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Sex, Lies and Politics
Congress is poised to reauthorize fearmongering "abstinence-only" sex ed.
By Marjorie Heins
Kids "know far too much too soon" about sex, a recent college graduate named Wendy Shalit lamented in her 1999 book A Return to Modesty, and Congress seems to agree. In recent years, it has been doing everything in its power to prevent comprehensive sexuality education from reaching America's youngsters and to promote, in its place, an educationally limited, fear-based curriculum that preaches "abstinence unless married."
Adapted from Not in Front of the Children, copyright © 2001 by Marjorie Heins. Used by arrangement with Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
Later this year, Congress will probably reauthorize an "abstinence education" program that it created in 1996 with $250 million in matching funds (to receive the full amount, states must put up at least three-quarters as much, or an additional $187.5 million). The original package was part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act–otherwise known as welfare reform. It was the 104th Congress's attempt not only to eliminate welfare but to impose conservative standards of sexual morality on low-income Americans.
The law enumerates eight principles for "abstinence education," among them that "abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and other associated health problems"; that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity"; and that "sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects." Gay and lesbian youngsters, unlikely to conduct sexual activity only "in the context of marriage," are thus rendered deviant or invisible, while the children of single moms or unmarried couples are implicitly told that their parents have suffered "harmful psychological and physical effects" from sex outside marriage. Funded programs cannot discuss birth control or safer-sex techniques, except to highlight (or exaggerate) their shortcomings. The goal is quite explicitly to discourage adolescents from using condoms or other contraceptives.
The premise that is usually articulated to defend this unusual pedagogy is that an unambiguous "just say no" message is the only way to reduce teen pregnancy and STDs. As Oklahoma Republican Ernest Istook, one of the program's most vocal Congressional champions, puts it, teenagers cannot understand "mixed messages." While this may be true of cultural conservatives like Istook, it is not necessarily true of American teenagers, most of whom are adept at negotiating the ambiguities of popular culture. Indeed, Istook's reductive approach to education and his low opinion of youthful intelligence have not in any event proven accurate. As Planned Parenthood, Advocates for Youth and SIECUS (the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) pointed out in the wake of the 1996 law, studies have shown no decrease, and often an increase, in the age of "sexual debut" after the introduction of sex-ed programs that include straightforward contraceptive and safer-sex information in addition to abstinence messages. By contrast, there is no evidence that abstinence-only programs discourage sexual activity.
By late 1998, though, every state had applied for and received abstinence-unless-married funds. Some sought to use the money without compromising existing programs; in Maine, for example, as one official explained, "the limits on what you can say are so restrictive that we decided we could not use the money for classroom programs or anywhere else where there was face-to-face contact." Two states–California and New Hampshire–ultimately did not use the funds, in California's case because it was determined that the eight-point program violated state law by withholding contraceptive information and forbidding mention of the fact that condoms reduce the risk of AIDS. And there were a few surprises: Richmond, Virginia, withdrew from participation, its director of health declaring that the program was "ill-conceived" and "did not help children who were already sexually active or gays and lesbians." Charleston County, South Carolina, also voted against accepting the federal money; the school board chairman said, "Let's not live in a fantasy land" or "play Russian roulette with the lives of our students."
Six states, on the other hand, incorporated the federal ideology into their official sex-ed programs. The Pennsylvania Senate proclaimed "Chastity Awareness Week" and urged "Chastity Day" presentations at public schools. Franklin County, North Carolina, cut three chapters out of its ninth-grade textbook because they dealt with contraception and STDs, and the school board had not held a hearing, required by state law, before state-mandated abstinence-unless-married pedagogy could be replaced with a comprehensive curriculum. By the end of 1999 abstinence was the sole contraception method taught at more than a third of all US public schools.
The triumph of abstinence-unless-married pedagogy is the culmination of two decades' work by the religious right in first trying to defeat, then managing brilliantly to co-opt, sexuality education. The current curriculums have their roots in the fear-based "sex hygiene" programs that social-purity groups offered early in the twentieth century. These featured hideous images of the symptoms of tertiary syphilis but ignored the varieties and pleasures of sex, or even the details of anatomy. Elements of the fear-based approach persisted even after Dr. Mary Calderone and her colleagues, with the encouragement of the National Education Association and the American Medical Association, founded SIECUS in 1964 to promote comprehensive sexuality education. ("Sexuality" rather than "sex" is the preferred term because it emphasizes the social, cultural, psychological and spiritual dimensions of human sexual life, not just reproduction, anatomy and disease prevention.)
Calderone and SIECUS succeeded by the mid-1960s in encouraging many school boards to introduce sexuality education, though the content of the programs was, to say the least, uneven. Calderone, for example (according to her obituary in 1998), "was an unstinting advocate for the acceptance of masturbation as a wholesome, normal and almost universal practice for people of all ages," but it was hardly a subject featured in most classes. Meanwhile, the John Birch Society and other groups fought back with attacks on sex education as "smut," "destructive of religious belief" and a "filthy communist plot." Groups like MOMS (Mothers Organized for Moral Stability) and PAUSE (People Against Unconstitutional Sex Education) opposed sex ed in state legislatures, local communities and the courts. Judges were not generally inclined to second-guess school boards, however, and sometimes even noted (in the words of one California court) that parents do not have "a monopoly over the thoughts of their own children or anyone else's."
Opponents of sex ed were further frustrated in the 1970s and early '80s when the federal government, in response to reports of more than a million teen pregnancies in the United States annually and more than 600,000 births, began to fund family-planning clinics and contraceptive information. Adolescent pregnancy rates in the United States were far higher than in any other industrialized country (most of which had similar rates of teen sexual activity)–fifteen times higher than Japan's, and twice as high as sexually emancipated Scandinavia's. Although a variety of reasons were posited for the problem, the lack of accurate, widely available contraceptive information was one obvious factor.
As government grants for contraceptive outreach multiplied, the right mounted a new counterattack. If sexuality education could not be suppressed, at least it could be altered to conform to a pro-chastity worldview. Phyllis Schlafly, a leading player in this game, wrote indignantly in 1981 that "nearly all existing sex education curricula" taught "how to enjoy fornication without having a baby and without feeling guilty." Her activism inspired the creation of a new organization called the Committee on the Status of Women, which later became Respect, Incorporated, and produced the famous Sex Respect curriculum for grades 7-9. Another pro-chastity program, Facing Reality, was produced for high schoolers, along with other texts, parent/teacher guides and audiovisual aids. These right-wing curriculums pushed "abstinence only" based on exaggerated fears of emotional devastation, STDs and death from premarital sex. "There's no way to have premarital sex without hurting someone," announced Sex Respect, adding the exaggerated and misleading assertion that HIV can pass through latex condoms and be contracted by kissing. Facing Reality's Parent/Teacher Guide characterized as "mythology" the idea that condoms can prevent pregnancy or STDs, and catalogued forty-five separate perils of premarital sex, including "inability to concentrate on school, syphilis, embarrassment, abortion, shotgun wedding…heartbreak, infertility, loneliness, cervical cancer, poverty, loss of self-esteem, loss of reputation, being used, substance abuse, melancholy, loss of faith, possessiveness, diminished ability to communicate" and death. In one video designed for use with Sex Respect, a student asks an instructor, "What if I want to have sex before I get married?" "Well, I guess you'll just have to be prepared to die," the instructor replies.
These early-abstinence curriculums were also explicitly religious. Sex Respect urged students to "attend worship services regularly" and suggested that "nature seems to be making a statement about the wisdom of keeping sex within marriage through the current epidemic of STDs and teen pregnancy." Although the overt religiosity was gradually eliminated because of concerns about the separation of church and state, the second- and third-generation versions of these fear-based programs are now used in many of the classrooms affected by the 1996 abstinence law. (Although national figures are not available, Project Reality reports sales to more than 350 schools in Illinois alone; and Teen-Aid, another producer of abstinence curriculums, boasts of training 300-500 teachers across the country every year.)
During the Reagan years, abstinence-only pedagogy benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal largesse for promotion, curriculum development and pilot projects. As a contributor to Conservative Digest gratefully wrote, the 1981 Adolescent Family Life Act "was written expressly for the purpose of diverting money that would otherwise go to Planned Parenthood into groups with traditional values"; if not for "the seed money provided by the federal government, Sex Respect might still be just an idea sitting in a graduate student's thesis." (The graduate student in question was Coleen Kelly Mast, Sex Respect's author.) Although critics complained of bias in favor of traditional two-parent families and the disparagement of divorced and single-parent families, as well as gay men and lesbians, by the 1990s somewhere between 10 and 25 percent of the nation's schools were using an abstinence-only curriculum. Some communities engaged in ferocious political battles as newly elected school-board majorities substituted abstinence curriculums for more comprehensive, less ideologically loaded texts. In one 1994 case, a Louisiana court ruled that using Sex Respect and Facing Reality in public schools violated state law proscriptions against the teaching of religious beliefs or medically inaccurate information.
In 1991 SIECUS and its allies responded to the right-wing challenge with a comprehensive set of guidelines for K-12 sexuality education, endorsed by more than 100 professional and advocacy organizations ranging from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to Catholics for a Free Choice. The guidelines (updated in 1996) followed the conventional wisdom among sexuality educators: that sex ed must begin early (as one British author said, if kids are not given basic facts they will construct their own, "often of the mythological variety"). So, for example, elementary school classes would discuss reproduction, masturbation and puberty–well in advance of its arrival. Contraception, gender roles, varieties of sexual behavior and homosexuality would be covered later. Older students would learn, among other things, that most women "need clitoral stimulation to reach orgasm" and that most couples "do not experience simultaneous orgasm during vaginal intercourse."
The guidelines were certainly comprehensive–but rarely implemented in their entirety. Even among school districts that resisted abstinence-only, typical sex-ed programs lasted just a few weeks and were tucked into physical education classes. As former SIECUS president Debra Haffner acknowledged, even the more liberal ones consisted primarily of "disaster prevention and organ recitals." Given this fearful approach, it was not surprising that US teen pregnancy rates remained higher than in any other industrialized nation. By the late 1980s, the US rate was about one in ten–six times the rate in the Netherlands–and more than half of those pregnancies resulted in live births. The corresponding teen birthrate for Japan was four per 1,000; for Denmark, 16; for Italy, 23. A 1998 study found that US youngsters scored the lowest of thirteen nations on basic sexual and reproductive knowledge.
The contrast with Continental Europe was striking. Not only did the Scandinavian countries teach comprehensive sex ed, starting in elementary school, but free or low-cost contraceptive services and information were readily available in most of Western Europe. Youngsters received sex information from parents, grandparents, schools, healthcare providers and the media. Massive, long-term, government-funded educational campaigns used television, radio, discos, billboards, pharmacies and clinics to give youngsters explicit portrayals of responsible sexual behavior. Even Britain, with sexual politics almost as fraught as those of the United States, had contraceptive ads on TV in the late 1980s (one showed a young woman insisting that her paramour don his "rubber-johnnies" if he wanted "humpy-pumpy"); and in 1999 the British government sponsored a "Lovelife" website for teens with explicit, nonjudgmental information about condoms and safer sex.
Adolescent pregnancy and birthrates in the United States did decrease slightly by the late 1990s, but they remained by far the highest among industrialized nations. For young women 15-19, the US pregnancy rate was 101 per 1,000 in 1995, down from a peak of 117 in 1990. The teen childbirth rate was 52 per 1,000–thirteen times higher than the Netherlands rate and six times higher than that of France. In a 1998 tally of childbirth rates for young women through age 19, Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast ranked highest, followed by India, Kenya and eight other Third World nations. Next came the United States, with a teen childbirth rate higher than any European country and many non-Western ones as well.
Of course, Europe does not have the severe right-wing opposition to sex- and contraceptive education that besets the United States. Indeed, it is one of the ironies of European life that Italy, overwhelmingly Catholic and home to the Vatican, has the lowest birthrate on the Continent. The United States, by contrast, is sexually schizophrenic: copious information about anatomy, contraception, orgasm, masturbation and oral sex techniques is available to youngsters from mass circulation magazines and educational nonprofits (some of it, like the popular SEX, ETC. newsletter and website, is even written and edited by teens), but government continues to preach abstinence-only and to withhold straightforward sexual information from those youngsters who are least likely to find alternative sources.
Beyond America's sexual schizophrenia, though, there are structural reasons for our peculiarly obtuse approach to sexuality and youth. The extreme decentralization of public education in the United States not only makes possible but invites local culture-war battles over curriculum, from sex ed to school plays with vulgar words to novels by Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. In other nations, curriculum is more centralized and uniform, and disputes over pedagogy are correspondingly muted. Here, sex ed remains a hot political issue rather than a sober matter of public health. As Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has said: "You start out talking about condoms in this country, and you end up fighting about the future of the American family. Teens just end up frozen like a deer in the headlights."
The irony is that surveys consistently show an overwhelming majority of American parents want public schools to offer comprehensive sex ed, including discussion of contraception, abortion, homosexuality and safer sex. Even the White House Office of National AIDS Policy last year expressed "grave concern" that "there is such a large incentive to adopt unproven abstinence-only approaches."
As Congressional reauthorization of abstinence education looms, reproductive rights, youth and anticensorship advocates have begun a campaign to draw attention to the deficiencies in Congress's ideological approach to sexuality education. Participants include Advocates for Youth, SIECUS, Planned Parenthood, the Pro-Choice Resource Center, the Center for Law and Social Policy and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), whose concerns center around the First Amendment implications of a law that promotes a narrowly partisan message and suppresses valuable, even lifesaving information. In January NCAC circulated a joint statement of opposition to the abstinence law, for endorsement by other anticensorship groups, while the reproductive rights contingent worked on crafting model legislation, tentatively titled the Family Life Education Act, that would fund comprehensive sexuality education as an alternative to the distortions and omissions of abstinence-only. These groups emphasize, as they have ever since the Sex Respect phenomenon put them on the defensive, that comprehensive sex ed also teaches abstinence, but not to the point of denying reality or depriving kids of health information. As SIECUS's public policy director, William Smith, says, the proposed act "will at least level the playing field and restore some sanity to the federal investment in sexuality education."
But the forces of sanity will have an uphill battle. Most legislators are reluctant even to hint that any message other than unmitigated chastity is acceptable for youth. In 1999, without serious opposition, Representative Istook secured $20 million for abstinence pedagogy above and beyond the '96 funds (these grants will go directly to qualifying projects rather than to the states). He obtained another $30 million for fiscal year 2001. This political landscape is unlikely to change until elected officials are persuaded to focus their energies on developing a sane sexual health policy instead of indulging in the easy pleasures of symbolic rectitude. James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth sums up: "It is a classic case of US politicians putting their agendas before the health and needs of our young people. And it has to stop."
Marjorie HeinsMarjorie Heins, who directs the Free Expression Policy Project at the National Coalition Against Censorship, is the author of Not in Front of the Children: "Indecency," Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth (May 2001).
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World War I battles were commanded by many brilliant generals on both sides. Combined, they led some 65 million men, many of which sacrificed their lives for an advancement of a few feet. However, they also led some of the greatest battles of all time. Listed below are 10 greatest World War I generals who played a key role in the outcome of the war which dramatically influenced the later 20th century history.
Serbian Vojvoda Živojin Mišić was one of the most important figures on the Serbian Front at the outbreak of the war and later liberation of Serbia. In the Battle of Kolubara in late 1914, Mišić decisively defeated the overwhelmingly numerically superior Austro-Hungarian forces under the command of Oskar Potiorek. The Austro-Hungarian army was humiliated, while Serbia capitulated only after a coordinated attack of Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces in 1915. Mišić withdrew with the Serbian Army through Montenegro and Albania to Greece. After the establishment of the Thessaloniki Front in 1916, he was appointed commander of the First Army and in mid-1918, Chief of Supreme Command. He commanded the Serbian army until the end of the war.
Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch played a crucial role in checking the Germans at the beginning of World War I. In September 1914, he was the key actor in German defeat at the First Battle of Marne by which he effectively ended all German hopes to achieve a quick victory on the Western Front. After the failed offensive at Ypres in 1915 and huge casualties in the Battle of the Somme one year later, Foch was dismissed. But he was back as Chief of the French General Staff in 1917. In 1918, Foch was appointed Commander in Chief of the Allied Armies. After repulsing the German Spring Offensive, Foch co-created the so-called Hundred Days Offensive which forced the Germans to give in.
When Paul von Hindenburg was re-called to military service and named commander of the German Eight Army in August 1914, he was in a seemingly lost position. He was facing the advancing Russian First and Second armies with an overwhelming numerical superiority. But after defeating the Second Army in the Battle of Tannenberg and then the First Army in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, he pushed the Russians out of East Prussia. According to many historians, von Hindenburg's defeat of the Russian First and Second armies was a serious blow to the Russian morale and one of the key factors that led to the Russian Revolution of 1917. But on the other hand, the transfer of an entire German corps from the Western Front to confront the advancing Russians weakened the German positions in France. In addition, the Russians continued to pose a serious threat to the German ally Austria-Hungary.
Aleksei Brusilov was one of the most innovative World War I generals. The commander of the Russian Eighth Army in Galicia laid down plans for a full-scale attack along the Austro-Hungarian lines. The so-called Brusilov Offensive began with some spectacular victories such as the Battle of Lutsk which decimated the numerically superior Austro-Hungarian army. During the first two days of the Offensive that started on June 4, 1916, the Austro-Hungarian forces suffered some 230,000 casualties, while the Russians advanced over 45 miles. By September 20, the Russian advance was finally halted thanks to the German troops that were transferred from the Western Front and the Russians running out of supplies. Although the Brusilov Offensive was the last major Russian campaign during World War I and despite the fact that the Russians suffered heavy casualties as well, the Russian general managed to break the Austro-Hungarian army. It didn't launch any major offensive alone by the end of the war, while Brusilov's success during the early phase of the campaign encouraged Romania to enter the war on the Entente's side.
British Field Marshal Douglas Haig was Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from late 1915 when he replaced John French until the end of the war. He is remembered as the general who led the British forces in the Battle of the Somme in 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele one year later, both of which achieved little despite heavy casualties. Although Haig's contribution to the Allied victory over the Central Powers is undeniable, the British Field Marshal remains a subject of controversy. While some hold him responsible for the worst human loses in British history, others emphasize that he was above all a man of his time and that high casualties simply reflect the military reality of that time.
Marshal of France Philippe Petain is best known as the leader of the so-called Vichy France and for collaboration with the Germans during World War II. But Petain was also one of the greatest World War I generals and was hailed as a national hero after repulsing the German attack at Verdun in 1916. One year later, he was briefly Commander in Chief but held the position long enough to improve discipline and raise morale which were of key importance for the French forces to withstand and repulse the massive German offensive in spring 1918. Achievements during World War I, however, didn't help him escape trial for treason after the end of World War II. He was sentenced to death but due to his age, the sentence was turned into a life imprisonment.
Spanish-born Italian general and Marshal of Italy Armando Diaz is remembered for halting the Austro-Hungarian offensive in 1917 and launching a counter-offensive which led to a decisive victory over Austria-Hungary. After the Italian entry into the war, he was major-general under Luigi Cadorna but was soon promoted to division and then corps commander. After the disaster at the Battle of Caporetto in fall 1917, Diaz replaced Cadorna as Chief of Staff of the Italian Army. He managed to stop the Austro-Hungarian advance along the Piave River and in June 1918 led the Italian forces to a major victory in the Battle of the Piave River. A few months later, he achieved a decisive victory in the Battle of Vittorio Veneto which de facto ended World War I on the Italian Front.
Australian general John Monash was one of the architects of the Battle of Amiens which opened the final phase of World War I. Monash led the 4th Brigade during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915-16 and despite the failure to secure an open sea route to Russia in the Mediterranean, he was appointed commander of the newly formed Australian 3rd Division in France. Following the success at the Battle of Messines in 1917, he was promoted to lieutenant general. Shortly thereafter, Monash replaced general William Birdwood as commander of the Australian Corps and led his corps to a series of victories in the final phase of the war. In contrary to the majority of both his Allied and Central Powers' counterparts, the Australian general was very productive in developing strategies to minimize casualties.
Svetozar Boroević (born into a Serbian Orthodox family in Austria-Hungary) was one of the most capable Austro-Hungarian generals. After the outbreak of the war, he was sent to the Eastern Front but following the Italian entry into the war, he was sent on the Austro-Hungarian-Italian border. Much better defensive than offensive strategist, Boroević achieved a major victory in the Battle of Caporetto in 1917 which allowed the combined Austro-Hungarian and German forces to advance over 60 miles. But the attempt to strike the Italian forces the final blow failed and after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, the Austro-Hungarian army collapsed. After the end of the war, Boroević offered his services to Belgrade but he was rejected.
German general Erich Ludendorff was one of the key actors in the victory over the Russians at Tannenberg which according to many historians, played an important role in the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Russian withdrawal from the war in March 1917. On the Western Front, however, Luddendorff was less successful. The German defeat in the First Battle of Marne revealed that his revised Schlieffen Plan which foresaw a quick victory in the west had failed. In 1917, he also ordered an unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain with an aim to break the blockade. But while the attempt to break the blockade failed, his unrestricted submarine warfare helped provoke the US entry into the war. In March 1918, Ludendorff launched a full-scale offensive (known as the Spring Offensive) in the West but despite some initial success, the German troops soon found themselves in defensive. After the Second Battle of the Marne, Ludendorff realized that the war is lost although he demanded the war to be continued after he heard for the armistice conditions. He was rejected and on October 26, he resigned.


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***ICM is a CoFFET company engaged in marketing and representing "japan school" in its desire to get interested applicants from the Philippines. We are not recruiting workers for Japan placement. All fees related to this program goes directly to the Japan company. ICM will NOT accept payments/reservations from applicants, it should be paid directly to the Japan Company. ICM will assist the applicant in all stages of the application process including documentation and give advice from time to time.
Thank you for being interested in the program, Corporate Sponsored Study and Work Program in Japan (CSSWPJ).
We could not be happier to welcome more international talents to Japan. With the CSSWPJ program, we offer potential foreign students who are interested in Japanese language learning to get financial support and employment opportunities with major Japanese companies.
First of all, we would like you to gain a better understanding toward the program. Please refer to the below website for Program Overview, Japanese Language Learning, Study Loan, Work with the Sponsor Company Introduction and Fee Detail for your reference.
This program does not require applicant to have a sponsor, the company is your sponsor.
This program will not require you proof of income in COE application.
CoFFET is a Japan based organization with operations in the Philippines. It is engaged in the field of education and training and professional development that assists Filipinos wherever they may be in their desire to come and teach in Japan.
ICFCoop is a cooperative owned by its members for the purpose of serving its members achieve financial independence and opportunities to improve their lives through empowerment, ownership, training and patronage.
1. Providing legal basis for its activities and representation.
Is a company sponsored language study and work program in partnership with various language schools all over Japan and major Japanese companies to provide opportunity for foreigners to come to Japan and study the language inspite of financial difficulties.
What is the Study Loan Program of CSSWPJ?
CSSPJ will select qualified students after video conference interviews to receive Schooling Fee Study Loan varying in percentage up to 75%. In the case of 75% Study Loan, sponsor company will pay 75% of schooling fee in advance leaving only 25% for students to shoulder at own cost. Here, study loan can be slowly paid back by working with sponsor company every month.
Once you graduate from the program, you can apply for permanent employment with sponsor companies and others CSSWPJ affiliate companies for excellent and hardworking students. You have a chance to be qualified to get a job offer from various companies and obtain Japan Working Visa to reside in Japan permanently.
CSSPJ Program participant should be aware that this program is not a scholarship but a Sponsorship that students need to carefully consider own financial situation before enrolling in the program. The cost to participate in CSSPJ Program consists of 3 aspects, Program Fee, Schooling Fee and Dormitory Rental Fee. These will be payable to the Japan program organizer.
o Once the applicant has been accepted to the program. The CSSWPJ shall request the applicant to pay JPY 30,000 to be paid to the CSSWPJ. This serves as your confirmation to join the program and allow us to proceed with your visa application. The full amount is refundable at the end of the program.
o A participant is expected to prepare around 300,000 JPY for the 1 time before departure fee. This will be payable after your Students Visa is granted. 100,000 JPY Program Deposit fee is to be refunded after program graduation. Once the below payment is completed, Certificate of Eligibility granted for student Visa will be released by Japan immigration and sent to your residence in your home country. Then, you can proceed with local Japan embassy to have the student visa issued then depart to Japan.
Please review carefully which intake you desire to participate in the program considering your physical, mental and financial readiness. We are open every year in every season according to Japanese Language School semester enrollment periods.
Every intake will have similar time-frame of application process as demonstrated in the below chart. We are opened for 2 years in advance applications up to year 2018. For the future semester intakes, we will keep your profile with us and will get back to you once the future application period draws closer.
Note: Intake application can be flexible. So, even if it is past due for an Intake Period. It is still possible to get accepted. Inquire during interview or through email.
CSSPJ Program is open for unlimited talents from anywhere around the world. we welcome all diversities in all age and gender. The screening process of CSSP could also depend on the preference of sponsor companies and the work vacancies available at the time. All in all, we tend to focus more toward the attitude and the ability to adjust well to Japan.
· Finish at least secondary level of education (highs school). Diploma and Bachelor degree graduates will have more advantage for future permanent employment opportunities.
· English language proficiency is the minimum qualification required if you cannot communicate in Japanese well.
· Already been to Japan to study in Japanese language school with student visa longer than 1 and a half years.
A person who holds Exchange Student visa in Japan will be eligible to work up to 28 working hours a week during school season and up to 40 working hours a week during off school season.
After your program participation confirmation, CSSPWJ will prepare your profile to be reviewed by multiple potential sponsor companies. One or more interview schedules with the sponsor companies will be arranged according to your skills. Depending on the company, students may be able to attend interview through Skype video conference prior to coming to Japan and most students will be attending interviews after they arrive to Japan. Once you are selected, the sponsor company will join CSSWPJ to become that student's Visa co-guarantor.
CSSWPJ will advise students how to prepare for interviews with sponsor companies focusing on the importance of Japanese etiquette and Japanese business manner. Participants should do their very best in order to be qualified in job to start work as soon as possible.
Here, students will receive the Study Loan under CSSWPJ support no matter what, not related to when they are selected by the sponsor company. Initially, we offer CSSWPJ Study loan opportunity under available quota of fund provided by CSSWPJ affiliates companies. Lastly, students will only be required to start paying the loan back once they can begin their work duty in Japan.
You will be working with local Japanese where good work ethics will be required to perform your duties successfully with the Japanese sponsor companies.
This way, you will learn about Japanese society deeply by having first-hand experience in regard to the people and the work culture. Moreover, your Japanese language learned in school could be put into practice while working with Japanese locals. This is a very valuable experience that our program offers during your stay to learn Japan way of success and to experience becoming part of the Japanese society.
With the nature of the program, work types and work location may be unknown until students arrive to Japan.
· You will most likely perform work in the afternoon after morning school classes or you will perform work in the early morning or later in the evening for afternoon classes.
· Transportation to work will be subsidized.
· Working Shifts, leaves and day off are adjustable upon discussion with the workplace leader but not always completely flexible to your wish.
· Some work place related to catering and food may require a prior health check up. Some other jobs may require to submit certain document and certificates if any.
· You will be earning hourly wage same as Japanese local employees approximately 900-1,200 JPY/hour.
③Please state which semester intake you want to apply by putting in the E-mail "Subject" field: to title as below.
Those who send in their application first will be arranged with the first program interview you as soon as possible.
Application intake periods maybe closed but we can be flexible. Please inquire if interested in January 2017 intake.
For other periods, we will keep recruiting until approximately 8 months prior to the semester.
WHICH INTAKE DO YOU WANT TO APPLY?
We truly wish this program can change your life and can offer you an opportunity to expand your horizons.
We understand that even through our program, Japan could be expensive and financially challenging. However, all possibilities are up to your own hands! After we invite you to Japan, you can surely work hard and accomplish your future goals.


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Freedom Closes Danforth Brook Bridge
Alliance Report
Freedom—October 23, 2020—The trouble-plagued project to replace the Danforth Brook Bridge on Ossipee Lake Road took another hit this week when the Freedom Select Board voted to close the span to all traffic until further notice.
The bridge is likely to remain closed through December, the town said.
Construction work on the $1.1 million project was aborted on September 30 after bore-hole tests revealed the load-bearing capacity of the soils surrounding the bridge was less than what is required in the design. The town kept the span open to passenger cars but banned trucks, saying the remaining section of the old bridge had been compromised by work on the replacement structure.
The closure of the bridge to all traffic, which is effective on Monday, October 26, is necessary in order to implement a solution to the load-bearing issue.
In a plan developed by the town's construction administrator, CMA Engineers of Portsmouth, and GZA Engineering of Portland, a 'densification' technique will be used to increase soil capacity at the site. An initial test of the technique convinced the town it was the most cost-effective way to complete the project before winter.
Closing the bridge during the process will help ensure that the soils under both sides of the bridge footings are consistent and the span settles evenly, according to town administrator Ellen White.
White said the town recognizes the closure will be a "huge inconvenience," but said safety services will not be interrupted. Action Ambulance has a base station on the town line between Tamworth and Madison on Route 41, and fire coverage can be provided by the West Ossipee Fire Department through mutual aid.
White said the decision-making process during the past month was "fluid and fast moving," with the State of NH DOT, which has to approve any work order changes, working with all parties in an "extremely cooperative" manner.
The bridge project was approved a year ago after a decade of delays in obtaining state funds. Work was supposed to commence at the end of spring melt this year and be completed by November. But in mid-June, a design flaw in one of the bridge's wing walls was found during a review by the construction engineering firm.
Addressing the flaw required new design documents and an amended state wetlands permit, which delayed the construction start date to August 10. Work began but stopped on September 30 after the load-bearing capacity issue became apparent.
The heavily-used bridge was built in 1925 and is long past its 50-year life expectancy.
White said the town believes the end-of-December completion date estimate is realistic.
"We are still awaiting the updated construction schedule, but it seems the densification technique is very predictable in its results based on the test area, and…all of the precast components that have been manufactured can be used with no new re-fabrication or down time."
White said work could continue through the winter months if necessary, but "there is no plan to have this bridge closed through the winter."
Fred Laspisa 3 months ago October 24, 2020
It is a shame that over this past summer the Freedom board of selectman would not entertain this very proposal to shut this bridge down completely, let the surrounding towns provide mutual aid for emergency services thus expediting the safe building and timely completion of this bridge which was by the way also recommend by the then engineer. It boggles ones mind to try and understand why this small and simple project was planned for mid summer and why one lane had to remain open on that small unsafe structure which is now about to fall into the river. Now look at the mess we are in with no bridge, winter approaching, cut off from emergency services, fuel oil and propane deliveries, access to town offices and snow removal services and the list goes on. One must wonder, WHO is minding the store here!
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Other than running back, the Packers' most frequently mentioned need has been (and will continue to be) outside linebacker. Or, more specifically, an outside linebacker that can provide some pass rush opposite of Clay Matthews.
That's not to say there haven't been contenders through the years. Erik Walden looked like a find near the end of the 2010 season, but he never recaptured the magic we saw in his Week 17 performance that year. Like Walden, Frank Zombo went quietly into the night after a solid 2010 season. Nick Perry was supposed to be the next big thing, but we only caught a glimpse of him last season before a wrist injury knocked him out for the year. Dezman Moses stepped in for Perry, but he was relatively raw after playing his college ball at Tulane and only had a spotty impact.
All that brings us to this year, where a healthy Perry, a seasoned Moses, and an upstart rookie named Nate Palmer will tangle for the lion's share of the playing time across from Matthews. Who ya got? Here are the contenders.
How can Perry not be the favorite? He's bigger, stronger, and faster than the other two, plus he has the benefit of being a former first round pick. While the Packers can tend to give less favoritism to former first rounders than other teams, you still want your top picks to succeed, and Perry will get every opportunity to do so.
His athleticism, by the way, might be the biggest reason he'll get the best shot at the starting spot. Watch how he keeps contain on this play, then chases down Russell Wilson. Textbook.
Calling him a probable backup is no knock to Dezman Moses. Given how Dom Capers rotates players in and out of his defensive alignments, a top backup spot is almost as desirable as starting. And after his four sack season last year, you have to think Moses will be hungry for more, especially if he gets the chance to strip Matt Stafford again.
Physically, Palmer is almost a carbon copy of Dezman Moses (6'2"/248 lbs to 6'2"/240 lbs). He also has big school experience, starting his college career at Illinois before transferring to Illinois State. Like Moses last year, Palmer may be the kind of training camp star that ends up snagging a roster spot. Nobody at Illinois State can find a bad word to say about him, and if he has the talent to match his sterling reputation, the Packers may have found somebody worth keeping around.


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'The Meg' - Movie Review
I was seriously sceptical about "The Meg" - I think with some justification. Particularly after not liking "Sharknado," its spiritual predecessor in the category of cheesy shark movies. But a friend who's a connoisseur of all the finest cheese said that this was a good one, and my weakness for stupid-ass action films got me the rest of the way. The writers were having a blast (and, more importantly for us, doing a good job). I was particularly fond of the precocious eight year old daughter, but the other comedic highlight was them working in a brilliant "Finding Nemo" reference, with Jonas (Jason Statham) in the ocean saying "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming ..."
The concept is simple: underwater research facility sends a sub to visits an unexplored region of the ocean, attracts a megalodon - a 25 metre long shark thought to be several million years extinct. Havoc ensues. The action sequences are appropriately ludicrous but mostly entertaining. And reasonably intelligent and humorous writing made the parts in between the action fairly good. I found the last half to three quarters of an hour somewhat drawn out - if the movie had been 75 minutes instead of 113 minutes it would have been perfect.
The mixed Chinese-American origins of the movie are visible in a couple ways: first, both languages are spoken at different points in the movie (with subs), and second, the hero and heroine don't kiss at the end, they just talk about plans.
Prev: 'Bumblebee' - Movie Review Next: 'Bullitt' - Movie Review
http://www.gilesorr.com/blog/the-meg.html


Military Intelligence – a Contradiction in Terms?
Maybe there's some uniquely calm land where military heroes and ex-generals don't get a head start in politics. But that land is neither Israel or the United States. The only thing consistent about John McCain's campaign is the claim that he deserves to be president because he was a POW. Closer to where I live, both Shaul Mofaz and Ehud Barak presume that having been the country's top military commander not only qualifies them to be prime minister, but makes the job theirs by right. A military man, supposedly, not only understands national security but has proven his ability to make decisions under pressure.
John McCain finds himself behind in the polls, trying to design policy on economics, which he doesn't understand, facing a debate for which he is not ready. What does our war hero do? Why, with heroic cool and elan, he panics.
Read moreMilitary Intelligence – a Contradiction in Terms?
My wife occasionally mentions a repeated gag on the fake news broadcast on Saturday Night Live in the 70s. After other mangled news, the announcer would say, "And Franco is still dying." Given what he could expect in the next world, it's no wonder he was slow about moving there.
But the record for slow political deaths surely belongs to Israel's Labor Party.
Barak Speaks–Does He Have Anything To Say?
"Ehud Barak will Talk More to the Media," says the headline in today's Ha'aretz (Hebrew edition). It's a mark of the sad state of Israeli politics that it's worth a headline when the leader of what ought to be the country's progressive camp decides to talk to the press.
It's hard to believe but, since regaining leadership of the Labor Party more than a year ago, Barak has said virtually nothing about the major policy issues of the day. He's one of the three major contenders for the prime minister's post in the next elections, yet he's given the public little information about his thinking. We know his social policies, his foreign policy strategy, or his budget priorities. His message to the voting public has been "trust me because I'm Israel's most decorated soldier and a proven leader." But leader of what, and in which direction?
Read moreBarak Speaks–Does He Have Anything To Say?
This week's key misunderstood news story from the Looking Glass Land of the West Bank is that the Defense Ministry is about to approve settlement at a spot called Maskiot, near the Jordan River. On first glance, that's bad because it means that the government is abandoning its freeze on new settlements. At second glance, the freeze on new settlements is a joke – but Maskiot is really bad news. It shows again that the government consistently, reflexively, obsessively gives in to the most extreme elements of the settlement movement.
Tzipi and the General: Who's Experienced?
Tzipi Livni is running against the embodiment of dumb military macho, and she's responding wrong.
In a Ha'aretz piece this morning (in Hebrew), political reporter Mazal Mualam tells us that Livni's main competition in Kadima, Shaul Mofaz is conducting "a negative campaign against Livni, focused on her lack of military experience" while Livni "is refraining from personal attacks." Instead, she's trying to set her own defense agenda, most recently by touring the northern border with the Italian foreign minister. It's a quieter version of an ad about phone calls at 3 a.m. to the commander-in-chief.
Livni, let me stress, is far too hawkish for my tastes. A colleague who covers diplomacy describes her as a person who lacks empathy, a quality needed for good negotiation: You don't have to agree with the person across the table, but it's valuable to understand how he or she thinks. That said, she's more of a diplomat than her rivals within Kadima, or outside of it. Labor's Ehud Barak not only flubbed his chance, he has rationalized his failure by dismissing the very possibility of peace, reinforcing the right's politics of despair. His line is, "If I couldn't do it, it can't be done." Fortunately, in a multiparty system, I'm not constrained to vote for Barak, Bibi Netanyahu, or whoever Kadima picks. But how Kadima goes about making the choice still matters.
Mofaz is an ex-chief of staff who exemplifies how mediocre the officer class has become.
Read moreTzipi and the General: Who's Experienced?
When my son informed me Saturday night that he was taking all three of my pairs of walking shorts back to the army with him, I was left scratching my head. Why would a commando-in-training need three pairs of walking shorts? He wasn't telling me, and I resigned myself to the fact that I'll never know.
In shadowy, prestigious elite military units, not only operations, but mundane everyday activities remain secret pretty much forever. As if I needed to be reminded of that, Sefarim, Ha'aretz's Wednesday book supplement, has a two page spread (in Hebrew) on a new book about "The Unit"—Avner Shor's Crossing Borders: Sayeret Matkal and Its Founder, Avraham Arnan. Reviewer Yiftah Reicher-Atir, himself a veteran of The Unit, notes that Shor's book contains little about the actual operations that Sayeret Matkal has carried out since it was founded in 1957. The large majority of them remain classified.


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Japanese animation "Evangelion" bullet train makes final run
A shinkansen bullet train featuring a design inspired by popular Japanese animation series "Neon Genesis Evangelion" made its final run on Sunday, drawing throngs of fans to witness the last journey.Around 1,200 people, including anime fans and train enthusiasts, gathered at the platform of Shin-Osaka Station to see the train off. The 500-series shinkansen train of West Japan Railway Co. began its daily round trips in November 2015 on the Sanyo Shinkansen Line from Shin-Osaka to Hakata.
Hiroshi Kaibe, a 44-year-old Nara city resident, lamented the end of the Evangelion train runs, saying, "I hope they will resume."At Hakata, around 500 people welcomed the last train run.The Evangelion train was scheduled to end its service in March last year, but it was extended due to strong demand from fans at home and abroad.
The train is painted in purple in the image of a giant human-type weapon, used by the main character of the TV animation series.With passengers able to play a game in an Evangelion cockpit, the train proved a hit not only with domestic but foreign travelers as well.
The train was introduced in 2015 to mark the 40th anniversary of the opening of the Sanyo Shinkansen Line and the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of the sci-fi TV series.
source@kyodo news


I need to clone myself. There isn't enough time to do everything that needs to be done. So, once again I apologize for the dearth of posts.
First, I'd like to say this is for informational purposes only. I'm not encouraging, advocating, instructing, or directing anyone to produce, manufacture, distribute, or use for any purpose these devices.
The M228 fuze is a mystery as far as legality goes. I've seen places on the web that state these are Class 3 devices (Destructive Devices), other places that state you can buy them with proper documentation, and yet others that say they are completely legal because they contain less than 0.25 oz of explosives, but manufacturer's won't sell to the public due to government contract / insurance / legal / liability issues.
Quite frankly, I'm confused as apparently it is legal for people to own smoke, CS and CN grenades. These use fuses similar to the M228. In flashbangs, apparently, the BATF considers the fuze a "serialized device" under the NFA. Flashbang grenades are not legal for private ownership because they contain a sizable amount of explosive. However, the fuzes for FBs are available from Source One Tactical and other places.
So, as confusing as it is to find a definitive article on the legality of grenade fuses, practice or otherwise, approach this subject with caution.
Usually, when one purchases a DeMiled practice or dummy grenade, an expended training fuse is in place. Many times the fuze only has the pull pin, and safety handle (spoon) attached to the body of the fuze. Absent are the striker spring, striker, and striker pivot.
Complete fuze assemblies containing all parts and repair kits containing the striker, striker spring and pivot are available from Guns And Surplus ( I like these guys and am a customer ), Old Sarges Dropzone, and even eBay.
The expended fuze will still have the use primer in place and the body of the fuze will contain the residue of the delay element. The delay element is the mixture ignited by the primer and typically has, in an anti-personnel grenade, a 5 to 7 second burn time before setting off the detonator or igniter.


If you are a Mom, aunt, sibling, cousin or just a observant soul, you probably have watched a baby feed on his milk. He eagerly feeds as if he had never eaten before today. He smacks his lips and makes all kind of sounds including contentment once he starts to feed. If he doesn't receive nourishment, he begins to cry loudly from hunger in order to get your attention. He wants it now and eagerly draws it in as quickly as he can. Without milk he will not survive, his growth will be stunted and he will die if not nourished. When we become a new Christian, God's Word is our milk. We crave it and desire to dig in with everything we've got. We have an insatiable appetite for the Word.
So why is it that we do not "feed" our new Christians by helping them understand God's Word. Babies are not expected to get their own meals. How then can we expect them to grow as Christians without teaching? So often, our churches rejoice at the salvation of a new soul but then leave them to fend for themselves to grow in the Word. We don't seem to grasp the importance of mentoring and teaching them. Yes, the Holy Spirit illuminates the Word opening up each passage and making God's Word clear to every child. But God has also gifted His children to teach and guide His "babies". Even milk is ingested one swallow at a time. Babies don't instantly become a mature person or a mature Christian. We need to provide assistance/mentoring for them. What a delight to see a new Christian growing in wisdom as he draws closer to the Lord!
Ephesians 4:11-16 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Do you provide mentoring to a new Christian by helping them understand God's Word? Help them have a full life. Share God's truths. Life without the Word is hopeless.


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Death penalty report
Amnesty in Salisbury
Promoting human rights in Salisbury UK
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Human Rights tableau, France
The US execution spree
World Day Against the Death Penalty
Is the human rights era drawing to a close?
Refugee vigil
Saudi arms sales and human rights
Posted: October 18, 2015 in Saudi Arabia, stop torture
Tags: "Human rights", arms sales, George Osborne, John Glen MP, Saudi, Saudi Arabia
An about turn
Over the last three months we have been in correspondence with our local MP Mr John Glen over the issue of arms sales to Saudi Arabia. This arose because the French President spoke out publicly against the increased use of the death penalty in Saudi and the barbaric way in which they are carried out. We also expressed concerns about human rights generally, the use of torture and the dreadful treatment of women.
Mr Glen replied and arranged for a Foreign Office minister to reply as well. The burden of their replies was that the government took the issue of human rights very seriously and raised the issue of human rights with the Saudis at every available opportunity. It began to unwind because it was revealed that the Foreign Office had removed the abolition of the death penalty as one of its objectives. This was only a matter of days following assurances to the contrary from one if its junior ministers in his letter to us. Earlier this month Sir Simon McDonald, head of the FCO, told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that:
economic prosperity was further up his list of priorities than human rights.
Following the news that a Saudi had been elected to the UN's human rights council – an astonishing fact in itself – it was discovered shortly afterwards that our own government had facilitated this. The British government had used its influence to secure the position of someone, patently against human rights, onto the human rights council. This was a quid pro quo arrangement apparently but since no one was objecting to our application, why it should be necessary was never explained.
We noted that George Osborne had pleased and apparently surprised his Chinese hosts by not mentioning human rights on his recent visit there. China executes more than any other country in the world and has been arresting and detaining large numbers of people involved in human rights in a major crackdown. We are shortly to play host to the President of China, Xi-Jinping, who has expressed a wish that human rights are not mentioned during his visit. Despite their lamentable human rights record he will get the red carpet treatment nevertheless.
Then came the news that a Briton, Karl Andree, was to receive 360 lashes for alcohol offences for which he has already served a prison term. It might be thought that the Saudi administration would be sensitive to how this might play in the UK. With the UK government falling over themselves to sell them arms and the Kingdom in an increasingly rocky state financially because of low oil prices, to flog a British national in public is not exactly good PR.
The government responded by cancelling a £9.5m contract to train prison staff. Again, one might ask what on earth are we doing helping a regime which tortures its prisoners more or less as a matter of routine. And it has to be noted that this is not an arms contract so its effect is unlikely to be keenly felt. So it seems that where a Briton is involved the government is willing to react reportedly after a huge ministerial row. Otherwise, it is business as usual.
On the BBC's Profile programme (18 October) it was concluded that the deal is that Saudi provides oil and security information in exchange for legitimacy and keeping quiet on human rights abuses.
The statement 'the government will continue to work towards the complete abolition of the death penalty using all the tools at its disposal' is unconvincing in the light of these actions.
Action on Armed Violence
Arms Control Association
Campaign Against the Arms Trade
Conflict armaments research
European Network Against the Arms Trade
Breaking the Silence (Israel)
Burma Campaign
Chinese Human Rights Defenders Network
Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea
Human Rights North Korea
Iran Report
Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Liverpool Friends of Yemen
Middle East Monitor
Mwatana
Physicians for human rights Israel
Safeguard Defenders
Yemen Data Project
Yesh Din (Israel)
Death Penalty Focus
Death Penalty Information Centre
Death Penalty Project
Death Penalty worldwide
L'Abolition
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
The Death Penalty Project
Human rights sites
Act for the Act
British Institute of Human Rights
Business and human rights resource centre
Detention Action
Essex University Centre for Human rights
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
Fortify Rights
Front Line Defenders
Global Consilium
Global Legal Action Network
Grant Liberty
Human Rights Connected
HURSDEF
Inter American Commission on Human rights
International Bar Association Human Rights Institute
International Federation for Human Rights
International Rights Advocates
North Korean Human Rights Committee
Rights Watch UK
Rightsinfo
Southern Region site
Stand for All
The Rights Angle
UK human rights blog
York University Centre for Applied Human Rights
Bristol University Law School
Inspire (women's rights group)
Peace Brigades
Penal Reform Trust
Reason and Reality
Reggie Clemons – USA
Sport for Rights
The Ferret


Country Notes: * The Power of Attorney can be filed within 2 months of the filing date.
• The Statement Justifying Applicant's Right To File must be notarized. This can be filed within 2 months of the filing date.


text:
Basketball brings in towering first-year class
Liam Devine-Carter, Staff Writer|October 6, 2017
unior Carson Long shoots from almost the three-point line during their NCAA basketball tournament at Marietta College on March 4, 2017//Photo courtesy of Guilford College Basketball
The first-years on the Guilford men's basketball team cast shadows over the other students on campus. Seeing the first-year basketball players around campus is like spotting Bigfoot. These players should not be confused with the hairy forest-dwelling behemoth, but hopefully they will be able to contribute to the success of the Quakers this season.
Guilford was able to take home the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship after an impressive 24-6 record last season. The Quakers made it to the second round of of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division III Tournament. This upcoming season will be head coach Tom Palombo's fifteenth season as team's head coach. Palombo's career has been extremely successful. He earned 12 ODAC championships and 16 national playoff appearances while on staff. Palombo and the Quakers had back-to-back national semifinals appearances in 2009 and 2010.
All this success assists the Quakers in obtaining high quality recruits. 2016-2017 All-Region forward Carson Long commented on the level of contribution first-years would most likely have coming in. In his opinion, they will likely receive less playing time as they adjust to the new level of speed and competition.
"They won't play a ton of minutes," said Long. "The minutes they do play will be very crucial though."
Last season, of the 10 first-years on the team, only six played, averaging about 11 minutes per game. Although one of the positives about this first-year class is size, Long says the new players can contribute in the backcourt.
"We have more big guys than guards so the guards could fill some holes," said Long. "I am really excited (though). We have some big guys and some shooters."
In contemporary basketball, it is really important to have shooters with range and mobile rim protectors, ensuring that Guilford will be able to compete with top offenses and defenses.
Forward Luke Cartwright is one of the big first-years that could make an impact. Cartwright has an impressive presence standing at 6'8" and weighing in at 255 pounds. He is one of nine first-years, which is a relatively large recruiting class for Guilford.
"The (first-years) are definitely fitting right in with Guilford College culture," said Cartwright.
It is very important for first-years to buy in early to a coach's system to ensure a successful season. It seems as if the culture is already rubbing off on Cartwright.
The (first-year) class will fill in a few small missing spots that will help Guilford college win a conference championship and make a run in the (National Collegiate Athletic Association) Tournament,"said Cartwright.
The Quakers will open their season at crosstown rival Greensboro College on Wednesday, Nov. 15. They will host the Guilford College Classic two days later, playing their first game of the tournament against Concordia University (Texas). The Tornados ranked sixth in the NCAA South regional last season.
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In the US and Israel, new urgency in battle against cyberattacks – Jewish Insider
When an Israeli hospital was thrown offline last week, sending it back to the pre-digital age of pen and paper, the country was forced to grapple with what its National Cyber Directorate described as a major ransomware attack a challenge that many countries have had to tackle in recent years.
At the same time as Israeli doctors were contending with the ramifications of the significant blow to their health system, the White House National Security Council was convening a virtual conference on the topic of countering ransomware. Over 30 countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, participated.
Among the recent events that triggered the meeting was the May ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which caused a shutdown of the U.S.s largest fuel pipeline system for five days. Colonial Pipeline paid the requested ransom (75 bitcoin, or nearly $5 million) to the hacking group DarkSide, believed to be based in Eastern Europe, which has since claimed to have shut down. Due to its status as a government-owned hospital, the Israeli Hillel Yaffe hospital in Hadera, where the ransomware attack took place, was reportedly barred from paying a similar ransom.
As the world has become ever more dependent on the internet since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a year and a half ago, the threat of cyberattacks is higher than ever.
Were all very vulnerable, and especially as our dependence on cyberspace and our digital identities becomes greater and greater, our vulnerability to cyberattacks is liable to increase, Deborah Housen-Couriel, the chief legal officer for Konfidas, a cybersecurity company based in Tel Aviv, told Jewish Insider.
A joint statement released at the NSC conferences conclusion said the participants recognized that ransomware is an escalating global security threat with serious economic and security consequences.
As with other cyber threats, the threat of ransomware is complex and global in nature and requires a shared response. A nations ability to effectively prevent, detect, mitigate and respond to threats from ransomware will depend, in part, on the capacity, cooperation, and resilience of global partners, the private sector, civil society, and the general public, the statement read.
This is an important development, said Housen-Couriel, who at the same time as the White House conference was underway was participating in a panel discussion on cyber abuse, security and defense at a conference held by the University of Chicagos Pearson Global Forum.
Its the first time that theres been such an initiative to specifically address the use of ransomware internationally, she remarked.
Amit Ashkenazi, legal advisor of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), was part of the Israeli contingent that participated in the conference. The fact that we have like-minded countries around the table helps us talk about something that we at the INCD have been talking about over the last few years, more openly, he told JI.
He said the effort can help reduce barriers between countries when it comes to information sharing and recovery techniques, and can create technical, legal and policy vehicles to enable swift cooperation.
A joint announcement by the Ministry of Health and the INCD on Sunday said the ransomware attack had spread to additional unnamed hospitals, but that early assessments and a quick response from the center and teams on the ground halted the attempts and no damage was done.
Health Ministry cybersecurity chief Reuven Eliyahu said in an Army Radio interview on Monday that a Chinese hacker group was likely behind the attack and that the motives were purely financial.
Ashkenazi said that in the event of significant incidents such as the Hillel Yaffe attack, government bodies are simultaneously working on various tracks, including following the crumb trail to identify the perpetrator; and working within the victims network to understand what has happened and whether additional attacks can be expected..
Israels digitized health system, which was touted during the coronavirus pandemic for enabling a speedy and efficient vaccination campaign, is also somewhat of an Achilles heel when it comes to vulnerability in the face of cyberattacks.
Doctors at Hillel Yaffe have been forced to piece together patients medical histories, which are usually readily available online. They now need to ask patients to bring in any records they have at home, and are building up physical folders from scratch.
Some come from home with their records, but beyond that, we have no access to the system that enables us to see information about patients who were operated on or catheterized in the past, Professor Ariel Roguin, who heads the hospitals cardiology unit, told Haaretz earlier this week.
Medical equipment is working as usual and most operations are going ahead, other than elective, non-urgent procedures, and those that can be done via HMOs are deferred to them.
For Internal Medicine Department Director Nina Avshovich, the situation has taken her back to her days as a medical intern. I worked without computers 20 years ago, so it didnt agitate me, she told JI, adding that the hospital has developed new systems to cope with the present reality.
Simulations were held for various situations, such as how to book and conduct the process of X-rays, from beginning to end.
Staff are required to walk around the hospital, or use fax machines, in order to transmit information that would usually be done digitally.
Full communication among staff has been key to enabling the current manual work system to function well, Avshovich said. We spend much more time with the patients, she added, seeing this as the glass-half-full aspect of the crisis.
Fewer patients are showing up at the hospital since news of the cyberattack began to circulate. Management is working both on building new systems as well as trying to restore the old ones.
They promise us that in a few weeks we will partially be able to see lab results, X-rays and imaging digitally, Avshovich said. When hospital staff will return to work as normal is not yet clear.
In addition to the health sector, Housen-Couriel, the Konfidas official, identified the finance sector and critical infrastructure in general communications as often-targeted sectors.
She described Israel as an important player that can contribute to the effort via its high level of cyber-awareness and talent in incident response, digital forensics and situational awareness in cyberspace. In turn, she said, it can gain from the initiative by broadening its cyber alliances around the world, developing expertise along with other like-minded countries. Moving ahead with this common goal of combating this type of malware and ransomware which, in the end, if it does in fact pan out as a successful initiative, will obviously have ramifications for all, for many other types of cyberthreats.
While expressing her support for the recent effort for strengthened international cooperation, she suggested that it needs to be expanded further.
You cant catch the cybercriminals if youre operating only on your own as a country, Housen-Couriel said. Cyberspace is a global resource and the reach of global cybercriminals is global. Any meaningful response to mitigate the effects of these types of attacks has got to be international. This includes international assistance on identifying how the attack vector was carried out, locating where in the world the attackers are based, and at the end of the process collaboration on legal aid, providing evidence, putting the suspects on trial and potentially extraditing them.
She also highlighted the importance of addressing the money trail issue, which is really a hard one because of the anonymity of payments made through cryptocurrency. Once the money trail nut is cracked, that will achieve the goal that the Counter Ransomware Initiative set, which is to disrupt the business model of these ransomware attacks which has been such a successful model.
Amounts of money demanded by ransomware attackers have skyrocketed. CNA Financial Corp., one of the U.S.s largest insurance companies, reportedly paid $40 million in March to regain control of its network after a ransomware attack. According to a report this year by Palo Alto Networks, the average ransom paid by organizations in the U.S., Canada and Europe increased from $115,123 in 2019 to $312,493 in 2020 a 171% spike.
Addressing the absence of countries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran in the U.S-led conference, Housen-Couriel said, Clearly, without the participation of states whose citizens are actively using ransomware and we know weve identified them as attackers without their participation, in all the levels this initiative is committed to engage with, only limited progress can be made. So a lot more countries need to be involved and that is one of the stated aims of the initiative.
But Ashkenazi said the recent conference was more focused on like-minded countries. Given the type of cooperation that was discussed, Im not sure this would have been the right format to share ideas and thoughts in such a broad manner there are other forums for this, he said, alluding to the United Nations, which he said has several channels open on cyber-related issues.
There are some basic differences, he noted, in the way other countries approach the role of the internet, and the focus of cybersecurity.
Like-minded countries see cyberspace as an important space for human rights and defense of freedom of speech and rule of law regarding the relationship of the government with the people. Some countries see cyberspace as another place of governance in which they apply their government values and systems, Ashkenazi said.
That isnt to say that there isnt bilateral cooperation between Israel, the U.S. and others with those countries. In a White House press call ahead of the virtual conference, for instance, a senior administration official said, in response to questions about Russias nonparticipation that the U.S.-Kremlin Experts Group, which is led by the White House, was established by President Biden and President Putin, so the U.S. engages directly with Russia on this on the issue of ransomware.
Israel, Ashkenazi said, has some 90 bilateral agreements with organizations and missions similar to the INCD. He hopes, however, that this turn towards greater multilateralism will speed up the pace of information sharing and dealing with cyberattacks.
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In the US and Israel, new urgency in battle against cyberattacks - Jewish Insider
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Course Objective: Upon successful completion of this course, students with a prior knowledge of Windows 7 will be able to perform common tasks within the Windows 8 environment.
Target Student: This course is designed for students who wish to switch from using a PC running on the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system to using a PC running on the Microsoft Windows 8 operating system in a business or work-related environment.
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Yes, construction is starting as of March 30, 2015!
Contruction restarts on Charles St. to prepare for our new LRT. Estimated time to complete this leg of the track is "end of the summer".
Here at the store, we of course, will be open through the construction and will be keeping our regular hours.
We have been assured that there will always be access by car to our driveway and parking spots.
If you need an update of the construction process or need directions ahead of time, just give us a call at the store at 519.744.5331.
Even with the dust and noise, we expect to have a great summer; we are already planning for our annual Patio Lantern Contest. Stay tuned for all the details if you haven't participated before.
In addition to our annual contest we will busy shopping for extra deals to pass on to our customers.
So, join us to make this summer successful with lots of in-store specials and don't forget to enter out Patio Lantern Contest!
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After 7 trips to Burning Man over 14 years while working for various tech companies, I've personally experienced and witnessed the brain dead malaise that can take over as people come back to earth after spending a week on the Playa.
Burning Man is an exhausting experience — mentally, physically, and emotionally. But it is also inspiring and enlivening and can drive creativity if you know how to tap into it.
Every year someone asks, "How can we make the 'default world' more like Burning Man?" In most ways, you can't — the playa is too magical and unique to recreate. But you can create an atmosphere that helps your team take best advantage of the creative window that may have opened up for them out on the playa. Here are a few tips.
Let Them Drink Coconut Water!
It may seem silly to make this point first, but most people have no idea just how dehydrated they get after a week of desert living (let alone drinking and doing drugs in the desert).
Dehydration lowers brain function more quickly than hunger and lack of sleep. And since the cells in the body can only take in so much water on a given day, it can take days of non-stop drinking for the body to recover to full hydration after an experience like Burning Man.
The solution? Stock your company fridge with tons of hydrating, electrolyte-filled drinks — coconut water, gatorade, Vitamin Water, etc. Put a leaderboard on the fridge where people can mark down how much they've had. Reward the "most hydrated" with a free lunch at the end of the week. Anything to get people hydrated and back up to maximum productivity and brain function.
I used to work in an office where talking about Burning Man was taboo. It was like it was something to be ashamed of, rather than something to share and celebrate. F*** that.
People are going to talk to each other about their experiences at Burning Man whether you like it or not. Why not call it out in the name of transparency and authenticity and get people talking to the entire office about it?
Ask your resident Burners to host a brown bag lunch to talk about what they learned on the playa. If you're worried about "censoring" the content, it's ok to remind them that normal office decorum still applies, so some stories might be best left for after hours.
Who did they meet? How were they inspired? What realizations about themselves, life, or their work did they have? How can we bring those lessons back to the office? How can we build them into the product?
Radical Inclusion — Burning Man is a participatory event. There are no wall flowers. This creates massive opportunities for cross-pollination of ideas, sharing of responsibilities, and thinking. Great organizations like Google actively recruit problem-solvers. They reward off-the-wall ideas. Feeling that your wacky idea will be welcomed with curiosity rather than judgment engenders an atmosphere of creativity and nonlinear thinking.
Radical Self-Reliance — When at Burning Man, you have to be able to take care of yourself. Yes, some people show up to posh camps where people wait on them, but that is a gross recent phenomenon that all real Burners hope will die off. Real Burners are self-reliant. And self-reliant people are problem solvers. They are resourceful. They never give up.
Gift Economy — Burning Man is a gift economy. This means you can't buy anything (except ice and coffee), and you aren't supposed to "trade" for things. If you have something others want, you are invited to give it away with no expectation of compensation. Having an office culture with a gift economy means people support each other, they dive into offer help and ideas, and they don't squabble over credit.
At the end of the day, you can't expect your Burner office mates to recreate the playa experience in your office. But by helping your team recover physically and mentally, by encouraging them to share their experiences, and by creating an atmosphere that draws the best of Burning Man into your office culture, you can make this annual rite a resource rather than a liability.
Oh, and I heard Daft Punk is already booked to play at the trash fence at 3am the Friday before the Burn next year. See you there!
Have other thoughts about bringing the best of Burning Man into your workplace? We want to hear your ideas. If you liked this article please recommend and/or share it.
You might also enjoy reading, How to be Assertive, well – 5 Tips to Staying on Top Without Stepping on Toes.


Content administrators are constantly looking for innovative ways to engage site visitors. For developers this often leads to requests for customization. It goes without saying that for web sites the heart of any Content Management System (CMS) is managing content. Within Kentico CMS documents are the building blocks of web content. They contain the data, format and structure processed by the Kentico application and presented to the site visitors. When programmatic customization is needed the Kentico API provides an extensible framework for documents. In this eBook we will look at how this is done.