The masculine bedroom is comfortable but cool and downplayed. Instead of vibrant colors and excessive furnishings, the masculine bedroom is focused on details. Whether you are decorating a bedroom for a male friend, or for yourself, here are some basics that you need to remember in order to create a masculine bedroom.
Room features. First of all, you will need to evaluate the space allotted for the bedroom itself. This will help you decide what types of furnishings you can introduce, and what type of decorative items you can use for the bedroom. If the room is very small, for instance, you should minimize the use of paintings for decoration. If the room has large windows, on the other hand, you can focus on adding window dressings that will make the window and the scenery outside of the window as the focal point of the room.
Space. Next, try to imagine the basics that you need to put inside the bedroom. To do this, you must consider the function for the bedroom. If the bedroom will be used solely for sleeping, then a bed and a few drawers and cabinets for clothes will do. If the bedroom is to be used for studying or for light reading before bedtime, however, you may want to include a small bedside table and add more lighting to the room. Also consider the personality of the room owner. Just because the room is supposed to be masculine does not mean that it should not have character. There are some men who like the arts for instance. If this is the case, you can add a few paintings or a few sculptures on the bedside table. Or you can choose artsy lamps instead of a simple sconce by the wall.
Color palette. The color palette will greatly influence the ambience of the room. Make sure that you choose colors that are muted but earthy, such as grays, dark blues, navy blues, browns, moss greens, and other woodsy colors. These colors are both muted but spirited, and will not overwhelm the eyes. Make sure that you choose at least two distinct colors, one of which will be the primary color, while the other will be the accenting color. The primary colors will be used for the walls, ceiling, floor, et cetera, while the accent colors will be used for the furniture, and details in the room such as the curtain rods, door, window frame, et cetera.
Bedding. The bedding should be comfortable, but should also be in keeping with the general color scheme for the room. As much as possible, you should avoid bedding that have bold and large prints in them. Instead, opt for classy and basic prints, such as stripes, squares, and other simple and unobtrusive patterns.
Finally, make sure that you add finishing touches such as alarm clocks, lamps, dressers, and other details that will complete the room. When choosing these finishing touches, always make sure that you opt for something that is clean and solid looking, with colors that match the color palette in the room. With these steps, you should be able to easily decorate a bedroom for men.


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MalditoFlanders
MalditoFlanders ..i want you to show me.. (reblip)
Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is (Official Lyric Video)
Jan 13, 2022 at 3:28 pm via YouTube
geegee_ There Is No Time @luka2810: "I wanna feel what love is, I know you can show me" (reblip)
Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is (Live at Farm Aid 1985)
luka2810
luka2810 I wanna feel what love is, I know you can show me
Tambourine_Man
Tambourine_Man Dirty white boy
Foreigner – Dirty White Boy 2010 Live Video HD
Jan 10, 2022 at 11:35 am via YouTube
Tsauro
Foreigner – Blue Morning, Blue Day
Jan 1, 2022 at 2:43 pm via Spotify | Follow on Spotify
Foreigner – Cold as Ice
Seal_FM Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is (HD)
Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is (HD) (Melodic Rock)
Foreigner – Long, Long Way From Home [lyrics]
Foreigner – Waiting For A Girl Like You (HD) (Melodic Rock)
Foreigner – Cold As Ice (Official Music Video)
Dec 3, 2021 at 6:48 pm via YouTube
aerowolf36
Foreigner – Double Vision (Live At The Rainbow '78)
HobbeLink
HobbeLink Foreigner ~ I Want To Know What Love Is #mijnlievegunsteling
Artists Like Foreigner
Blip.fm DJs who play Foreigner

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


MAYURBHANJ: Travelling in a train, we often come across old engines in dilapidated condition in neighboring tracks. Such sights remind us of the time when steam engines were introduced in India. Mayurbhanj houses multiple such sights in three decrepit steam engines, a few battered coaches, some paraphernalia of the steam age and a glorious history behind it.
Set up more than a century ago, Baripada Railway Station still carries the aura of British Raj. For the old timers, it's pure nostalgia of an era gone by, when every boy wanted to be an engine driver and blow the whistle. However, half a century ago, it had 12 steam engines and a staff of 200. According historian Anil Dhir, these old locomotives have turned into tourist attractions as people of all age groups want to hear about its glorious past.
The Rupsa-Baripada-Bangriposi Narrow Gauge line was started by the erstwhile ruler of Mayurbhanj, Maharaja Sriram Chandra Bhanj Deo. The first section of 52 km, from Rupsa to Baripada, was inaugurated by then Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, Sir Andrew Fraser on 20th January, 1905. Rupsa was the junction with the Bengal Nagpur Railway's Broad Gauge line.
An agreement was signed on 2nd December, 1918, between the Mayurbhanj State and Mayurbhanj Railway Company, for extending the line to Talband, 61.5 km away. Noted personalities of India, members of royal families, British officials and the common people of Mayurbhanj used to travel in this train. There was an exclusive saloon for the royalty.
The four original locomotives have survived to this daythe day. The Baripada Steam Shed can be converted into a prominent place on the steam map of the world. If properly restored, this heritage shed can be transformed from a ruin, lost and forgotten, to a grand museum. It will draw steam enthusiasts from India and abroad, who have come to enjoy the steam engines in their full glory. There are many who have not seen a working Steam Locomotive in their lives. Seeing such huge machines at work is one the most humbling experience in life and perhaps, the most joyous one too.


These glitter-encrusted booties from Miu Miu make me smile. A little reminiscent of Dorothy's ruby slippers, no? I love the warm pops of color with the suede trims. They would be fantastic with a simple dress to add some glam.


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The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Rating (10/10 average 10 from 1 votes)
Trailer: The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
A teenager becomes a major competitor in the world of drift racing after moving in with his father in Tokyo to avoid a jail sentence in America.
Actor: Lucas Black, Nathalie Kelley, Sung Kang, Shad Moss, Brian Tee, Leonardo Nam, Brian Goodman, Zachery Ty Bryan, Nikki Griffin, Jason Tobin
Director: Justin Lin
Country: Japan, USA
Tagged: #Car Race #Car Journey #Car Mechanic #Auto #Car Garage #Auto-Tuning #Drifting #Car #Automobile Racing
Tomorrowland HD
Bound by a shared destiny, a teen bursting with scientific curiosity and a former boy-genius inventor embark on a mission to unearth the secrets of a place so..
Genre: Action, Adventure, Family
Director: Brad Bird
Actor: Britt Robertson, George Clooney, Raffey Cassidy, Thomas Robinson, Hugh Laurie, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Tim McGraw, Chris Bauer, Pierce Gagnon
Against the Clock
Against the Clock HD
After new CIA recruit, Kelley Chandler is seriously injured during a mission, surviving only on life support, his wife Tess, a former CIA operative, becomes d..
Genre: Thriller, Sci-Fi
Director: Mark Polish
Actor: Dianna Agron, Andy García, James Frain, Bar Paly, Justin Bartha, D.W. Moffett, Patrick Bauchau, Gabrielle Haugh, Jay Karnes, Johnny Pemberton
HD Eps 23
Black-ish - Season 4
Black-ish - Season 4 HD
In Black-ish Season 4 the family attend a school play about Columbus Day, and Dre is dismayed by its inaccuracies. This inspires him to get Aloe Blacc to help..
Director: Kenya Barris
Actor: Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Yara Shahidi, Marcus Scribner, Miles Brown
Oldboy HD
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.
Director: Chan-wook Park
Actor: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jung, Kim Byeong-ok, Oh Dal-su, Ji Dae-Han, Oh Tae-kyung, Yoon Jin-Seo, Lee Seung-Shin, Lee Dae-yeon
Pope Francis: A Man of His Word HD
Pope Francis travels the world speaking to those in need and delivering a message of hope.
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Director: Wim Wenders
Actor: Pope Francis
Steve Jobs HD
Steve Jobs takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution, to paint a portrait of the man at its epicenter. The story unfolds backstage at three iconic ..
Director: Danny Boyle
Actor: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Katherine Waterston, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Makenzie Moss, Sarah Snook, Adam Shapiro, John Ortiz
Minutes to Midnight HD
On the cusp of New Year's Eve, seven friends and a mysterious backpacker converge at a desolate ski lodge in the mountains when they are systematically hunted..
Genre: Action, Horror
Director: Christopher Ray
Actor: William Baldwin, Richard Grieco, Bill Moseley, Viva Bianca, Christopher Judge, John Hennigan, Dominique Swain, Mercy Malick, Bryce Draper, Sara Fletcher
Schindler's List HD
In German-occupied Poland during World War II, Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the ..
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Actor: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz, Malgorzata Gebel, Shmuel Levy, Mark Ivanir, Béatrice Macola
Love HD
Murphy is an American living in Paris who enters a highly sexually and emotionally charged relationship with the unstable Electra. Unaware of the effect it wi..
Director: Gaspar Noé
Actor: Karl Glusman, Aomi Muyock, Klara Kristin, Juan Saavedra, Gaspar Noé, Vincent Maraval, Déborah Révy, Stella Rocha, Benoît Debie
Old Boy HD
Obsessed with vengeance, a man sets out to find out why he was kidnapped and locked into solitary confinement for twenty years without reason.
Actor: Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen, Sharlto Copley, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Imperioli
The Erotic Mirror
The Erotic Mirror SD
A young couple on a romantic vacation purchase a mysterious antique mirror possessed by the ghost of a whorehouse madame who's power forces the woman and all ..
Director: Pete Jacelone
Actor: Ruby LaRocca, A.J. Khan, Debbie Rochon, Erin Brown
Devil's Tree: Rooted Evil
Devil's Tree: Rooted Evil HD
Inspired by true events, The Devils Tree follows Samantha, a college student studying journalism, who needs to finish her thesis with one last breaking news s..
Director: Chris Alonso
Actor: Maddy Curley, Eddie Kaulukukui, Logan Gambill, Roberto Escobar, Jevon White, Sharon Pfeiffer, Michael Ray Davis, Roy Lynam, Dan Crisafulli, Erin Ownbey
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For a while, I've been wearing everything so oversized. I'm at the point where I can't tell if I do it because I actually love the oversized look, or if it's because I'm uncomfortable with my body—or both. I don't know, but sometimes, even I forget that I have a figure underneath my men's section wardrobe.
I'm not going full body-con anytime soon, but a cute cinched waist here and there is doable. I've been obsessed with these H&M culottes since I got them earlier this summer. The olive color is always a favorite alternate to black for me, but the paper bag waist really does it for me. I love this look!
Despite these being the totally wrong fabric for muggy, DC summers, I wore these at least ten times (at least). I was able to style these with a lot of different tops, so I'd definitely say these are versatile. They are just too cute to leave in the closet.
Prepare to see these again in the Fall, I'm not done with them yet.


Looking for a data scientist is a little like going on a unicorn hunt.
Are you trying to hire a "data scientist" for your organization? You might want to think twice before you decide to place that job ad.
"Data scientist" is either a meaningless designation or a descriptor for a person who will prevent your organization from realizing the full value of the data that it currently owns. Here's why.
Data scientists typically approach the problem from the wrong direction.
Most "data scientists" typically focus on building technically superior models. There's nothing wrong with building a better rocket ship, but first you'd best make sure that the rocket is actually pointed in the right direction.
No "optimized model" has ever aligned with business objectives. No business has ever generated a significant benefit from merely building a better algorithm.
In fact, many so-called "data scientists" pooh-pooh strategic assessment and project planning as "fluff" that distracts them from the "real work" of writing ever-more complicated code.
Unfortunately, strategic assessment and project planning happen to be vital if you're ever going to extract any value from your data.
The term (as most organizations use it) describes a unicorn.
Can oversee analytic processes at the project level.
This mythical human somehow has managerial acumen and technical skill all rolled up into one brilliant, convenient package. Someone like this might exist in the sense that anything is possible…kind of like the way unicorns might exist in a universe where anything is possible. Since most organizations don't have the time or money to embark on a unicorn hunt it's smarter to take a step back and to think about who or what can actually achieve what the organization hopes to achieve by hiring a "data scientist" in the first place.
Anyone can call themselves a data scientist.
Granted, if you are dead set on acquiring a certain skill set then it's awfully hard to fake having the technical skills. However, there is simply no formal definition for the term, which means no certifications, no degrees, and no quality controls. An unemployed MBA can legally hang out his "data scientist" shingle tomorrow. Often, amateurs do just that, to the detriment of the organizations they attempt to help.
Your existing employees can probably give you what you need.
Believe it or not, your existing employees probably have what it takes to help you derive outstanding value from the data you possess. In fact, training strategic thinkers who are close to the problems your organization is facing is often the first step. Sending key employees to a vendor-neutral training regimen which takes just a few short weeks can help you begin transforming your data into actionable intelligence that offers solid benefits to your business. Doesn't that sound far better than hiring an overpriced theoretical analytic specialist who is largely incapable of taking your organization where it needs to go?
This entry was posted	on Thursday, December 18th, 2014 at 7:06 pm	and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has announced seven finalists for the $100,000 Wheelwright Grant which is awarded annually for travel-based architectural research. This prize was first given in 1935 to purely GSD grads until it was revamped in 2013 to be an open competition.
The 2014 competition received nearly 200 submissions from 46 countries. The jury awarded special commendation to seven individuals for their exceptional design talent and imaginative research proposals. The winner will be announced on April 30th.
Jose Ahedo established his own firm, Studio Ahedo, in 2010. His first completed project is Blanca, a dairy complex in the Pyrenees, which includes 13 buildings comprising animal facilities, research labs, and an education center.
Ana Dana Beros is an independent architect, curator, editor, educator, and exhibition designer.
Wheelwright proposal: The Poison and the Cure: Rubbish in the Information Age.
Alison wrote a thesis on illegal building practices in Rome during her time as a Rome Scholar.
Wheelwright proposal: Tropical Skin: Study on New Building Envelope for Tropical Megacities.
His work includes low-cost housing, a kindergarten, and workplaces, has been widely published.
Wheelwright proposal: Caricatures, Fictions and Hyperboles: A Revisit of the World of Wonders.
Jimenez Lai is the principal of Bureau Spectacular and an assistant architecture professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Wheelwright proposal: Climate Design: The Architecture of Energies.
Sean Lally is the founder of the firm Weathers and assistant architecture professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Wheelwright proposal: Utopics of Cities: Amorphous Contemporaneity of Ideal.


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No change, no win - Cameron
Shadow Education Secretary David Cameron, the standard bearer of the Tory modernisers, talks to EADT Political Editor Graham Dines ahead of the contest to replace Michael Howard as party leader.
DAVID Cameron makes no pretence of the scale of the task facing the Conservative Party.
Whoever wins the leadership contest to succeed Michael Howard has to make the Tories relevant to millions who long ago gave up on a party which they believe was not in tune with the hopes and aspirations of a new generation of voters.
Mr Cameron has none of the "one last heave and we're home boys" mentality which some blinkered MPs and party faithful believe is all that is needed to win the next General Election.
"We need to gain more than 140 seats to win power. It won't be easy, our progress over the past eight years has been slow."
Mr Cameron knows that the path to power depends on the Conservatives reconnecting with the cities of Britain, most of which long ago ceased to have Tory MPs. That means effective solutions to deep rooted social problems.
David Cameron is the great white hope of the modernising wing of the Conservative Party, characterised as the Notting Hill set - politicians in their 20s and 30s sitting around outside trendy wine bars and coffee shops and formulating polices on crime, health, education and regeneration.
Mr Cameron's pitch for the leadership was made easier when his friend and fellow young Turk George Osborne decided to rule himself out of the contest. He thus has the modernisers' vote to himself.
"We have lost three elections in a row, flat lining at 33%," says Mr Cameron. "Yes we made some progress in May, gaining 33 seats, but our share of the vote has not increased. And if we don't change don't change, we won't win."
He believes the Tories have to become an inclusive, all-embracing party, appealing to every section of the community and society. If it does not, the next election will be beyond them.
Mr Cameron has huge respect for Kenneth Clarke, the 65 year-old former Chancellor who surprised the party establishment by announcing at the end of the last month that he would be a candidate for leadership for the third time.
"This is a very open contest. Ken Clarke is a huge figure in the party - he only has to get out of bed to get headlines. Some of us have to work a bid harder at it.
"Age is irrelevant in this leadership contest. It's the policies that matter and I just happen to think that Ken has always been wrong on Europe."
It's a crowded field in the race to become leader. As well as Mr Clarke, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Dr Liam Fox have declared their candidatures, and it could well be that Theresa May, David Willetts and Michael Ancram will enter the first round.
Mr Cameron has still to declare officially that he will be a candidate, but his coyness is kidding no-one. He has resisted overtures from the Clarke camp to join the former Chancellor in a dream team partnership to combat the favourite David Davis.
Like Mr Davis, Cameron believes in biding his time before making the formal announcement. But with the Conservative Party conference starting in less than four weeks, he's likely to declare later this month, enabling him to sell himself to the party rank-and-file in a platform speech and a number of fringe meetings.
He spent the summer outlining his beliefs in a set of key note speeches, appealing to the Tory Party with the theme "strengthening the ties that bind us."
"I have been trying over the past few months to lay out a concrete set of ideas on what the Conservative Party should stand for.
"We must be modern, believing that our best days lie ahead of us. There is no use reliving the past, talking about how the economy was when we were last in office, or refighting European battles."
Mr Cameron added: "I am very conscious that we are picking a leader for 2009. What this party has to be is modern, believing that out best days lie a head of us.
"We have to be compassionate - I believe there has to be `we' in politics, not just `me.'"
Michael Howard's hope of changing the party's rules to remove the vote from ordinary party members and let MPs make the final decision on who should be leader appears to be in danger of being defeated at the party's convention, to be held during the Labour Party conference.
Is the protracted nature of the leadership contest having a detrimental effect on the party's standing in the country? "No matter which set of rules the party uses to choose its leader, there has to be the widest possible audience for the views of the candidates.
"I do not think it will be an issue at the next election. People will not look back four years and say: `If only the Conservative Party had chosen its leader a month earlier, things would be different.'"
He dismisses a weekend opinion poll showing that whichever leader the Tories' choose will still lose to a Gordon Brown-led Labour Party. The electorate wants major reforms of the public services and the Chancellor has been "a huge brake" on modernising education and health.
With the right policies in place, he maintains a forward looking and progressive Conservative Party can pull off victory at the next election.
"It's not an impossible task. Fortunes of political parties turn around. When I was at university, there was a line across this country from the River Seven to The Wash, below which there were no Labour MPs with the exception of London."
He believes that if Labour could turn its fortunes around, then so can the Conservatives - but not unless the party modernises.
Mr Cameron, who will be 39 on October 9, was educated at Eton and Oxford. He worked in policy departments of Conservative Central Office, before being elected MP for Witney in Oxfordshire in 2001.
Married with two children, he says: "I have a very rich life outside of politics. I play tennis, cook, garden, grow vegetables, and like walking, riding, and cycling.
"I have a wonderful family, a lovely wife, we travel a lot, and have many friends who have nothing to do with politics.
"I can switch off at weekends. I read a lot, although that's not easy with two young children, and enjoy biographies and political history."
The last time the Tory Party turned to youth to lead them, it was a disaster. MPs chose William Hague in 1997, the candidate pushed into the race to stop Kenneth Clarke becoming leader.
Hague led the Tories to another mauling, but there are now many in the party who assert it's time to skip a generation and plump for Cameron.
Although he says age doesn't matter, in reality it does. If Mr Clarke became leader and lost in 2009 at the age of 69, he would almost certainly have to stand down.
Many think David Davis, who'll be 60 at the next election, would also be forced out through age. The same goes for Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Ancram.
Dr Liam Fox and Theresa May are younger, but the great leap of faith for the Tory Party would be to choose Cameron and stick with him if he loses the next election.
Yes, the Tory Party is looking for a winner. But if the election is lost, it does not want to go through the agonies and derision of selecting its sixth leader in 12 years.
And that could be the deciding factor when it comes to choosing the next leader of the Conservative Party.


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You are currently here!HomeNewsCybersecurity ProductsArqit Releases QuantumCloud™ Encryption Service
Arqit Releases QuantumCloud™ Encryption Service
By Dusan Vasic	August 4, 2021
Arqit, a cybersecurity company specializing in quantum encryption, has announced the release of their encryption service, QuantumCloud version 1.0. It is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) software whose purpose is to help customers protect communication channels or data on any end-point, cloud, or edge device.
This type of product represents an important advancement in the field of encryption. Today's encryption algorithms won't be able to keep data private forever, as quantum attacks may become a reality in the future. Due to the sheer computing power of quantum devices, should hackers get their hands on such hardware, existing encryptions will not be enough to stop them. With that in mind, cybersecurity experts are scrambling to develop quantum-proof encryption.
Arqit's new product seems to indicate we're one step closer to their goal. According to Business Wire, QuantumCloud enables customers to protect their devices on a global level by "providing a strong device authentication capability, over which is layered the agreement of symmetric keys between authenticated and authorized devices."
Additionally, due to the lack of asymmetric cryptographic primitives within the trustless key agreement protocol, the encryption will withstand even quantum computer attacks through Shor's algorithm.
More features are soon to be added as well. The most significant of these is the launch of Arqit's quantum satellites which is set for 2023. These satellites will replace terrestrial systems as a source of encryption randomness and present the final element in creating crack-proof encryption.
The CEO of Arqit, David Williams, said "A growing number of customers in many sectors are now getting exposure to the transformational levels of security that can be provided by QuantumCloudTM. The version released today delivers stronger, simpler key agreement technology to counter the threats that we read about every day, and it has built-in protection against the future threats from quantum attack. I believe that the transparency that a NASDAQ listing will bring is a great advantage for Arqit in promoting game-changing technology, and we are now ready to scale up our platform for revenues this year".
Dusan Vasic
Dusan is our resident tech, cybersecurity, and Warhammer 40k expert. Since space exploration wasn't in the stars for him, Dusan began cruising cyberspace – and loved it. Still, he is pretty aware of the online world becoming a far more dangerous place than one might think, where knowing how to protect your data is a must. His engineering background and passion for all things tech are what drives him to help others safeguard their digital lives. When he is not poking around VPNs or anti-malware software, he likes to paint minis and send poor, innocent graphics cards into crypto mines.


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Book review symposium: Cities and Social Movements
By Walter J Nicholls & Justus Uitermark and reviewed by Ross Beveridge, Virginie Mamadouh and Berna Turam
28 Dec 2020, 2:17 p.m.
Ross Beveridge, Virginie Mamadouh, Berna Turam, Walter J Nicholls & Justus Uitermark
Book Review Symposium: Cities and Social Movements: Immigrant Rights Activism in the United States, France, and the Netherlands, 1970–2015
Walter J Nicholls & Justus Uitermark
Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016; 280 pp.: ISBN 978-1-118-75066-7, £19.99 (pbk)
Commentary I
Reviewed by: Ross Beveridge, Urban Studies Foundation Senior Research Fellow, Urban Studies, University of Glasgow, UK
This excellent book by Walter Nicholls and Justus Uitermark consolidates their considerable contribution to scholarship on urban studies and social movements over the last decade. A principal aim is to rethink social movements from the bottom up, but its further achievement is to show how the 'urban' (and especially certain types of urban areas) is fundamental to politics, in this case the development of immigrant rights movements. It does this through extensive empirical research – geographical, comparative and, perhaps, most valuably, historical. The book's study of immigrant rights activism from 1970 to 2015 in three countries (USA, France and the Netherlands) details how ways of being political – organising, building alliances, articulating demands, claiming rights – are shaped by changing urban conditions, especially the growing reach – and ferocity – of the market and state over this period. This review reflects on what we learn generally about urban politics from reading this book. As such it does not delve into the intricacies of the comparative case studies or engage with all of the book's many layered arguments about social movements and immigrant rights activism.
Debates on urban politics ultimately hinge on the potential for and of political action in towns and cities. Generally, of course, this potential is seen as restricted as a result of both global conditions of, for example, neoliberalism, and the conditions of politics more specific to the urban scale. Nicholl's and Uitermark's contribution is to show the highly contingent possibilities for achieving political change prior to and within different phases of neoliberal urban governance. The authors' approach might be seen to depart from the question posed by Rodgers et al. (2014): 'where is urban politics?' The stress is on empirical richness, tracing geographies of political mobilisation in Los Angeles, Paris and Amsterdam and outlining the commonalities (or not) across the cases. Politics is not confined to a specific realm, nor centred on formal institutions of state or friend/enemy conflict. The politicisation of immigrants occurs in both private and public worlds and is riveted to a grievance at once theoretical and lived every day. This is a politics rooted in spatial networks (of activists), micro as well as macro, expanding and contracting, shaped by but struggling against other networks through which state and market forces operate. Building and maintaining bonds to generate solidarity is as central to this account of politics as the necessity for struggle.
The authors make two main arguments about the urban conditions of politics. First, the 'urban' is seen as a governmental field, or a series of spaces, which can become contested, characterised by the interplay of policies and regulations and the grievances and resistances they provoke. The policies and regulations of government are instruments through which space is shaped according to political agendas or neutralised when it becomes too unruly. The struggle for immigrant rights is shown in this book as resting, in part, on a struggle for certain types of urban space, where political networks can flourish in the shadow of the state. Indeed, one of the more general messages of this book is that the means and extent of state and market intrusion into towns and cities has increased since the 1970s, requiring innovation in terms of network building and mobilisation amongst immigrants, especially those with legal status. Governments do their utmost to know, remake and control them, their purpose often aggressive – to disrupt and neutralise the potential of these people and the places they tend to live in. The book provides a striking illustration of this. In the USA, the Bracero Program sought to control the spatial dispersal of immigrants, to keep them away from large urban areas with stronger unions, and to place them in rural areas where work and social life where more easily determined and where immigrants were more isolated and dependent upon individual employers.
Second, urbanity as a way of life is viewed as a crucial condition for political mobilisation in and beyond urban areas. The potential for political agency and organisation to emerge lies deep in the urban conditions of proximity, density, diversity and mass (of persons), which shape everyday encounters in neighbourhoods. Some urban areas, like Eastside Los Angeles, provide a context of closeness to those similar (immigrants with/without rights), sympathetic (other social movements) and hostile (forces of state and market). But the authors do not assume the relation between urbanity and politics. Rather, urban settings provide 'relational resources' (p. 227) with which actors can, for example, turn small into large mobilisations. In this way, then, the political potential of the urban itself has to be mobilised. The urban way of life offers conducive conditions, but they are realised and enacted. The urban is thus not merely a convenient setting for immigrant rights politics, but is central to its very possibility.
What, then, of the wider implications of this study for our understanding of urban politics? The authors' use of the term 'infrastructure' has interesting parallels with Simone's (2004) notion of people as infrastructure and the idea that the performance of the urban is bound up in the (mis)alignments of a range of human actions. Similarly, Nicholls and Uitermark argue that sustained social movements in particular need these alignments of urban resources too. There is a more general sense of politics as being strongly cumulative and performative, one that is bound up in urbanity itself, dependent on 'the ability of residents to engage complex combinations of objects, spaces, persons, and practices' (Simone, 2004: 407–408). Immigrant rights activism in the three cities studied rests on both heroic and post-heroic (Boudreau, 2017) political action: daring acts and individual bravery as well as cumulative gains and networked strength. Politics is shown to be ongoing, emergent, bubbling away with occasional moments of overflow and eruption. Its ultimate potential is rooted in the dynamics of everyday urban life, with the seemingly decisive big demonstrations just moments in the continuing 'process of constructing counter-hegemonic spaces' (p. 230) for the activists themselves.
This is a substantial piece of work, but one might ask if a book on cities and social movements should be more specific in its engagements with the 'urban' and 'politics' and reflect more on what the findings imply for the relations between the two, as well as positioning itself more overtly in ongoing debates in urban studies. It would have been fascinating to see the authors reflect on the possible tensions in their account of the urban conditions of politics. For instance, they may have asked, tentatively of course, if the urban is 'a particular way of being political' (Roy, 2016: 819), a governmental category or something much more encompassing, 'the very form of the political' (Magnusson, 2014: 1561). If urbanity as a way of life is so essential to political mobilisation, and often so precarious in current urban conditions, then is it in some way a part of all or most contemporary struggles? Is the urban a political stake in itself? Put differently, might we say that politics is becoming more urban? The authors tend to swerve such questions, but their book still speaks to and enlightens crucial debates in the field.
Boudreau, J-A (2017) Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State. Malden, MA: Polity Press.
Magnusson, W (2014) The symbiosis of the urban and the political. International Journal of Urban and Region Research 38(5): 1561–1575.
Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI
Rodgers, S, Barnett, C, Cochrane, A (2014) Where is urban politics? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(5): 1551–1560.
Roy, A (2016) What is urban about critical urban theory? Urban Geography 37(6): 810–823.
Simone, A (2004) People as infrastructure: Intersecting fragments in Johannesburg. Public Culture 16(3): 407–429.
Commentary II
Reviewed by: Virginie Mamadouh, Associate Professor of Political and Cultural Geography, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
More than urban social movements: Immigrants' movements, cities and states – and the border
The Wiley-Blackwell Studies in Urban and Social Change series is an established collection of key texts published in association with the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. This volume emerged from the fruitful and prolific collaboration between Walter Nicholls and Justus Uitermark and from a series of individually or co-authored articles and chapters (p. x) published in IJURR but also in Antipode, Environment and Planning A, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Theory and Society and Political Geography. Despite these many publications, the three research sites and the two authors, the book reads as a strong and coherent monograph.
The synergy between two authors with each a considerable expertise in urban and migration politics results in a particularly inspiring analysis of three cities. The three cities are not mentioned in the title or the subtitle of the book, which instead foreground the three states in whose territories they are located: the United States, France and the Netherlands. And rightly so, in the sense that immigrant rights activism targets primarily the state and its relation to immigrants. Moreover, the main title, Cities and Social Movements, might be misleading. This is not a book about urban social movements (after the expression coined by Manuel Castells, 1983) or about the city as a stake in an urban struggle. It does not resolve around the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1974), around urban struggles against technocratic planners (Jacobs, 1961) or around gentrification and dispossession (Harvey, 2012). Instead, it focuses on the city as a resource in struggles against the state.
Likewise, it focuses on migrants but not on their contribution to city-making (Çaglar and Schiller, 2018). Instead, it addresses the question of the city as a site of contestation. When precarious immigrants press for rights, how does a particular place help or hinder their endeavour? Cities are ecosystems of solidarity, and new assemblages are emerging from local interactions, the authors contend. In this way, they discuss the political opportunity structure not only at the national level but also at the levels of the city and the neighbourhood. They also successfully navigate the political and policing as two interconnected domains.
A relational and geographical approach to social movements
The book offers a well-documented narrative about the collective mobilisation of immigrants to defend their rights against the restrictive policies of the state in three different cities. It all starts with small resistances, since 'where there are borders there are resistances' (p. 3). The book then traces how sparks of resistance in the early 1970s evolved into wildfires – or not.
The authors present a strong critique on the more common poststructuralist approach to social movements with its focus on framing and discursive practices and on the role of social movements in developing new discourses. The authors foreground grievances relating to ever harsher migration policies and deportation regimes. These state policies have particular repercussions for immigrants labelled as 'illegal, underserving and unwanted' (p. 23). The authors also focus on the networks through which these grievances are expressed and communicated.
The structure of the book is straightforward. It consists of two introductory chapters and one concluding chapter about the book's approach, with nine empirical chapters making up the main body of the text. These nine main chapters are grouped into three periods, with a chapter on each city (Los Angeles, Paris, Amsterdam) in each period. This structure highlights the commonalities between the three cities in the different phases: (1) the birth of immigrant rights activism in the 1970s, (2) the urban landscapes of control and contention in the 1980s and 1990s, and (3) the new geographies of immigrant rights movements in the 2000s and early 2010s.
In the first series of chapters, cities are conceived as relational incubators: aggregating grievances, harnessing resources in what the authors call specialised activist clusters, connecting these clusters and providing hubs in the social movement space. This phase is arguably rather similar in each of the three cities, where a strong activist cluster was already present. In the second series of chapters, cities are sites where the state attempts to control the grassroots. To research this, the authors chose a Foucauldian governmentality perspective but they also wanted to examine the limits of governmentality and the uneven reach of government. As a result, the new geographies of immigrant rights movements are very variegated. These geographies are the objects of the third series of chapters.
Empirical grounding
The selection of the cities is never really justified. It is most likely the result of pragmatic path-dependent decisions in previous research projects. Commonalities and differences help understand the dynamics of social movements formation. However, the depth of the fieldwork and the quality of the analysis are uneven. The French case is the least thorough and convincing; it is clearly a context that is less familiar to the two authors than Los Angeles and Amsterdam, of which they have intimate knowledge. Nevertheless, Paris/France is a welcome third entry point in the analysis. It creates a kind of triangulation. It is a case where they can take more distance, but foremost it enables them to avoid the kind of binary conclusions a twin study would have implicitly generated: Amsterdam as non-LA, and LA as non-Amsterdam.
The empirical chapters are rich and very compact. A great deal of relevant information remains concealed, such as the fact that Dutch mayors are not elected or the complicated administrative structure of Paris and its region. Similarly, the local situations differ greatly in the extent to which the informal sector provides labour opportunities (more so in LA than in Paris, more so in Paris than in Amsterdam) and the extent to which participation in city life is constrained for illegal residents (more so in Amsterdam than in Paris, more so in Paris than in LA). The reader is expected to be able to contextualise the selected information.
At times, the social boundaries between different categories of migrants and their descendants are ignored. In LA, the distinction is somewhat blurred between immigrants and minorities among citizens (for example, discussing the role of the minority communities including Latinos in Tom Bradley's mayoral electoral campaign in 1969 and 1973 and the decision to run a Spanish-speaking campaign).
Issues of labels and categories could have been discussed more thoroughly. Who is an immigrant? Immigrant rights are not defined explicitly but they encompass rights associated with mobility and residency for non-nationals: political, social and cultural rights, access to the state territory, residence rights, access to citizenship (through naturalisation). More fundamentally, they are rights pertaining to the right to be there, the right to be. This allows for some context-dependent specificities. The struggle of the descendants of immigrants is included, especially in the countries where they are seen as 'second-generation immigrants' despite being born in the country and often holding national citizenship. Nevertheless, the differences between migrants, asylum seekers and refugees could have been addressed more explicitly.
Moreover, the postcolonial heritage of France and the Netherlands is hardly touched upon: this is particularly important in the case of Algerian immigrants, since at independence in 1962 special arrangements were agreed regarding migration (and citizenship). Repatriates from the former Dutch colonies (Indonesia, Suriname) in the Netherlands, and from former French colonies (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Indochina, Western and Central Africa, Madagascar) in France remain invisible. Some were nationals, but many are not (yet?), and they have struggled with similar limits to their rights as many other immigrants.
The case studies focus on the largest groups of labour migrants in the respective cities, but the importance of international law cannot be overestimated for the rights of certain categories of migrants (asylum seekers/refugees), even if restrictive national migration laws since the 1970s have impacted on the self-definition of many migrants' journeys and blurred differences between these categories. Moreover, mobile EU citizens in Paris and Amsterdam have entitlements that immigrants from third countries (i.e. from countries outside the EU) do not have, but they are nevertheless immigrants and are confronted with similar integration challenges (language, culture, etc.) and exclusionary social mechanisms, and might be mobilised in similar, or even in common, struggles.
Finally, the diaspora politics of the state of origin could have warranted further attention (Dijkink and Van der Welle, 2009), since they alter the processes of cities of residence. More general policy discourses and practices, such as the balance between the territorial versus the ethnic framing of stereotyping and discrimination on the one hand and policies targeting those in a socially precarious situation on the other hand, differ between the three states and could have been taken more explicitly into account. They also shape the context in which immigrants struggle for their rights.
Relations across borders and scales
The points mentioned above are unavoidable shortcomings when one tries to cover so much empirical ground in such a compact book. Three others are in my opinion more problematic in the light of the proposed framework.
First, although the authors explicitly analyse the role of Los Angeles, Paris and Amsterdam respectively as hubs in the national immigrant rights movements, cross-national networks between cities remain less visible. More specifically, the Europeanisation of migration and integration policies, of urban policies and of collective mobilisation (Imig and Tarrow, 2001) remains unclear. How Europeani-sation impacts migration, immigrant rights, immigrant rights activism and immigrant rights movements is not addressed.
Second, a chapter seems missing before the case studies, as a complement to the excellent chapter on social movements: a conceptual discussion of the state, the border and the city. The authors do acknowledge that state borders are located in the cities and that bordering processes are shaped in the cities (Chapter 1), but do not engage with the large literature of critical border studies and more specifically mobile borders (such as the collection edited by Amilhat Szary and Giraut, 2015, on borderities that is centred too on the concept of governmentality applied to borders). It remains a (yet) unfulfilled promise of a potential fruitful dialogue between critical urban studies and critical border studies.
Third, the 45-year period under study closes in 2015: the year of the so-called migration crisis in Europe, that could more appropriately be called a reception policy and hospitality crisis. In effect, the French case study ends almost 10 years earlier. In Europe, '2015' has re-actualised the tension between cities and states regarding migration, all the more since cities (as political entities, i.e. as municipalities or local states) have claimed more agency by developing their own policies towards migrants and refugees (for legal implications, see Versteeghe, 2016, or the ongoing project on Cities of Refuge headed by Barbara Oomen at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights). Moreover, the impact of the very existence of the European Union on city–state relations deserved more attention in the French and Dutch cases. It has also been enhanced recently with the adoption of the Urban Agenda of the European Union in June 2016. One of the partnerships pertains specifically to the integration of migrants and refugees (Mamadouh, 2018).
Most likely, the foregrounding of these three unfulfilled promises reveals more my own reading as a political geographer than a serious flaw in Nicholls and Uitermark's approach, and should not be seen as a reservation against the book. The volume has clearly a wide relevance in urban studies. The empirical chapters offer precious insights into the local political cultures of the three cities under scrutiny and the political institutions of the states that aim at controlling them, and should be of value to a broad readership interested in politics in those sites, but not necessarily in social movements. Moreover, Chapter 2, 'Rethinking Movements from the Bottom Up', is a must-read for anyone interested in social movements in cities.
Amilhat Szary, A-L, Giraut, F (eds) (2015) Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Google Scholar | Crossref
Çaglar, A, Schiller, NG (2018) Migrants and City-making: Multiscalar Perspectives on Dispossession. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Castells, M (1983) The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements. London: Edward Arnold.
Dijkink, G, Van der Welle, I (2009) Diaspora and sovereignty: Three cases of public alarm in The Netherlands. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie (TESG) 100(5): 623–634.
Harvey, D (2012) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.
Imig, D, Tarrow, S (eds) (2001) Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Jacobs, J (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.
Lefebvre, H (1974) La production de l'espace. Paris: Editions Anthropos.
Mamadouh, V (2018) The city, the (member) state, and the European Union. Urban Geography 39(9): 1435–1439.
Versteegh, L (2016) Municipalities as the last resort for rejected asylum seekers. In: Mamadouh, V, Van Wageningen, A (eds) Urban Europe: Fifty Tales of the City. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 363–368.
Commentary III
Reviewed by: Berna Turam, Director of International Affairs Program; Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Northeastern University, USA
Immigration has become one of the most divisive political issues across the world. Whether one is pro- or anti-immigrant has become the main underlying factor of deep fault lines at multiple scales, neighbourhoods, cities, states and world politics. As we witness the reversal of democracies along with the erosion of human and civil rights, cities take on new roles in becoming shields that protect immigrants. This new urbanism is manifested in the increasing involvement of municipalities and cities in immigration policies and activism (Mullenkopf and Pastor, 2016; Varsanyi, 2010). In this political milieu, Nicholls and Uitermark make a remarkable contribution to the debate with their detailed analysis of immigrant rights activism in three cities on both sides of the Atlantic. They provide a rich historical and socio-political detail and in-depth analysis – a combination that is not very common to comparative works.
Cities and Social Movements is a must-read for those who study the geography of resistance in the US, France and the Netherlands of the past 40 years. However, rather than providing a historical timeline for immigrant activisms, Amsterdam, Paris and Los Angeles are used as case studies to study the effect of immigrant movements. The book emplaces the immigration question and brings the city to the centre of immigration activism and politics. By presenting us with an inclusive account of immigrant movements from 1970 to 2015, the authors ask an extremely timely question: how do precarious immigrants press for their rights in increasingly inhospitable countries? Chronologically, the book begins with an analysis of the early phases of immigration with the arrival of guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s, and the emergence of immigrant activism in cities. While each case has distinctions owing to different types of states and policies, the authors also draw attention to similarities. The analysis raises curiosity about other cities that are hubs of immigration. Hence, the book is a very reliable source and a reference book for scholars who wish to expand the comparison to other parts of Europe and the United States and to examine the recent shifts and developments in the face of the massive refugee influx since 2015.
Throughout the book, the reader is consistently invited to think 'how particular places help or block [immigrants'] ability to engage in these struggles'. It makes an important point by showing how the hardening of attitudes and policies against working-class immigrants coincides with a growing urban struggle to expand immigrant rights and protection. We are presented with the two sides of the coin: 'As illegality becomes locally constituted and enforced, this is also where it is circumvented, compromised or contested outright' (p. 228).
Importantly, bringing immigration politics to the local level, Nicholls and Uitermark do not ignore or downplay the central importance of the state in their analysis. For example, in line with Joel Migdal's (2001) 'state in society' perspective, they highlight how a variety of officials are charged with guarding and closing off the borders, such as doctors and taxi drivers in the Netherlands and mayors in France. Accordingly, the book not only does justice to the multi-layered manifestations of the state in immigration politics, but also points to the remarkable spatiality of inclusion and exclusion. 'A border', the authors state, 'is no longer something geographically or socially distant, but something that is proximate and carried in daily life' (p. 3). This puts daily immigrant struggles into perspective, which is a very welcome contribution to former works on everyday life politics and its multi-scalarity (e.g. Bayat, 2010; Monroe, 2016; Turam, 2015). Furthermore, it invites further thinking about how both ordinary actors and activists interact with and defy state officials in their resistance to submitting to deportation regimes.
One of the biggest strengths of the book is its ability to link social movements and political institutions. While many studies of collective action neglect the importance of the interaction between states and social movements, Nicholls and Uitermark do an excellent job in bridging these largely disconnected conversations. This gap in the literature is not trivial: for example, the American Sociological Association has two separate sections for political sociology with an emphasis on political processes and institutions, and social movements with a focus on collective action. By underlining the centrality of different types of states and national immigration policies, the second part of the book brilliantly juxtaposes the case of LA against that of European cities. While LA is under weak government control in a federal and laissez-faire state, Paris and Amsterdam are distinguished by strong state control over immigration in centralised nation-states. The authors juxtapose LA to Paris and Amsterdam by arguing that the key concept that shapes immigration policy in Paris and Amsterdam is 'political integration'. By linking various forms of immigrant activism and the type of the state, the book successfully illuminates the different responses of both cities and states to the intensifying immigration problem.
The book also made me rethink the relationship between the politics of cities and of civil society. Although it impressively takes the city as the main locus of analysis to compare various forms of immigrant movements, civil society also comes into the picture as the basis of immigrant activism. While urban politics and civil societies are by no means mutually exclusive realms or disconnected processes, I tend to think that the city – rather than civil society – as the unit of analysis is both conceptually and theoretically more explanatory of distinctions between immigrant politics in different geographies. This is partly because immigrant politics in a city is more multifaceted and is not limited to civil society organisations, and partly because it is difficult to perceive civil society as a city-specific entity that could explain the different forms of resistance between localities.
To conclude, Cities and Social Movements opens new venues of thinking on burning debates on immigration, including but not limited to sanctuary cities. The historical, socio-political and spatial analysis in the book sheds light on the current struggle of sanctuary cities of the United States and the cities of refuge of Europe. Accordingly, the book will be also appreciated by both policy makers and sanctuary movement activists, who welcome and protect vulnerable immigrant populations. By filling a big gap on cities and local immigrant activism at a time when the populist regimes reinforce increasingly anti-immigrant policies, the book offers a much-needed analysis at the right time. It will definitely be used widely by scholars across disciplines for research, classroom teaching and policy making.
Bayat, A (2010) Life as Politics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Migdal, J (2001) State in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mollenkopf, J, Pastor, M (2016) Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Monroe, KV (2016) The Insecure City: Space, Power and Mobility in Beirut. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Turam, B (2015) Gaining Freedoms and Claiming Space in Istanbul and Berlin. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Varsanyi, M (2010) Taking Local Control: Immigration Policy Activism in the US Cities and States. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Walter Nicholls, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, University of California, Irvine, USA
Justus L. Uitermark, Professor of Urban Geography, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
We would like to thank our interlocutors for their engagement with our work and their thoughtful and stimulating comments. Through Cities and Social Movements, we were hoping to make contributions to a number of disciplines and research fields simultaneously and we feel that the constructive comments from this diverse set of reviewers demonstrate that we succeeded to a satisfactory extent.
Perhaps we should start with an admission: as Virginie Mamadouh states, the title of the book 'might be misleading'. Many prospective readers will come to a book with this title –Cities and Social Movements– in the expectation to read about urban movements, a distinct class of social movements as theorised by Manuel Castells, among others (e.g. Castells, 1983; Mayer et al., 2016). They might further expect, as Ross Beveridge perhaps did, that the book would discuss the many ways in which 'the urban' might be defined in relation to politics.
We set out to write a somewhat different kind of book. The 'urban' was not our starting point; it was not even our primary concern. In this sense, this is not a book of urban studies. Instead, we intended to write a book about the rise and fall of social movements, specifically immigrant rights movements. We do not turn to movements to understand cities but to cities to understand how people become politicised and develop into activists. We argue that cities potentially (not always) provide environments where aggrieved groups politicise, get together and launch mobilisations that reach far beyond the boundaries of the city. In a nutshell, we 'develop a relational approach by examining how and why the networks constituting movements develop in specific places and evolve across space' (Nicholls and Uitermark, 2017: 13, emphasis in original).
One implication is that the rise of mass movements, or even revolutions, can be explained in part by looking at the particular places and environments in which they grow. As Beveridge argues, this 'is a politics rooted in spatial networks (of activists), micro as well as macro, expanding and contracting, shaped by but struggling against other networks through which state and market forces operate'. To understand the ferocity and tactics of social movements, we must attend to the environments where they originate and develop. Emplacing the immigration question, as Berna Turam explains, 'brings the city to the centre of immigration activism and politics'. As such, the urban is 'not merely a convenient setting for immigrant rights politics, but is central to its very possibility' (Beveridge).
Our focus on space further brings into view relations between movements. It is customary for social movement scholars to isolate one movement for study, but this becomes difficult when we incorporate space. Once we identify the cultural centres, educational institutions, squats, cafes and religious institutions where immigrant rights activists get together and coordinate, we find that they are prodigious environments for a range of movements. Three prodigious environments for social movements that we study in the book – East LA, north Paris and the historical centre of Amsterdam in the 1970s – functioned as relational incubators: they were the places where many of the networks constituting movements were established and indeed coordinated. In this respect, our argument draws upon and is analogous to arguments by Michael Storper, Saskia Sassen and others who argue that the coordination of complex and extensive operations (of the financial industry in their case, of social movements in our case) requires geographically concentrated interactions between clusters specialising in different functions (extraction and accumulation in their case, protests and campaigns in our case).
While we argue that cities, or rather specific places within cities, provide the conditions for social movements to emerge and grow, we insist they do not always do so (see also Uitermark and Nicholls, 2014). Where most of our earlier publications sought to explain why and where contention comes about, we devote a considerable portion of Cities and Social Movements to explaining why revolutionary sentiments and movements fade out or do not arise in the first place. In this context, state strategies of 'political integration' play a critical role in shaping the networks of activists. In Paris, the state sought to contain local associations to the scale of the neighbourhood and to deter their connections to radical outsiders. In Amsterdam, the government channelled once-radical activists into citywide ethnic councils that served to manage migrant populations rather than politicise them. Strategies of political integration do not simply achieve control through co-optation or repression. Instead, they penetrate into the fabric of urban civil society and rewire networks to produce more manageable and controllable people. This process of rationalising activist relations helps transform once-disruptive political activists into captive subjects whose scope for action is restrained to the reproduction of the status quo. Though drawing inspiration from governmentality theory, we also suggest that the power of the state to embrace, rewire and subdue political subjects is uneven and incomplete. We use the case of Los Angeles to show that the roll-back neoliberalism of the 1980s deprived the local state of the resources and governing capacities to subdue new networks of radical immigrants. The absence of state control provided immigrant activists the opening to develop strong relations with a diverse range of likeminded radicals. Our assertion concerning the uneven reach of state controls helps to explain the geographical unevenness of social movements, with activists in some cities maintaining their politicising potential while activists in others succumb to state control.
As all three reviewers indicate, part of the effort to account for the rise and fall of social movements is to study their relations within and across places, or what we refer to as their social movement space. Our intent was to lay the foundations for a broader inter-urban geography of social movements. Cities provide conditions where small sparks of resistance can become wildfires of political revolt. The complex relations found in cities nurture these sparks through the mobilisation of resources and the brokering of ties. As relations evolve and competencies develop, early mobilisations form into activist clusters. Relations within each city foster activist clusters, and relations across cities bind each of these clusters into a distinctive social movement space. Though similar conditions (relations and political openings) give rise to this network, only a handful of clusters mature into major activist hubs. Such hubs are equivalent to the alpha cities found in the world cities literature. The most potent of hubs, Los Angeles for instance, can exert enormous influence over the entire network because of their ability to draw in resources and assert legitimacy. Lastly, we would suggest that such a social movement space is contradictory. The social movement space enhances the collective powers of all activists in the network, but it also introduces cleavages between centrally and peripherally located activists. Peripherally located activists find themselves having to follow the lead of their centrally located comrades and competing with them for resources, attention and legitimacy. In this way, the social movement space is politically productive, but it also plants seeds of internal conflict between centrally and peripherally located activists. Thus, our theory of social movement space is grounded in the particular places where resistances emerge, but it extends outward to include the geographically uneven political relations between activists within and across countries.
More could be done to bring out this movement space. For instance, Virginie Mamadouh is correct in noticing that cross-national networks between cities are not so visible in our analysis. We touched upon this topic in a couple of places, but there is no sustained engagement. Our methods were not designed to follow activists as they traversed national boundaries, and we did not want to add further complexity to an already complicated and wide-ranging exposition. Exploring these kinds of relations, following for example Routledge (2003), would be a natural extension of the analysis in the book. One way to do this at scale would be to draw on digital data, including social media traffic. By examining the origins and destinations of messages, it becomes possible to develop a geographical network analysis that provides insight into relations across and within different localities and sectors (Van Haperen et al., 2018).
A final thought. If the making of all kinds of social movements requires the making of movement spaces, the struggles over urban space are not just about living environments. They are also about creating the preconditions for critique and counter-hegemonic projects. The remaking of society in no small part requires the remaking of cities.
Castells, M (1983) The City and the Grassroots. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Mayer, M, Thörn, H, Thörn, C (eds) (2016) Urban Uprisings: Challenging Neoliberal Urbanism in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Routledge, P (2003) Convergence space: Process geographies of grassroots globalization networks. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28(3): 333–349.
Uitermark, J, Nicholls, W (2014) From politicization to policing: The rise and decline of new social movements in Amsterdam and Paris. Antipode 46(4): 970–991.
Van Haperen, S, Nicholls, W, Uitermark, J (2018) Building protest online: Engagement with the digitally networked #not1more protest campaign on Twitter. Social Movement Studies 17(4): 408–423.
If you enjoyed this review, the following articles published in Urban Studies might also be of interest:
Bridging city environments: A contextual approach to the mobilisation of immigrant groups by Cristina Lacomba
Lacomba uses the concept of bridging social capital to explain how immigrants living in cities with high diversity mobilisation.
Squatters and migrants in Madrid: Interactions, contexts and cycles by Miguel Angel Martínez López
This article investigates the participation of migrants in the squatting of abandoned buildings.
Tentative friendships among low-income migrants in São Paulo's commercial districts by Megha Amrith
Amrith traces the everyday forms of conviviality among migrants who find themselves in precarious conditions in São Paulo.
To extend: Temporariness in a world of itineraries by AbdouMaliq Simone
How does the temporariness of everyday life inhabit the urban? Read the Urban Studies 2019 Annual Lecture by AbdouMaliq Simone.
Queer urban trauma and its spatial politics: A lesson from social movements in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by Gilly Hartal, Chen Misgav
Based on the geographies of sexualities and queer theory, new Special Issue paper from Hartal and Misgav analyses traumatic events in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Read more book reviews on the Urban Studies blog.


text:
Carriera
Marta inizia la sua carriera agonistica internazionale nel 2017, esordendo ai Campionati mondiali di canoa slalom junior a Bratislava in Slovacchia vincendo una medaglia di bronzo nella categoria C1 individuale. L'anno seguente, nella stessa competizione ad Ivrea, vince la medaglia d'argento nello slalom C1 e la medaglia di bronzo nello slalom K1 a squadre. Nel 2019 dopo aver vinto la medaglia d'oro sia ai Campionati mondiali di Cracovia in Polonia che a quelli europei a Liptovský Mikuláš in Slovacchia nello slalom C1 a squadre, ed il bronzo ai mondiali nello slalom C1 individuale, esordisce in una competizione assoluta ai Mondiali di La Seu d'Urgell piazzandosi al quindicesimo posto.

Grazie alle prestazioni ai Mondiali di La Seu d'Urgell, ottiene la qualificazione ai Giochi olimpici di Tokyo 2020. Partecipa nella categoria slalom C-1 piazzandosi al quindicesimo posto, venendo eliminata nelle semifinali.

Palmarès

Competizioni internazionali

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


These seven prints by FL@33's very own Agathe Jacquillat form the second series of an expanding body of work – graphic art inspired by the subject of 'beautiful remains'. The slightly morbid yet colourful and joyful compositions are based on her photographs of deflated balloons. The party is over but only just begins — Balloons S2 #001 – #007. Series 1, 3 and 4 have also been released.
in three sizes (A3, A2 and A1).
limited edition of 50 each.
limited edition of 20 each.
limited edition of 10 each.
April 19th, 2017 — A whole bunch of super-nice graphic design students from ECV Bordeaux came to visit us at FL@33 / Stereohype HQ in London.
May 16th, 2017 — FL@33's Agathe has been getting her hands dirty during a two-day screen-printing workshop at Print Club London. See work in progress pictures and her resulting experimental limited edition of eight A3plus-sized Big Splash / Black Swan prints here.
May 21st, 2014 — FL@33's Agathe Jacquillat released limited editions of her latest body of work covering graphic art print series Balloons Series 1, 2, 3 and 4 and her piece Breaking Waves. See previews of all of them together.


Monterey Creek is a tributary of Possum Creek. It begins just south of NW 39th Avenue and flows southeast under NW 43rd street near the Millhopper Library where it is joined by Pebble Creek. The creek then flows into Possum Creek near NW 31st Place, in the Pelham Place/Wood Creek neighborhood.


How can I arrange my future study in China?
What courses are hot in China?
Is study in China expensive?
I want to study in a degree program, how long will it take?
I want to study in a non-degree program, how long will it take?
I want to study in a language program, how long will it take?
How to choose the most suitable university for studying in China?
Can I search for universities through cities on SICAS?
I am not rich. Are there any universities in China suitable for people like me?
Where can I find best universities in China officially recognized on SICAS?
Where can I find Chinese universities with special features or competitive in particular courses on SICAS?
What is the requirement of Chinese universities?
Am I eligible for Chinese universities?
What is the requirement of non-degree courses?
Am I eligible for non-degree courses?
What is the requirement of degree courses?
Am I eligible for degree courses?


Commissary (Canteen) orders are available to inmates housed at the St. Lucie County Jail. A private contractor provides this service. An inmate's personal account can not be discussed with anyone except the inmate and he/she is provided with the means to request information on their account. Canteen deliveries are made weekly throughout the facility from Tuesday morning through Friday evening.
iCare is no longer available as of August 9th, 2013.
All money is receipted and deposited in an inmate's individual account upon entry into the facility. These funds may be used for purchasing commissary items and will be used for any expenses incurred (booking fee, subsistence fee, self-initiated and non-emergency medical care). For funding an inmate account read more about "Touchpay"
We do not accept Money Orders or Cashier's Checks; if received they will be returned to sender.
The Kiosk is located at the St. Lucie County Jail.
Completed transactions will receive a confirmation number.
There is a convenience fee to use this system.
All deposits made to an inmate account will first satisfy the intake/booking fee. After satisfying the intake/booking fee, then half of the total deposit will go toward any outstanding debt such as the daily subsistence fees, or prior fees incurred, and any amount of the deposit remaining after that will then be available for canteen purchases.
If you have any questions, you can contact our Inmate Account Provider, Aramark, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. through 3 p.m. at 772-462-3490.


There are a few different symptoms to look out for if you suspect you need a valve replacement. Some of these include: sprinkler heads constantly seeping water, only intermittent operation of the sprinklers or the valve, no pressure of only low pressure coming to the sprinklers, and lastly wet puddles of water surrounding the sprinkler heads. If you have any of these issues with your sprinklers a valve replacement is needed.


The kingdom is in danger! Hordes of enemies are going to capture it and to enslave all its inhabitants. Looks like it's time to stand up for freedom! Help the brave defenders of the kingdom to defeat all the enemies. Good luck, warrior!
All games and trademarks are copyright their respective owners. Contact Us if you feel Summon the Hero has been used without proper permission.


Boho style long white dresses such as the Esperance are part of the new Hello lovers collection. Featuring a covering of fine bridal lace long sleeves and a lace backs.
Leah S Designs wedding dress styles everything from traditional to Relaxed casual. Also the only retail bridal shop that has the entire range of Hello Lovers Australia.
The Hello Lovers range is perfect for a destination wedding or garden ceremony. Our just because you can.
Never underestimate the weight of a fabric it has to be just right to as to drape over the body and obtain ultimate fit. The Esperance gown has just that with a covering of fine bridal lace that sits just right. This gown features a knee length split. Just enough to be flirty. A beautifully shaped gown that will compliment all your curves.
Leah S Designs also has an extensive range of bridal jewelry. Hair vines, bridal hair combs and tiaras. Hello Lovers is also renown for its stunning range of wedding jewellery truly unique pieces made in Melbourne. Some designs with a bohemian feel other styles with a more traditional edge.
All with matching accessories such as earrings necklaces or bracelets. To complete your look you might like to wear a long cathedral wedding veil we have them too. Your wedding photographer will love the long veil and you will get some fabulous photos with it.
The vintage bridal lace in the Esperance long white wedding dresses has also been lovingly made into matching ring cushions. This will give you a level of detail nobody is expecting and also a wonderful keepsake. Not forgetting the opportunity to wear an amazing pair of shoes with this gown the split will show them off wonderfully. We would recommend the Doris wedding shoes.
Boasting an extensive range of accessories something to suit all bridal styles. Also many off the rack wedding dresses. Also ready to wear deb dresses for sale, matching bags and wedding shoes Melbourne.


text:
MovieBoozer Movies Measured by the Pint!
An Interview with Reality Life's Kate Casey
Virtual Pub 265: Spider-Man Into the Spider Verse, The Favourite etc
Virtual Pub 263: Overlord, Fantastic Beasts 2, Suspiria etc
Virtual Pub 262: Bohemian Rhapsody, The Nutcracker & the Four Realms etc
Virtual Pub 261: Halloween, First Man, Bad Times at the El Royale etc.
Virtual Pub 260: A Star is Born, Venom
Virtual Pub 259: Life Itself, All about Nina, Night School
The Young Victoria (2009) Movie Review
Rojo (2019) Movie Review
Ed Wood (1994) Movie Review
Anne Frank: The Whole Story (TV Mini-Series Review) (2001)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) Movie Review
Booksmart (2019) Movie Review
Yesterday (2019) Movie Review
The Bachelorette (2019): Season 15, Episode 9
365 Days of Movies- Henry J. Fromage's Tries Again Edition- Week 27
Six Pack of Westerns
Interview with "Being Frank" Screenwriter Glen Lakin
MOVIE DRINKING GAMES
HOW WE RATE MOVIES
First Man (2018) Movie Review
Reel 127 October 17, 2018 Leave a comment 2,102 Views
By: Reel 127 (Two Beers) –
I got into Damien Chazelle around the same time as everyone else with Whiplash. That ended up being one of my favorite films of 2014. So fresh off his Oscar for Best Director for La La Land I was surprised to learn that Chazelle's next movie wouldn't be musically-driven like his previous films.
First Man is a biopic focusing on Neil Armstrong's career with NASA as an astronaut, as well as his family life during the time. Through much trial and error, plus battling his own shortcomings, Neil becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie going in. Spoilers ahead.
A Toast
I love this movie! This is probably the most "realistic" space flight film I have seen. By that I mean nothing makes you think being an astronaut is a fun experience. From the moment Neil joins the Gemini program, death lingers throughout the film. He loses friends and colleagues all in the effort to get a man to the moon. It shows that while space flight has been rewarding, there have been a lot of fatal errors made along the way.
Was surprised they show Apollo 1,
nothing says "let's go to the moon"
like a fatal first attempt.
Ryan Gosling is incredible. I would say this is probably the most unlikable character I have ever seen him play. You never hate Neil Armstrong while watching First Man, but you very much understand him. This is one of the few films where Gosling isn't a charming guy and it's great. Claire Foy also had a mesmerizing performance as Janet Armstrong. While she is supportive of Neil, she has her own personality and worries that make her just as important to the story.
This was the only shot I could
find where he smiles.
Chazelle and Justin Horowitz continue to be great collaborators. The music and sound design of First Man are definitely some of the strongest things going for it. The cinematography and editing take some getting used to, though. The camera is never still (excluding most establishing shots) and lots of medium and close up shots are used. This ends up making the viewer feel like a fly on the wall, like they are in the scene with the characters. Unfortunately, there are a few times that this becomes too much and it's annoying to watch. But for a vast majority of the film it works really, really well.
Despite everything this movie has going for it, First Man does have one glaring flaw: this is not a film for mainstream audiences. It won't hold you hand and leave you feeling good when you leave the theater. Much like Neil on the moon, you can end up feeling cold and isolated.
Beer Two
If you get motion sickness, or are claustrophobic, don't see this movie in theaters. Especially during liftoff sequences or when there is turbulence. It is the equivalent of watching a show on a tablet and shaking it violently. To the film's credit, the claustrophobia comes from how small the space capsules are. It's really good with a realistic presentation, but I was feeling anxious and I do not consider myself claustrophobic.
If you want a steadier frame
try The Blair Witch Project.
Really my only other gripe with the movie is Kyle Chandler as Deke Slayton and Corey Stoll as Buzz Aldrin. Neither of them was bad in this; however, both did not have much screen time and are well known actors. I couldn't get a feeling for the characters except that Slayton was an old friend and supporter of Neil, and that Buzz Aldrin was kind of a dick. Stoll only becomes important in the final act of the movie; before that he is only in two scenes. This wasn't enough to ruin my experience, though, and I doubt most people will care.
If after reading this review you feel like seeing this movie then definitely do. If all my warnings haven't scared you, this movie is worth experiencing on the big screen. Still, I would recommend it and suggest waiting until it is on demand if necessary, but seeing this will be a headache if you can't fast-forward. First Man has great potential for this awards season, and is a fantastic film to boot. Don't miss experiencing this on the big screen!
First Man (2018) Drinking Game
Take a Drink: every time the camera is shaking at an obnoxious level.
Take a Drink: for every casualty discussed or shown.
Take a Drink: every time everything goes dead silent, especially after it is really loud.
Take a Drink: for every funeral.
Take a Drink: when Neil is being interviewed or at a press conference.
Take a Drink: every time someone puts on a spacesuit.
About Reel 127
Dark Phoenix (2019) Movie Review
Vice (2018) Movie Review
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018) Movie Review
WE RATE MOVIES BY BEER!
"A Toast!" - Great Movie!
Good Movie.
Okay Movie.
Mediocre Movie.
Awful Movie.
"Six-Pack" - Do not be sober for this movie!
2 Broke Geeks: MovieBoozer
Movie Reviews, Movie Drinking Games.
Copyright 2015 MovieBoozer.com. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Policy. Website developed by SG.


text:
All posts tagged "MEP"
Project Profile: How the Coco-Cola Arena was delivered ahead of schedule
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Al Ghurair Properties says key Deira residential projects to be ready by May 2019
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Etihad Esco partners with Daikin for Jafza retrofit project
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Understanding the value in Value Engineering
Since the commercial and financial challenges of 2008, the words 'value engineering' have been bandied about frequently, without due regard for what...
The MEP Masters – An interview with Mark Cairns, CEO, B&W
Construction projects comprise hundreds of elements, and while each is important in its own way, MEP engineering is perhaps one of the...
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"Our philosophy is to think outside the box – we always believe that we can outwit the competition and that we can...
Tech Group invests $100 million to 'keep edge' in market
Shiraz Hasan, CEO of Ajman-based construction group Tech Group has revealed that the company has invested more than $100 million into the...
Departing chairman thanked as HE Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Shaibani takes lead of expanded seven-member board
JV will develop utility-scale and distributed solar energy and wind power projects in Egypt...
Abu Dhabi's DoE to retrofit 150 government buildings
The project is the first of its kind and utilises private ESCOs to implement...
800MW third phase of MBR Solar Park to be operational by April 2020
Current work focusing on operational preparations to evaluate readiness of substation


At Master Service Companies, we specialize in crawl space repairs of all types. If you're experiencing a structural problem with your crawl space, we have a solution for you. We offer free estimates in Winston Salem, Greensboro, High Point, and surrounding areas.
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text:
using NSpec.VsAdapter.Core.Discovery;
using NSpec.VsAdapter.Logging;
using NSpec.VsAdapter.Settings;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace NSpec.VsAdapter.TestAdapter.Discovery
{
    public class MultiSourceTestDiscovererFactory : IMultiSourceTestDiscovererFactory
    {
        public MultiSourceTestDiscovererFactory(
            IBinaryTestDiscoverer binaryTestDiscoverer,
            ITestCaseMapper testCaseMapper,
            ISettingsRepository settingsRepository,
            ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
        {
            this.binaryTestDiscoverer = binaryTestDiscoverer;
            this.testCaseMapper = testCaseMapper;
            this.settingsRepository = settingsRepository;
            this.loggerFactory = loggerFactory;
        }

        public IMultiSourceTestDiscoverer Create(IEnumerable<string> sources)
        {
            return new MultiSourceTestDiscoverer(sources, binaryTestDiscoverer, testCaseMapper, settingsRepository, loggerFactory);
        }

        readonly IBinaryTestDiscoverer binaryTestDiscoverer;
        readonly ITestCaseMapper testCaseMapper;
        readonly ISettingsRepository settingsRepository;
        readonly ILoggerFactory loggerFactory;
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Tudo certo, produto corresponde ao anunciado.
Superfast delivery, I was surprised!! It only took 11 days to get to Holland. This never happened and I have ordered many things here on AliExpress. Also it was very, very well packed so there was no chance of any damage during shipping. Hats off for this store, excellent job, I am very pleased. Thank you. I will definitely buy again from you!!


[NZX: CNU], the telecommunications network operator facing regulated price cuts in December, posted a 14 percent drop in full-year profit that met market expectations on static sales and a marginal decline in fixed-line connections.
Profit was $148 million in the year ended June 30, from $171 million a year earlier, the Wellington-based company said in a statement. Sales rose to $1.058 billion from $1.057 billion. Profit of $148.8 million was expected, according to a Reuters survey.
The company has suspended dividend payments, renegotiated banking covenants and cut a deal with Crown Fibre Holdings to bring forward some funding of the ultrafast broadband network, which Chorus has a commitment to build even though price cuts set by the Commerce Commission will leave the company with what it says is a $1 billion funding gap for the project. Chorus is currently awaiting the outcome of a challenge to the new pricing it has made in the Court of Appeal.
The company has forecast earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $590 million to $605 million, down from Ebitda of $649 million in 2014, which it attributed to the regulated price cuts and the company's UBA initiatives including the launch of its Boost products. Gross capex for 2015 is forecast at between $590 million and $605 million.
The full-year results show the decline in earnings included a 3.8 percent rise in operating expenses to $409 million, and a 12 percent increase in interest costs to $121 million. A breakdown of sales shows the changing profile of the company's services – sales of basic copper, its biggest business, fell 14 percent to $543 million while enhanced copper jumped 36 percent to $293 million. Revenue from fibre rose 25 percent to $75 million.
Labour made the biggest contribution to the gain in operating expenses, rising 18 percent to $79 million. Total capital spending fell to $679 million from $681 million, of which 83 percent related to fibre.
Total broadband connections rose by 51,000 to 1,163,000 in the latest year, as fibre broadband connections more than doubled to 42,000. Total lines remained "largely static," reducing by 3,000 during the period to 1,781,000, the company said.
The company said it is 31 percent through the rollout of UFB, putting the service within reach of 353,000 end users. The average cost per premises passed was $2,948, near the bottom end of guidance of between $2,900 and $3,200.
The share last traded at $1.73 and have shed 46 percent since they began trading in late 2011, after the company was carved out of what is now called Spark New Zealand.


Like Baku and Tbilisi, new hotels, restaurants and boutiques have sprung up where once stood communal markets and grey, drab shops selling wares that the majority could afford.
But venture further and roads have deteriorated, buildings are in disrepair and some have even collapsed. The centre of the city is illuminated by hundreds of neon signs and billboards but when the sun goes down, the rest of the capital and much of the country instead descends into darkness. Poverty here is endemic.
According to official government statistics, half of Armernia's population lives below the national poverty line with 17 per cent living in extreme poverty. Salaries average just $50 a month while pensions are even lower at $10. According to the National Statistics Service, 70 per cent of the population lives on a staple diet of bread, potatoes and macaroni.
As a result, the United Nations concludes that the issue of survival is still vital for many Armenians.
"When we talk about poverty in Armenia," says Ashot Yesayan, First Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Social Security, "we are talking about people who cannot even afford to eat. Among potential claimants [for social benefits] are families with young children who have no money for even bread."
In a small room of a derelict house situated half an hour away from Yerevan, one such family burns plastic and rubber to stay warm during the winter months. The walls of the room should be white but, like the three children that resemble paupers from a Dickensian novel, they are black and covered in soot.
A social worker stands calmly as the children's Uncle articulates his anger. The government's National Commission for Minors has decided that the children must be removed for their own safety and placed in a children's home.
An international organisation has been called in to do the dirty work for them.
Without the children, the family will find it impossible to survive. Every day, they beg for scraps and change in the nearby village. Faced with the prospect of his only source of income being taken away, the Uncle waves a knife in the air before emotion finally overcomes him. His legs give way and he collapses into a heap on the floor.
Families like this are representative of the poorest of the poor in Armenia. They are unable to feed or clothe themselves; their children rarely attend school and in some cases, are not even officially registered as having been born. With no official documents, they are unable to receive social benefits or medical assistance.
An underclass is forming in Armenia, a world away from the image that the government would like to portray to its large and influential Diaspora. It is, however, one closer to the reality than that depicted in a hundred coffee-table books and postcards of monasteries and churches photographed against scenic landscapes.
Some even rationalise the situation by arguing that conditions are only bad in the regions of the republic, but there are just as serious concerns with poverty in the cities. In fact, the United Nations considers that urban poverty is far more desperate than that which faces villagers who can at least live off the land.
In one of the capital's poorest residential districts, approximately 200 families inhabit a dilapidated hostel complex that once accommodated workers from the nearby chemical factory. The condition of the building should be enough to raise alarm in most civilised countries but the local council says that it is none of their concern. There are no windows left on the stairwell now exposed to the elements, and the elevators no longer work after residents cannibalised their innards long ago.
A four-year-old child pushed another on this stairwell last summer and one-and-a-half-year-old Isabella fell through a hole in the railings seven floors to her death. Her mother, Jenik, shrugs off her loss although from time to time, tears still swell in her eyes when she remembers.
Jenik has four other children to bring up in two tiny rooms furnished only by three rusting, metal bed frames and a divan covered with rags that serve as bedclothes. They've lived in this apartment for over a decade now and don't even have running water. Her children instead collect water from those more fortunate living below.
Now, her children no longer beg on the streets after Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) included them in their Prevention program but that's not to say that their situation has improved.
Somewhat ironically, although most of the inhabitants of the hostel are living in abject poverty, only two fall within the remit of the international medical organisation.
"I agree that many families in this building live in very difficult conditions," admits Samuel Hanryon, MSF's Country Director, "but their situation is not the same. For example, we can only work with two of these families because there is a problem with violence. The needs are enormous in Armenia but we are not the government."
Across the road, two former officials have erected large and opulent mansions, an arrogant display of wealth to contrast against the extreme poverty opposite.
Two floors up, a father of six removes copper wire from electrical appliances and automobile parts to sell for a few hundred drams. Like Jenik, Hampartsum's family is also included in MSF's Prevention Program but their situation could be considered even worse.
Hampartsum's only son is in prison for theft after he stole in order to buy food for the family. But unlike those in government who are believed to have stolen significantly more, the courts threw the book at him. Recently, Hampartsum's son wrote a letter to his father. He can be released from prison if he pays $100. For Hampartsum, however, it might just as well be $100,000.
Last September, his daughter, Gohar, became the face on hundreds of posters that were displayed throughout Yerevan highlighting the plight of vulnerable children in Armenia. "I want to live with my family," read the poster.
Now, Gohar and two of her four sisters are temporarily residing in a children's home in Gyumri. And to make matters worse, Hampartsum's eldest daughter lives with her grandmother, unwilling to tolerate her father's drinking. When Hampartsum was supplied with a bag of cement to fix up his apartment he allegedly sold it in order to buy vodka. In and out of hospital for alcoholism, when he drinks, he beats his wife.
But Hampartsum is not a bad man; it's just that times are hard. His wife found work in a local kiosk but left after three days when the owner refused to pay her the 3,000 dram ($6) she was owed. Meanwhile, both Margarita and her husband can't even scrape 500 dram together to pay for the photographs required for their passport applications.
They're not planning to leave the country, of course; just that they need some official papers to receive benefits and other assistance. Still, they have it better than others.
On the ground floor, an extended family of 14 inhabits a tiny room that can barely accommodate two. Along the corridor, water gushes from the communal toilet and the washroom, seeping into the floor.
Last year, according to the residents but not confirmed by other sources, four people died of tuberculosis on the ground floor alone.
MSF admit that tuberculosis is fast becoming a serious concern in Armenia. "The problem is a serious issue in Yerevan - especially with regards to Multi Drug Resistant (MDR) Tuberculosis," says Hanryon. "Nowadays, anyone suffering from MDR in Armenia is sentenced to death."
But although journalists, international organisations and film crews visit the families living in this hostel on a regular basis, and seemingly with good intentions, everyone complains that nothing changes.
Perhaps they have a point.
Although the Armenian Government finalised its long-awaited Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in August 2003, it will take until 2015 before poverty in Armenia is reduced to the post-earthquake 1989 level of 20 percent.
But at least the World Bank and the United Nations consider that such goals are achievable.
Key to the success of the PRSP will be increasing social benefits and salaries while waging an effective struggle against endemic corruption and a shadow economy that by some estimates accounts for the lion's share of all business in the republic.
It is envisaged that poverty in Armenia should fall to below 45 per cent of the population in 2004.