 zeolite by treatment with an aqueous solution of sodium carbonate under mild conditions has provided materials having much lower Si/Al ratio with an unchanged zeolite structure. The desilicated ZSMS zeolite exhibited a higher Bronsted acid sites density compared to the parent zeolite and showed a significant increase of MTBE conversion. The combination of these two modification techniques, i.e. desilication followed by incorporation of fluorine/thermal treatment produced a highly efficient catalyst: the yield of MTBE obtained was higher than that of the commercial catalyst and no isobutene dimer by-products were formed owing to the shape selectivity of ZSM-5 structure. With respect to the parent zeolite, the total acid density increased by almost 80% and the formation of some stronger acid sites were observed. This new inorganic catalyst can be advantageously applied to a wide range of acido-catalysed reactions up to 450C̕ which require a high surface acidity, a pronounced shape-selectivity and a strong chemical resistance.
xix, 264 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm.


text:
These three Benzie County businesses made the state's training program
Colin Merry, Staff Writer
Mr. Chain is just one of several expanding businesses taking advantage of the Going Pro Talent Fund to train new workers and enhance the skills of longtime employees for a lifetime.
Courtesy photoShow MoreShow Less
Iron Fish Distillery also received Going Pro grants to help train employees in a variety of positions during 2022.
BENZIE COUNTY – Several businesses in Benzie and Mainstee counties are taking advantage of a state program to help train their workforce.
The Michigan Department of Labor and Opportunity released the names of businesses that would be reimbursed for training costs for the 2022 fiscal year in December through the Going Pro Talent Fund. On that list were three Benzie County business and one Manistee County business.
In Benzie County, Honor Bank, Moore Mechanical and Ironfish Distillery were awarded funds for training. In Manistee County, M R products, known as Mr. Chain, also was awarded training funds.
According to Kyle Ray, a business services representative with Northwest Michigan Works, said the Going Pro Talent Fund is the largest monetary training grant the state has to offer.
"It is the best chance an employer has to get funding to help pay for training for new and current employees," he said. "The grant is designed for employer to take what they are doing already or add some training in the coming year to help upscale their current employees skills and hire on new employees and expand their workforce."
Ray, who works with Networks Northwest to help businesses in Benzie and Manistee counties apply for the program, said training could be anything that comes with some sort of credentials that can be carried over throughout the life of a workers career, such as college courses or training through organizations such as the Michigan Manufacturing and Technology Center that end with a certificate.
"They're investing in the employee and hopefully company loyalty," Ray said.
Ray said the grant awards are reimbursement grants, meaning employers have to front the costs for training. Once everything is finalized at the end of the year and the employer meets the training objectives for the funding, the state will reimburse them for training costs.
GOING PRO TALENT FUND AT A GLANCE
Several business in Benzie and Manistee counties received Going Pro Talent Funding to help train their current workforce and new hires.
Here are the businesses and the amount of training costs the state has agreed to reimburse in the 2022 fiscal year.
Benzie County
• Honor Bank $18,600
• Moore Mechanical, $84,000
• Ironfish Distillary $19,744
Manistee County
• M R Productions (Mr. Chain), $28,339
"I have constant communication with those employers who are awarded grants to make sure they go through with the training plan," he said. "If they're hiring, we need to know who those new employees are and they need to get the training the employer proposed. At the end of the grant period, in this case Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, we have to do a close out. We finalize everything and submit the paperwork to get reimbursement."
Ray said the program has been around in one form or another since 2014.
"I think it is a necessary program for the state of Michigan," said Ryan Schultz, chief operating officer for Mr. Chain. "It directs training people who are working, advances their skillsets and allows us to compete in the United States and globally with a well trained work force."
Schultz said training included everything from taking unskilled individuals and turning them into skilled individuals for the companies work force, which could be quality control or injection molding.
Training could even turn into an apprenticeship.
"We work with a registered apprenticeship program though the United States Department of Labor," Schultz said. "They become certified apprentices who train in maintenance, logistics, plastic injection supervision or work within our office. Our controller came through that program."
Schultz said the business had four certified apprentices either going through the program or who had graduated from it, and it was the second year working with the Going Pro Talent Fund.
Deidra Charnes, assistance vice president and human resources manager for Honor Bank, also said it was the second year the business has worked with the program.
"I have nothing but positive things to say about the program and particularly the support from Networks Northwest in applying to the program and then making sure we're reimbursed by it."
Charnes said in 2021, the bank was able to train new hires, as well as some current employees, to staff a new help and calling center launched in 2021. She also said some employees also received training in how to train employees.
"This year, we asked for funding to assist with leadership level training for our emerging leaders," Charnes said. "We are training managers who may be new to the position who haven't had to manage people before or do things like have difficult discussions. We're able to have 12 individuals going to customized training for that. "
She also said the bank also would be sending more individuals to training on how to train employees.
"We'll soon be able to have a person at each of our locations with those skills," she said.
Heidi Bolger, a partner in Iron Fish Distillery, said they will use the program to train a variety of positions.
"Our training plan this year includes leadership development, customer service training, technical distilling and operations training, as well as food and beverage skills and safe food handling," she said.
In the past, they have used the program to invest in apprenticeships in several positions.
"Going Pro is such a benefit for businesses when it comes to retaining and developing our human capital," Bolger said. "As our business has grown, the need for human relations, customer service and technical skills has exploded. We have a super capable team that is benefiting greatly from formal and on-the-job training. Access to Going Pro is really helping us get our team equipped for what's ahead and empowering people to grow professionally; a huge job satisfier and key factor in retention. We really see Going Pro as valuable."
Ray said businesses looking to apply for the 2023 funds can work with him and Networks Northwest to get started.
"Usually applications open up in October," he said. "We help employers help fill out the application; we help strengthen it."
If approved he works with the businesses to make sure the training plan is followed. The fund awards $1,500 for new hire training and $3,000 for certified apprentice training.
To learn more about the Going Pro Talent Fund, visit nwm.org/goingpro, call Kyle Ray at 231-342-1242 or email kyle.ray@networksnorthwest.org.
Copemish business investing $4.2M to expand operations
Honor Bank announces promotions, new addition as VP of commercial lending
Colin Merry
I grew up in Frankfort enjoying the lakes and streams of the Benzie County area. I started school at Northwestern Michigan College and finished at Central Michigan University. I enjoy walking, fishing and reading.