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← MASSIMO FAGGIOLI. Are US Catholics too American to stand up to Trump?
JAMES O'NEILL. American missile strikes in Syria raise fresh questions. →
MUNGO MacCALLUM. Another distraction, but what a distraction.
By Mungo MacCallum | On 11 April 2017
The starting point is putting a price on carbon – some form of emissions trading policy. But this is total anathema to the coalition party room – worse even than negative gearing.
Donald Trump's impulsive missile strike on the assets of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad threw a huge dead pig into the international ring, even more rivetingly as no-one – least of all Trump himself – has any idea how it will eventually play out.
But it grabbed the undivided attention of leaders around the world, including our own Malcolm Turnbull, who unhesitatingly endorsed the great war leader's line: "a calibrated, proportionate and targeted response."
And he made it clear that for once he was not prepared to dither and temporise when it came to a brutal and ruthless dictator using illegal chemical weapons to kill his own civilians. "These crimes against humanity, shocking and horrific – even in the context of the Syrian conflict zone – cannot be committed with impunity …. The perpetrators must be held to account," he thundered.
Well, up to a point: "we are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime." So that's all right then – we can go on with business as usual, in the happy knowledge that the headlines, like the apparently endless stalemate in the region, will stay well away from our shores.
Certainly Turnbull will not lament the burying of Andrew Robb's all too predictable report on the last election, in which the authors blamed just about everyone, including our hapless prime minister. And this is just as well, because the verdict was that the national economic plan for growth and jobs was almost entirely lost on the voters, despite the fact that Turnbull is attempting to resuscitate it as some kind of triumph following the passing of some of the corporate tax cuts he has finally negotiated.
Turnbull spent much of the last week traipsing through various carefully selected small businesses, whose owners assured him that they were absolutely delighted with the foreshadowed lot, and that they might actually try to expand their operations – and even their staffs – once the money started flowing. So if Turnbull had any real doubt, it would seem that the small business owners vote is now locked in.
Similarly the Treasurer Scott Morrison was tackling the big end of town, demanding that the world-weary executives band together to flog the government's somewhat unwholesome package, apparently on the grounds that the government was unable to do the job itself. And once again he received a warm – well, warmish – welcome. It is more than likely that most of the fat cats will also vote Liberal.
But, as hardened psephologists will tell the duo of spruikers, this is not terribly helpful, because there are very few fat cats and more, but not enough more, small business owners. They are vastly outnumbered by their employees, who remain deeply sceptical of Turnbull's insistence that the program of corporate cuts will produce even the most miserable of trickles down, and regard it, like such indulgences of section 18c, as no more than a distraction to the main game – and a far less interesting one than bombing air strips in Syria.
And given that wages are worse than stagnant, unemployment and underemployment stuck, and the cost of living pressures, most notably in housing and energy bills, growing weekly more critical, it may be that they have a point. Which is where, Syria or not, Turnbull will have to turn his real search for a solution: what the bloody hell is he, along with his fractious colleagues, to do about the forthcoming budget?
About all we know is that there will definitely be something about housing, although it appears that Turnbull, Morrison and the government's resident spokesandroid, now renovated as negotiator and problem solver extraordinaire, are still squabbling over just what, how and how much.
Naturally negative gearing is not on the table: it is, says Morrison, a blunt instrument. And in a sense it is – the crises over the real estate bubble are now confined largely to Sydney and Melbourne, although it is not clear what, if any harm limiting negative gearing to the other cities and regions would actually do while the blunt instrument was swinging in the two big capitals. And the same could be applied to capital gains tax concessions, which may or may not be on at least the edge of the table, unless Turnbull has already pushed them off.
But if tax policy is a blunt instrument, where does that leave the Reserve Bank, which has had to resort to the sledgehammer of interest rates, which need to be raised to cool the housing market but lowered to revive the rest of the sluggish economy? The bank's governor, Phillip Lowe, suggested, even pleaded, with the government to try and deal with both the supply side of the problem – on which Turnbull is very keen, given that land development is a matter of the states rather than him – and also the demand side, on which Turnbull is not keen at all.
Bribing investors to pay higher and higher prices for buildings in which they have no intention of residing is obviously not assisting despairing first home owners, but as far as the government is concerned it has to be good politics, because Bill Shorten is against it. So housing is, to put it mildly, awkward.
In contrast the other barbecue stopper, energy policy should be simple enough: just about everyone who has even the most casual knowledge in the field (and that includes Turnbull, his energy and environment minister Josh Frydenberg, and for that matter his former environment minister, Greg Hunt) is perfectly aware that the starting point is putting a price on carbon – some form of emissions trading policy.
But this is total anathema to the coalition party room – worse even than negative gearing. A carbon price cannot be contemplated, let alone articulated for debate. Thus the market, whether it is private or public, has no real idea of how to manage its future, and presumably will continue to muddle along as it has done for the last few years, giving increasing grief and aggravation to the consumers and, by extension, the government.
All of which means that the budget is not a pretty prospect. There must be times when Turnbull yearns for the direct approach of Trumpism. He could always get some good press if he could just lob a few bombs one of his many enemies. Ah, if it was only so simple.
Mungo MacCallum is a veteran Canberra correspondent who was a member of the Canberra Press Gallery for many years.
Mungo MacCallum
Mungo MacCallum is a veteran political journalist and commentator. His books include Run Johnny Run, Poll Dancing, and Punch and Judy.
This entry was posted in Climate, Economy, Politics. Bookmark the permalink.


Last year whilst I was filming a documentary shooting all around Australia, I came across a great find in what now is my favourite little country town… and that is… THE BEECHWORTH BAKERY!
Recently my lovely mother took a drive up to Beachworth to get some of their fab pies and after tasting these babies again for the first time in over a year (they really are the best pies I've ever eaten in my life) mum and I just had to go and investigate to see if they had any closer stores.
To our surprise, there was one located not too far away in our backyard wine country!
So today we took the drive to go out and have one of their fabulous donuts… yes… driving 2 hours there and back for a donut really was worth it.
These are the freshest donuts I have ever eaten in my life! Soft, homemade, thick icing and not one bit rubbery or greasy at all!
Here are some snaps of our little adventure today..
Sooo looking forward to devouring these babies again tonight… now matter how stuffed from the ones I ate today I already am..
← // BEAUTIFUL BRITISH COLUMBIA – VANCOUVER..


text:
Q: Error pandas._libs.hashtable.Int64HashTable.get_item when creating cluster I've been working in this project long time ago and I have some trouble analyzing the clusters. Basically, i'm reading some data from an csv file with 4000 records using panda read_csv() (a excel file exported as csv), then I clean the extracted data by removing the punctuation, tokenizing and stemming, in the following step, I create the Tdidf Matrix and, using k-means, I make the clusters.
I've used the following libs:
word_tokenize, SnowballStemmer, TfidfVectorizer, cosine_similarity, KMeans, MDS. With python 3.
from __future__ import print_function
import os
import nltk
import pandas as pd
from nltk.tokenize import word_tokenize
from nltk.stem.snowball import SnowballStemmer
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from sklearn.manifold import MDS
from scipy.spatial.distance import cdist
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from string import punctuation
import numpy as np

# Creación de un corpus de documentos a partir de una ruta (PATH) donde se encuentran varios documentos.
# Se genera una lista de textos de cada documentos junto con su nombre de archivo de origen

def CrearCorpus(path):

    df = pd.read_csv('./llamadas.csv', usecols=['motivo', 'respuesta'], delimiter=';')

    corpus = []

    for i in range(1, 4050):
        problema = str(df['motivo'][i])
        solucion = str(df['respuesta'][i])
        problema_final = problema + ' ' + solucion
        corpus.append([problema_final, 'document ' + str(i + 1)])
    return (corpus)

# Eliminar "stopwords" de un texto

def _RemoveStopwords(sentence):
    word_tokens = word_tokenize(sentence)
    stop_words = set(stopwords.words('spanish'))
    filtered_sentence = [w for w in word_tokens if not w in stop_words]
    filtered_sentence = ""
    for w in word_tokens:
       if w not in stop_words:
           filtered_sentence = filtered_sentence + " "+w
    return(filtered_sentence)

# Lee  cada uno de los documentos desde el corpus y genera los textos y sus identificadores (titles)

def read_documents(path):
    corpus = CrearCorpus(path)
    documents = []
    titles = []
    for c in range(len(corpus)):
        (doc, fn) = corpus[c]
        titles.append(fn)
        documents.append(doc)
    return ((documents, titles))

# Elimina puntuación de los documentos

def removePuntuaction(documents):
    translator = str.maketrans('', '', punctuation)
    for i in range(len(documents)):
        documents[i] = documents[i].translate(translator)
    return (documents)

# Realizar lematización de un texto en Español

def Stemmer(text):
    stemmer = SnowballStemmer('spanish')
    words_stem = stemmer.stem(text)
    return (words_stem)

# Realiza tokenización y lematización de un texto

def tokenize_and_stem(textdata):
    text = word_tokenize(textdata)
    lista = []
    for elem in text:
        word = elem.lower()
        nuevo = Stemmer(word)
        lista.append(nuevo)
    return (lista)

# Realiza tokenización de un un texto

def tokenize_only(text):
    tokens = [word.lower() for sent in nltk.sent_tokenize(text) for word in nltk.word_tokenize(sent)]
    filtered_tokens = tokens
    return filtered_tokens

# Crear vocabulario de términos a partir del corpus de documentos
# Se crea una tabla (FRAME) que representa un "vocabulario" de las palabras de cada documento

def crear_vocabulario(documents):
    # crear dos listas, una lematizada y otra con tokens
    totalvocab_stemmed = []
    totalvocab_tokenized = []
    for i in documents:
        allwords_stemmed = tokenize_and_stem(i)
        totalvocab_stemmed.extend(allwords_stemmed)
        allwords_tokenized = tokenize_only(i)
        totalvocab_tokenized.extend(allwords_tokenized)
    vocab_frame = pd.DataFrame({'words': totalvocab_tokenized}, index=totalvocab_stemmed)
    return (vocab_frame)

# Crea una matrix tf x idf a partir de los textos "tokenizados" y lematizados

def crear_matriz_tfidf():
    tfidf_vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(max_df=0.8, max_features=200000,
                                       min_df=0.2,
                                       use_idf=True, tokenizer=tokenize_and_stem, ngram_range=(1, 3))
    tfidf_matrix = tfidf_vectorizer.fit_transform(documents)
    terms = tfidf_vectorizer.get_feature_names()
    return ((tfidf_matrix, terms))

# Realiza clustering K-means de la matrix tf x idf (entrega los clusters)

def clustering(tfidf_matrix, num_clusters):
    km = KMeans(n_clusters=num_clusters)  # Crea objeto de datos KMeans
    km.fit(tfidf_matrix)  # Realiza K-means propiamente tal
    clusters = km.labels_.tolist()

    return ((clusters, km))

# Muestra estadísticas de los clusters y objetos (documentos y palabras) generados

def cluster_stats(clusters, titles, km, tfidf_matrix):

    # abrimos el archivo csv
    df = pd.read_csv('./llamadas.csv', usecols=['Plataforma'], delimiter=';')

    films = {'title': titles, 'documents': documents, 'cluster': clusters}
    frame = pd.DataFrame(films, index=[clusters], columns=['title', 'cluster'])
    frame['cluster'].value_counts()  # number of docs per cluster
    print("Top terminos por cluster:")
    print()
    # Ordenar centros de clusters segun proximidad al centroid
    order_centroids = km.cluster_centers_.argsort()[:, ::-1]

    # analizamos cluster por cluster
    for i in range(num_clusters):

        print("Palabras de Cluster %d:" % i, end='')
        for ind in order_centroids[i, :5]:  # replace 6 with n words per cluster
            print(' %s' % vocab_frame.loc[terms[ind].split(' ')].values.tolist()[0][0].encode('utf-8', 'ignore'),
                  end=',')
        print()
        print()

        # variable para ver el largo de la cantidad de documentos involucrados en el cluster
        list_row = []

        print("IDs de cluster %d:" % i, end='')
        for title in frame.loc[i]['title'].values.tolist():
            print(' %s,' % title, end='')

        # extraemos la linea de cada documento para analizar de que plataforma es
        count_snd = 0
        count_mateonet = 0
        print()
        numbers_rows = frame.loc[i]['title'].values.tolist()
        for index in range(0, len(numbers_rows)):
            row = numbers_rows[index].strip('document ')
            list_row.append(int(row))

        # contamos cuantos elementos son de que plataforma
        for cols in range(0, len(list_row)):
            value_platform = df['Plataforma'][list_row[cols]]
            if value_platform == 'SND ':
                count_snd = count_snd + 1
            if value_platform == 'Mateonet ':
                count_mateonet = count_mateonet + 1

        # indices por plataforma
        print()
        print('Plataforma SND: ' + str(count_snd))
        print()
        print('Plataforma Mateonet: ' + str(count_mateonet))
        print()
        print('Cantidad de preguntas: ' + str(len(frame.loc[i]['title'].values.tolist())))
        print()
        print()

#MAIN

# Ajustar esta variable con la ruta a un directorio que contenga varios documentos
# Give the location of the file
PATH = "./llamadas.csv"

num_clusters = 100 # Maximo numero de clusters es 5

(documents, titles) = read_documents(PATH)
documents = removePuntuaction(documents)
vocab_frame = crear_vocabulario(documents)

print('Existen ' + str(vocab_frame.shape[0]) + ' itemes en vocab_frame')

(tfidf_matrix, terms) = crear_matriz_tfidf()
(clusters, km) = clustering(tfidf_matrix, num_clusters)
cluster_stats(clusters, titles, km, tfidf_matrix)

https://github.com/felipefuller/faq/blob/master/data_analysis.py
I can create up to 167 clusters, but when I update it to create 168 or more clusters it raises the following errors:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/base.py", line 2657, in get_loc
    return self._engine.get_loc(key)
  File "pandas/_libs/index.pyx", line 108, in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc
  File "pandas/_libs/index.pyx", line 132, in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc
  File "pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi", line 987, in pandas._libs.hashtable.Int64HashTable.get_item
  File "pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi", line 993, in pandas._libs.hashtable.Int64HashTable.get_item
KeyError: 167

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/felipefuller/dev/faq/cluster.py", line 324, in <module>
    cluster_stats(clusters, titles, km, tfidf_matrix)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/dev/faq/cluster.py", line 187, in cluster_stats
    if (len(frame.loc[i]['title'].values.tolist()) >= 250):
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexing.py", line 1500, in __getitem__
    return self._getitem_axis(maybe_callable, axis=axis)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexing.py", line 1913, in _getitem_axis
    return self._get_label(key, axis=axis)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexing.py", line 141, in _get_label
    return self.obj._xs(label, axis=axis)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/generic.py", line 3583, in xs
    drop_level=drop_level)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/multi.py", line 2571, in get_loc_level
    indexer = self._get_level_indexer(key, level=level)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/multi.py", line 2652, in _get_level_indexer
    code = level_index.get_loc(key)
  File "/Users/felipefuller/.virtualenvs/faq/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pandas/core/indexes/base.py", line 2659, in get_loc
    return self._engine.get_loc(self._maybe_cast_indexer(key))
  File "pandas/_libs/index.pyx", line 108, in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc
  File "pandas/_libs/index.pyx", line 132, in pandas._libs.index.IndexEngine.get_loc
  File "pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi", line 987, in pandas._libs.hashtable.Int64HashTable.get_item
  File "pandas/_libs/hashtable_class_helper.pxi", line 993, in pandas._libs.hashtable.Int64HashTable.get_item
KeyError: 167

So it should be able to manage easily more than 167 clusters, because i'm using more than 4000 records.
Thank you!

A: Clearly there is an error in you code.
Your probably try to access a non existent column, not row.
Fix your code - we can't because we don't have it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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text:
Home 1 25,000 + Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)
Institute of Cancer Research (ICR)
The Institute of Cancer Research (the ICR) is a public research institute and university located in London, United Kingdom specialised in oncology, and a constituent college of the University of London.
A prototype AI test that can predict which drug combinations are likely to work for cancer patients in as little as 24 to 48 hours
Precision cancer drugs boost the immune system and help more patients benefit from immunotherapy
Precision cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors have a previously unknown ability to boost the immune system, and could help many more patients benefit from immunotherapy, a new study reveals. Scientists found that PARP inhibitors sparked a powerful immune response when used against cancer cells with weaknesses in repairing their DNA. The study changes our understanding
World first as viral immunotherapy for skin cancer shows patient benefit in Phase III trial
A genetically engineered herpes virus can halt the progression of skin cancer by killing cancer cells and sparking the immune system into action against tumours, a landmark clinical trial has shown. It is the first time that a Phase III trial of viral immunotherapy has definitively shown benefit for patients with cancer. The trial was
Computer-controlled table could direct radiotherapy to tumours
Swivelling patients around on a computer-controlled, rotating table could deliver high doses of radiotherapy to tumours more quickly than current methods, while sparing vulnerable organs such as the heart, brain, eyes and bowel. Swivelling patients around on a computer-controlled, rotating table could deliver high doses of radiotherapy to tumours more quickly than current methods, while
Golden age of prostate cancer treatment hailed as fourth drug in two years extends life
A new drug can significantly extend life The head of one of the UK's leading cancer research organisations has hailed a golden age in prostate cancer drug discovery as for the fourth time in two years results are published finding a new drug can significantly extend life. A study in the New England Journal of
Antidepressant Shows Promise as Cancer Treatment
Retinoids have already transformed one rare type of fatal leukemia into a curable disease An antidepressant combined with a drug derived from vitamin A could be used to treat a common adult form of leukemia, according to laboratory research led by a team at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR). A retinoid called all-trans retinoic
Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) Research
University of Cambridge experts jointly lead UK proton beam therapy trial for breast cancer
Cambridge researchers are jointly leading the first UK trial to test the benefits of proton beam therapy for certain patients with breast cancer.Standard breast radiotherapy is really effective for ...
Targeting cancer-supporting cells boosts immunotherapy in previously insensitive tumors
Removing a single protein from cells that surround tumors can improve the sensitivity of certain cancers to immunotherapy, researchers have found.
UK trial asks if proton beam therapy for breast cancer can reduce heart risks
A new clinical trial just starting in the United Kingdom will assess whether proton beam therapy for breast cancer poses fewer risks to heart health than standard radiotherapy.
Targeting cancer-supporting cells boosts immunotherapy in previously insensitive tumours
Removing a single protein from cells that surround tumours can improve the sensitivity of certain cancers to immunotherapy, researchers have found.
Covid could help to cure cancer, new research reveals
Experts from the Institute of Cancer Research in London (ICR) described the results as "exciting" and said such vaccines showed great potential in improving cancer treatment. Moderna and MSD ...
Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) Discovery
The Cancer Research UK Convergence Science Centre was established as a strategic partnership between The Institute of Cancer Research and ... has passed. The ICR's MRC-funded Doctoral Training ...
Targeting the ecosystem to make cancer extinct
ICR will use its discovery science to understand the genetic and molecular basis of cancer, and the cancer ecosystem. The organisation will carry out the translational research to diagnose and ...
Institute of Cancer Research
The Institute of Cancer Research (the ICR) is a cancer research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. It was founded in 1909 ...
ICR and University of Cambridge reveal new prostate cancer prediction tool
Researchers from the The Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR) and the University of Cambridge have revealed a newly created comprehensive tool, CanRisk-Prostate, for predicting an individual's ...
Tags: ICR
University of Florida (UF)
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
BIS Publishes the Quarterly Review in September 2018
BIS published the September 2018 issue of its quarterly review. BIS also published speeches by Claudio Borio, the Head of the Monetary and Economic Department, and Hyun Song Shin, the BIS Economic Adviser and Head of Research.
The four special features in this BIS Quarterly Review are on how cryptocurrencies react to news about possible actions by regulators, on the extent of fintech credit activity based on income levels in countries, on zombie firms (entities that appear to be insolvent but keep on operating), and on reviewing ways to estimate the term premium embedded in bond yields. The BIS quarterly review highlights the following:
It shows that international debt securities issuance now outweighs bank loans as the main driver of international credit to firms, households and governments.
It explores the reasons for a surge in bank finance to highly indebted or non-investment-grade borrowers. These include strong investor demand, a pickup in securitization, and a changed regulatory stance in the U.S.; however, the rapid expansion can create vulnerabilities.
The review uses BIS banking statistics on Turkey as an example of how to analyze bank exposures to country risk. At the end of March 2018, foreign banks had USD 223 billion in outstanding loans, securities holdings, and other claims vis-à-vis residents of Turkey. However, the absolute size of exposures might not be the most relevant indicator. Analysts may, for instance, need to compare exposures with the size of bank capital. The raw figures should also be viewed in the context of banks' business models, financial health, consolidation and accounting practices, and risk transfers.
BIS Quarterly Review, September 2018
Remarks of Claudio Borio and Hyun Song Shin
Keywords: International, Banking, Quarterly Review, Cryptocurrencies, Fintech, BIS
APRA Chair Speaks About Uncertain Impact of Financial Innovations
FASB Proposes Taxonomy Improvements for ASU on Credit Losses


text:
Filter: in title in Year in Full text Sort by date Sort by relevance Sort by title
UNHCR regrets loss of life in the Aegean Sea, with at least 31 dead and more missing
Joint UNHCR/IOM Press release
UNHCR saddened by English Channel tragedy - urges action to prevent further loss of life
News comment attributable to Pascale Moreau, UNHCR Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe.
IOM, UNHCR provide emergency aid to asylum-seekers and migrants at the Belarus-Poland border, call to ensure well-being of people and prevent loss of life
UNHCR: World must turn COP26 words into action for forcibly displaced and stateless people
Fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo forces 11,000 to flee to Uganda
UNHCR report: Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, facing deadlier journeys in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea
Another boat tragedy off North Africa's Atlantic coast stark reminder of perilous sea journeys


text:
Can Republicans Be Cured of Their Love for Trump?
Maryland GovPics/Flickr
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.
Most Americans can be excused for not paying close to attention to everything that goes on in Washington, D.C., but that's less true for Marylanders because many of them live in the D.C. media market and a huge number of them actually work for the federal government. They have a front-seat view of the chaos and dysfunction, and if they aren't following along on television or at work, they can learn about it from their neighbors. When it comes to being a Terrapin State supporter of Donald Trump, ignorance is not a defense.
Trump is heavily disliked in Maryland. The voters there went for Hillary Clinton by a 60-34 percent margin. They currently give the president a 39 percent approval rating. But they like their own Republican governor. Larry Hogan has a 76 percent approval rating, which is impressive enough that he's being encouraged in some quarters to launch a challenge to Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.
There's no question that Hogan would do better than Trump as a general election candidate in Maryland, although it's highly unlikely that he could carry the state against the eventual Democratic nominee. It's probable that Hogan would do better than Trump in a lot of states, including many of the states that could actually swing one way or the other.
On the other hand, the data suggest that Hogan would get slaughtered by the president in a primary, including in his home state.
If Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan mounted a primary challenge against President Trump, Republican voters in his home state would back the president by a more than 2-to-1 margin, a new poll has found.
Hogan (R) remains just as popular as Trump among Maryland Republicans, according to a survey released Thursday by Gonzales Research & Media Services, but that popularity does not translate to support for a primary campaign.
About 24 percent of GOP voters would support Hogan in a primary fight, while 68 percent would vote for Trump, the survey said.
Maryland Republicans are fond of their governor and they have the unique advantage of being able to compare his style and performance to the president's record, and yet they still overwhelmingly prefer that Trump be their party's 2020 nominee.
Whenever I think about Trump's persistent popularity with Republican voters, I immediately reach for metaphors of illness. It's like a brain virus or perhaps a prion disease. There's clearly a widespread mental disturbance involved here. Whatever combination of factors explains it, it is most definitely not healthy. My inclination is to look as much for a psychological cure as a political solution.
Yet, it doesn't seem like a problem that can be cured from outside the Republican Party. I'd like to be proven wrong about that, and maybe there are some slow policy cures that could work over time. There are Republicans (and former Republicans) who are trying. William Weld has announced he'll challenge Trump for the nomination. Perhaps Larry Hogan will as well. The more the merrier, and it could be that having some folks team up to challenge him would break the spell Trump has cast over conservative Americans.
It's frustrating to watch Republican lawmakers fall in line for Trump, but they are representatives and their strongest supporters want them to have the president's back. I don't think most of them actually like the kind of pressure this creates for them, but they like their careers more than their country.
Having an alternative to Trump is certainly a good starting point. But even if Trump is reelected, he will eventually be a former president. Will his spell continue to work its evil even after he's gone?
We can point the finger at Trump all we want, but the Americans who support him are what maintains him in power. We need to discover what is wrong with them and develop some theory on how they can be cured.
The Case for Preemptive Impeachment
If this past week has not strengthened Tom Steyer's case for the expedited removal of Donald ...read more
The Real Story Behind a Romney Aide's Challenge to Elizabeth Warren
So, is this the best the Massachusetts Republican Party can offer? Longtime Republican ...read more
This is What You Call Getting It Terribly Wrong
Almost as bad as the mainstream media's pre-debate obsession with normalizing Donald Trump is ...read more


text:
Details Announced for the 2022 Balance Bike World Championships
by Si Paton
Press Release: Malverns Classic
Three days of racing to be crowned the Balance Bike World Champion!
Date: 26-28th of August 2022 (August Bank Holiday Weekend).
Venue: GT Bicycles Malverns Classic Mountain Bike Festival at Eastnor Deer Park, Herefordshire. HR8 1RQ. England.
The Balance Bike World World Championships presented by The Little Rider Co and supported by G-Form.
Riders Ready, let's go racing!! Children aged from 2 to 5 years of age are invited from all around the world to race in this fun and competitive competition. Race categories are split between both boys and girls in their age category. There are three days of racing with Quad Eliminator, Slalom and Downhill. Enter every race to be in with the chance to be World Champion!
Friday 26th of August – Balance Bike Quad Eliminator – ENTER HERE
Four riders on the BMX style start gate, elbows out and go! This is action-packed head-to-head racing down into the main arena. Riders will fire out of the four-man start gate at the same time, battling elbows high into the first corner. The course will be fast and flowing with plenty of passing places for the skilled and the brave. The top two racers from each round will go through to the next heat, a simple elimination format as we head to the super finals!
Saturday 27th of August – Balance Bike Slalom – ENTER HERE
Racing one at a time down the slalom course, the race is against the clock! This is action-packed racing as riders fire out of the BMX style start gate and around the coloured gates. The fastest four from each category will go into the super finals.
The 1st and 2nd fastest riders will be in the A Final. The 3rd and 4th fastest will be in the B final. (B final will run first, the winner will be awarded 3rd place). These super finals will be based on one race, racing dual slalom head to head. Gate pick goes to the rider that qualified fastest.
Sunday 28th of August – Balance Bike Downhill – ENTER HERE
Downhill is the Formula 1 of mountain bike racing. The purest form of racing with riders racing against the clock. The course will be fast and flowing with plenty of corners for the riders to showcase their skills.
The festival is free to children aged 12 and under as are all the Fair Ground rides. If you require any further information regarding the Balance Bike World Championships of the GT Bicycles Malverns Classic, please check out the website HERE.
kcy4130 (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:25)
Will the uci be conducting anti-doping tests? I suspect that many of these athletes are juicing. Apple juicing to be exact.
lewiscraik (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:52)
My son had a balance bike race shortly after the Martin Maes ban was announced - I did check his prescibed medicine on the WADA list. He was OK to race, but still didn't win.
hgardner (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:54)
Tests show the athletes have high levels of HGH
CustardCountry (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:55)
As long as a rider doesn't drink from someone else's juice box they should be ok.
matadorCE (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:37)
Pedialyte---over hydration!
snl1200 (Nov 18, 2021 at 11:46)
Performance Enhancing Hugs have been a big issue with this age group previous...so some level of testing would be really appropriate to keep the playing field level.
GalenS (Nov 18, 2021 at 23:44)
Checked for use of Crank?
chriskneeland (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:12)
My 2 year old is looking for sponsors to fly her out. PM me with inquiries.
fullendurbro (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:55)
I heard Pinkishbike is run by a rad dad. Maybe they'll hand out some sponsorship money.
kingbike2 (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:54)
Shorter cranks taken to the extreme.
rrolly (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:36)
Hear me out: MegAvalanche + Strider bikes. . .
mab411 (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:30)
See, this is where Specialized's carbon strider makes sense. By the way, Strider opened their first brick-and-mortar store in Bentonville. Completely adorable. If you're there, it's worth checking out, especially if you have a little ripper. They have ALL KINDS of gear I'd never seen or heard of.
Hogfly (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:45)
And check our local operation, Buddy Pegs, while you're there which also specializes in kids bikes and programming, though they sort of focus more on the post-strider demographic (though they do carry balance bikes from woom and other companies).
hardcore-hardtail (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:33)
Strider has a carbon bike too! Released two years before specialized and cost $100 less! Theres one on display at the bentonville store to drool over.
jgoldfield (Nov 18, 2021 at 9:05)
What's up with this groomed course? And all the kids are on single crown forks nowadays? I remember back when the Balance Bike World Championships were still raw...
lewiscraik (Nov 18, 2021 at 13:28)
The slalom course was pretty raw this year - certainly for 12" wheels.
rockyflowtbay (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:19)
Can we get a bike check???
mi-bike (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:46)
Any mullet setups?
sofakingwetarded (Nov 18, 2021 at 13:13)
bikes are all too long and low
sngltrkmnd (Nov 18, 2021 at 14:10)
@sofakingwetarded: Honestly, they're seldom slack enough haha
oscartheballer (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:11)
Look at those kids muscles, they are clearly doping.
pioterski (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:53)
I bet it's because of someone else's water bottle.
@pioterski: someone else's jugs*
hidden motors in some of those rides......not even close to a level playing field. This is jacked.
chacou (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:18)
Remove the wooden ramps after practice. Let's see the kids send it MVdP style, or not.
"And the leader, Little Jerry, just went over the bars! He was expecting the ramp to be there and tried to roll it!"
jbirdz (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:23)
Parents going off in the comments!
witnessed a dad popping a neck vein while screaming at the UCI official for disqualifying his daughter for cutting the course.
konarider94 (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:46)
Rumor has it next years World Championship Strider Bike race will be held at Glen Helen during the World Vet Championship Race. Striders will be 2nd drop in the 30+ pro moto.
watermonkey (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:34)
I guarantee some dentist tried to get his kid to race on an e-strider, was denied, then stormed off with a crying kid in tow. They spent the whole event sulking in the sprinter.
There were plenty of kids swapping to e-balance bikes to ride back to the top of the course this year.
v7fmp (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:12)
i now regret teaching my daughter to ride a pedal bike at 3 years old.... she used to rip on her balance bike! Great event tho! Good to get the young involved.
Same issue here - my son raced in the blanace bike races at the Malverns last year, but will be on a pedal bike by next August!
GumptionZA (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:17)
@lewiscraik: you could postpone teaching him how to use pedals for another year, hell, another 5 years! you could have a reigning champ on your hands!
@GumptionZA: it was hard enough keeping him away from his big brothers bike last summer!
PAmtbiker (Nov 18, 2021 at 10:07)
This is not the content that we want, but it is the content that we need...
jpat22 (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:26)
Wish this was in the US! Unfortunately (?) my son is now on a pedal bike. This is such a cool way to get kids to experience the competitive side of riding.
Strider have their world championships in US!
Ensminger (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:47)
Since it's world champs, do I need a Sprout+ account for the live feed? Will really miss the RBTv call by Warner, wondering how that brave lad can even sit
jakewashere (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:56)
Looks like a Session.
GlazedHam (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:18)
I spent years working a city-wide Bike Rodeo event where youngsters competed in multiple events to advance to the city finals. Also coached various YMCA leagues for 10 years and was a Boy Scout leader for 14.
Hard pass on any event where "parents" are involved.
Lonjuan (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:08)
Oh man! Can't wait until RedBull takes over this event!
Just imagine how awesome this would be with Rob Warner commentating...
Bikesbecauserunningsucks (Nov 18, 2021 at 11:25)
Me scrolling through feed: What kind of clickbaiting satire is this!?
Also me: WTFRICK this is a real thing. Where was this when I was 3?!
JimV (Nov 20, 2021 at 16:15)
Great article. I will take just a second to say that downhill is completely unlike F1. In F1, all the competitors are on the course at the same time. It's true, you could look it up. That's what makes it great.
Vudu74 (Nov 18, 2021 at 5:28)
That is a very long time to get to wear the rainbow stripes!
BikesNRussets (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:00)
This is the only event I would have a chance of winning.
SJP (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:00)
How about poor #049? His parents brought him to a world championship on a bike he outgrew 2 years ago; and they knew it! They put a longer seatpost in to try to compensate.
tkrug (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:30)
I really want to see the Pro category races. 14" wheels and under only.
louantonis (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:31)
World Championships? yo mean WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS??
... so there is a world wide qualification scheduled, in order to attend?
sailor74 (Nov 18, 2021 at 7:34) (Below Threshold)
lol no just the usual USA thinking its the only country in the world
@sailor74:
Lloydmeister (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:59)
@sailor74: just another geezer not reading the article
louantonis (Nov 18, 2021 at 12:49)
... it is called sarcasm ...
& it refers to the fact that kids of that age must play ...
it would be kinder and more appropriate to call it ... "World balance games... every kid invited"
and not "marketing wise" as ...world championship bla bla bla ...
to probably attract viewers
@louantonis:
Everone knows it is tongue-in-cheek.
Here's an even more over-the-top naming from another sport:
www.yachtsandyachting.com/news/209847/Humans-dominate-the-Foxer-Intergalactics
ElDebarge (Nov 18, 2021 at 9:35)
Can we get video of parents berating their 2-5 year olds for losing and not going all out. Parents are the best.
RepublicBicycles (Nov 18, 2021 at 16:50)
Can't wait to see what all the athletes are running for brakes, drivetrains and suspension.
Freemurr (Nov 19, 2021 at 19:25)
In depth bike checks please.
jimbsport (Nov 18, 2021 at 9:11)
for wanna be racer parents
Gotta get my 2yo's passport application completed STAT!
Darwin66 (Nov 18, 2021 at 22:16)
I would highly recommend full faces here.
dv8416 (Nov 19, 2021 at 6:02)
FINALLY a race I can win!!!....
pink505 (Nov 19, 2021 at 7:24)
Can my kid on her e-Strider participate?
JeremyC (Nov 19, 2021 at 10:42)
If this was the basis of the Pinkbike Academy, I might actually watch it.
GotchaJimmy (Nov 19, 2021 at 11:21)
how do i register
yabbaDABdo (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:19)
So gt didn't get the green message invited kids from all over the world for a publicity stunt ….
sailor74 (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:48)
balance bikes, ebikes, road bikes.....'mountainbiking' just isnt what it used to be, i find myself coming here less and less, maybe im too old and all this inclusivity is just a generational thing
Bro-LanDog (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:15)
Yep. It's garbage. I do not care about your drooling toddler walking a toy around.
BikesNRussets (Nov 18, 2021 at 18:10)
@Bro-LanDog: I'm fine with it, but I've almost hit like 5 different kids at my local pump track. Note that the stupid parents of the kids have them on the full-size pump track, and they built a strider track right across from it. I find it impressive that 99% of the strider parents I've seen have no idea what they are doing, even if they ride seriously.
It's like they're actively trying to find content I don't give a single F about.
im assuming you must have to have kids to get this....looks like a shit day out to me but im sure some will enjoy it
Bro-LanDog (Nov 18, 2021 at 6:49) (Below Threshold)
@sailor74: I guess. Least it keeps them out of the skateparks and dirtjumps. Cannot stand helicopter moms taking up the whole line so their precious Braydens/Kayleighs can be walked up and down the big boy features.
@sailor74: it's part of the wider festival, which was a great day out.
bikefuturist (Nov 18, 2021 at 8:45)
so american to put kids of that age competing
Mpblikes2ski (Nov 18, 2021 at 10:19)
uhhh... It's in England.


text:
UK HOOPS
ABOUT MVP
MenuUK HOOPS INTERNATIONAL NBA GEAR PODCAST NEWSLETTER ABOUT MVP
LIONS WILL REACH OUT – MACAULAY
JACDONMI EAGER TO KEEP TOWERING ABOVE
CLARK GETS REAL
PRIDE, DOING UTMOST TO AVOID A FALL
ROCKETS TROPHY BID FIZZLES OUT
FLYERS COOK UP BAKER
EAGLES HEAD INTO CUP FINAL
CITING COVID, SUNS PASS ON FINAL SHOW
LONDON INTO CUP FINAL AS GIANTS FORCED OUT
SURREY'S OUTBREAK FORCES RAIDERS OFF
Home / INTERNATIONAL / Great Britain / LAWRENCE READY FOR NEXT STOP
LAWRENCE READY FOR NEXT STOP
By Niall Gray
In the end the game meant nothing.
Defeat to Luxembourg in the final group game would not prevent Great Britain from reaching EuroBasket 2017, results elsewhere would confirm that, but Andrew Lawrence was having to come to terms balancing the joy of qualifying with the pain of defeat.
"It's a roller-coaster of emotions," the GB guard admitted afterwards.
"It's a tough pill to swallow losing that game and we gave up one we definitely should have won."
He added, "During the game we weren't worried about the other results, we were just focused on our own game.
"So afterwards, when we found out we'd qualified, it was a real mix of emotions.
"Disappointed we lost, but happy with the qualification."
Lawrence received a lot of praise during the qualifiers and rightly so, with the Londoner leading GB in scoring with a 14.3 points per game average coming off the bench.
It's worth remembering that he's put in a number of big performances after battling back from a serious anterior cruciate ligament injury which ruled him out of the EuroBasket 2015 qualifying.
While Lawrence appreciates the plaudits,he prefers to find his own motivation to keep improving.
"I try not to focus on anything negative or positive, just go out there and play," he said.
"I'm not really looking for outside sources to give me any confidence, I get it all from [my GB teammates] at practice every day.
"It's very nice when you do read it as your family and friends will comment on stuff like that and it's nice to hear."
Lawrence says he takes immense pride in being able to wear the GBjersey and still has goals he wants to achieve with the national team.
"I need to keep working as I'm trying to be one of the best players Great Britain's ever had," he said.
"I want to be around for a long time and will just try to keep improving."
In the long-term future, Lawrence is hoping to have a successful tournament next summer.
"I've very happy to be going to EuroBasket," said the GB guard.
"It's a huge deal as we're playing against the top teams again, which is where I think we belong."
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About Niall Gray
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text:
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
January theater festivals roundup: Under the Radar edition
By Helen Shaw Posted: Friday January 6 2017, 1:50 PM
The news out of Under the Radar's first few days is rather like recent Hollywood box-office numbers: In troubled times, we turn to nostalgia and escape. None of the shows I saw were exactly Finding Dory, but much on display at the Public Theater is un-provocative and meant to comfort. Here was experimental theater in its "dear innocent" guise; this was certainly the first UTR I've been to where you actually could have brought your kids. (The festival's later days bristle with international offerings, including the in-exile Belarus Free Theater, so the snugglesome mood will shift next week.)
RECOMMENDED: January theater festivals guide
Speaking of children, the 600 Highwaymen participatory work The Fever was determined to make each of us feel like one again. Sitting in a big rectangle around a bright red floor, we imitated directors Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone as they moved their hands in little waves. Seated alongside us, they would then quietly prompt random theatergoer to stand or raise a hand, so the directors could illustrate their scene of a neighborhood party. "Doesn't Mary Anne look pretty tonight?" Browde would ask, as we contemplated some bearded dude standing before his chair. Browde and Silverstone are interested in citizen-performance: they're known for their intergenerational amateur ensembles, and here—in a savvy intensification—they turn almost completely to the audience for their casting needs. Formally, it's a beautiful inversion, but for me the piece itself had a claustrophobically sweet aspect. Browde and Silverstone deserve hearty applause for their creative restlessness within the new form they're carving out: while being clearly of the same genre, The Fever is hugely different from their all-movement The Record or their staggering Death of a Salesman. If here things seem a touch too gentle and the writing a bit too clichéd ("This is the end. Or maybe a kind of beginning?" an audience member reads from cue cards), at least the iconoclastic approach is radical. (75 mins. Through January 15)
Operating at maximum cute were the folk-rock duo The Bengsons, who perform their concert-narrative work Hundred Days. Surrounded by their band, standing underneath 50 twinkling light bulbs, the married couple Shaun and Abigail Bengson tell us the story of their three-week courtship. At first, it goes well—an Astoria idyll. But since childhood, Abigail has dreamt that her beloved will one day be given those titular 100 days to live. She decides it's a prophecy, so she freaks out. Now, having a bad dream is not conflict; it's not even trouble. If you start digging for the events underneath the huge, heartbreaking songs, you realize that Abigail's imagined peril means she was 1) preoccupied on a road trip and 2) subsequently inconsiderate. Oh no? These hiccups are treated as high opera. The Lumineers-esque music is wonderful, though, whether joyful or stormy, and it's performed with extraordinary vigor by a stellar ensemble including accordion, cello, keyboard and drums. I'd say, when it comes to The Bengsons, never, never miss a concert. But if they want to tell you how they met? Good time to fade towards the bar. (90 mins. Through January 15)
In two offerings, the escapist urge entailed stepping directly into a retro-styled film: three-dimensional actors letting two dimensions translate them away. In Saori Tsukada and Nikki Appino's multimedia Club Diamond, Tsukada appears physically in suit-and-mustache as a Benshi, our silent-film narrator. Behind her, black-and-white fantasies of her own immigration story play out—a clever, shadowy cinematography placing the filmed Tsukada in a funhouse Manhattan. The idea of the '20s-era Benshi speaking untranslated Japanese and operating as our only connection to the noir onscreen is interesting, but ultimately there's actually very little to Tsukada's examination of herself. The piece resets halfway through and transmits the same story again, but its thinness can't sustain a retelling. (60 mins. Through January 9)
More excitingly, the Manual Cinema folk from Chicago (they presented Ada/Ava here last year) work their lo-fi shadow-puppet magic with Lula Del Ray, another of their exquisite live-created films. They've refined their techniques to an astonishing edge: Using three overhead projectors, a three-piece band, lots of cut-outs, and two actors with false-silhouettes taped to their faces, the team can achieve any cinematic effect you can imagine. They seem to dream mainly of the middle of last century, so Lula is a lonesome teenager obsessed with the moon landing and a country-western duo, who runs away to the Big City for a strange kind of Girl's Own Adventure. There's less risk in Lula than there was in Ada, and we drift along in it rather than being swept violently downriver as we were in the other work. For sheer craft, though, you'll find nothing more lovingly made. (75 mins. Through January 14)
The exception to all this niceness was the very naughty Erin Markey: Boner Killer, another of that explosive talent's queergasm cabarets, which played one day only at Joe's Pub. Theoretically the show's concept was that Markey had gathered us to explain her funeral wishes, but we were soon out of the comfortable realm of "this show has a concept" and into a landscape of rapid-fire weirdness. Markey performs her songs with mic-eating ferocity; she has a nicely sadistic relationship to her audiences (she made Pubgoers stuff a baby-doll's crotch with money); and she reveals private—or invented?—biographical details with such bizarro regality ("And that's when I decided to become a Craigslist whore") that we're left stunned in her wake. The shaggy-dog tale effect can wear long after the piece's nearly two hours, but if you're not exhausted, disoriented and a little sticky walking out of one of Markey's shows—you're probably watching it wrong.


text:
HomePhilly Opera's 'Kumbaya' Moment
Philly Opera's 'Kumbaya' Moment
Raphael MostelJuly 3, 2012Image by LAWRENCE HICKS
Image by LAWRENCE HICKS
By chance I attended "Slaying the Dragon," a new opera on the subject of violence and surprising redemption, on June 17, the same day that Rodney King died. King — the victim of a savage beating in 1991 by Los Angeles police (the video of which provoked one of the worst race riots in recent American history) — famously pleaded for reason and decency: "Can't we all get along?"
Historical examples of hatred and love have long provided fodder for operatic treatment, though decency usually gets much shorter shrift. "Slaying the Dragon," which is based on a true story from Kansas roughly contemporary with the Rodney King beating, concerns Larry Trapp, a Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon who renounced violence and converted to Judaism. The opera begins in the aftermath of the bombing of a local Asian Center and climaxes with the barely thwarted bombing of the local synagogue, with the rabbi delivering a considered and eloquent plea for reason and decency derived from the words of a different victim of violence and hatred, also named King.
In the sermon he penned while in jail during the 1957 Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, also had its own similar history of hate, such as when, barely seven years prior to the aforementioned events, the city police themselves bombed a residential house, creating a fire that burned 11 people to death and destroyed 60 neighboring homes. Today Philadelphia seems to be a hotbed not of fires, but of new operas. Opera America, the national professional organization for opera companies and performers, held its annual conference there this year in June. Andrew Kurz, founder and musical director of Philadelphia's enterprising 14-year-old Center City Opera Theater (CCOT), has for the past four years commissioned and premiered a new opera annually, and arranged for this year's offering to coincide with the conference.
Riveted by the revelatory 2001 book "Not by the Sword: How a Cantor and His Family Transformed a Klansman," by Kathryn Watterson, Kurz commissioned librettist (and former chief editor and CEO of the Jewish Publication Society, currently managing director of CCOT) Ellen Frankel to create a musical theater work based on the story, and Michael Ching, composer of four other operas (and former general and artistic director of Opera Memphis), to write the score. In a talk before the performance, Ching explained that even as a fourth-generation American of Chinese ancestry, as a young man he still encountered taunts of "Go back to where you came from!"
Creating an opera is a strangely alchemical process. How do the music and words lift the audience into another realm? When the subject matter is familiar history, it is an even more challenging task to incorporate period fashion, local vernacular and musical style. Nevertheless, the idea of operas ripped from the news headlines has a long tradition. Verdi's "A Masked Ball" was about the assassination of the king of Sweden (although to get past the censors, the victim was changed to the governor of colonial-era Boston). Marc-Anthony Turnage has just had a major success with "Anna Nicole," an opera about tabloid star Anna Nicole Smith. And my pick of last year, "Kommilitonen!" ("Young Blood!") by Peter Maxwell Davies, wove together three historical protest movements: the anti-Nazi White Rose, James Meredith combating racism in Mississippi and the Cultural Revolution in China.
Inevitably, Frankel took artistic liberties with elements of the Kansas events, such as changing the names and transforming the cantor into a rabbi. Kurz conducted the score of "Slaying the Dragon," written for 16-piece orchestra and 11 singers, plus adult and children's choruses, with clarity and passion. But the music itself, though admirably structured and varied, is largely uninspired. It is mostly in a square 4/4 time signature, except when the subject of peace drives it into saccharine waltz 3/4 time, or when strife drives it into compound meters.
The most effective parts of the score are those that are most stripped-down, where the composer takes a chance and the singers get an opportunity to breathe. This happens when bare pizzicato strings accompany the beginning of the aria of the rabbi's wife, "Doesn't the Torah teach" (which Teresa Eickel sang attractively until she began to push her voice too hard, as she and several other members of the otherwise talented cast did all too often), or when the spare string bass accompanies the mostly spoken scene of Grand Dragon Jerry Krieg (the capable tenor Christopher Lorge) telephoning people to make racist threats.
Most embarrassing — though charismatically acted and performed by rich-voiced baritone Roland Burks — was the over-the-top "Kumbaya" forced-joy moment when the audience, company and orchestra is led in a jazzy shout-out gospel-like version of the psalm verse "Hinay ma tov." In contrast, Burks's early scene of fear, "My home's no longer safe," was particularly moving, with the singer pushing the meaning beyond the limits of the score.
The young bass Paul Corujo is definitely a singer to watch out for. As the talk show host and grand magus of the KKK, he appropriately insinuated himself in smarmy fashion into the focus of all his scenes. Bass Jason Switzer, possessed of a voice equally rich, seemed uncomfortably cramped by his part as the rabbi, even in the climactic sermon on King. Mezzo Jody Kidwell, as the concentration camp survivor, made the most of her aria, but director Leland Kimball's decision to have her display to everyone onstage the camp tattoo on her arm in silent anger, undercut the show's momentum.
If the composer had provided music for this moment, or at least set up Kidwell's scene to support the sudden silence, it would make more sense as opera. As it is, showing the tattoo with no support in the score may show proper respect for the Holocaust but not for the opera.
Another problematic artistic choice was the conflation of the singers' racial identities with those of their characters: the Asian-American singer (David Koh) played the Asian immigrant, the African-American singer (Burks) played the black preacher, while all the neo-Nazis were white. The Juilliard School's production of "Kommilitonen," in contrast, dispensed with such identity politics by sticking small pieces of colored tape on the singers' faces, whatever their personal racial identity, with colors changed as needed. This emphasized roles rather than identities and gave more power to the underlying drama.
Puzzling, too, was the musical symbolism, like having the KKK characters' oath of hate musically "rhyme" with the opposing paean to love and understanding. Although the juxtaposition is theatrical, it also makes them spiritually equivalent, thus contradicting the essential message of the opera. Similarly, the KKK rally scene ends with hoods removed, revealing an everyday "normal" woman (Sarah Beckham) who also works for the rabbi, a revelation that seems to undercut the central proposition that hatred grows from abuse.
Probably this confusion is a historical elision made necessary by the opera's demand for brevity. Unlike opera's more straightforward dramatic needs, truthful history is almost always complex and contradictory. King's principles of nonviolence, for example, which furnish the climax of the opera, come from the man who had learned them personally while working with Mohandas Gandhi in India: Bayard Rustin — a man who, in addition to being one of the prime movers of the civil rights movement, incidentally happened to be an accomplished professional tenor.
But when push came to shove and the fact that Rustin was gay (and a Socialist and former Communist) threatened to disrupt the movement, King didn't hesitate to throw Rustin under the bus, so to speak. Even though Rustin himself recommended this for the good of the movement, he still has not received the credit he deserves as the prime mover of nonviolence in America. Combating hate with love is a complicated endeavor.
Raphael Mostel is a composer based in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to the Forward and other publications.
Raphael Mostel


National, Natural and Ecotourism Parks in the Canary Islands.
Explore and enjoy the best National, natural parks and protected sites in the Canary Islands for ecotourism, nature tourism or adventure.
If you're in love by ecotourism and nature on its purest state, in the Canary Islands you'll find an idyllic place as in every island you might find many national parks, natural parks and protected landscapes of much beauty as well as welcoming towns with many costumes and traditions.
In all the spaces and protected sites in the Canary Islands you'll be able to find beautiful and unequal volcanic landscapes as for example the island of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura or green landscapes of La Gomera or La Palma where you'll be able to unplug for your daily life.
Tenerife houses the El Teide National Park, the most known park in the Canary Islands. This is a must-visit site if you're in Tenerife. Tenerife has also many other natural spaces and beautiful parks.
The island has many diverse landscapes from the arid Dunes of Maspalomas to the leafy Rural Park of Doramas.
Lanzarote has, Timanfaya, one of the most famous and visited parks in the Canary Islands, as well as other protected spaces that offer amazing volcanic landscapes as La Geria.
The natural parks and protected sites in Fuerteventura are characterized by their arid landscape. The most known parks are the Dunas de Corralejo and the Natural park of Isla de Lobos. Discover them.
La Palma is famous for its leafy nature landscapes which might be observed both in the Natural Park of Caldera de Taburiente and multiple other protected spaces.
The island of La Gomera has the famous Garajonay National Park, a must-visit park for those who are on the island, as well as other interesting rural parks and protected spaces. Don't miss visiting it.
On this small island you'll find many beautiful landscapes from volcanic cones to high pine forests.


L'Oréal champions programmes that support girls and women all along their scientific journey, by making strategic interventions at key stages.
For more than a century, we have devoted our energy and our competencies solely to one business: beauty.
Develop your career: Because a professional career has to be built long term, L'Oréal has constructed a simple but powerful career development process to let you take control of your career.


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Home Racing Nation Southeast Furious Five Series Begins At Atlanta's Thunder Ring
Furious Five Series Begins At Atlanta's Thunder Ring
Legend cars returned to Atlanta Motor Speedway's Thunder Ring on Saturday.
HAMPTON, Ga. – The first day of the Furious Five series was jammed full of racing action, with double features to start off the series.
After navigating the twists and turns of road courses for the final events of the previous series, the drivers in Atlanta Motor Speedway's Legends program returned to the quarter-mile Thunder Ring, kicking off the Furious Five with tight, bumper to bumper racing.
Taylor Jorgensen started third in the first Pro Legends feature, but wasted no time getting to the front. After lap one she was up to second, and by lap three she had taken the lead from polesitter Cody Hall.
From there, Jorgensen never looked back, pacing the final 18 circuits on her way to victory.
Starting from the pole in the second Pro Legends feature, Jorgensen took off from the field and didn't look back, cruising to her second win of the day. Cale Hall finished second, while Cody Hall recovered from an incident at the start to finish third.
Nick Woodall and Audrie Ruark put on a show in the first Semi-Pro Legends feature. Ruark won the pole and led the first lap, but Woodall was able to scoot by her to take over the lead on lap two.
After that, Ruark stalked Woodall every lap, looking for an opportunity to pounce and re-take the lead, but Woodall never slipped and held off each challenge to take the win.
The pair picked up right where they left off when the second Semi-Pro feature began. Throughout the 20-lap feature, Ruark hounded Woodall looking for a way by, but Woodall never flinched. Woodall held off Ruark to take his second win of the day.
In the first Masters feature, Bill Plemons Jr. put on a clinic, leading from flag to flag and cruising to the win with a healthy gap over his next closest challenger, Mark Swan.
Plemons didn't slow down in the second Masters feature, though he did have to hold off a few challenges from Swan shortly after restarts. Nonetheless, Plemons held serve for all 20 laps, sweeping both Masters feature wins from the pole.
Timothy Watson showed the way from the pole position in the first Young Lions feature, despite having Nathan Jackson right in his tire tracks the entire way. Watson stayed flawless on a restart with two laps to go and held on to win the feature.
In the second Young Lions feature, Jackson snatched the lead away from Watson for a lap, but Watson found a way back by quickly and never looked back. Watson took his second feature victory of the day, while Jackson settled for second.
While others found trouble behind him in the first Outlaws feature, Mason Maggio cruised at the front of the pack, fending off a pass attempt by Kenny Brady on the final restart to get the win.
In the second Outlaws feature, Brady hounded Maggio throughout, nearly completing a pass for the lead before an untimely caution ended the attempt. However, Maggio was able to defend his position throughout and held off Brady to complete the sweep.
The first Bandits feature saw bumps and paybacks. After leading the first 12 laps, Carter Griffis was muscled out of the lead by Garrett Gumm. Three laps later when Griffis returned the favor, the contact sent both cars spinning.
Their misfortune opened the door for Kyle Bacon, who held on to win.
Griffis recovered in the second feature, taking the lead from Bacon on lap three and leading the rest of the way to win. Bacon slid to third in the second feature, surrendering second to Bryson Matthews.
In the first Rookie Bandoleros feature, Gianni Esposito picked his way through lap traffic with patience and precision, allowing him to hold off hard charges from Briana Freeman and Kristen Holland.
Esposito and Freeman went to battle in the second Rookie Bandolero feature, this time crossing the stripe door to door as the checkered flag flew. Esposito narrowly edged out Freeman to sweep the day's features.
Furious Five Series
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Home Sport Tomas Berdych Wore Trainers With Djokovic's Face On Them
Tomas Berdych Wore Trainers With Djokovic's Face On Them
Petar Mitrovic
Source:footwearnews.com
Tennis player, Tomas Berdych wore the trainers with a picture of Novak Djokovic's face located on the tongue. Tomas went up against Roger Federer in the Wimbledon semi-final, but he lost the match. The Czech managed to reach the last four after Djokovic was forced to retire due to an injury.
The former world number one was losing, but he realized that he couldn't play anymore because of the elbow issues. However, Berdych wanted the Serb's presence to be felt on the tournament, so he had Djokovic's face printed onto the tongues of his trainers.
Source:express.co.uk
Djokovic would have replaced Andy Murray as the number one in the world if he had continued to play. Despite that, he admitted that he might take an extended break from tennis in order for this injury to heal completely.
"Now I am paying interest for all these years as a professional, my body is giving me signals," said Djokovic. "I may take longer breaks than the ones I have previously taken. The more I play, the worse it gets. I guess the break is something that I will have to consider right now.
"I haven't felt this much pain since I've had this injury. It's not the shoulder, it's the elbow that has kept bothering me for over a year and a half. I was able, for 30 minutes, to play with some pain that was bearable, but the serve and forehand were shots where I could feel it the most. After that, there was really no sense [in continuing]," Djokovic explained.
Meanwhile, Berdych had a pain in his feet while he wore his usual trainers, so he just took the others, reported Associated Press. Berdych said: "I wear Novak's trainers because the other ones make me uncomfortable."
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Novak Djokovic will no longer be in Top 4 on the ATP list


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You are here: Home | Education | News | Ministry of Education readjusts academic calender
Ministry of Education readjusts academic calender
Author: Obaj Okuj | Published: Tuesday, January 17, 2023
School children pictured during a morning prayer at Juba One Primary School 11th June 2021. (Photo: Juba One Primary School).
The Ministry of General Education and Instruction has decided to revert to the initial academic calendar before the Covid-19 outbreak in 2019.
The academic calendar for primary and secondary levels has been distorted by the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, schools were closed after the government imposed a lock-down to curb the spread of the contagious virus.
Classes then resumed for Primary 8 and Senior 4 candidates in October 2020 after the government partially lifted the coronavirus measures.
In February 2021, the ministry announced the full reopening of all schools and grades which coincided with the normal academic year.
The COVID-19 measures forced some schools to extend learning to the new year to cover the lost period.
However, in a letter issued yesterday, seen by Eye Radio, the Undersecretary at the National Ministry of General Education says the academic calendar will run as it used to be prior to the Covid-19 lock-down.
"I am pleased to inform you that the Ministry of General Education and Instruction has decided to revert to the old academic calendar, pre-covid-19 that operated from February to December," said Undersecretary Kuyok Abol Kuyok.
According to Kuyok, the schools will commence on Monday, 6th of February, and end on Friday 22, December 2023.
He said the schools will close for a week for the conduct of the examination of the Primary leaving Certificate and two weeks for the Secondary Education Certificate respectively.
Kuyok urged all schools across the country to adhere to the calendar, warning that any school that breaches the directive will be penalized.
The Undersecretary appealed to the states and the three administrative areas to conduct back-to-learning campaigns in their respective areas.
Wildlife wardens arrest 11 people carrying tons of bush-meat
Captain Azari Momo: Why you should embrace piloting career


Securing the future of the Palaweno children at Sitio Malutok, Ransang, Palawan.
Providing livelihood and scholarship program to a Palaweno community when the trees produce fruits that will be sold in Palawan, a favorite tourists destination.
CURRENT STATUS: Clearing the land (above picture).
CONTACT US to find out how to bring a team for short-term mission and TO DONATE to this project.


A gift to the Trauma, Acute Care and General Surgery Fund will be used to help our researchers discover new treatments and procedures for trauma injuries and disease.
UC Davis Medical Center functions as California's only level 1 Trauma Center north of San Francisco. The Trauma Service of the Department of Surgery cares for the vast majority of trauma victims admitted to the medical center and coordinates the care of surgical subspecialists in addition to providing primary injury management. The service is primarily responsible for a wide range of injuries, including injuries to the neck, chest, abdomen, extremities and soft tissue, as well as injuries to the vasculature. The service also cares for patients presenting with surgical emergencies other than trauma. The service manages patients in both the intensive care unit and on the ward and has extensive expertise in the field of surgical critical care; all of the faculty members on the service have a special certificate in surgical critical care from the American Board of Surgery.
We offer advanced training in surgical critical care in a fellowship accredited by the American Committee for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and the American Medical Association Residency Review Committee for Surgery.


Limited number of 1 Bedroom Apartments ( 29 sqm ) have been released to the public with EXCLUSIVE INVESTOR prices.
Inquire right now to get hold of one of these units up to the 17th floor overlooking the Pattaya Bay.
0% Interest Free Payment Plan INCLUDED !!!
Here are the new payment terms for Grand Solaire, applicable for purchases under both foreign and Thai / company ownership.
The Start price will be 125.000 baht per sqm (pre-launch on floors 5-18 of Tower A) but additional 5,000 THB per sqm discount for early bird buyers who book now! Entry levels units are 29 sqm 1 bedrooms.
Pattaya`s brand new high rise super-project Grand Solaire brings you executive, five-star splendour at the heart of Thailand's Eastern Seaboard. Positioned on Thappraya Road Soi 15, the development intersects Central Pattaya, Pratumnak Hill and Jomtien to give absolute convenience and easy access to all of the city's major attractions and amenities.
Grand Solaire features two towers of 67 and 48 storeys each, offering the highest point of elevation in Pattaya City with stunning, panoramic ocean views from the vast majority of units. All of the 3,600 luxury residences on offer feature state-of-the-art interior design elements, comprising decadent marble-styled tiling, luxurious black marble and glass kitchens and premium fixtures & fittings. Enjoy ultimate luxury in your own home with electronic sanitary systems and custom designed, space-saving and energy-conserving air conditioning.
Early bird pre-launch sales started Saturday 15th December 2018! Book now to avoid disappointment!
• Prime, convenient location - positioned on the corner of Thappraya Soi 15 & Thappraya Road.


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SFU Home to Canada's Top Co-op Student
Katelyn Mueller
SFU Co-op Alumni
Science › Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
/ 6 November 2010 /
Submitted by OLC Editor on 6 November 2010
I knew that gaining hands-on experience outside the classroom is not only one of the best ways to learn, but an excellent opportunity to explore and shape my career goals. The diverse work and cultural experiences I had challenged me and contributed to the growth of my independence and maturity.
The following article was adapted from a news release sent out on Monday March 23rd, 2009. The full release is published on the SFU Public Affairs & Media Relations page
During National Co-op Week 2009, the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education in partnership with SFU announced that SFU Biology and Biochemistry Co-op student, Katelyn Mueller , was awarded the 2008 National Co-op Student of the Year award.
In her back pocket, Katelyn holds a CGPA of 4.16, has received the Governor General Bronze Academic Medal, the BC Science Achievement Award, and has a hand full of nationally and internationally published articles. Katelyn has been described by the SFU Co-op Program as an "exceptional scholar, Co-op student, and community member."
After working on developing cancer treatments at the Biology III Institute at the University of Freiburg in Germany, Katelyn's supervisor, Dr. Kristian Müller, commented, "I can only praise her personality and immaculate work and I foresee a great future for her in science." Locally, Katelyn worked with Dr. David Granville at St. Paul's Hospital working towards reducing heart transplant rejection, and also worked with Merck Frosst in Montreal on studies looking into reducing high blood pressure.
Katelyn recognized that the exposure to Co-op work experiences would enhance her university career. "I knew that gaining hands-on experience outside the classroom is not only one of the best ways to learn, but an excellent opportunity to explore and shape my career goals. The diverse work and cultural experiences I had challenged me and contributed to the growth of my independence and maturity."
Katelyn's motivation to continue in Co-op was also closely tied to her academics, "my academic work became more relevant as I saw its practical applications. For this reason, I strove to apply to a variety of Co-op positions that would give me the broadest and most valuable experiences possible." Katelyn notes, "I am grateful for the opportunities I have gained through Co-op. Now that I have completed the Co-op program, I look forward to applying my experience and challenging myself in new ways."
Muriel Klemetski, Director of SFU's Co-op Education Program comments, "Katelyn is now the third SFU student in the last seven years to receive this prestigious national award. It truly speaks to her incredible accomplishments and her ability to serve as an ambassador for Co-op Education around the world. We're extremely proud of her and our Program."
The national awards program recognizes two students enrolled in an accredited Co-op Program (out of a pool of 80,000 students studying at CAFCE member institutions) who have gone above and beyond their expected performance and achievements in areas including job performance, academic performance and responsibility. It also includes particular contributions to their employer, to Co-operative Education, and the community at large.
In addition to receiving a certificate and plaque from CAFCE recognizing her achievement, Katelyn receives the $500 Emery-Dufault Award in recognition of the contributions of two of the founding members of o-operative education in Canada, Dr. Charles Leslie (Les) Emery and Professor George Joseph Dufault along with a $500 CAFCE Award.
Katelyn and coworkers
Katelyn smiling on a ledge in versailles
Katelyin smiling in Germany
Katelyn in Rhine Valley
picture of building in Berlin
The Best of Studying Abroad in South Korea
Travel: A Resume Enhancing Experience
Visit the International Co-op page to learn more about opportunities like Katelyn's!
During the Work Term
Co-operative Education International Co-op
Science Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
Katelyn Mueller Nov 6, 2010
Co-op Reflections, During the Work Term, Life Experience, International, Personal Development
SFU Biology and Biochemistry Co-op student Katelyn Mueller was awarded the 2008 National Co-op Student of the Year award from the Canadian Association for Co-operative Education during National Co-op Week, March 23rd - 27th, 2009.
Preparing for a Summer in Silicon Valley | Part One
Ian Brown shares both his experience working at Tesla Motors and Edwin Chand's experience working at Apple and their general thoughts about going to California to intern for co-op. Ian and Edwin are both recently graduated from engineering, and share their perspective on relocating to California for a co-op position. In this article, Ian describes the preparation and going to California.
Learning to Thrive in Discomfort
"Discomfort isn't bad - it's just stepping outside of your comfort zone." From embracing once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, to seeking out constructive feedback, Magali offers ways to survive and succeed in a new work environment.
Magali Bureau
The Co-op Career Makeover: A Student's Journey from Drab to High Profile
Is your career portfolio feeling a little outdated? Tune in to a local makeover phenomenon that's taking the job market by storm: SFU Co-op. Communication Major Jessica Doherty knows first hand what co-op can do for building confidence, contacts, and a killer resume. Read on to follow her on her journey from drab to high profile.
Adam Brayford
Explore the unique opportunities for SFU students to travel the world, while gaining experience in the workplace and serves as professional and personal growth experience by forcing you to adapt to a new cultural environment. Learn more by visiting the International Co-op website.
Explore I-Coop on the OLC


make her gasp for air.
that one day he would blow his guts out.
continued to blast them out!
laughing, tears in her eyes!
look of horror on his face.
out, and today it finally happened.
This was so funny I just had to post it so everybody could see it.
I know, I know, it has been a little while since my last post. There is a little thing that keeps getting in my way of posting…it's called life.
My topic of choice today is my children. My little girl, Zoe, is one of the sweetest little girls most of the time. She is very hard headed and will argue with everything that I tell her. She argues the most with me when she is getting into trouble. She thinks that she never does anything wrong so it must be me misunderstanding the situation, yeah right. When she gets tired she starts to whine a lot. When she gets this way is when I have the hardest time with her. I can't stand the whining and she knows that…haha. I have an answer for the whining…it's called a belt. Yes, I do believe in spanking my kids and I'll tell you right now, it does work. I have tried many different methods of discipline on my kids but I always end up back at spanking. I put the fear into my kids and they fully understand what happens next. I don't have to spank them very often but it does happen from time to time. The hard part it spanking them just hard enough that it gets their attention but doesn't do any damage. Anyhow, I think Zoe has finally started to understand that daddy will win the arguments….haha…most of the time anyway.
Life has been good to me these days.
I haven't had much time for blogging lately if you haven't noticed. The reason that I have been so busy lately is because I have dedicated my time to finishing up some major projects that I have needed to get done. I finished up a large networking job that has been nagging at me every since I started it, man I'm glad to be done with that one. And the pay wasn't too shabby either but how do you measure pay. In my opinion you can measure pay in two ways. Either by financial gain or by personal gain. I have had some projects that paid off with financial gain but the most satisfying for me has been the projects that paid off with personal gain. I finished up some critical phases of some projects that I have been working on for my employer that has rewarded me with personal gain. By personal gain I mean that there has been some doors open up and some pressure has been lifted. This, for me, has made life better and my job easier and also for me this is more valuable than financial gain. Now I know that there will be many people that will disagree with this and I'm fine with that. But I'm much happier so it really doesn't matter, to each is their own, right. Now that I'm happier I feel as if I'm more productive and that the quality of my work is better. With that said I do think that personal gain will lead to financial gain.


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Why Don't I Have Any Friends?
<iframe frameborder="0" width="560" height="315" src=" https://biteable.com/watch/embed/why-dont-i-have-any-friends-1668640" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
The second installment in the CRAZIFIED to GLORIFIED Series was written as a fulfillment to a promise I made to the 2300 women currently in my Christian Women with Depression Facebook group.
The number one thing you wanted to know was why you can't make friends. You are not alone. If you Google "Why don't I have any friends?" there are over 98 million results. There are a lot of other people who feel like you do. This book explains why you feel that way and explains how to change that.
http://whydontihaveanyfriends.com
By Penny Haynes, Licensed Pastoral Counselor. http://PennyHaynes.com


The leaders of the 28 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meet in Lisbon, Portugal, on November 19-20 to chart the future course of the transatlantic military alliance. The gathering in Lisbon is being billed as one of the most important summits in the history of the alliance.
The centrepiece of the NATO summit will be the unveiling of a new strategic concept, or mission statement, to shape the way the alliance defends itself against threats over the next decade. NATO has struggled to define itself in a post-Cold War world of expanding threats and shrinking budgets, and in Lisbon the alliance will try to lay out a vision for itself as a more agile grouping better able to deal with the security realities of the 21st century.
The strategic concept will reconfirm NATO's commitment to its core task of mutual defense in Europe, but it will also stress the need for the alliance to ensure that it can mount expeditionary operations elsewhere in the world, such as its ongoing mission in Afghanistan, or the anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.
The document will embrace the deployment of a land-based NATO missile-defense system and approve cost-cutting plans to reduce overlapping weapons systems and streamline the alliance's command structure. It will also stress the need for alliance members to modernize their armed forces to deal with contemporary security threats, such as cyber security.
NATO's new strategic blueprint will endorse U.S. President Barack Obama's disarmament vision of a "world without nuclear weapons," although it will also stress that NATO will remain a nuclear-armed alliance for as long as others have such weapons.
The document will call for NATO to engage more actively on security with non-alliance members such as Australia, China, India, Japan, and especially Russia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet NATO leaders on the last day of the Lisbon summit, becoming the first Russian president to attend a NATO gathering since his country's conflict with Georgia in 2008.
Last but not least, NATO leaders will discuss the future course of the nine-year war in Afghanistan. They will back a strategy of starting to hand security responsibility to Afghan forces in 2011, although plans to bring NATO's combat operations to a complete end by late 2014 seem highly doubtful.
NATO has been called the most successful military alliance in history, a bulwark of freedom and democracy for more than six decades, and the coalition that won the Cold War without firing a single shot. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall more than 20 years ago, NATO has often appeared ill-equipped to cope with the new strategic realities of the post-Cold War era.
The Lisbon summit will go a long way to determining whether NATO will remain relevant in the future. Despite its many limitations, NATO is a valuable U.S. foreign policy asset. Not only is it the main forum for transatlantic defense, it also enables the United States to exert a significant degree of diplomatic, political, and military influence over Europe. As such, it is very much in the American interest to keep NATO alive and kicking.
Afghanistan: Transition Strategy or Exit Strategy?
Afghanistan will be the top issue on the summit agenda, with exit strategy and transition to Afghan ownership being the key topics for discussion. The Afghan mission has been NATO's largest combat role in its 61-year history and the first outside of Europe. It has also prompted the biggest questions about NATO's long-term viability.
NATO's primary immediate challenge is finding a satisfactory conclusion to the nine-year war. The main strategy hinges on a faltering effort to build up Afghan security forces to a level at which they are capable of containing a Taliban insurgency which has spread throughout the country. American targets call for expanding the Afghan army and police to 306,000 by October 2011 from around 260,000 now. But American plans have been hampered by high desertion rates and an Afghan government that is widely seen as too corrupt, inept, and unstable to survive long without foreign military support.
The White House wants NATO allies to commit to a blueprint for shifting primary security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014. In theory, that would allow for the gradual reduction of foreign troop numbers from the current peak of 150,000 soldiers from more than 40 countries.
Obama has set a July 2011 date for American troops to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan. A White House review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, due in December 2010, will help to determine the pace of those withdrawals.
In any case, Obama's pledge to start withdrawing U.S. troops has emboldened the Taliban and encouraged allies to scale back their own roles. The Netherlands has already ended its combat commitment and Canada plans to do so in 2011. Germany and France want to cut their troop levels in 2011, as does Britain, which hopes to end its combat role by 2015.
Denmark says it wants to withdraw most of its 700 troops from Afghanistan by 2015, and Sweden has said it hopes its 600 troops in northern Afghanistan will be able to start handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces in 2011.
In the end, however, the main issue will be whether NATO troop withdrawals will be gradual enough to prevent the security situation from deteriorating.
NATO's future credibility lies with ensuring a workable transition in Afghanistan; a messy conclusion to the conflict will further damage NATO's prestige. As a result, NATO leaders will seek to reassure Afghanistan that the alliance is not abandoning the country.


Discover distinct and unique coffees from around the world with threesixty˚. With brilliant blends and delicious single origins, threesixty˚ brings a wide world of coffee into one memorable range.
threesixty° is on a mission to bring the most distinct and unique coffees from around the world to the UK. Our range includes three one-of-a-kind blends and four spectacular single origins. They will take you on adventures through taste, full of incredible flavours from the world's most diverse coffee growing countries.
Three distinct blends combine coffees from the bean belt's heartlands. Each with flavour profiles and recipes to serve up delicious coffee experiences. All created to be enjoyed.
This lighter-roasted, 100% Arabica, high-altitude blend is sourced from the dramatic volcanic slopes of Kenya, Nicaragua and Guatemala. The result is a bright, alternative twist to our threesixty° selection. Give it a whirl.
Our medium roast Rainforest Alliance accredited blend protects growers, their wider communities and the South American rainforests the beans call home. This is a blend that's achieved balance.
Panoramic in our choice of coffee, this darker roasted blend packs in four origin coffees from three continents to serve up a genuine crowd pleaser.
As the legendary homeland of 'Coffea arabica' and one of the first countries to fully embrace coffee drinking as a ritual, with deep social and cultural significance, Ethiopia is perhaps the most compelling origin in the coffee belt.
The land of a thousand pagodas, leg rowers, and ancient mysticism – Myanmar is considered a 'new' origin in the bean belt. Robusta was first planted in Thanin Thar Yi in Southern Myanmar in 1885 by a British missionary with seeds from India, but Arabica soon followed, spreading northwards to the mountains.
The Spanish introduced coffee plants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic to Veracruz, Mexico, in the 1700s. Terruño hails from three farming communities found to the west of Tepic in Nayarit – a region of agriculture, sugarcane and citrus fruits located between the forested mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Pacific Ocean.