text:
Edippol – a mild oath.
2 Comments	| language	| Tagged: edipol	| Permalink
Cunning plan could save farms and camping grounds
A new pressure group Save the Camping Grounds is hoping to enlist the support of Save the Farms to save both.
SCG spokesperson Roland Canvas said the suggestion that Department of Conservation camping grounds be handed over to private companies was an outrage.
"A private company will want to make a profit which is completely unfair to those of us who've been enjoying camping sites for as little as $6 a night," Mr Canvas said.
"Camping is a New Zealand birth right and the idea that anyone should make money from running camping grounds; providing, maintaining and cleaning facilities; and supervising campers is ridiculous."
Mr Canvas said concerns over taxpayers subsidising campers' holidays was a red herring.
"Have you seen all those flash camper vans and caravans spreading like slow moving lice across the land? There's not many of us old fashioned campers left prepared to spend a night on a stretcher under canvas anymore. We're an endangered species, looking after them is core business for DoC. If they can save the kakapo they can look after campers."
Mr Canvas said no tent would remain unpitched in their attempts to keep the camping grounds as they were.
"We've come up with a plan so cunning you could pin a guy rope on it and call it a tent," he said.
"We've approached Save The Farms, the group which wants to prevent the sale of private land to foreigners, and proposed they join our campaign then all the farms they save could be turned into camping grounds.
"They save the farms, we not only save the camping grounds we've got, we get more of them. They'll be happy, we'll be happy, DoC can chalk up another rare species out of danger and who cares about the deficit when you're on holiday anyway?" Mr Canvas said.
6 Comments	| politics, smiles	| Tagged: camping grounds, DOC	| Permalink
Voters not parties determine who wins electorates
Most voters don't want the National Party to stand aside in Epsom and Ohariu to help coalition partners if a Horizon poll conducted for the Sunday Star Times (not online) can be believed.
In Epsom, only 16% think National should stand aside, with 55% saying it shouldn't. The bulk of Act (53%) want National to stay out of the electorate.
In Dunne's Ohariu electorate, 48% want National to field a candidate, 16% want it to stand aside and 36% don't know. Of National's 2008 voters, 54% oppose the party standing aside for United Future.
This is a sorry reflection on the respondents' understanding of MMP and recent history.
It's the voters in the electorate who'll determine who wins the seat not National.
National fielded candidates in both seats in 2008, and previous elections, it was the people in those electorates who voted tactically who gave the seats to Rodney Hide and Peter Dunne.
Having Act in this parliament gives National the ability to govern with its support although at times it has turned to its other coalition partner, the Maori Party, to pass legislation Act didn't favour.
It's debatable whether there is any advantage to National in having Dunne in parliament.
If around half those who voted for the Green candidate had voted for the Labour one in Ohariu in 2008 Dunne would have lost his seat and United Future would have gone with him. The votes which that party received would have been distributed among the other parties in parliament and National would have got another MP.
From 1999 – 2005 votes for Dunne enabled him to prop up the Labour-led government.
Dunne's hold on the seat was strongest in 2002 when National was at its weakest, since then his majority has slipped and the electorate could now be regarded as marginal.
Hide had a bad year as party leader last year, although he performed well as a minister. If he's worked hard in his electorate the people of Epsom might overlook his use of the perks he'd campaigned against and return him to parliament.
As in previous elections they'll work out what to do themselves regardless of any nods or winks from National.
4 Comments	| politics	| Tagged: Act, Epsom, Horizon Poll, National Party, Ohariu, Peter Dunne, Rodney Hide, Sunday Star Times, United Future	| Permalink
Someone had to say it
Someone had to say the chances of finidng the remains of the men who were killed in the Pike River mine are almost impossible and someone has:
The ferocity of the fire in the Pike River mine could make it almost impossible to find any human remains should recovery teams ever make it underground, a forensics expert says.
Phil Glover, a forensic fire investigator with nearly 40 years' experience in New Zealand and Australia, said the harsh reality was that the intensity of the fire in the confined spaces of the West Coast mine made it unlikely there were any bodies left to recover.
"There wouldn't be much left of them – you might find small fragments of bone and ash but that's probably about it," said Glover. "As hard as it is . . . I would not be putting people in there under any circumstances."
Glover said if a retrieval team did make it underground, the dark, cramped and volatile conditions they would have to work under would make the task of finding human remains virtually impossible.
"I don't know how I would feel if it was one of my family down there, but the practical side of me would be saying that this is their last resting place."
If there is are grounds for criticism of how the recovery has been handled it could be that families might have been given false hope that if a recovery crew could get to where the men were there would be anything left to bring out.
Shortly after the second explosion there was talk about the need to use DNA for identification but the implications of that might not have been clear to everyone.
It's human to hope even when it seems hopeless. While some of the families accepted the sad reality that they'd not see the men they'd lost again others kept hoping that first rescue and then recovery was possible.
Their anger at the end of the recovery efforts is understandable but for their own sakes they need to take a lead from those who have faced the facts and start looking forward.
14 Comments	| disaster	| Tagged: Phil Glover, Pike River mine	| Permalink
January 17 in history
On January 17:
1287– King Alfonso III of Aragon invaded Minorca.
1377 Pope Gregory XI moved the Papacy back to Rome from Avignon.
1524 Beginning of Giovanni da Verrazzano's voyage to find a passage to China.
1608 Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia surprised an Oromo army at Ebenat; his army reportedly killed 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men.
1648 England's Long Parliament passed the Vote of No Addresses, breaking off negotiations with King Charles I and thereby setting the scene for the second phase of the English Civil War.
1773 Captain James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to sail below the Antarctic Circle.
1820 Anne Brontë, British author, was born (d. 1849).
1852 The United Kingdom recognised the independence of the Boer colonies of the Transvaal.
1853 The New Zealand Constitution Act (UK) of 1852, which established a system of representative government for New Zealand, was declared operative by Governor Sir George Grey.
1863 David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister, was born (d. 1945).
1865 Charles Fergusson, Governor-General of New Zealand, was born (d. 1951).
1877 May Gibbs, Australian children's author, was born.
A "Banksia Man" abducting Little Ragged Blossom, from Snugglepot and Cuddlepie.
1899 Al Capone, American gangster, was born (d. 1947) .
1899 Nevil Shute, English author, was born (d. 1960).
1904 Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard received its premiere performance at the Moscow Art Theatre.
1905 Peggy Gilbert, American jazz saxophonist and bandleader, was born (d. 2007).
1912 Sir Robert Falcon Scott (Scott of the Antarctic) reached the South Pole, one month after Roald Amundsen.
Scott's group took this photograph of themselves using string to operate the shutter on 17 January 1912, the day after they discovered Amundsen had reached the pole first.
1917 The United States paid Denmark $25 million for the Virgin Islands.
1927 – Norman Kaye, Australian actor and musician, was born (d. 2007)
1928 Vidal Sassoon, English cosmetologist, was born .
Sassoon (left) with Figaro Claus Niedermaier
1929 Popeye the Sailor Man, a cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, first appeared in the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
1933 Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, French-born Pakistani diplomat (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), was born (d. 2003).
1933 Shari Lewis, American ventriloquist, was born(d. 1998).
Shari's daughter,Mallory Lewis with Lamb Chop
1941 Dame Gillian Weir, New Zealand organist, was born.
1942 Muhammad Ali, American boxer, was born.
1942 Ita Buttrose, Australian journalist and businesswoman, was born.
1945 Soviet forces capture the almost completely destroyed Polish city of Warsaw.
1945 – The Nazis began the evacuation of the Auschwitz concentration camp as Soviet forces closed in.
1946 The UN Security Council held its first session.
1949 Mick Taylor, British musician (The Rolling Stones), was born.
1949 The Goldbergs, the first sitcom on American television, first aired.
1950 The Great Brinks Robbery – 11 thieves stolel more than $2 million from an armored car Company's offices in Boston, Massachusetts.
1956 Paul Young, English musician, was born.
1961 President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a televised farewell address to the nation three days before leaving office, in which he warned against the accumulation of power by the "military-industrial complex".
1962 Jim Carrey, Canadian actor and comedian, was born.
1964 Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, was born.
1966 A B-52 bomber collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea in the Palomares incident.
The B28RI nuclear bomb, recovered from 2,850 feet (869 m) of water, on the deck of the USS Petrel.
1973 Ferdinand Marcos became "President for Life" of the Philippines.
1982 "Cold Sunday" in the United States -temperatures fell to their lowest levels in over 100 years in numerous cities.
National Weather Service surface weather map from January 17, 1982.
1983 The tallest department store in the world, Hudson's, flagship store in downtown Detroit closed due to high cost of operating.
1989 Stockton massacre: Patrick Purdy opened fire with an assault rifle at the Cleveland Elementary School playground, killing five children and wounding 29 others and one teacher before taking his own life.
1991 Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm began early in the morning.
1991 – Harald V became King of Norway on the death of his father, Olav V.
1995 The Great Hanshin earthquake: A magnitude 7.3 earthquake near Kobe, Japan, caused extensive property damage and killed 6,434 people.
2002 Mount Nyiragongo erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, displacing an estimated 400,000 people.
2007 The Doomsday Clock was set to five minutes to midnight in response to North Korea nuclear testing.
2008 – British Airways Flight 38 crash landed just short of London Heathrow Airport with no fatalities.
2010 – Rioting began between Muslim and Christian groups in Jos, Nigeria, resulting in at least 200 deaths.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.
Leave a Comment »	| history	| Tagged: Al Capone, Anne Brontë, Charles Fergusson, Dame Gillian Weir, David Lloyd George, January 17, Jim Carrey, May Gibbs, Michelle Obama, Muhammad Ali, Nevil Shute, Norman Kaye, NZ History Online, Paul Young, Peggy Gilbert, Shari Lewis, Vidal Sassoon, Wikipedia	| Permalink
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


These versatile Canadian-grown hemp seeds will add nutrition and a rich nutty taste to any meal! Sprinkle Hemp Hearts on salad, cereal, or yoghurt, or blend them into smoothies.
Shelling the hemp seed produces the most nutritious and tender part of the seed, the heart. Hemp Hearts taste great, are easy to use, and nutritious too! There's no need to grind or cook Hemp Hearts, they're ready to eat straight from the bag and are simple to incorporate into your diet. Try sprinkling them on salads, cereal, or yoghurt or blend them into smoothies. The only limit is your imagination.
Hemp Hearts may look little, but they contain 10 grams of plant-based protein and 10 grams of omega-3 and omega-6 per 30-gram serving (more than a comparable serving of flax or chia).


Per Afterschool Alliance, out of school STEM programs show positive outcomes in improving students' attitude towards STEM careers, increasing their knowledge and skills, and providing a higher likelihood for graduation.
Bring a breadth of STEM programs to enrich your students' learning before and after the school hours including Early Release Days. We work with mixed grade groups – convenience for you and parents as children can stay at school for these enrichment programs. We come to you. So, there is no cost to transport and it is easy for parents to pick-up.
We bring hands-on STEM to your students during the school day. These are grade level focused STEM workshops designed to extend students' learning of science and math.
Per school Alliance, school STEM programs show positive outcomes in improving students' attitude towards STEM careers, increasing their knowledge and skills, and providing a higher likelihood for graduation.
Bring a breadth of STEM programs to enrich your students' learning at the school hours. We work with mixed grade groups or per grade – according to school requirement. We come to school so there is no cost to transport and it is easy for parents.
Each student designs a project and then builds it over a period of 8 weeks.
We can come to your site and provide custom camps for your students on-site when school is out of session. We can handle everything from student registrations to program delivery and can customize based on your needs. Off-site track out and year round camps may also be available in your area.
Cost: Camp start from $230 for a two day camp, to $440 for a four day camp. Camp run from 9am to 3.30pm (drop-off from 8.30am and pick up by 4pm).
What to bring: Kids need to bring a hat, food (lunch and morning tea). However, all devices and software is provided by us.


My previous entry on Petronas CNY advertisment has gathered a lot of interest. Many asked me if I know where they can see it online. I have been keeping an eye on Petronas website, esp. the section that post these video clips but so far no luck. So I am surprised when I found it on Google Video today :-) Without further ados, here it is!
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 2nd, 2006 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Random Musing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


text:
USOPC launch "Thank You, Japan" to promote Olympic and Paralympic values
An international goodwill campaign has been launched by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to share Olympic and Paralympic values with Japanese people ahead of Tokyo 2020.
The "Thank You, Japan" campaign was launched during the annual Symposium on Accessibility in Setagaya City in Tokyo, designated as "Host Town USA" for USOPC's high-performance centre for US athletes at Tokyo 2020.
Activities through the project include team USA athlete exchanges, youth sport clinics, introductions to Japanese culture such as a Team USA manga comic strip series and various community relations events.
"We are incredibly excited for the Tokyo Games and to see what advancements Japan will bring to the Olympic and Paralympic movements," USOPC chief executive Sarah Hirschland said.
"Through the 'Thank You, Japan' initiative, our goal is to join Japan in continuing to spread the Olympic and Paralympic values, while providing Team USA athletes with the opportunity to learn more about the country and embrace the community that will host us in 2020."
US wheelchair rugby stars Chuck Aoki, Joe Delagrave, Chuck Melton and Josh Wheeler visited the Setagaya shopping district yesterday to observe accessibility improvements made to the city and met with Japanese rugby legend Toshiaki Hirose for a traditional Japanese lunch.
We're thrilled to launch the "Thank You, Japan" initiative with #TeamUSA athletes and look forward to engaging with the people of Setagaya & Japan in the year ahead!
"Thank you, Japan" を #TeamUSA アスリートと発表でき、これから世田谷と日本のみなさまと交流ができるのが楽しみです!
— Team USA (@TeamUSA) October 21, 2019
They also took part in a panel session with local residents to discuss accessibility for the disabled and to share approaches in Japan and the US to create more inclusive and barrier-free societies.
"As members of Team USA, we are so grateful to the people of Japan for hosting us at special cultural exchanges, test events and at the Olympic and Paralympic Games next year," said 17-time Paralympic track and field medallist Tatyana McFadden.
"Japan is such a hospitable and welcoming country.
"We are excited to experience the unique Japanese culture, and we're honoured to have the opportunity to call Setagaya City our home for training and preparation throughout the Tokyo 2020 Games."
A special logo was unveiled by USOPC to pay homage to the culture and history of Japan.
The design depicts the flat-topped Mount Fuji, which can be seen with the "A" of Japan, while a navy blue text reflects the Japanese tradition of indigo dyeing, a symbolic recognition of Japan's heritage and craftsmanship.
McFadden will be joined by 400 metres indoor world record holder Michael Norman to officially unveil the new training facilities at Okura Sports Park in Setagaya on November 23.
October 2019: USOPC relaxes Rule 40 guidelines for athletes
October 2019: USOPC appoint new chief marketing and communications officer
September 2019: United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee unveil five-year plan to combat sexual abuse
September 2019: USA Triathlon engagement programme wins USOPC diversity award
August 2019: US Paralympians to have own hospitality house at Tokyo 2020
Patrick O'Kane Junior Reporter
Follow @@sportingpat
Patrick O'Kane is a junior reporter at insidethegames.biz. He graduated from the University of Sunderland with a degree in Journalism Studies, and built his experience as a sports reporter at The Westmorland Gazette in Cumbria. Patrick was a flash-quote reporter for LOCOG at the London 2012 Paralympics and has covered the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and Heineken Cup rugby as a freelance writer.
Read more of Patrick's articles
Follow @@sportingpat on Twitter
United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Paralympic Games

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Sir William Turner Walton  (29 March 19028 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre.

Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score.

In middle age, Walton left Britain and set up home with his young wife Susana on the Italian island of Ischia. By this time, he had ceased to be regarded as a modernist, and some of his compositions of the 1950s were criticised as old-fashioned. His only full-length opera, Troilus and Cressida, was among the works to be so labelled and has made little impact in opera houses. In his last years, his works came back into critical fashion; his later compositions, dismissed by critics at the time of their premieres, were revalued and regarded alongside his earlier works.

Walton was a slow worker, painstakingly perfectionist, and his complete body of work across his long career is not large. His most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century, and by 2010 almost all his works had been released on CD.

Biography

Early years

Walton was born into a musical family in Oldham, Lancashire, the second son in a family of three boys and a girl. His father, Charles Alexander Walton, was a musician who had trained at the Royal Manchester College of Music under Charles Hallé, and made a living as a singing teacher and church organist. Charles's wife, Louisa Maria (née Turner), had been a singer before their marriage. William Walton's musical talents were spotted when he was still a young boy, and he took piano and violin lessons, though he never mastered either instrument. He was more successful as a singer: he and his elder brother sang in their father's choir, taking part in performances of large-scale works by Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn and others.

Walton was sent to a local school, but in 1912 his father saw a newspaper advertisement for probationer choristers at Christ Church Cathedral School in Oxford and applied for William to be admitted. The boy and his mother missed their intended train from Manchester to Oxford because Walton's father had spent the money for the fare in a local public house. Louisa Walton had to borrow the fares from a greengrocer. Although they arrived in Oxford after the entrance trials were over, Mrs Walton successfully pleaded for her son to be heard, and he was accepted.

He remained at the choir school for the next six years. The Dean of Christ Church, Dr Thomas Strong, noted the young Walton's musical potential and was encouraged in this view by Sir Hubert Parry, who saw the manuscripts of some of Walton's early compositions and said to Strong, "There's a lot in this chap; you must keep your eye on him."

At the age of sixteen Walton became an undergraduate of Christ Church. It is sometimes said that he was Oxford's youngest undergraduate since Henry VIII, and though this is probably not correct, he was nonetheless among the youngest. He came under the influence of Hugh Allen, the dominant figure in Oxford's musical life. Allen introduced Walton to modern music, including Stravinsky's Petrushka, and enthused him with "the mysteries of the orchestra". Walton spent much time in the university library, studying scores by Stravinsky, Debussy, Sibelius, Roussel and others. He neglected his non-musical studies, and though he passed the musical examinations with ease, he failed the Greek and algebra examinations required for graduation.

Little survives from Walton's juvenilia, but the choral anthem A Litany, written when he was fifteen, anticipates his mature style.

At Oxford Walton befriended several poets including Roy Campbell, Siegfried Sassoon and, most importantly for his future, Sacheverell Sitwell. Walton was sent down from Oxford in 1920 without a degree or any firm plans. Sitwell invited him to lodge in London with him and his literary brother and sister, Osbert and Edith. Walton took up residence in the attic of their house in Chelsea, later recalling, "I went for a few weeks and stayed about fifteen years".

First successes
The Sitwells looked after their protégé both materially and culturally, giving him not only a home but a stimulating cultural education. He took music lessons with Ernest Ansermet, Ferruccio Busoni and Edward J. Dent. He attended the Russian ballet, met Stravinsky and Gershwin, heard the Savoy Orpheans at the Savoy Hotel and wrote an experimental string quartet heavily influenced by the Second Viennese School that was performed at a festival of new music at Salzburg in 1923. Alban Berg heard the performance and was impressed enough to take Walton to meet Arnold Schoenberg, Berg's teacher and the founder of the Second Viennese School.

In 1923, in collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Walton had his first great success, though at first it was a succès de scandale. Façade was first performed in public at the Aeolian Hall, London, on 12 June. The work consisted of Edith's verses, which she recited through a megaphone from behind a screen, while Walton conducted an ensemble of six players in his accompanying music. The press was generally condemnatory. Walton's biographer Michael Kennedy cites as typical a contemporary headline: "Drivel That They Paid to Hear". The Daily Express loathed the work, but admitted that it was naggingly memorable. The Manchester Guardian wrote of "relentless cacophony". The Observer condemned the verses and dismissed Walton's music as "harmless". In The Illustrated London News, Dent was much more appreciative: "The audience was at first inclined to treat the whole thing as an absurd joke, but there is always a surprisingly serious element in Miss Sitwell's poetry and Mr Walton's music ... which soon induced the audience to listen with breathless attention." In The Sunday Times, Ernest Newman said of Walton, "as a musical joker he is a jewel of the first water".

Among the audience were Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf and Noël Coward. The last was so outraged by the avant-garde nature of Sitwell's verses and the staging, that he marched out ostentatiously during the performance. The players did not like the music: the clarinettist, Charles Draper asked the composer, "Mr Walton, has a clarinet player ever done you an injury?" Nevertheless, the work soon became accepted, and within a decade Walton's music was used for the popular Façade ballet, choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

Walton's works of the 1920s, while he was living in the Sitwells' attic, include the overture Portsmouth Point, dedicated to Sassoon and inspired by the well-known painting of the same name by Thomas Rowlandson. It was first heard as an entr'acte at a performance in Diaghilev's 1926 ballet season, where The Times complained, "It is a little difficult to make much of new music when it is heard through the hum of conversation." Sir Henry Wood programmed the work at the Proms the following year, where it made more of an impression. The composer conducted this performance; he did not enjoy conducting, but he had firm views on how his works should be interpreted, and orchestral players appreciated his "easy nonchalance" and "complete absence of fuss." Walton's other works of the 1920s included a short orchestral piece, Siesta (1926) and a Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1928), which was well-received at its premiere at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert, but has not entered the regular repertory.

The Viola Concerto (1929) brought Walton to the forefront of British classical music. It was written at the suggestion of Sir Thomas Beecham for the viola virtuoso Lionel Tertis. When Tertis received the manuscript, he rejected it immediately. The composer and violist Paul Hindemith stepped into the breach and gave the first performance. The work was greeted with enthusiasm. In The Manchester Guardian, Eric Blom wrote, "This young composer is a born genius" and said that it was tempting to call the concerto the best thing in recent music of any nationality. Tertis soon changed his mind and took the work up. A performance by him at a Three Choirs Festival concert in Worcester in 1932 was the only occasion on which Walton met Elgar, whom he greatly admired. Elgar did not share the general enthusiasm for Walton's concerto.

Walton's next major composition was the massive choral cantata Belshazzar's Feast (1931). It began as a work on a modest scale; the BBC commissioned a piece for a small chorus, orchestra of no more than fifteen players, and soloist. Osbert Sitwell constructed a text, selecting verses from several books of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation. As Walton worked on it, he found that his music required far larger forces than the BBC proposed to allow, and Beecham rescued him by programming the work for the 1931 Leeds Festival, to be conducted by Malcolm Sargent. Walton later recalled Beecham as saying, "As you'll never hear the work again, my boy, why not throw in a couple of brass bands?" During early rehearsals, the Leeds chorus members found Walton's music difficult to master, and it was falsely rumoured in London musical circles that Beecham had been obliged to send Sargent to Leeds to quell a revolt. The first performance was a triumph for the composer, conductor and performers. A contemporary critic wrote, "Those who experienced the tremendous impact of its first performance had full justification for feeling that a great composer had arisen in our land, a composer to whose potentialities it was impossible to set any limits." The work has remained a staple of the choral repertoire.

1930s

In the 1930s, Walton's relationship with the Sitwells became less close. He had love affairs and new friendships that drew him out of their orbit. His first long affair was with Imma von Doernberg, the young widow of a German baron. She and Walton met in the late 1920s and they were together until 1934, when she left him. His later affair with Alice, Viscountess Wimborne (born 1880), which lasted from 1934 until her death in April 1948, caused a wider breach between Walton and the Sitwells, as she disliked them as much as they disliked her. By the 1930s, Walton was earning enough from composing to allow him financial independence for the first time. A legacy from a musical benefactress in 1931 further enhanced his finances, and in 1934 he left the Sitwells' house and bought a house in Belgravia.

Walton's first major composition after Belshazzar's Feast was his First Symphony. It was not written to a commission, and Walton worked slowly on the score from late 1931 until he completed it in 1935. He had composed the first three of the four movements by the end of 1933 and promised the premiere to the conductor Hamilton Harty. Walton then found himself unable to complete the work. The end of his affair with Imma von Doernberg coincided with, and may have contributed to, a sudden and persistent writer's block. Harty persuaded Walton to let him perform the three existing movements, which he premiered in December 1934 with the London Symphony Orchestra. During 1934 Walton interrupted work on the symphony to compose his first film music, for Paul Czinner's Escape Me Never (1934), for which he was paid £300.

After a break of eight months, Walton resumed work on the symphony and completed it in 1935. Harty and the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the premiere of the completed piece in November of that year. The symphony aroused international interest. The leading continental conductors Wilhelm Furtwängler and Willem Mengelberg sent for copies of the score, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in the US under Harty, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the New York premiere, and the young George Szell conducted the symphony in Australia.

Elgar having died in 1934, the authorities turned to Walton to compose a march in the Elgarian tradition for the coronation of George VI in 1937. His Crown Imperial was an immediate success with the public, but disappointed those of Walton's admirers who thought of him as an avant-garde composer. Among Walton's other works from this decade are more film scores, including the first of his incidental music for Shakespeare adaptations, As You Like It (1936); a short ballet for a West End revue (1936); and a choral piece, In Honour of the City of London (1937). His most important work of the 1930s, alongside the symphony, was the Violin Concerto (1939), commissioned by Jascha Heifetz. The concerto, Walton later revealed, expressed his love for Alice Wimborne. Its strong romantic style caused some critics to label it retrogressive, and Walton said in a newspaper interview, "Today's white hope is tomorrow's black sheep. These days it is very sad for a composer to grow old ... I seriously advise all sensitive composers to die at the age of 37. I know: I've gone through the first halcyon period and am just about ripe for my critical damnation."

In the late 1930s Walton became aware of a younger English composer whose fame was shortly to overtake his, Benjamin Britten. After their first meeting, Britten wrote in his diary, "[...] to lunch with William Walton at Sloane Square. He is charming, but I feel always the school relationship with him – he is so obviously the head prefect of English music, whereas I'm the promising new boy." They remained on friendly terms for the rest of Britten's life; Walton admired many of Britten's works, and considered him a genius; Britten did not admire all of Walton's works but was grateful for his support at difficult times in his life.

Second World War

During the Second World War Walton was exempted from military service on the understanding that he would compose music for wartime propaganda films. In addition to driving ambulances (extremely badly, he said), he was attached to the Army Film Unit as music adviser. He wrote scores for six films during the war – some that he thought "rather boring" and some that have become classics such as The First of the Few (1942) and Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V (1944).

Walton was at first dismissive of his film scores, regarding them as professional but of no intrinsic worth; he resisted attempts to arrange them into concert suites, saying, "Film music is not good film music if it can be used for any other purpose." He later relented to the extent of allowing concert suites to be arranged from The First of the Few and the Olivier Shakespeare films. For the BBC, Walton composed the music for a large-scale radio drama about Christopher Columbus, written by Louis MacNeice and starring Olivier. As with his film music, the composer was inclined to dismiss the musical importance of his work on the programme.

Apart from these commissions, Walton's wartime works of any magnitude comprised incidental music for John Gielgud's 1942 production of Macbeth; two scores for the Sadler's Wells Ballet, The Wise Virgins, based on the music of J. S. Bach transcribed by Walton, and The Quest, with a plot loosely based on Spenser's The Faerie Queene; and, for the concert hall, a suite of orchestral miniatures, Music for Children, and a comedy overture, Scapino, composed for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Walton's house in London was destroyed by German bombing in May 1941, after which he spent much of his time at Alice Wimborne's family house at Ashby St Ledgers in the countryside of Northamptonshire in the middle of England. While there, Walton worked on projects that had been in his mind for some time. In 1939 he had been planning a substantial chamber work, a string quartet, but he set it aside while composing his wartime film scores. In early 1945 he turned again to the quartet. Walton was conscious that Britten, with Les Illuminations (1940), the Sinfonia da Requiem (1942), and Peter Grimes in 1945, had produced a series of substantial works, while Walton had produced no major composition since the Violin Concerto in 1939. Among English critics and audiences, the Violin Concerto was not at first rated one of Walton's finest works. Because Heifetz had bought the exclusive rights to play the concerto for two years, it was not heard in Britain until 1941. The London premiere, with a less famous soloist, and in the unflattering acoustics of the Royal Albert Hall, did not immediately reveal the work as a masterpiece. The String Quartet in A minor, premiered in May 1947, was Walton's most substantial work of the 1940s. Kennedy calls it one of his finest achievements and "a sure sign that he had thrown off the trammels of his cinema style and rediscovered his true voice."

Postwar
In 1947, Walton was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal. In the same year he accepted an invitation from the BBC to compose his first opera. He decided to base it on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, but his preliminary work came to a halt in April 1948 when Alice Wimborne died. To take Walton's mind off his grief, the music publisher Leslie Boosey persuaded him to be a British delegate to a conference on copyright in Buenos Aires later that year. While there, Walton met Susana Gil Passo (1926–2010), daughter of an Argentine lawyer. At 22 she was 24 years younger than Walton (Alice Wimborne had been 22 years his senior), and at first she ridiculed his romantic interest in her. He persisted, and she eventually accepted his proposal of marriage. The wedding was held in Buenos Aires in December 1948. From the start of their marriage, the couple spent half the year on the Italian island of Ischia, and by the mid-1950s they lived there permanently.

Walton's last work of the 1940s was his music for Olivier's film of Hamlet (1948). After that, he focused his attentions on his opera Troilus and Cressida. On the advice of the BBC, he invited Christopher Hassall to write the libretto. This did not help Walton's relations with the Sitwells, each of whom thought he or she should have been asked to be his librettist. Work continued slowly over the next few years, with many breaks while Walton turned to other things. In 1950 he and Heifetz recorded the Violin Concerto for EMI. In 1951 Walton was knighted. In the same year, he prepared an authorised version of Façade, which had undergone many revisions since its premiere. In 1953, following the accession of Elizabeth II he was again called on to write a coronation march, Orb and Sceptre; he was also commissioned to write a choral setting of the Te Deum for the occasion.

Troilus and Cressida was presented at Covent Garden on 3 December 1954. Its preparation was dogged by misfortunes. Olivier, originally scheduled to direct it, backed out, as did Henry Moore who had agreed to design the production; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, for whom the role of Cressida had been written, refused to perform it; her replacement, Magda László, had difficulty mastering the English words; and Sargent, the conductor, "did not seem well acquainted with the score". The premiere had a friendly reception, but there was a general feeling that Hassall and Walton had written an old-fashioned opera in an outmoded tradition. The piece was subsequently staged in San Francisco, New York and Milan during the next year, but failed to make a positive impression, and did not enter the regular operatic repertory.

In 1956 Walton sold his London house and took up full-time residence on Ischia. He built a hilltop house at Forio and called it La Mortella. Susana Walton created a magnificent garden there. Walton's other works of the 1950s include the music for a fourth Shakespeare film, Olivier's Richard III, and the Cello Concerto (1956), written for Gregor Piatigorsky, who gave the premiere in January 1957 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the conductor Charles Munch. Some critics felt that the concerto was old-fashioned; Peter Heyworth wrote that there was little in the work that would have startled an audience in the year the  met its iceberg (1912). It has nevertheless entered the regular repertoire, performed by Paul Tortelier, Yo-Yo Ma, Lynn Harrell and Pierre Fournier among others.

In 1966 Walton successfully underwent surgery for lung cancer. Until then he had been an inveterate pipe-smoker, but after the operation he never smoked again. While he was convalescing, he worked on a one-act comic opera, The Bear, which was premiered at Britten's Aldeburgh Festival, in June 1966, and enthusiastically received. Walton had become so used to being written off by music critics that he felt "there must be something wrong when the worms turned on some praise." Walton received the Order of Merit in 1967, the fourth composer to be so honoured, after Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten.

Walton's orchestral works of the 1960s include his Second Symphony (1960), Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1963), Capriccio burlesco (1968), and Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten (1969). His song cycles from this period were composed for Peter Pears (Anon. in Love, 1960) and Schwarzkopf (A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table, 1962). He was commissioned to compose a score for the 1969 film Battle of Britain, but the film company rejected most of his score, replacing it with music by Ron Goodwin. A concert suite of Walton's score was published and recorded after Walton's death. After his experience over Battle of Britain, Walton declared that he would write no more film music, but he was persuaded by Olivier to compose the score for a film of Chekhov's Three Sisters in 1969.

Last years
Walton was never a facile or quick composer, and in his final decade, he found composition increasingly difficult. He repeatedly tried to compose a third symphony for André Previn, but eventually abandoned it. Many of his final works are re-orchestrations or revisions of earlier music. He orchestrated his song cycle Anon. in Love (originally for tenor and guitar), and at the request of Neville Marriner adapted his A minor String Quartet as a Sonata for Strings. One original work from this period was his Jubilate Deo, premiered as one of several events to celebrate his seventieth birthday. The British prime minister, Edward Heath, gave a birthday dinner for Walton at 10 Downing Street, attended by royalty and Walton's most eminent colleagues; Britten presented a Walton evening at Aldeburgh and Previn conducted an all-Walton concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

Walton revised the score of Troilus and Cressida, and the opera was staged at Covent Garden in 1976. Once again it was plagued by misfortune while in preparation. Walton was in poor health; Previn, who was to conduct, also fell ill; and the tenor chosen for Troilus pulled out. As in 1954, the critics were generally tepid. Some of Walton's final artistic endeavours were in collaboration with the film-maker Tony Palmer. Walton took part in Palmer's profile of him, At the Haunted End of the Day, in 1981, and in 1982 Walton and his wife played the cameo roles of King Frederick Augustus and Queen Maria of Saxony in Palmer's nine-hour film Wagner. In March 1982 there were concerts marking Walton's eightieth birthday, at the Barbican and Royal Festival halls. The audience's response to the performance of Belshazzar's Feast, at the latter, conducted by Previn, moved the composer to tears.

Walton died at La Mortella on 8 March 1983, at the age of 80. His ashes were buried on Ischia, and a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey, where a commemorative stone to Walton was unveiled near those to Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Britten.

Legacy
In 1944, it was said of Walton that he summed up the recent past of English music and augured its future. Later writers have concluded that Walton had little influence on the next generation of composers.       In his later years, Walton formed friendships with younger composers including Hans Werner Henze and Malcolm Arnold, but although he admired their work, he did not influence their compositional styles. Throughout his life, Walton held no posts at music conservatoires; he had no pupils, gave no lectures and wrote no essays. After his death, the Walton Trust, inspired by Susana Walton, has run arts education projects, promoted British music and held annual summer masterclasses on Ischia for gifted young musicians.

Music

Walton was a slow worker. Both during composition and afterwards he would continually revise his music; he said, "Without an india-rubber I was absolutely sunk." Consequently, his total body of work from his sixty-year career as a composer is not large. Between the first performance of Façade in 1923, for example, and that of the Sinfonia Concertante in 1928, he averaged only one small piece a year. Of his work as a whole, Byron Adams in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians writes:

The writer adds that Walton's allegiance to his basic style never wavered and that this loyalty to his own vision, together with his rhythmic vitality, sensuous melancholy, sly charm and orchestral flair, gives Walton's finest music "an imperishable glamour". Another biographer of Walton, Neil Tierney, writes that although contemporary critics felt that the post-war music did not match Walton's pre-war compositions, it has become clear that the later works are "if emotionally less direct, more profound."

Orchestral music

Overtures and short orchestral pieces

Walton's first work for full orchestra, Portsmouth Point (1925), inspired by a Rowlandson print of the same name, depicts a rumbustious dockside scene (in Kennedy's phrase, "the sailors of H.M.S. Pinafore have had a night on the tiles") in a fast moving score full of syncopation and cross-rhythm that for years proved hazardous for conductors and orchestras alike. Throughout his career, Walton wrote works in this pattern, such as the lively Comedy Overture Scapino, a virtuoso piece commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, described by The Musical Times as "an ingenious blending of fragments in exhilarating profusion." Walton's post-war works in this genre are the Johannesburg Festival Overture (1956), the "diverting but hard-edged Capriccio burlesco" (1968), and the longer Partita (1957), written for the Cleveland Orchestra, described by Grove as "an impressively concentrated score with a high-spirited finale [with] steely counterpoint and orchestral virtuosity". Walton's shorter pieces also include two tributes to musical colleagues, Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1963) and the Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten (1969), in both of which the source material is gradually transformed as Walton's own voice becomes more prominent. The critic Hugh Ottaway commented that in both pieces "the interaction of two musical personalities is... fascinating".

Concertos and symphonies
Walton's first successful large-scale concert work, the Viola Concerto (1929) is in marked contrast to the raucous Portsmouth Point; despite the common influence of jazz and of the music of Hindemith and Ravel, in its structure and romantic longing it owes much to the Elgar Cello Concerto. In this work, wrote Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor in The Record Guide, "the lyric poet in Walton, who had so far been hidden under a mask of irony, fully emerged." Walton followed this pattern in his two subsequent concertos, for Violin (1937) and for Cello (1956). Each opens reflectively, is in three movements, and contrasts agitated and jagged passages with warmer romantic sections. The Cello Concerto is more introspective than the two earlier concertos, with a ticking rhythm throughout the work suggesting the inexorable passage of time.

The two symphonies are strongly contrasted with one another. The First is on a large scale, reminiscent at times of Sibelius. Grove says of the work that its "orgiastic power, coruscating malice, sensuous desolation and extroverted swagger" make the symphony a tribute to Walton's tenacity and inventive facility. Critics have always differed on whether the finale lives up to the rest of the work. In comparison with the First, the Second Symphony struck many reviewers as lightweight, and, as with many of Walton's works of the 1950s, it was regarded as old-fashioned. It is a very different kind of work from the First Symphony. David Cox describes it as "more a divertimento than a symphony ... highly personal, unmistakably Walton throughout", and Kennedy calls it "somewhat enigmatic in mood, and a superb example of Walton's more mature, concise, and mellow post-1945 style."

Music for ballets, plays and films
Although generally a slow and perfectionist composer, Walton was capable of working quickly when necessary. Some of his stage and screen music was written to tight deadlines. He regarded his ballet and incidental music as of less importance than his concert works and was generally dismissive of what he produced.

Of his ballets for Sadler's Wells, The Wise Virgins (1940) is an arrangement of eight extracts from choral and instrumental music by Bach. The Quest (1943), written in great haste, is, according to Grove, oddly reminiscent of Vaughan Williams. Neither of these works established itself in the regular repertoire, unlike the ballet score Walton arranged from the music of Façade, the music for which was expanded for full orchestra, still retaining the jazz influences and the iconoclastic wit of the original. Music from The Quest and the whole of the Viola Concerto were used for another Sadler's Wells ballet, O.W., in 1972.

Walton wrote little incidental music for the theatre, his music for Macbeth (1942) being one of his most notable contributions to the genre.

Between 1934 and 1969 he wrote the music for 13 films. He arranged the Spitfire Prelude and Fugue from his own score for The First of the Few (1942). He allowed suites to be arranged from his Shakespeare film scores of the 1940s and 1950s; in these films, he mixed Elizabethan pastiche with wholly characteristic Waltonian music. Kennedy singles out for praise the Agincourt battle sequence in Henry V, where the music makes the charge of the French knights "fearsomely real." Despite Walton's view that film music is ineffective when performed out of context, suites from several more of his filmscores have been assembled since his death.

Opera

Walton worked for many years on his only full-length opera, Troilus and Cressida, both before its premiere and afterwards. It has never been regarded as a success. The libretto is generally considered weak, and Walton's music, despite many passages that have won critical praise, is not dramatic enough to sustain interest. Grove calls the work a partially successful attempt to revivify the traditions of nineteenth-century Italian opera in a post-war era wary of heroic Romanticism.

Walton's only other opera, The Bear, based on a comic vaudeville by Chekhov, is judged by critics as much more successful. It is, however, a one-act piece, a genre not regularly staged at most opera houses, and so is infrequently seen. Operabase records four productions of the piece worldwide between 2013 and 2015.

Chamber and solo works
Apart from an early experiment in atonalism in his String Quartet (1919–22), which he later described as "full of undigested Bartók and Schoenberg", Walton's major essays in chamber music are his String Quartet in A Minor (1945–46) and the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1947–49). In the opinion of Adams in Grove's Dictionary, the quartet is one of Walton's supreme achievements. Earlier critics did not always share this view. In 1956 The Record Guide said, "[T]he material is not first class and the composition as a whole seems laboured."

The String Quartet in A Minor exists also in its later expanded form as the Sonata for String Orchestra (1971), which, the critic Trevor Harvey wrote, combines Walton in his most energetically rhythmic mood with a "vein of lyrical tenderness which is equally characteristic and is so rewarding to listen to".. Malcolm Arnold undertook some of the transcription involved in this expansion of forces. The work was premiered by Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields in March 1972 at the Perth Festival in Australia.

The Violin Sonata is in two closely related movements, with strong thematic material in common. The first movement is nostalgically lyrical, the second a set of variations, each one a semitone higher than its predecessor. Walton briefly refers back to Schoenberg with a dodecaphonic passage in the second movement, but otherwise the sonata is firmly tonal.

The Five Bagatelles for Guitar were written for, and edited by, the guitarist Julian Bream and dedicated to Arnold.

Choral and other vocal music

Walton's liturgical compositions include the Coronation Te Deum (1952), Missa brevis (1966), Jubilate Deo (1972), and Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (1974), and the anthems A Litany (1916) and Set me as a seal upon thy heart (1938).

One of the best-known and most frequently performed of Walton's works is the cantata Belshazzar's Feast. Written for large orchestra, chorus and baritone soloist, it intersperses a choral and orchestral depiction of Babylonian excess and depravity, barbaric jazzy outbursts, and the lamentations and finally the rejoicing of the Jewish captives. The "couple of brass bands" added at Beecham's suggestion to an already large orchestra each consist of three trumpets, three trombones and a tuba. Many critics judged it the most important English choral work since Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius in 1900. None of Walton's later choral works have matched its popularity. They include In Honour of the City of London (1937) and a Gloria (1960–61) composed for the 125th anniversary of the Huddersfield Choral Society.

Recordings

From the days of 78 rpm discs, when relatively little modern music was being put on record, Walton was favoured by the record companies. In 1929 the small, new Decca company recorded eleven movements from Façade, with the composer conducting a chamber ensemble, with the speakers Edith Sitwell and Walton's friend and colleague Constant Lambert.       In the 1930s, Walton also had two of his major orchestral works on disc, both on Decca, the First Symphony recorded by Harty and the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Viola Concerto with Frederick Riddle and the LSO conducted by the composer. In the 1940s Walton moved from Decca to its older, larger rival, EMI. The EMI producer Walter Legge arranged a series of recordings of Walton's major works and many minor ones over the next twenty years; a rival composer expressed the view that if Walton had an attack of flatulence (he used an earthier expression), Walter Legge would record it.

Walton himself, although a reluctant conductor, conducted many of the EMI recordings, and some for other labels. He made studio recordings of the First Symphony, the Viola Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the Sinfonia Concertante, the Façade Suites, the Partita, Belshazzar's Feast, and suites from his film scores for Shakespeare plays and The First of the Few. Some live performances conducted by Walton were recorded and have been released on compact disc, including the Cello Concerto and the Coronation Te Deum.

Almost all Walton's works have been recorded for commercial release. EMI published a "Walton Edition" of his major works on CD in the 1990s, and the recording of the Chandos Records "Walton Edition" of his works was completed in 2010. His best-known works have been recorded by performers from many countries. Among the frequently recorded are Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola and Violin Concertos and the First Symphony, which has had more than twenty recordings since Harty's 1936 set.

Notes, references and sources

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

William Walton Trust
William Walton Online Archive. Archive of digitised works from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
 Walton pages at Oxford University Press
 Sir William Turner Walton (1902–1983), Composer, Sitter in 22 portraits (National Portrait Gallery collection)
 "The Jazz Age", lecture and concert by Chamber Domaine given on 6 November 2007 at Gresham College, including Walton's Façade (available for audio and video download).
  performed by Julian Lloyd Webber and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner

 Sir William Walton on Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4 in 1982.

1902 births
1983 deaths
20th-century classical composers
20th-century English composers
People educated at Christ Church Cathedral School
Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford
British ballet composers
Composers awarded knighthoods
English classical composers
English film score composers
English male film score composers
English opera composers
Knights Bachelor
Male opera composers
Members of the Order of Merit
Musicians from the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham
People from Oldham
Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medallists
20th-century British male musicians

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21 Aug 2013 8 Oct 2013 by Volubrjotr
U.S. Sheriffs Prepare For Returning School Students: Deploy Armed Militia To Protect County Schools Against Further Federal Corporate Government False Flag Events!
All three thousand American county sheriff's across the country has the sovereign authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime and at anytime deploy armed volunteer militia members to protect school children.
Arpaio requiring deputies to carry assault rifles 24 hours per day
*Breaking: 30 Shots Fired At Georgia Elementary School; Shooter In Custody
USCDA will supply trained volunteers for any sovereign Constitutional Sheriff who requests it. USCDA members should contact their local county sheriff and find out if that sheriff is interested in developing such a program for your county. All USCDA members who want to become armed militia members for America's Schools contact HQ with your qualifications.
Those interested in training for such a position, also contact HQ for training. USCDA militia will be working with the NRA's National School Shield Education And Training Emergency Response Program.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has already announced plans to deploy an armed volunteer posse to protect students in the wake of the Connecticut school shooting.
The Arizona Sheriff Arpaio told KTVK-TV he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime.
He says he doesn't plan to put posse members inside Phoenix-area schools but will have them posted around the perimeters.
The Answer Is Mandatory Gun Ownership For Ages 21 Years And Older: Feinstein's Benghazi Massacre!
Arpaio is known as one of the nation's most high-profile supporters of strict U.S.-Mexico border policy.
Arpaio's plan announced Thursday comes after two other Arizona officials announced ideas for school security. Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne proposed firearms training for one person in each school, and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu proposed training multiple educators per school to carry guns.
Utah teachers take firearms training
Texas Approves Law For Teachers To Carry Guns!!
In a press conference reflecting on last week's massacre in Newtown, Conn., the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre today called on Congress to put armed law enforcement agents in every American school, insisting that guns in schools — not tougher gun laws — would most effectively protect children from school shootings.
Peter Lanza's Libor Bid Rigging Connection!
A Potential Deadly Aurora Movie Massacre In Texas Is Prevented By Concealed Carry Citizen: Police Do NOT Owe A Duty To Protect!
LaPierre, who did not take any questions and whose remarks were interrupted twice by pro-gun control protesters, disdained the notion that stricter gun laws could have prevented "monsters" like Adam Lanza from committing mass shootings, and wondered why students, unlike banks, don't have the protection of armed officials.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," he said.
Twenty first-grade students were gunned down at their Connecticut elementary school last Friday, when 20-year-old Lanza reportedly opened fire in the school. Six adult faculty members were killed in his rampage, and Lanza also took his own life. Shortly before entering Sandy Hook Elementary School, Lanza is believed to have killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in her bed.
Sandy Hook Killings Now Emerging As A 'Stage Managed' Terrorist Attack: Rothschild Israeli Death Squad!
In the aftermath of the shooting, the NRA stayed largely silent, making only a brief comment earlier this week when announcing today's press conference. In his remarks today, however, LaPierre vehemently defended the pro-gun agency against critics and offered up a solution of his own.
Obama sets up contrived gun violence task force.
Record-Low Only 26% in U.S. Favor Handgun Ban – Gallup Poll
Sheriff LaPierre
"We must speak for the safety of our nation's children," said LaPierre.
"We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. American airports, office buildings, power plants, courthouses, even sports stadiums, are all protected by armed security. We care about our president, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress works in offices surrounded by Capitol police officers, yet when it comes to our most beloved innocent and vulnerable members of the American family — our children — we as a society leave them every day utterly defenseless. And the monsters and the predators of the world know it and exploit it."
Record number of Americans oppose handgun ban
"That must change now," argued LaPierre, moments before being interrupted by a protester carrying a large pink sign proclaiming that the "NRA is killing our kids." "The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them. They walk among us every day. And does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn't planning his attack on a school he's already identified at this very moment?"
Alternately criticizing politicians, the media, and the entertainment industry, LaPierre argued that "the press and political class here in Washington [are] so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners" that they overlook what he claims is the real solution to the nation's recent surge in mass shootings — and what, he said, could have saved lives last week.
Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Ratified December 15, 1791. http://justfacts.com/constitution.asp#Amendment2"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."
"What if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?" he asked. "Will you at least admit it's possible that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?"
State's Constitutional Militias: Sovereign Militias Buy More Firearms In 3 Months, Than What It Takes To Outfit The Entire Chinese And Indian Armies Combined!
Gun Ownership Mandatory In Kennesaw, Georgia: Crime Rate Plummets!
LaPierre called on Congress to put a police officer in every school in America, whichaccording to a Slate analysis would cost the nation at least $5.4 billion. LaPierre recognized that local budgets are "strained," but urged lawmakers "to act immediately, to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school." He offered up the NRA's unique "knowledge, dedication, and resources" to assist in efforts to train those forces, but made no mention of a fiscal contribution.
Gun Prohibition, R.I.P. : The Supreme Court's Latest Second Amendment Decision Is The End Of An Era.
England's Gun Ban Created More Batmans ~ In Fact 40% More: Handguns Were Banned Following The U.K. Dunblane Massacre
Americans are most likely to say that an increased police presence at schools, increased government spending on mental health screening and treatment, and decreased depiction of gun violence in entertainment venues would be effective in preventing mass shootings at schools. Americans rate the potential effectiveness of a ban on assault and semi-automatic guns as fourth on a list of six actions Gallup asked about.
Interned
Jailing Of The Rothschild Banking Mafia Has Begun: Iceland Leads The Way!
Gun Funds Across The Country Are Raising Money To Make Second Amendment Rights A Reality For Women!
Bolling Endorses Arpaio's Armed Posses In Schools (newshounds.us)
GOP Sheriff Arpaio is sending his 3,000-strong gun "posse" to AZ schools (americablog.com)
Sheriff Arpaio sending armed posse to protect schools (azfamily.com)
www.usborderfirereport.com
Armed Volunteers in Schools (pochp.wordpress.com)
Gun Treatises Easily Blocked By Sovereign States When They Contravene The U.S. Constitution!
American Sheriff's to deploy armed posse members to county schools (freemadd.wordpress.com)
American Sheriffs Mobilize & Deploy Armed Militia To County Schools: No More Of The Corrupt Politicians Writing Our Epitaphs By Violating Our Constitution! (servehiminthewaiting.wordpress.com)
Posted in Barack Obama, Constitution, Gun, Second AmendmentTagged arizona, arpaio, connecticut, firearms, gun control, Joe Arpaio, KTVK, Maricopa County, Maricopa County Arizona, militia, National Rifle Association, Paul Babeu, Phoenix, protect, Second Amendment, sheriff, Tom Horne
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In this interview, Roger Manilla shares his experience of growing up in Detroit and the suburbs, his association with radical left-wing groups, and his memories of '67.
In this interview, Michael shares the differences between living in the north and south, coming of age as a black male in Detroit, living during the time of the 1967 unrest, and his observations of the city past and present.
In this interview, Straus discusses her first impressions of the Detroit area in the 1950's, her work in politics and as a community leader, and the changes she saw to her neighborhood both before and after the events of July 1967.
In this interview, Anthony discusses moving from St. Louis to Detroit, Kenneth Cockrel Sr., and the Big Four. He also discusses the challenges of activism within the church and his role working with the NAACP.
Joann Castle describes her experiences moving her family into an old home on Boston Boulevard the summer of July 1967 and her continued work with social justice.


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Guatemala Human Rights Commission
About GHRC
Human Rights Analysis
CELEBRATE AND HONOR THIS YEAR'S RECIPIENT OF THE ALICE ZACHMANN AWARD
Posted on December 16, 2019 by ghrcusa
2019 ALICE ZACHMANN HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD Monday December 16
Deeply touched by her experience in Guatemala, Sister Alice Zachmann, SSND, worked with former missionaries and with Guatemalan refugees to found the Guatemala Human Rights Commission in 1982, with the mission of documenting and denouncing human rights violations in Guatemala and working for positive change.
Every year, GHRC recognizes and honors this vision with the presentation of an award to an outstanding organization working to promote and protect human rights in Guatemala. This year's awardee is the Rabinal Community Legal Clinic, and the award will be received tomorrow by the clinic's representative, Paulina Ixtapa.
St. Stephen & the Incarnation Episcopal Church
1525 Newton St. NW
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GHRC NEWS OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2019 Updates from GHRC staff working in Guatemala, Honduras & Washington, DC
TWO MONTHS OF STATE OF SIEGE ENDS
For two months the constitutional rights of the inhabitants of 6 of 22 departments that make up Guatemala were suspended following the declaration of a state of siege. The state of siege decree, which was initially implemented on September 7 and renewed on October 10 before ending on November 4, resulted in a series of human rights violations in communities, mainly indigenous, deeply affected by crimes against humanity against the civilian population that occurred during the Internal Armed Conflict (1962-1996), as well as centuries of structural violence. As an organization committed to human rights in Guatemala and the region, we condemned the use of a state of siege to harass communities while their constitutional rights were suspended.
At the end of October, GHRC joined a delegation organized by Guatemalan Indigenous Authorities to monitor and verify the situation of communities affected by the state of siege, which was originally implemented by the Morales Administration on September 7. Due to the increased militarization in the area, it was impossible for the delegation to travel to some of the most impacted areas. Instead, they met with members of the Sepur Zarco, San Pablo and Semuy II communities in other towns in the Polochic Valley. Much of the conversation was centered on the constant threat of eviction.
"We have been fighting for years for the legal certainty of our lands, and we don't have an answer. The state has totally abandoned us. Government after government has passed, we 've had more than 35 meetings with the Secretary of Agrarian Affairs and we haven't had an answer. The state has abandoned the area. The governor never comes here."
The communities urged that a thorough investigation be undertaken into the events that led to the state of siege being implemented and for the facts to the clarified.
"There should be a good report of what's been observed, but also a report about the total abandonment of our people and the needs of my community."
In line with our work, GHRC will continue to monitor and report on the situation of indigenous communities in the Polochic Valley.
PUBLIC LETTER QUESTIONS INTENTION OF STATE OF SIEGE
Since the implementation of the state of siege in early September, GHRC worked with colleagues at the Guatemala Solidarity Project, the Latin America Working Group and Peace Brigades International to express concerns about the implementation of the State of Siege to US representatives monitoring Guatemala. We also joined members of the Observatory on Guatemala to urge the international community to investigate conditions in northeastern Guatemala, and to communicate emphatically to the Guatemalan government high concern for the wellbeing of the affected indigenous population.
LAGUNA LARGA IN GUATEMALA
On June 2 , 2017 , 450 people were evicted by 1800 military and police agents from Laguna Larga, a community in the municipality of San Andres, Peten, within the Laguna del Tigre Nature Reserve. The eviction happened at the request of the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP), even though the mostly indigenous Maya Chuj and Q' eqchi' community had lived there before the protected area was created. Though the community was granted precautionary measures by the IACHR, the humanitarian crisis persists. The 111 families live in an accutely precarious situation on the Mexico-
Guatemala border and suffers chronic malnutrition, squalid health conditions and a deplorable sanitation situation. This has led to 9 deaths. On November 6 , GHRC accompanied communities and their lawyers from the Indigenous Peoples Law Firm and the Human Rights Law Firm to a hearing at the Constitutional Court regarding a provisional return to their homeland until the state finds an adequate long-term solution for the community. Thirty- seven indigenous communities within the Laguna del Tigre and Sierra de Lacandon Nature Reserves have been evicted or are at risk of being so.
MINING VS. WATER IN HONDURAS
In Honduras, the core zone – and protected area – of the Carlos Escaleres National Park in the Bajo Aguan region was changed through a constitutional decree in 2017 to accommodate a concession for iron mining to be granted to EMCO (now Inversiones Los Pinares) mining company. In light of wide-spread community opposition to the project, a criminalization campaign promoted by the company started a year ago. In September 2019, 9 people were indicted (including a man who died 4 years ago) for illegal detention and aggravated arson charges; Judge Lisseth Vallecillo, who doesn' t have jurisdiction to hear the case, illegally sent them to pretrial jail without giving any reasons. As a result, the National Penitentiary Institute sent them to La Tolva maximum security prison. In October and November, GHRC worked with international human rights organizations to advocate for a transfer out of La Tolva to the Olanchito Penal Center, closer to their home, after the request was made by their lawyers. Read it here. GHRC visited Guapinol in November a part of an international delegation.
JUSTICE FOR GENOCIDE & CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
The Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) continues its struggle for justice for genocide. GHRC staff was present to observe part of the initial hearing of 3 former members of the military high command accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and forced disappearance against the Maya Ixil population during the dictatorship of Roman Lucas Garcia (1978 – 1982) .
On November 25 , High Risk Court " B" Judge, Miguel Angel Galvez, indicted the men, Benedicto Lucas Garcia, Manuel Callejas y Callejas and César Octavio Noguera Argueta who will now face a preliminary hearing after a phase of further investigation.
At the same time, the initial hearing of Luis Enrique Mendoza, military head of operations during the dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt (1982 – 1983 ) began on November 27 . He is also accused of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil population.
Meanwhile, a group of 36 Maya Achi survivors of sexual violence and crimes against humanity continue to wait for an Appellate Court to decide whether or not the case against 6 former Civil Defense Patrollers will continue after Judge Claudette Dominguez ruled to dismiss charges against 3 and provisionally close the case of 3 others. On December 20 , Francisco Cuxum, a former military officer accused for his role in the case, will be sentenced in a Boston court after pleading guilty in September 2019 to i l legal re- entry into the US. After he serves his sentence, the Rabinal Legal Clinic, which is prosecuting the case in Guatemala, hopes he will be extradited to face trial there. Read more here.
OBSERVATORY ON GUATEMALA
On October 28 , the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures to 5 high level Guatemalan judges who were deemed to be "in a situation of serious and urgent risk of irreparable damage to their rights." On November 1 , GHRC joined members of the Observatory for Human Rights in Guatemala to demand the Guatemalan state immediately comply with protection measures. Read the letter here.
In October, as a response to ongoing threats against the Human Rights
Ombudsperson' s Office ( PDH), including institutional funds being witheld and a campaign to have Jordan Rodas Andrade removed from his position as head, members of the Observatory wrote and published a statement expressing deep concern. Read it here.
FUEGO VOLCANO VICTIMS PLAN THEIR FUTURE
When the Fuego Volcano erupted on June 3, 2018, hundreds of people died–many were buried alive by boiling ash and rocks that rushed down into communities living on the slopes of the volcano–including communities like El Rodeo, that had returned to Guatemala after being exiled during the genocide. Thanks to generous GHRC contributors, donations were made to folks in need of emergency medical and special burn care. We continue to accompany these communities and during a visit in November, GHRC staff were told that more than half of the families of El Rodeo are getting ready to move to a new farm where they will be resettled while the others haveaccepted humble government housing.
OBSTACLES TO JUSTICE FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN HONDURAS
BERTA'S ASSASSINS STILL AT LARGE
On October 10 , the preliminary hearing of Roberto David Castillo Mejia,accused of the murder of COPINH co-founder Berta Caceres, resumed in the National Jurisdiction Court presided by Judge Lisseth Vallecillo in Tegucigalpa. Castillo, President of the DESA hydroelectric corporation at the time he was arrested on March 2, 2018, has been in pretrial jail ever since. His preliminary hearing began in April 2019, but due to a series of appeals, including one presented by the defense on October 10, the hearing has yet to
finish and there is still no date for a trial. David Castillo is the only alleged " intellectual author" who has been arrested for Berta' s murder, although the State Prosecutor' s Office has repeatedly announced that further investigations are ongoing. GHRC was present at the hearing and has been coordinating the International Observer Mission for the Berta Caceres Case since July 2018 . In August, we co-published "Violence, Corruption & Impunity in the Honduran Energy Sector: A Profile of David Castillo." Read it here. A sentencing hearing for 7 men convicted of Berta' s murder took place on December 2.
Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award December 16!
Posted on December 6, 2019 by ghrcusa
Join us for the 2019 Alice Zachmann Human Rights Defenders Award Ceremony December 16
St. Stephen Church, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington, DC 20010
RSVP Required: here's how.
The 2019 recipient of the Alica Zachman Human Rights Defender's Award is the Rabinal Community Legal Clinic. The clinic's legal representative, Paulina Ixpata, will join us on December 16 to accept the award and to celebrate the long struggle for justice courageously undertaken by so many in Guatemala.
The Rabinal Legal Clinic is led by a group of women who have bravely pursued justice for rapes carried out during the Achi genocide. Civil Patrollers arrested for these heinous crimes were released earlier this year as the Guatemalan Congress was attempting to push through an impunity law. The victims, Paulina among them, are under threat.The Rabinal Community Law Firm (Asociacion Bufete Juridico Popular de Rabinal) was created more than 15 years ago to provide legal accompaniment to survivors and family members of victims of the Achi genocide perpetrated in the late 1970s and early 1980s against the indigenous civilian population. The Community Law Firm has been part of an extraordinary grassroots effort to ensure justice for crimes of the past, from unearthing some of the first clandestine graves to being some of the first litigators to prosecute military officers and civil defense patrollers for crimes against humanity. These actions helped lead to the genocide trial against Rios Montt and other high profile transitional justice cases against the former military high command.
Since 2012, the Guatemala Human Rights Commission has presented the annual Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award to human rights defenders in Guatemala. The Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award acknowledges recipients' deep commitment to promoting respect for human rights, even when confronted threats and violence. This award aims to help protect human rights defenders at risk and honors the legacy of Sister Alice Zachmann, who founded GHRC in 1982 and directed the organization for over 20 years.
2017 Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award Recipient
Posted on November 28, 2017 by ghrcusa
GHRC is proud to announce that the Coordination of Associations and Communities for the Integral Development of the Cho'rti People [COMUNDICH] has been chosen to receive the Alice Zachmann Award for human rights defenders. COMUNIDICH will be represented in the award ceremony by Elodia Castillo Vasquez.
Elodia Castillo Vasquez from COMUNIDICH. Foto: Laura Kleiner.
Cho'rti communities in the municipalities of Camotan and La Union in the department of Chiquimula, along the border with Honduras, are renowned for extreme levels of poverty and malnutrition. Not only are Cho'rti lands arid but these vulnerable communities have been illegally pushed off their lands by local families using violence and corruption of the justice system.
COMUNDICH is successfully pursuing lawsuits in national courts to recover land illegally taken from Chorti communities, and promote grassroots development projects so they may better feed their families.
Large landholders in the area often maintain Cho'rti lands under the control of heavily armed bands. In reaction to the defense of their lands, COMUNDICH communities are under constant attack. Over the past 10 years seven COMUNDICH leaders have been murdered, and in May of 2017, seven indigenous leaders organized in COMUNDICH were arrested, and remain wrongly imprisoned. While the extreme levels of malnutrition and the area's importance as a border region have made the Cho'rti region a focus of the Alliance for Prosperity, Cho'rti communities explain they are not a part of the development plans and fear it will only deepen poverty by reinforcing illicit landholders interest in their lands.
Since 2012, the Guatemala Human Rights Commission has presented the annual the Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award to human rights defenders in Guatemala. The Alice Zachmann Human Rights Award recognizes commitment to promoting respect for human rights, even when confronted by threats and violence. This award aims to protect human rights defenders at risk of suffering acts of violence and other attacks, and honors the legacy of Sister Alice Zachmann who founded GHRC in 1982, and directed the organization tirelessly over 20 years.
Private security group kills 1, evicts 18 families in central Guatemala
On November 3 in the Alta Verapaz region of central Guatemala, 18 families were violently displaced from the Semuy community in the Cahabon municipality. According to a verification mission of human rights defenders from the United Committee of Campesinos (CUC) nine armed private security guards stationed just outside the community had been intimidating the community on behalf of a property manager.
Two weeks later, on November 20, the families were attacked again by armed private security guards contracted by the company Trece Aguas. At around 6 pm the guards captured 54-year-old Erwin Che and threatened him — eventually the family members were able to free him. At 11 pm a group of men returned, surrounded the community and opened fire for 30 minutes. In the attack Ricardo Maquin was severely injured and Emilio Toc was killed.
According to testimony from locals, a worker for Trece Aguas, Javier Choc, led the raid. In the days prior, Choc had apparently offered between Q60 and Q80 Quetzales to those willing to intimidate and attack the families.
The CUC has called for an immediate investigation into these actions
CUC has reported several other killings and attacks of land rights defenders in recent months. According to CUC, Eugenio López López, 72-years-old was killed on June 23, 2017 in Quetzaltenango, by the Campollo y Quintanal families, owners of the San Gregorio Piedra Parada farm.
On August 9 campesino leader José Aroldo Orozco from the La Montañita community in the Ayutla municipality of the San Marcos department was murdered. He had allegedly been trying to regain land that had been taken from families and had just won a case in his favor.
These reports are in addition to several others detailing violent attacks, threats, and illegal detentions.
Protestors killed, attacked during strike
On November 7th and 8th, the Committee for Campesino Development and the National Coordinator of Campesino Organizations held a two-day national strike to protest President Jimmy Morales, forced evictions, corrupt officials, and violations of human rights.
Their protest was met with violence and legal action — the director of the strike was killed while another member of the group was run over with a vehicle and is now in serious condition. The Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF) has filed a complaint against the group, amounting to a criminalization of their protest.
Here is a press release from CODECA condemning these acts:
Increased Persecution, Attacks, Defamation and Criminalization Against People that Demand Rights and Reject Corrupt Officials
On November 8, communities and organizations that are part of The Committee for Campesino Development (El Comité de Desarrollo Campesino — CODECA) and the National Coordinator of Campesino Organizations (Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas — CNOC) continued their second day of national strike to demand:
Resignation of government cabinet and deputies due to their corruption and inability to govern.
Investigation into mayor Capitalino Alvaro Arzú over the death of Monsignor Gerardi and the irregular deliveries by the state to corrupt private companies
Investigation and criminal prosecution of deputies who seek to obstruct justice using a law that protects criminals which endangers the nation and justice.
CICIG and Ministerio Publico investigate companies for their links to organized crime, tax evasion and persecution and criminalization of human rights defenders.
Stop the persecution and criminalization of human rights defenders.
Attention to campesino families' land issues and stop evictions that directly threaten peoples' lives.
The response to our requests has been:
On November 7, 65-year-old Antonio Perez de León was murdered. He was assassinated with a knife when leaving his house at 6:30 AM in the Chichop San Antonio Ilotenango Quiché community. He directed CODECA's national strike.
On November 8, at 9:30 AM, Vicente Calderon from El Cedro was run over by Carlos Pineda Rosen, who owns the Pineda Rosel company and holds land in Izabal and other departments in Guatemala. The event occurred in Ruidosa de Izabal, where CODECA's activities were taking place. Vicente is in serious condition and has been transferred to the hospital. It is believed that he will lose both legs because the vehicle destroyed his knees.
Aside from the physical attacks, there has also been a criminalization of protest by sectors of power. The Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Association (Comité de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales y Financieras — CACIF) has filed a complaint against CODECA in the Ministerio Publico for several alleged crimes carried out during the national strike that took place November 7th and 8th. There is no basis for these accusations.
Currently a defamation campaign is being carried out in the media — on television, written, radio and social media — as well as a campaign of threats against and direct intimidation of several of CODECA's national, regional and community advocates.
Y aquí es el comunicado de CODECA en español:
AGUDIZAN PERSECUSION, ATENTADO, DIFAMACION Y CRIMINALIZACION CONTRA EL PUEBLO QUE EXIGE DERECHOS Y RENUNCIA DE GOBERNANTES CORRUPTOS
Hoy 08 de noviembre, las comunidades y organizaciones articuladas en CODECA y CNOC continúan con su segundo día de paro nacional para EXIGIR ENTRE VARIAS COSAS:
Renuncia de gabinete de gobierno y diputados por corrupción e incapacidad de gobernar.
Investigación al alcalde Capitalino Alvaro Arzú por la muerte de Monseñor Gerardi y la entrega anómala de bines del estado a manos de empresas privadas corruptas
Investigación y procesar penalmente a diputados que pretenden obstruir la justicia mediante una ley para proteger a delincuentes que pone en peligro a la nación y la justicia.
A la CICIG y MP investigar a empresas por su vínculo con el crimen organizado, la evasión de impuestos y la persecución y criminalización a defensores y defensoras.
Parar la persecución y criminalización a defensores y defensoras de ddhh.
Atender la demanda de la tierra de las familias campesinas y parar los desalojos que atentan de manera directa contra la vida.
LA RESPUESTA A NUESTRA PETICION HA SIDO:
El día de ayer, fue asesinado el compañero Antonio Perez de León de 65 años de edad, él fue asesinado con arma blanca al salir de su casa a las 6:30 de la mañana en la comunidad Chichop San Antonio Ilotenango Quiché, el compañero se dirigía al paro nacional convocado por CODECA
El día de hoy, a las 9:30 de la mañana el compañero Vicente Calderon de la comunidad El Cedro fue atropellado por Carlos Pineda Rosen quien es propietario de la empresa Pineda Rosel y también es un terrateniente de Izabal y otros departamentos de Guatemala. El hecho ocurrió en el lugar de la actividad de concentración de CODECA en el lugar conocido como la Ruidosa de Izabal. El compañero Vicente ha sido trasladado en estado grave al hospital para su atención. Se cree que perderá sus dos piernas porque el vehículo le destrozó las rodillas.
La criminalización de la protesta por parte de sectores de poder. El CACIF ha puesto una denuncia contra CODECA en el MP señalándonos sin fundamento de varios delitos por el paro nacional del día de ayer y hoy.
Hay una campaña de difamación y criminalización en los diferentes medios televisivos, escritos, radiales y en redes sociales.
Una campaña de amenaza e intimidación de manera directa a varios defensores nacionales, regionales y comunitarios de CODECA.
Guatemala, 8 de noviembre del 2017
700 Guatemalans take refuge in Mexico
Posted on June 12, 2017 by ghrcusa
Demand the IDB stop driving poor communities from their homes and stop militarizing the Mexico- Guatemala Border
The community of Laguna Larga, from the municipality of San Andres, Peten sought refuge on Friday in the southern Mexican state of Campeche, fleeing in advance of Guatemalan state security forces, reportedly 1000 police and military, on route to evict the community. A Mexican- Guatemala border working group reports that the settlement is experiencing a humanitarian crisis, with acute medical needs compounded by a fear of local authorities. They demand recognition of the families' right to refuge in Mexico.
Laguna Larga was one of 37 communities situated within the Laguna del Tigre Protected Area, which forms part of the Mayan Biosphere Reserve. An eviction of the community of La Mestiza, comprised of almost 300 families, is currently scheduled for June 14. The order is being appealed.
Lawyers with the Bufete Jurídico de Derechos Humanos have worked with 27 of these communities over the past five years, and have verified that they were established in the area between the 1970s and 1990s. While the Laguna del Tigre Protected Area was declared in 1989, in the early years the population of the Petén was unaware of the designation. They found that communities established in the 1990s came to work with the French petroleum company Perenco, granted a concession to operate in the heart of the protected area, though environmental defenders and communities have long blamed Perenco for extensive pollution.
Concerned about their precarious situation, local leaders created a sustainable development proposal which would allow long established communities to make a sustainable life while protecting of the Laguna del Tigre, a model which has been successfully employed in other areas of the Petén department. This proposal was presented to the Guatemalan government on November 4, 2016, but the government refused to establish a serious dialog, and instead continued to wrongfully criminalize community leaders.
In March 2017 Jovel Tovar, a leader of the community of La Mestiza who spearheaded the effort for dialog, was arrested. Lawyers have been denied access to evidence against Tovar, and have been prohibited from disclosing information about the public trial, both illegal under Guatemalan law. Tovar is charged with clearing land, and his community admits to having cleared 100 out of 43,000 hectares cleared in the Laguna del Tigre in 2016. Communities, environmentalists, and human rights defenders ask why authorities prosecute communities who clear small parcels, while the "narco-ranchers" clear thousands with impunity.
The IADB supports the management of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, including funding of the CONAP agency which promotes the evictions. The IADB is also currently preparing a $100 million "Border Integration Loan" to the implemented by the Guatemalan army along the Mexico – Guatemala Border.
Communities seeking dialog have come into conflict with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a USAID supported conservation organization, which controls the forest management concession in Laguna del Tigre, and that markets carbon credits through Rainforest Alliance. While WCS has a long history in Guatemala and has successfully promoted partnerships with Petén communities in the past, in the case of Laguna del Tigre, it is reported that WCS has actively pursued the eviction of existing communities within the reserve.
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Some of my absolutely favorite moments in fiction—the ones that stick with me forever—are the silliest, or the most mundane. Much like situational comedy, one of the irresistible temptations of fiction writing is to incorporate sort of…meaningless moments into stories, to deepen characters, to progress the plot, or just for fun.
The reason I find these moments resonant is because they happen all the time in real life. The most successful cold open to any crime show on television is a depiction of a relatable character. Who that is will be different for everyone (and let's be clear; on TV the vast majority of cold open victims are pretty young white women), but if you see yourself in a character, you're far more likely to read that book or watch that show.
I don't write a lot of things that are based on actual events. None of my books are autobiographical, but I do, from time to time, have fun adding little bits in here and there.
Social media doesn't come easily to me. I'd love to be one of those folks whose anxiety about interacting with humans was limited to only the humans I'm in a physical location with, but unfortunately I get heart-poundingly, palm-sweatingly anxious online, too. I joined, somewhat against my instincts, a Facebook group called Hassell and Hall, run by a couple of scribblers (who are also, not coincidentally, called Hassell and Hall).
So, you know, I lurked. You understand. I lurked along the fringes, never posting, very occasionally risking a drafted/revised/proofed comment, and I only posted maybe two percent of the comments I initially drafted.
And then there was this day. And this video. No. This one. This totally random video, which had nothing at all to do with anything, that was Sir Ian McKellan. Making eggs.
Some of you right now are scratching your heads, wondering if you're thinking of the right Sir Ian McKellan. You are. You so are.
In a group full of people who could basically spend all day talking about books (and sometimes we do), this was the thing that broke the ice for me. Ian McKellan. Making eggs.
I couldn't resist posting a comment. And watching the video again. (He covers proper toast treatment as well.) I spent a few hours going back and forth with humans on a screen, all of us delighted and mystified by the existence of such a video, driven to brainstorming the rest of the series. Sir Ian Makes Everything! There could be special holiday episodes! They'd all be under ten minutes! Sir Ian cookbooks! Sir Ian fan art!
After that day, I found it much easier to post things, much easier to comment and reply to people. I owe what scant comfort in online social spaces I can claim to Sir Ian McKellan. And his eggs.
Is it any wonder that when I needed a moment in Gays of Our Lives to align a few characters who had no reason to be aligned, I thought of that clip again? I hereby officially dedicate that scene in the kitchen of the farmhouse with Emerson, Obie, and Mildred watching Sir Ian make eggs to the astounding community of Hassell and Hall, who have no idea how very much they freaked me the hell out in the beginning. Thanks for being lovely, lads! We should totally watch Sir Ian make eggs again soon.
Have you ever had a real life ice breaker totally change your perspective on other people? Not, like, a manufactured "let us now do awkward ice breakers that make everyone want to hide under their beds", but an actual moment in the world that made you feel like you were really a part of something? Tell us!
NOTE: Don't forget that EVERY comment left on every post here at TTC Books and more will be entered into a monthly comment giveaway!
I'm drawing a blank on the ice breaker bit. I know I've met some people that there just isn't an awkward moment, well at least it didn't seem to me.
I retired from teaching and felt that way occasionally when helping a student really understand a concept.
I have no idea where I found the courage to join H&H, but when I got there, I jumped in head first with Two Truths and a Lie, and my life has never been the same since. Truly, I find myself a changed person. Also, I love you, Ripper. You talented, delightful b*stard. You make me smile every day.
I love the story of how you connected with Group, and am SO VERY glad you did! Also, I've read the Sir Ian snippet & it rocks. Gays of Our Lives is next up on the TBR!
I don't know about the ice breaker bit, but I do like it when the really intellectual and the really silly converge!
I'll admit I lurked around on the first group site I ever visited, women over 30 who all had an interest in Twilight. We were from all over the world, but became "sisters." I have no idea what my first comment was,I'm ut I'm glad I finally worked up the courage to do so. Even today, I'm a lurker on Facebook and Twitter.
I love everything I've heard about this book. On one blog you talked about visiting your webpage, so of course I had to jump over there. Love the video welcome, it's different and refreshing. Congrats on the release, I'm looking forward to picking it up. Thanks for a chance in the giveaway.
I think there was a time when I was still in the military & I was in the base club & a guy came up to me & asked me if I remembered casting his footprints. How can you be awkward with someone after you'd touched his feet?