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thepapercutpost · 3 years

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Female Artists Fighting For Their Due Are Not Being Greedy; They’re Defending the Futures of Their Industries

"Scarlett Johansson" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (left). "File:191125 Taylor Swift at the 2019 American Music Awards (cropped).png" by Cosmopolitan UK is licensed under CC BY 3.0 (right)

In May of 2010, Iron Man 2 introduced Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

A few months later, Netflix—whose subscribers were, in majority, still receiving DVDs—began offering a standalone streaming subscription independent from its DVD rentals. It wasn’t until nearly ten years later that Disney, parent company of Marvel Entertainment, would launch its own streaming service, Disney+. And in 2021, after three pandemic-related delays, Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff’s solo film which fans had been demanding for 11 years, was finally released.

The long-awaited film garnered $80 million in North American theaters during its opening weekend, more than any other film released during the pandemic era. (In comparison, MCU’s last pre-pandemic release, Spider-Man: Far From Home, made $185 million). Because of the somewhat mercurial state of indoor gatherings around the world, Disney chose to make Black Widow available simultaneously in theaters and for an additional $30 fee for Disney+ subscribers. After opening weekend, in an unprecedented move in streaming service transparency, Disney revealed the film had grossed $60 million through Disney+’s Premier Access feature.

The next weekend, the film suffered a 67% drop in box office sales. Disney has not since released streaming numbers.

Within a month, news broke that Johansson was suing Disney over the film’s hybrid release. Her suit claims that her contract for the film guaranteed an exclusively theatrical release and that her compensation was largely tied to box office revenue, which was impacted by the film’s simultaneous availability on Disney+. The breach of contract is a serious allegation against the company, and it comes from the embodiment of one of the longest-standing pillars of its most successful franchise.

Disney’s response? Make her the bad guy. Paint her as the greedy, insensitive Hollywood prima donna. Publish her salary to prove it, despite a policy of “never publicly disclos[ing] salaries or deal terms.” And blame the pandemic.

In a statement, the company claimed Johansson’s suit had “no merit whatsoever” and called it “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Their argument here is twofold: 1) the pandemic prevented them from releasing the movie in theaters, and 2) she should be happy with the millions she has already gotten.

We have all had to make concessions due to the pandemic, albeit most of us on a smaller scale. But Disney’s sudden overwhelming concern for public health and safety is less than convincing. Their claim that they couldn’t have released the film in theaters proves baseless on account of it, well, being released in theaters. What they seemingly meant was that the pandemic meant a smaller payday from movie theaters, so they found an additional method of distributing the film that just so happened to free them of the obligation of splitting its revenue with the star, not to mention movie theater companies.

Appealing to the sympathies of the billions of people in the world who can’t even fathom the amount of money Johansson and her movie star peers earn for each film they make is a slightly smarter move. After all, a jury who decides whether she wins her case will likely consist of non-millionaires who may be biased against a woman who out-earns them by two or three digits. Regardless of the amount of money in question or the wealth of the individual, a deal is a deal, and a written contract is legally binding. The bottom line is that Disney failed to honor the agreed-upon contingencies (ie. a theatrical release). Not to mention, this argument expects us to forget that Disney itself is a conglomerate worth hundreds of billions of dollars, hardly a poor, innocent victim of a rich woman’s greed.

In fact, Disney’s mentioning of “the $20 million she has received to date” only broadens the scope in Johansson’s favor. She is a Tony winner, two-time Oscar nominee, and one of the highest-grossing actors in box office history. If she retired today, her entire family would be able to live a life of luxury for generations to come without having to work a day. So why nitpick over the extra $50 million or so she could have earned with a theaters-only release, cause a Hollywood-sized fuss, and risk the company dragging her name through the mud, as they so predictably did?

Let’s ask Taylor Swift. The singer-songwriter shot to international superstardom in 2008, making her the face of pop music. In recent years, she has fiercely advocated for artists’ rights after experiencing her own long and ultimately failed attempt to buy back her master recordings from Big Machine Label Group, which was acquired by music manager Scooter Braun in 2019.

Similarly, Johansson’s representatives attempted to reach out to Disney after the announcement of Black Widow’s hybrid release, which could possibly have amended their agreement and avoided the lawsuit altogether. But, like Swift, she was ignored.

Swift famously writes her own music, often from her own experiences. Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine, claims that she had the opportunity to own her masters, but, from both his account and Swift’s, the offer was contingent upon her staying with the company. Seeing as doing business with his company was what landed her in this situation, she was not willing to accept this condition, nor did she later accept Braun’s offer to buy back her music, a deal from which Braun would have profited and which came with its own condition: an NDA.

Her claim that Braun’s deal “stripped [her] of [her] life’s work” ignited a highly publicized feud not just between Swift and Braun but between their friends, loyalists, and supporters. Swift’s team shared her stance on artists’ rights while Braun’s defended his nice guy image. Braun himself didn’t comment, instead allowing his allies to take shots at the singer. His wife, Yael Cohen Braun, in an Instagram post referred to Swift as a “bully” and to her claim as a “temper tantrum,” telling her, “the world has watched you collect and drop friends like wilted flowers.” Justin Bieber, a client of Braun’s, suggested Swift's intention when expressing her disgust over the deal was “to get sympathy.”

Even after selling her masters to a private equity firm for $300 million in November 2020, Braun continues to profit off every CD and every stream of every song from every one of the six studio albums Swift recorded while she was signed with Big Machine, an agreement she first entered into at age 15.

Where Johansson is clearly in the right legally, Swift is morally right. Borshetta and Braun were under no legal obligation to sell her the rights to the songs she wrote and created, but they should have.

Both Swift and Johansson have incited high profile disputes, and both have been called by critics the “wrong person” to serve as the figurehead for the big picture arguments based on how much money they make. Two multi-millionaires are hardly the best representatives of the little guy trying to make it in the entertainment industry. It’s no skin off either of their noses if they don’t revolutionize the way artists and actors are paid.

Actually, it makes them the best voices for their causes. The millions of dollars at stake in each of their deals, while massive amounts to the average onlooker, would be a drop in the bucket of their wealth. Yes, they both have huge platforms and established fanbases they can use to garner support, but the fact that they have no skin in the game is their real strength. They don’t need the money, which proves they’re not doing it for themselves.

Disney is trying to hide behind the pandemic to defend its decision to release Black Widow on Disney+, but the issue was present even before the pandemic started, evident in Johansson’s agreement that the film have an exclusively theatrical release. Her suit claims she insisted upon this contingency when the streaming service was launched.

Streaming changed the game. Johansson is likely not the only one to have lost out on media companies’ failure to compensate talent fairly in the wake of the streaming evolution, but she is the first to draw the amount of attention to it that she has. Her claim opens the eyes of fellow actors, film distributors, and the public to an issue that extends beyond her: if the film industry is capable of adapting their content to this new source of distribution, then they can accommodate the role of actors into the changing environment and pay them, and other individuals who make their films possible, what they’re owed.

Record companies can stand to shake things up, too. Contracts that grant an artist’s masters to the labels that produce their music, such as the one Swift signed with Big Machine in 2004, are the norm in the music industry. Hers is far from the first battle to be fought by artists over the rights to their own music. There was the famous Paul McCartney v. Prince debacle in the 1980s, for example. In most cases, revenue is doled out to the label, the producers, the managers, and, last and least, the artists. It’s a system that assumes the performers are just lucky to be there, to have the opportunity to become the next Taylor Swift.

But streaming isn’t just for the movies—it’s changing the music game, too. Artists used to be entirely dependent on record companies to promote their music and get it into the hands of radio stations, but streaming sites and social media have allowed artists to release music independently. Working with a record company is still highly advantageous to an up-and-coming artist, but the other options available to them leave some breathing room for an artist to negotiate and retain the rights to their own music.

So, will wins for Swift and Johansson mean making two rich people richer? Yes. But it also starts a conversation. It gets the word out to young artists and actors that they should expect more from the publishers and executives they work with. And it sends a message to CEOs and big corporations: change with the times.

Since leaving Big Machine, Swift has signed with Universal Music Publishing Group in an agreement that guarantees her the rights to the music she creates with them, from Lover on. She is also in the process of re-recording her first six albums, an endeavor that began with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April and will continue with the scheduled release of Red (Taylor’s Version) in November.

“Hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation,” Swift wrote in a post. “You deserve to own the art you make.”

#opinion #entertainment #business #feature

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disillusioned41 · 4 years

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As the nearly $2 trillion congressional stimulus package comes into clearer focus, one of the most controversial components remains the corporate bailout package (which, as has been noted in the Prospect, is massive). In the days and weeks leading up to the bill’s final draft, a number of industries have been floated—by themselves or by the Trump administration—as worthy bailout recipients, due to the challenging economic conditions of coronavirus-induced shutdown. Among those listed: the airline industry, Boeing, the cruise lines, the fossil fuel companies, and more.

What do these industries have in common? They operate in far-flung corners of the economy, some consumer-facing, some not so much. Some are represented by veritable armies of lobbyists, others seem to just be near and dear to the Trump administration’s heart. But one thing that they all share is a pioneering commitment to federal income tax evasion. All of the industries listed are among the country’s most decorated exploiters of tax loopholes, offshoring, and public subsidies. In healthy economic times, they contribute almost nothing in tax revenue; now, in crisis, they’re poised to be some of the biggest recipients of public funding.

Let’s start with the airlines, which are poised to receive the lion’s share of a $75 billion fund earmarked for “businesses critical to national security.” How much have the airlines contributed to the public sector in recent years, during a time of record-shattering profits? In the two full years since enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the seven largest U.S. carriers reported $30 billion of pretax income. On that haul, they paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 2.3 percent. According to Matthew Gardner at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, that rate is actually inflated by Southwest Airlines, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of the income taxes paid by this group. “The other six—Delta, American, United, Alaska Airlines, Spirit and Jetblue—paid effective rates in the single digits or negative during this two-year period,” he wrote in early March. Delta, JetBlue, and Alaska all paid an effective federal tax rate of zero or less in 2018.

That’s because of their widespread use of tax deferral, a generous provision in the Trump tax code. These companies have been using depreciation-related tax breaks to defer nearly all income taxes for the past two years. Every time they purchase a new plane to replace a sidelined one, the depreciation machine restarts. This minimizes tax contribution while juicing airline industry profits to help make the stock price look more appealing to investors. And if that wasn’t enough, to buy back their own stock, on which they’ve spent 96 percent of free cash flow during the past ten years.

Boeing, meanwhile, was paying single-digit federal tax rates even before the Trump tax cuts came along. Over the ten years prior to the Trump administration’s 2017 cut to the corporate tax rate, a time when corporations were levied at 35 percent, Boeing paid an effective federal tax rate of 8.4 percent on $54.7 billion of U.S. profits. Often, the company has paid negative income tax rates. To top things off, it took home an extra $1.1 billion after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passage.

That doesn’t even account for Boeing’s wealth of public contracts—$23.4 billion in government contracts in 2017, and multiple multibillion-dollar contracts in 2018 from the Department of Defense. Nor does it account for Boeing’s staggering use of state and local tax breaks, good for $14 billion, according to Good Jobs First. That group’s subsidy tracker also identified $70 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance: That’s before this most recent congressional bailout package. The stock price, accordingly, has surged during the past two days.

Cruise lines, meanwhile, have made effective use of offshoring to whittle their tax contributions down to nothing. Though they seem like American companies, are all traded on the New York Stock Exchange, and fully expect the American federal government to cut them a check, none of those companies are actually registered in the United States. Carnival Corporation is incorporated in Panama; Norwegian Cruise Line is incorporated in Bermuda; and Royal Caribbean is incorporated in Liberia, while their ships fly flags of various foreign countries. That right there accounts for 70 percent of the global cruise ship market.

These companies gleefully exploit an IRS provision that says that income earned via the international operation of a ship by a corporation set up in a foreign country is tax-exempt. That allows them, too, to pay negative income tax rates: In 2019, Carnival and Norwegian both reported that they received more in refunds or deductions than they paid or set aside for taxes. Royal Caribbean, meanwhile, told its shareholders its total income tax expense for 2019 was $32.6 million, on a total income of $1.9 billion. That’s 1.7 percent. And that’s to say nothing of their track record on labor (horrible) and environmental issues (also horrible).

Finally, the fossil fuel companies. Like Boeing, the fossil fuel industry has long enjoyed massive federal subsidies and tax breaks, made expert use of depreciation-driven tax deferrals, and paid next to nothing in federal income taxes. In 2018, Chevron paid an effective federal tax rate of zero; so too did EOG Resources (formerly known as Enron Oil and Gas). Ditto Halliburton, Kinder Morgan, Devon Energy, and more. Even before the Trump tax cut, from 2009 to 2013, the 20 largest oil and gas companies deferred payments on up to half of their federal income taxes, resulting in them paying a rate of just 11.7 percent on their pretax income. Meanwhile, ExxonMobil has enjoyed almost $4 billion in federal loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance.

The Trump tax cut kicked this long-standing trend into overdrive, resulting in 91 profitable Fortune 500 firms paying $0 in federal income taxes in 2018. Many of these same companies will travel hat in hand back to the government, who will move mountains to find money to deal with a near-term crisis.

So after years, or decades, of salting away record profits, or clamoring for lower and lower tax rates and funneling money to shareholders, the country’s largest corporations are threatening to shut down if the federal government doesn’t show them a bit of generosity. They were happy to reap federal contracts, enjoy federal subsidies, and rack up federal bailouts, taking out public money at every opportunity, all in the name of private profits. But they continue to have no interest in contributing money back into the public coffers, in good times or bad. Their belief in the value of the state, and the public purse, extends only to when they need it to balance out their books.

Of course, the bailouts could easily stipulate an end to these sorts of practices. In fact, they could mandate that recipients onshore their operations, or end any number of evasive practices. But there’s been little indication that that will be part of the package. And as programs like TARP, a signature component of the 2008 bailout package, taught us, without strict enforcement, loopholes will continue to be sought. For America’s largest and most profitable corporations, public money will continue to be viewed as a one-way street.

#SLUDGE #Alexander Sammon #us politics #covid-19 #coronvirus #corporate bailout #bailout #economics #economy #taxes

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ruminativerabbi · 5 years

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Sri Lanka, Paris

Passover and Easter are unrelated festivals that derive from different traditions, but that’s not how it seems to many in the Christian world. That most of the world calls Easter by a name related to Pesach (cf. French “Pâques” or Danish “Påske”) is part of it. As surely also is the assumption, widely believed yet almost definitely not historically correct, that the Last Supper described in the Gospels was a Passover seder or some version of a seder. (For an exhaustive consideration of every aspect of that issue, which apparently remains a delicate one even today in some circles, click here.) Even the use of the word “passion” to describe the suffering of Jesus provided some fuel for this particular fire, at least in antiquity, since the Greek word for “to suffer,” pascho, is phonically almost identical to Pascha, the name for Passover in the spoken Aramaic of ancient Jewish times.

Given the proximity of the festivals this year and in light of the above, I would like to write this week specifically about two events that have befallen the Christian world just recently and explain how they appear to someone reading the news through Jewish eyeglasses.

First, Sri Lanka. The numbers keep rising. First, “more than 100” dead, then “more than 200,” now, as I write on Wednesday, a minimal figure of 321—minimal in the sense that many of those hurt in the explosions—more than 500 in their own right—are not expected to survive and only haven’t succumbed to their wounds yet. It’s far away. It’s not a country Americans think of daily. No one on the radio, including the BBC World Service, seems to know whether the first word in the country’s name is pronounced “shree,” or “sree.” (In all fairness to the Brits, when they seized the place and unilaterally made it part of their empire, they called it Ceylon, which name everybody knew how to pronounce.) And yet…the sense of familiarity and shared humanity that incidents like this bring in their terrible wake seemed to overwhelm the rest of the details. Most Americans, I’m sure, couldn’t even say easily what language they speak in Sri Lanka or what the capital city is, let alone whether a majority of the citizens are Buddhist, Hindu, or something else entirely. Indeed, it felt at first like a terribly bad thing that had happened to other people. But then, just as the extent of the carnage was becoming known came the even more startling detail that the attacks on the three churches and four hotels were apparently planned as a kind of response to the assault on the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the course of which fifty Muslim worshipers were murdered. And with that single detail everything changed.

The single ideational concept that justifies terrorism in the mind of the terrorist is the ultimate fungibility of human life. Since I’ve been dealing in SAT words these last few weeks, I’ll add another: fungibility is the principle according to which things are deemed solely to have ascribed, not intrinsic, value. Paper money is the easiest example to seize: if I lend you five dollars on Monday and you come back on Tuesday to return the five dollars to me, I can’t sue you in court because the five-dollar bill you returned to me is not the same five-dollar bill I lent to you. But this is not so because it would make no sense to borrow money you were not planning to spend. It’s true because money in our culture is deemed fully fungible and, as a result, the paper bills we use as currency are supposed to have as their sole value the sum they represent, the sum ascribed to them by law. As a result every single five-dollar bill is deemed the equivalent of every other one and you can’t complain if you deposit a fiver in the bank one day and then receive a different bill from the bank the next day when you show up to withdraw your money.

This principle also applies to the eggs you borrow from a neighbor or the cup of sugar, but ethical people would never apply it to human life. To justify terror, however, is to do exactly that and willingly to ignore the fact that none of those people in church on Easter morning in Sri Lanka was responsible for the massacre in New Zealand and thus to feel justified in opening fire because you consider Christians to be as fungible as five-dollar bills and the shooter in Christchurch was presumed at least in some sense to have been a Christian. And that underlying notion makes it a humanitarian issue, not a Sri Lankan one or even a Christian one. This perverse line of logic is not unknown to Americans and it is certainly not unknown to Israelis: when someone is irritated by some or another Israeli policy and chooses to express that pique by blowing up a discotheque despite the fact that none of the young people on the dance floor was responsible for the policy in question—that too is an example of treating human life fungibly.

As a result, attempting to wave away events like this weekend’s horror in Sri Lanka as nothing more than the violent crime of an insane person is to miss the point: if the government is right to consider credible the statement by the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency tying the Sri Lankan bombings to the shooting in Christchurch, then the principled effort to eradicate terrorist groups and to banish their nation-state sponsors from the forum of nations is not only a practical response, but a deeply moral one. There are, of course, crazy people in the world who do crazy things. We Americans have had lots of examples of that in these last several decades! But terror is not craziness at all: by resting on the ideational foundation that considers all human life truly to be fungible and thus devoid of intrinsic value, terrorism comes to represent the ultimate devaluation of God’s greatest gift. As we approach the end of Passover and prepare to commemorate the destruction of Pharaoh’s armies in the sea, we should all take a moment to reflect on a deep, if unsettling, scriptural truth: violence undertaken to dominate or to oppress is wrong and fully sinful, but acting forcefully to combat evil is both ethically justifiable and, speaking morally, wholly right. Americans know this. Israelis certainly know it and so do New Zealanders. And now Sri Lankans have had the same lesson brutally brought to their own doorstep.

I brought a whole different set of emotions to my contemplation of the fire that destroyed such a significant part of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. It is, arguably, one of the most stunning pieces of Gothic architecture in the world and is surely one of the world’s truly great cathedrals. It took a hundred years to build. (Work was undertaken in 1160, but the project only drew to its conclusion a full century later in 1260.) There’s no reason for that specific detail to confound—work on St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue began in 1892 and the project still isn’t anywhere near finished—yet it somehow feels challenging nevertheless to think of a project spanning that much time and involving that many people. And all of it happening so long ago, and in an age without power tools, bulldozers, or electricity! For Jewish onlookers, on the other hand, the cathedral shimmers in a slightly different light.

For the Jews of France, the twelfth century was a terrible time. When work on the cathedral was still in its third decade, King Philip II expelled the Jews of France from his territory, apparently without the slightest interest in knowing or caring where they went once they left. When work on the cathedral was about halfway done, a council convened by Pope Innocent III—called the Third Lateran Council because it met at Rome’s Lateran Palace—disqualified Jews across Europe from holding public office, required Jews (and Muslims too) to wear distinctive dress so that they could not be mistaken in the street for Christians, and banned Jews from almost every profitable profession except pawnbroking and the sale of old clothes. But it wasn’t solely their economic lives that were under attack, but their intellectual lives as well: on March 3, 1240, when Notre Dame was a mere twenty years away from completion, church officials burst into synagogues across France—March 3 was a Shabbat in 1240—and carted off entire Jewish libraries. Eventually the king of France, Louis IX—who is recognized as a saint both in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and who is the St. Louis after whom the city in Missouri is named—insisted that the Talmud itself be put on trial. The ancient work was defended by a quartet of able rabbis, but the verdict was a foregone conclusion and then, on a day that lives on in infamy as one of the pre-Shoah world’s most outrageous acts of violent anti-Semitism, twenty-four cartloads of books—some 10,000 volumes, including irreplaceable works that would be considered of inestimable value today—all twenty-four cartloads of books were burnt in public on the Place de Grève, now called the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, just across the river from…Notre Dame de Paris.

Notre Dame itself features one of the most hateful of all anti-Semitic symbols on its front façade, where are depicted Synagoga and Ecclesia (“Church”) as a pair of very different women, the one (Synagoga, of course) dressed in rags, a snake covering her eyes, a broken scepter in her hand, and the tablets of the law slipping from her grasp, and the other, Ecclesia, depicted as a proud, attractive woman standing fully erect while carrying a wine chalice in one hand and a staff with a cross at its top in the other. The insult couldn’t be more clearly put. Nor has it lost its punch over the centuries: even though the statues were destroyed during the Revolution, they were both were restored and replaced during the nineteenth century. They’re still there too, inviting any eagle-eyed visitor to learn the lesson they were set in place to teach: that Judaism is defunct, dead, and disgraced, whereas Christianity is triumphantly and gloriously dominant.

So when I look at Notre Dame and feel the same pang of regret all civilized people surely do when a world-class work of architecture is damaged, I also recall the world that gave birth to Notre Dame and its harshness, its cruelty, its violence and its deeply engrained prejudice against Jews and against Judaism. And I think of poor Synagoga as well, and wonder what she would have to say if she were somehow able to shove the serpent aside and open her stony eyes onto the world. Would the fact that she’s still on display all these centuries later surprise her? And what would she have to say to the thirteen million visitors who walk by her on their way into France’s most famous cathedral? Would the resurgence of anti-Semitism in France surprise her? Would the existence of an independent Israel? Would anything? Those are the questions that the fire at Notre Dame prompts me to ponder on these coming final days of Pesach.

#Notre Dame de Paris #Sri Lanka #Christchurch #Synagoga et Ecclesia

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jhollemans · 5 years

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Insider Trading

Its hilarious that this is our topic this week for our blog, as recently my family and I have been discussing the case of Stewart and the insider trading fiasco. I’ve never really paid that close of attention to things in the media growing up. Of course bad things tend to happen and some times they strike you when you least expect them too. Then there are the other sorts of times where you’ve done wrong, and must go to jail for the crimes that have been committed.

Before I even reach the ending where I comment on the author’s stance on insider trading, I believe this is just as bad as cheating off your partner in course work. Or going behind the teachers back and snagging a answer key to the mid term that will be tested over next week. Bad morally and would make me sick to my stomach to be that heavily invested in being great without trying to put in the work to actually be great in my career, or my education.

Insider trading?

Insider trading is actually: “Insider trading is, at its core, profiting on nonpublic information by trading a company’s stock before the news investors need becomes public” (Malito, Mckenna, par.5, 2019). Something that I think applies to lots of other people in regards to life than just business executives, is not to be greedy. In many of the cases in insider trading an individual or group become so overwhelmed with money greed that they forget that there is sets of rules and regulations that they indeed need to follow. Some basic rules that are given out to stay away from insider trading is, first if you find some juicy non public information on a listed company, don't try and buy that stock. Also it’d be smart not to try and pass the information along to anyone else either.

“To be accused of insider trading, you must usually be someone who has a fiduciary duty to another person, institution, corporation, partnership, firm, or entity” (Kennon, par.10, 2019). This is where it was a problem for the likes of stewart, as she was involved and was hit with the insider trading. I view this as sort of gossiping, and gossiping about business happenings usually isn’t the best of news. So steering clear of that would be beneficial if one likes their career, and livelihood for that matter. Everyone thinks that they’re slick in the information of non public happenings, and think that the word will never get back to them, and continuously gab to other business people. Then they’re hooked, and on the line for insider trading.

Catching Insider Trading

The SEC is getting much better at spotting transactions that look like they might be insider trading, with the help of regulatory partners like FINRA and the stock exchanges. “Software can track the purchases and sales of stocks, especially if large numbers of shares are traded before major company announcements” (2019). For example, in 2017, gambler William Walters was sentenced to five years in prison for trading on information obtained from former Dean Food chairman Thomas Davis. That case was relatively easy to prove, lawyers said at the time, because Walters made a series of large, very successful trades, which set off alarm bells at the SEC. I think of the movie “21″ when I think of insider trading, you don't want the pit boss to be looking at your table, and the SEC in this case is the pit boss. Walters making those huge trades had to of been huge red flags, in which one would believe that would be smart enough not to operating their trades that nonchalantly.

Recent article?

In this recent article on the stance of making insider trading legal, makes me think that the title of any article arguing to legalize it should read: “Be better at cheating than us!”. Its just crazy that one can argue that insider trading should be legalized for wrongdoing. However thats neither here nor there. “Although insider trading is illegal and widely condemned, a stubborn minority still defends it as an efficient method of compensating executives and spurring innovation” (Dent, pg.248, 2013).

My question to anyone that thinks that insider trading should be something that is legal in the business world. Would you like coming to work each day wondering who is a dirtier “player” than you and has more information on non public happenings?

References

Kennon, J. (2019, May). What Is Insider Trading and Why Is It Illegal?. In the balance.com.

Malito, A., & Mckenna, F. (2019, February). What exactly is insider trading—and how do you avoid it?. In market watch.com.

Dent, G. W. (2013). Why Legalized Insider Trading Would Be a Disaster.

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meeedeee · 5 years

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Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

As social media platforms enter their collective adolescence – Facebook is fifteen, YouTube fourteen, Twitter thirteen, tumblr twelve – I find myself thinking about how little we really understand their cultural implications, both ongoing and for the future. At this point, the idea that being online is completely optional in modern world ought to be absurd, and yet multiple friends, having spoken to their therapists about the impact of digital abuse on their mental health, were told straight up to just stop using the internet. Even if this was a viable option for some, the idea that we can neatly sidestep the problem of bad behaviour in any non-utilitarian sphere by telling those impacted to simply quit is baffling at best and a tacit form of victim-blaming at worst. The internet might be a liminal space, but object permanence still applies to what happens here: the trolls don’t vanish if we close our eyes, and if we vanquish one digital hydra-domain for Toxicity Crimes without caring to fathom the whys and hows of what went wrong, we merely ensure that three more will spring up in its place.

Is the internet a private space, a government space or a public space? Yes.

Is it corporate, communal or unaffiliated? Yes.

Is it truly global or bound by local legal jurisdictions? Yes.

Does the internet reflect our culture or create it? Yes.

Is what people say on the internet reflective of their true beliefs, or is it a constant shell-game of digital personas, marketing ploys, intrusive thoughts, growth-in-progress, personal speculation and fictional exploration? Yes.

The problem with the internet is that takes up all three areas on a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between speech and action, and while this has always been the case, we’re only now admitting that it’s a bug as well as a feature. Human interaction cannot be usefully monitored using an algorithm, but our current conception of What The Internet Is has been engineered specifically to shortcut existing forms of human oversight, the better to maximise both accessibility (good to neutral) and profits (neutral to bad). Uber and Lyft are cheaper, frequently more convenient alternatives to a traditional taxi service, for instance, but that’s because the apps themselves are functionally predicated on the removal of meaningful customer service and worker protections that were hard-won elsewhere. Sites like tumblr are free to use, but the lack of revenue generated by those users means that, past a certain point, profits can only hope to outstrip expenses by selling access to those users and/or their account data, which means in turn that paying to effectively monitor their content creation becomes vastly less important than monetising it.

Small wonder, then, that individual users of social media platforms have learned to place a high premium on their ability to curate what they see, how they see it, and who sees them in turn. When I first started blogging, the largely unwritten rule of the blogsphere was that, while particular webforums dedicated to specific topics could have rules about content and conduct, blogs and their comment pages should be kept Free. Monitoring comments was viewed as a sign of narrow-minded fearfulness: even if a participant was aggressive or abusive, the enlightened path was to let them speak, because anything else was Censorship. This position held out for a good long while, until the collective frustration of everyone who’d been graphically threatened with rape, torture and death, bombarded with slurs, exhausted by sealioning or simply fed up with nitpicking and bad faith arguments finally boiled over.

Particularly in progressive circles, the relief people felt at being told that actually, we were under no moral obligation to let assholes grandstand in the comments or repeatedly explain basic concepts to only theoretically invested strangers was overwhelming. Instead, you could simply delete them, or block them, or maybe even mock them, if the offence or initial point of ignorance seemed silly enough. But as with the previous system, this one-size-fits-all approach soon developed a downside. Thanks to the burnout so many of us felt after literal years of trying to treat patiently with trolls playing Devil’s Advocate, liberal internet culture shifted sharply towards immediate shows of anger, derision and flippancy to anyone who asked a 101 question, or who didn’t use the right language, or who did anything other than immediately agree with whatever position was explained to them, however simply.

I don’t exempt myself from this criticism, but knowing why I was so goddamn tired doesn’t change my conviction that, cumulatively, the end result did more harm than good. Without wanting to sidetrack into a lengthy dissertation on digital activism in the post-aughties decade, it seems evident in hindsight that the then-fledgling alliance between trolls, MRAs, PUAs, Redditors and 4channers to deliberately exhaust left-wing goodwill via sealioning and bad faith arguments was only the first part of a two-pronged attack. The second part, when the left had lost all patience with explaining its own beliefs and was snappily telling anyone who asked about feminism, racism or anything else to just fucking Google it, was to swoop in and persuade the rebuffed party that we were all irrational, screeching harridans who didn’t want to answer because we knew our answers were bad, and why not consider reading Roosh V instead?

The fallout of this period, I would argue, is still ongoing. In an ideal world, drawing a link between online culture wars about ownership of SFF and geekdom and the rise of far-right fascist, xenophobic extremism should be a bow so long that not even Odysseus himself could draw it. But this world, as we’ve all had frequent cause to notice, is far from ideal at the best of times – which these are not – and yet another featurebug of the internet is the fluid interpermeability of its various spaces. We talk, for instance – as I am talking here – about social media as a discreet concept, as though platforms like Twitter or Facebook are functionally separate from the other sites to which their users link; as though there is no relationship between or bleed-through from the viral Facebook post screencapped and shared on BuzzFeed, which is then linked and commented upon on Reddit, which thread is then linked to on Twitter, where an entirely new conversation emerges and subsequently spawns an article in The Huffington Post, which is shared again on Facebook and the replies to that shared on tumblr, and so on like some grizzly perpetual mention machine.

But I digress. The point here is that internet culture is best understood as a pattern of ripples, each new iteration a reaction to the previous one, spreading out until it dissipates and a new shape takes its place. Having learned that slamming the virtual door in everyone’s face was a bad idea, the online left tried establishing a better, calmer means of communication; the flipside was a sudden increase in tone-policing, conversations in which presentation was vaunted over substance and where, once again, particular groups were singled out as needing to conform to the comfort-levels of others. Overlapping with this was the move towards discussing things as being problematic, rather than using more fixed and strident language to decry particular faults – an attempt to acknowledge the inherent fallibility of human works while still allowing for criticism. A sensible goal, surely, but once again, attempting to apply the dictum universally proved a double-edged sword: if everything is problematic, then how to distinguish grave offences from trifling ones? How can anyone enjoy anything if we’re always expected to thumb the rosary of its failings first?

When everything is problematic and everyone has the right to say so, being online as any sort of creator or celebrity is like being nibbled to death by ducks. The well-meaning promise of various organisations, public figures or storytellers to take criticism on board – to listen to the fanbase and do right by their desires – was always going to stumble over the problem of differing tastes. No group is a hivemind: what one person considers bad representation or in poor taste, another might find enlightening, while yet a third party is more concerned with something else entirely. Even in cases with a clear majority opinion, it’s physically impossible to please everyone and a type of folly to try, but that has yet to stop the collective internet from demanding it be so. Out of this comes a new type of ironic frustration: having once rejoiced in being allowed to simply block trolls or timewasters, we now cast judgement on those who block us in turn, viewing them, as we once were viewed, as being fearful of criticism.

Are we creating echo chambers by curating what we see online, or are we acting in pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that we neither have time to read everything nor an obligation to see all perspectives as equally valid? Yes.

Even if we did have the time and ability to wade through everything, is the signal-to-noise ratio of truth to lies on the internet beyond our individual ability to successfully measure, such that outsourcing some of our judgement to trusted sources is fundamentally necessary, or should we be expected to think critically about everything we encounter, even if it’s only intended as entertainment? Yes.

If something or someone online acts in a way that’s antithetical to our values, are we allowed to tune them out thereafter, knowing full well that there’s a nearly infinite supply of as-yet undisappointing content and content-creators waiting to take their place, or are we obliged to acknowledge that Doing A Bad doesn’t necessarily ruin a person forever? Yes.

And thus we come to cancel culture, the current – but by no means final – culmination of previous internet discourse waves. In this iteration, burnout at critical engagement dovetails with a new emphasis on collective content curation courtesies (try saying that six times fast), but ends up hamstrung once again by differences in taste. Or, to put it another way: someone fucks up and it’s the last straw for us personally, so we try to remove them from our timelines altogether – but unless our friends and mutuals, who we still want to engage with, are convinced to do likewise, then we haven’t really removed them at all, such that we’re now potentially willing to make failure to cancel on demand itself a cancellable offence.

Which brings us right back around to the problem of how the modern internet is fundamentally structured – which is to say, the way in which it’s overwhelmingly meant to rely on individual curation instead of collective moderation. Because the one thing each successive mode of social media discourse has in common with its predecessors is a central, and currently unanswerable question: what universal code of conduct exists that I, an individual on the internet, can adhere to – and expect others to adhere to – while we communicate across multiple different platforms?

In the real world, we understand about social behavioural norms: even if we don’t talk about them in those terms, we broadly recognise them when we see them. Of course, we also understand that those norms can vary from place to place and context to context, but as we can only ever be in one physical place at a time, it’s comparatively easy to adjust as appropriate.

But the internet, as stated, is a liminal space: it’s real and virtual, myriad and singular, private and public all at once. It confuses our sense of which rules might apply under which circumstances, jumbles the normal behavioural cues by obscuring the identity of our interlocutors, and even though we don’t acknowledge it nearly as often as we should, written communication – like spoken communication – is a skill that not everyone has, just as tone, whether spoken or written, isn’t always received (or executed, for that matter) in the way it was intended. And when it comes to politics, in which the internet and its doings now plays no small role, there’s the continual frustration that comes from observing, with more and more frequency, how many literal, real-world crimes and abuses go without punishment, and how that lack of consequences contributes in turn to the fostering of abuse and hostility towards vulnerable groups online.

This is what comes of occupying a transitional period in history: one in which laws are changed and proposed to reflect our changing awareness of the world, but where habit, custom, ignorance, bias and malice still routinely combine, both institutionally and more generally, to see those laws enacted only in part, or tokenistically, or not at all. To take one of the most egregious and well-publicised instances that ultimately presaged the #MeToo movement, the laughably meagre sentence handed down to Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman, combined with the emphasis placed by both the judge and much of the media coverage on his swimming talents and family standing as a means of exonerating him, made it very clear that sexual violence against women is frequently held to be less important than the perceived ‘bright futures’ of its perpetrators.

Knowing this, then – knowing that the story was spread, discussed and argued about on social media, along with thousands of other, similar accounts; knowing that, even in this context, some people still freely spoke up in defence of rapists and issued misogynistic threats against their female interlocutors – is it any wonder that, in the absence of consistent legal justice in such cases, the internet tried, and is still trying, to fill the gap? Is it any wonder, when instances of racist police brutality are constantly filmed and posted online, only for the perpetrators to receive no discipline, that we lose patience for anyone who wants to debate the semantics of when, exactly, extrajudicial murder is “acceptable”?

We cannot control the brutality of the world from the safety of our keyboards, but when it exhausts or threatens us, we can at least click a button to mute its seeming adherents. We don’t always have the energy to decry the same person we’ve already argued against a thousand times before, but when a friend unthinkingly puts them back on our timeline for some new reason, we can tell them that person is cancelled and hope they take the hint not to do it again. Never mind that there is far too often no subtlety, no sense of scale or proportion to how the collective, viral internet reacts in each instance, until all outrage is rendered flat and the outside observer could be forgiven for worrying what’s gone wrong with us all, that using a homophobic trope in a TV show is thought to merit the same online response as an actual hate crime. So long as the war is waged with words alone, there’s only a finite number of outcomes that boycotting, blocking, blacklisting, cancelling, complaining and critiquing can achieve, and while some of those outcomes in particular are well worth fighting for, so many words are poured towards so many attempts that it’s easy to feel numbed to the process; or, conversely, easy to think that one response fits all contexts.

I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

The thing about participating in internet discourse is, it’s like playing Civilisation in real-time, only it’s not a game and the world keeps progressing even when you log off. Things change so fast on the internet – memes, etiquette, slang, dominant opinions – and yet the changes spread so organically and so fast that we frequently adapt without keeping conscious track of when and why they shifted. Social media is like the Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never meaningfully leave – not when world leaders are still threatening nuclear war on Twitter, or when Facebook is using friendly memes to test facial recognition software, or when corporate accounts are creating multi-staffed humansonas to engage with artists on tumblr, or when YouTube algorithms are accidentally-on-purpose steering kids towards white nationalist propaganda because it makes them more money.

Of course we try and curate our time online into something finite, comprehensible, familiar, safe: the alternative is to embrace the near-infinite, incomprehensible, alien, dangerous gallimaufry of our fractured global mindscape. Of course we want to try and be critical, rational, moral in our convictions and choices; it’s just that we’re also tired and scared and everyone who wants to argue with us about anything can, even if they’re wrong and angry and also our relative, or else a complete stranger, and sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and enjoy a thing without thinking about it, or give yourself some respite, or exercise a tiny bit of autonomy in the only way you can.

It’s human nature to want to be the most amount of right for the least amount of effort, but unthinkingly taking our moral cues from internet culture the same way we’re accustomed to doing in offline contexts doesn’t work: digital culture shifts too fast and too asymmetrically to be relied on moment to moment as anything like a universal touchstone. Either you end up preaching to the choir, or you run a high risk of aggravation, not necessarily due to any fundamental ideological divide, but because your interlocutor is leaning on a different, false-universal jargon overlying alternate 101 and 201 concepts to the ones you’re using, and modern social media platforms – in what is perhaps the greatest irony of all – are uniquely poorly suited to coherent debate.

Purity wars in fandom, arguments about diversity in narrative and whether its proponents have crossed the line from criticism into bullying: these types of arguments are cyclical now, dying out and rekindling with each new wave of discourse. We might not yet be in a position to stop it, but I have some hope that being aware of it can mitigate the worst of the damage, if only because I’m loathe to watch yet another fandom steadily talk itself into hating its own core media for the sake of literal argument.

For all its flaws – and with all its potential – the internet is here to stay. Here’s hoping we figure out how to fix it before its ugliest aspects make us give up on ourselves.

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donnnoir · 5 years

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Austin, Texas June 15, 2019

Well on to the crux of the argument; at least by installments….

Or so it seems, now if I can spew this out on a more regular basis we will be getting somewhere. Now as previous noted I suspect rather than a purely chronological order that I will be bouncing around quite a bit. Because no matter how I would try I would no doubt have to constantly go back and amend any attempt at some birth to present presentation. Besides I am not sure I could make such an endeavor worthy of you the reader’s time. Overall I consider the majority of Life to be boring to mundane at best; into which are punctuated moments and or events that go far beyond the pale of what could possibly be part of the norm of a conservative Life. Understanding your time is immensely valuable let us begin….

Over the years whenever I have attempted to share some of the uniqueness of the events and the accompanying knowledge associated there to. Since for a long time within Popular Culture we enjoyed and endured the TV series “The X-files”. Seeking context and relevance to our social experience, I have asked many a person if they were familiar with the series and if so. I am sure you have noticed the poster above Mulder’s desk in the basement of the FBI’s headquarters. The poster with a flying saucer between some trees. The caption on the poster reads “I want to Believe”. Because of the popularity of the series this poster and that statement have become almost Iconic. Well as a matter of fact a good friend of mine took that photograph. His name was Paul Villa. I meet and knew him while he lived in New Mexico, in a little town south of Albuquerque. He was a very genuine sort of individual, the kind of man that the statement “salt of the Earth” could be sincerely applied. Her earn his daily bread as a fabricator or if you prefer as a wielder. Back in those days, this was in the ‘70’s, within the supposed community of the UFO Phenomena were individuals who were known as contactees. Unlike the group commonly referred to as abductees, these persons via one means or another were contacted, approached and either as part of a short period of association or as part of an ongoing relationship would be involved in a dialogue or variety of ongoing communications with beings not associated with the human population on the surface of the Earth. Paul was one such individual. During those years I was fortunate enough to have met several such persons. Most were if nothing else true believers; a few struck me as being at best misguided to being charlatans. But of all these individuals Paul was the most genuine and sincere, a man of character. He never tried to make a profit from his experiences nor did he ever feel comfortable being the center of attention. The particular photograph used in the poster is actually one of a group or series of photographs taken at that location and time frame. As memory severs me it is one of the group of like a dozen to twenty pictures of that particular flying saucer at that time and location. Paul never copyrighted any of his pictures, or anything else in association with this association with these visitors. As a consequence many of his pictures have been used in movies and books by others. Paul, himself would have condoned and appreciated the dissemination of these. If you had ever run into him as he was picking up his photographs from the developer; and had asked for a copy of the pictures. He would gladly do so for the price that the developer charged him for copies. He often said that this “friends”, those that visited him in their flying saucers wanted him to more openly show the pictures and discuss the elements of what he and them discussed.

Recently I YouTubed Paul’s name and lo and behold if there weren’t more than a couple video spots giving a brief discussion about my friend. In all honesty I only viewed two of these, an although they do a fairly good job of offering to the public a view of Paul that is objective and honest. I do take exception to the volume of material they cite him as having had. I recall on my visits that he had substantially more than the narrators of either video gave him credit. As to photo-albums containing pictures of various flying saucers, space ships, observation vehicles, sampling drones, alien landscapes, phenomena, living dinosaurs and much much more these numbered in the hundreds of albums packed full of various pictures devoted to this hobby, shall we say. Now in immediate approximate association to these were voluminous numbers of spiral notebooks. Hahahah….. why spiral notebooks? Well it should be quite obvious actually, in his dialogues with the different and varying persons from elsewhere. How does one accomplish such a feat. The new age crowd would have us all believe that some light or telepathic communication from the “superior” being would provide the solution. According to Paul the affair was much more mundane than all that hype. Yes, some could simply talk in a language he understood. However, since among themselves speech is unnecessary, their mouths are used for other things. The process of speaking was difficult for the vast majority. Yet wishing to dialogue; the concept of writing is not limited to the constraints of physical aptitude of the one. It is easy enough to learn the symbols or if you prefer pictography necessary to carry on a intelligent conversation, or as intelligent as could be presumed. Now, I meet Paul in 1973, I was thirteen years old. Yes I was a precocious young man, however. My introduction to Paul was facilitated by Bill Miller my friend and employer under whom I was apprenticing as a silversmith. Bill had for some time been Paul’s friend. So I enjoyed the benefits of their association. It also afforded me the opportunity to peruse the large library of spiral notebooks and a few of the other artifacts Paul had on open display in his living room. I should also note here that I was acquainted with the fact that Paul would limit access to his hobby depending on who was his guest. I also was made aware that certain photographs and or artifacts would only be shown to persons he was instructed to do so with by his “friends”. Thus I was aware I did not have full unlimited access to what was in Paul’s possession. This may sound odd or suspicious to some; sounds rather sensible and practical to me.

I read many kinds of documents in my visits to Paul’s home. Some were written to JPL or some similar quasi governmental agency or contractors. Usually concerning developments or design flaws within any given space program or vehicle. An as always there were the spiral notebooks, to occupy my attention. As a general rule from what was described to me, Paul would have this overwhelming sense he needed to drive somewhere. He would just drive out beyond the urban sprawl ultimately he would end up in a remote location where he would have an encounter of one kind or another. He was encouraged to bring his camera and take photographs. As these encounters came with some degree of regularity and so would the conversations; he soon learned to keep a notebook to write down questions of one kind or another in anticipation of these. From what I could tell he usually had a dozen to a couple dozen questions ready and waiting between encounters. Sometimes a line of questioning would continue on into a at large discussion, though usually not. Much of the material I read comes and goes in my memory of events, there are a couple of notable exceptions….

The most notable exception concerned the Flood, as in the Biblical Flood of Noah. Among a variety of questions Paul had written down the question; where did the water for Noah’s Flood come from? The written response was simple and succinct; Mars. Now you the reader if perhaps you are unaware, but at the time the accepted scientific stated fact was that there was NO water on Mars. That the observable polar caps were actually frozen CO2, common dry ice. This was taught at all levels of academia (though there was a very small group that knew otherwise; a story for another installment in my narrations if you will) from elementary schools to universities. I thought it intriguing and filed it away mentally. At this point may I say that though I have always wondered of the short falls, mistakes and disinformation contained within what is presented as our collective histories and of scientific note. I like most everyone generally accepted what I was taught in our institutions of education, all be it with more then a grain of salt. As I discovered more and more of the Truth of the matter, I abandoned these illusions and lies only keeping current so as to maintain relevance in society and even simple conversations. Presently as the consequence of these divergent realities presses down upon all of us, I as of late no longer share my understanding from the perspective of mere food for thought, or an alternative belief system; all the while being politely accommodating of the false or failed paradigms other hold. It is a disservice to my fellow men and women to feign such a posture for the sensibilities of those who refuse to question what is before them. Thus upon meeting I fully acknowledge and realize that my “crazy coefficient” is ostensibly high. Any one who takes a moment to share what Life has given us, usually gives me the benefit of the doubt. An as has been the case for the majority of my Life others shall always call me “crazy”. Which isn’t purely a bad thing!

As we fast forward to the present; we now know that Mars once was a great water planet. In fact it seems it had vast oceans and water in larger proportions than does our Earth. Which bates the question of where did it all go? Before science made these “discoveries”; I have long believed such. Including that the water for Noah’s Flood did in fact come from Mars. I shall leave you with that Fact to ponder. Because believe it or not we shall be revisiting this subject and many others, so we shall have a rich WTF content….

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xtruss · 3 years

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Why Taliban Should Thank US Not Only for Billions’ Worth of Weapons, But Also for Nuclear Pakistan

— Ekaterina Blinova | Sputnik | September 8, 2021

The Taliban* have managed to lay their hands on billions’ worth of sophisticated Western-made weapons amid the hurried retreat of the Afghan National Army. However, a broader problem cited by American and European military specialists and policymakers is that the Afghan insurgent group may also gain access to military nuclear technologies.

Col. Richard Kemp, a former British commander, on 16 August raised the red flag over the possibility of Taliban elements one day seizing nuclear materials and technology from Pakistan. These concerns were also shared by former National Security Adviser John Bolton in his 23 August op-ed for The Washington Post. The next day, a group of American lawmakers sent a letter to Joe Biden asking the president: "Do you have a plan to ensure that Afghanistan, under Taliban occupation, will never acquire a nuclear weapon?"

How US Turned Blind Eye to Pakistan's Nuclear Arms Programme

While the possibility that the Taliban could get access to Pakistani nukes has triggered serious concerns in the US and Europe, American politicians have shied away from discussing how Islamabad emerged as a nuclear power. While Bolton has specifically lambasted Pakistan for "recklessly" pursuing nuclear weapons for decades, newly released documents suggest Washington knew about Islamabad's nuclear bid, but did nothing to stop it.

In mid-August 2021, Pakistani President Arif Alvi revealed that the country had developed a "nuclear deterrent" by 1981, long before its 1998 underground atomic tests. In the aftermath of Alvi's remarks, the National Security Archive, a Washington-based non-profit archival institution, released a series of documents shedding light on the US handling of the Pakistan nuclear problem.

A Pakistani-made Shaheen-III missile, that is capable of carrying nuclear warheads, is on display during a military parade in Islamabad, Pakistan, Friday, March 23, 2018. AP Photo / Anjum Naveed

A US memo dated 28 March 1978 provides the earliest known indication of Washington's recognition of Pakistan's uranium enrichment programme. In June 1978, the CIA document suggested that Pakistan would "probably… be capable of assembling a nuclear device in the early 1980s", adding that the country "will not have a credible nuclear weapons option until at least the mid-1980s".

However, in January 1979, US State Department officials admitted that Islamabad was “moving more rapidly toward acquisition of nuclear capability than we had earlier estimated", having learned that Pakistan had initiated a uranium enrichment programme using gas centrifuge technology.

The 18 January 1979 State Department memo specifically cited the 1976 Symington Amendment which banned US economic and military assistance to countries illegally transferring or acquiring nuclear enrichment technology. While the memo highlighted that Washington must persuade Pakistan to nix its enrichment and reprocessing programme, it noted that "termination of aid [to Pakistan] would further complicate our position in the turbulent Persian Gulf region" and "would not contribute to achievement of our non-proliferation objectives". As a result, the Jimmy Carter administration turned a blind eye to Pakistan's nuclear development as well as transfer of materials and technologies to Pakistanis by other state and non-state players. I

President Jimmy Carter, claiming success for his human rights policies, is applauded by aides Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anne Wexler in Washington, Dec. 6, 1978. AP Photo / Harvey Georges

The reason behind Washington's unusually soft approach to Islamabad at the time was because the Cold War-era US leadership regarded Pakistan as a bulwark against the Soviet Union and India, the USSR's regional ally, says Bharat Karnad, a national security expert and emeritus professor of National Security Studies at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research.

"In 1979, Pakistan gained significance as a frontline state, and permitted the US Central Intelligence Agency to join with Pakistan army’s Inter-Services Intelligence to fund and mobilise the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan", remarks Karnad.”

It is unclear when the CIA actually learned about Islamabad's nuclear programme. However, the first signs of Islamabad's bid to build atomic weapons emerged in the mid-1960s, when Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto pledged that the nation would prefer "to eat grass and leaves for a thousand years" in order to create its own nuclear bomb rather than see neighbouring India get one. India's subsequent decision to kick off a nuclear project in 1967 and Islamabad's loss of East Pakistan in 1971's Bangladesh Liberation War prompted Pakistan to accelerate its efforts.

Afghan mujahideen prepare a rocket attack on the government troops in Shaga, Eastern Nangarhar province, on January 15, 1989 during the Afghan Civil War opposing the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) supported by Soviet Union. AFP 2021

The National Security Archive notes that it was Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Belgian-educated metallurgist, who played a crucial role in building Pakistan's enrichment facilities. The engineer had stolen major elements of gas centrifuge technology when he worked in the Netherlands at the uranium firm Urenco in the 1970s. However, the CIA asked the Netherlands in 1975 not to prosecute Khan when he came under suspicion, according to ex-Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. The intelligence agency explained that they wanted "to follow and watch Khan to get more information", according to Lubbers. Still, there are still many unknowns with regard to the CIA's efforts to trace Khan's activities, since the intelligence "has declassified next to nothing" concerning the issue, according to the National Security Archive. When the non-profit filed a FOIA for documents from 1978 concerning A. Q. Khan and Pakistani nuclear enrichment activities, the agency took "a neither confirm-nor-deny position that it had any such records".

Karnad does not rule out that the CIA was aware of Islamabad's secret nuclear weapons programme. According to him, the US did not prevent the transfer of atomic technologies to Pakistan because they apparently sought to reshuffle "a military balance on the subcontinent" vis-à-vis the USSR and pro-Soviet India, which conducted its first nuclear weapons test in 1974.

"America’s longstanding nonproliferation ideals were consigned to the dust heap", Karnad notes. "When international affairs are conducted without moral or policy scruples or inhibitions of any kind, then this is the kind of 'end of the world' scenario the world has to end up reasonably contemplating.”

Could Taliban Get Access to Pakistan's Nukes?

Meanwhile, the probability of the Taliban getting access to Islamabad's nuclear secrets and stockpiles has prompted a heated debate among international observers.

"For me that is absolutely out of the question for many solid reasons that Taliban get hold of Pakistan's nuclear material", argues Abdullah Khan, director of the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. "For what reason would they need nuclear weapons? At the moment for the Taliban the major issue is governance.”

However, one cannot be one hundred percent sure that the Taliban would never get access to Pakistani nuclear weapons technologies, believes Dr Michele Groppi, teaching fellow of Challenges to the International Order at the Defence Studies Department, King's College London.

"We have to keep an eye on it", he says. "But I don't think this prospect is particularly worrisome in the short run. In the longer term, however, we have to see".

But if the Taliban were to gain access to nuclear arms, this could "really angered China", Groppi believes. According to him, the Afghan insurgents are not interested in upsetting Beijing, at least for now, since they expect that the People's Republic will invest in Afghanistan. Furthermore, the Taliban leadership has already signalled its willingness to participate in the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Listen to this by birth “Boak Bollocks, Braindead, Disgraced and World’s Deadliest War Monger John Bolton” in this video clip. He thinks that Pakistan’s ‘Nuclear Weapons’ are scattered on the streets and TALIBAN will get them freely and they destroy the whole World. WTF? This idiot definitely carries his brain in his “Incurable Cancerous Swelled Scrotums.”

"Vis-à-vis Pakistan, the issue is not about the weapons but the increasing radicalisation of the society", deems Shreyas Deshmukh, research associate with the National Security Program at the Delhi Policy Group, a think tank in New Delhi, India. "Today we can see there is major support coming from lower and middle class of the Pakistani society for the Taliban, and it was there in the late 1990s as well. Therefore the fear of not only the Taliban but any extremist elements getting their hands on nuclear material from Pakistan is real." Here ‘Hypocrite Shreyas Deshmukh’ didn’t talk about the Saffron terrorism of Hindutva, RSS and so many others Hindu Terrorist Groups in India who are actively overwhelmed extremist Indian government and terrorizes the neighboring countries. Uranium was stolen and security of nuclear sites were breached many times.

Here is another idiot on Twitter: John Sipher@john_sipher! While I want to say “you reap what you sow,” a radical takeover in Pakistan (like in Afghanistan) would be a disaster that would draw us in completely. It’s six times the size, has a massive army and nuclear weapons. We cannot turn away. This idiot needs to put attention to his own filthy backyard. He should put his efforts to stop those fascists who are destroying America and America has more than 5000 Nuclear Weapons in his backyard. Pakistan is much more smarter than the United States who smartly kicked US ass in Afghanistan. He should ask current and past ‘Generals and Presidents’ as well.

Deshmukh notes that Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)*, a terrorist group located on the Afghan-Pakistan border which helped the Taliban to fight against Afghan government forces, carried out several attacks between 2008 and 2015, targeting Pakistani security infrastructures "including a major attack on Mehran Naval Air Base which also holds nuclear assets". Here again ‘Hypocrite Deshmukh’ didn’t want to open his bloody diarrheal mouth about “FASCIST HINDU EXTREMISTS: RSS, SANKPARIVAR, VISHVA HINDU PARISATH, SHIVE SHENA AND THE WORLD’S MOST WANTED FASCIST CRIMINAL PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI.”

"Nuclear deterrence in general is holding not because of the number of weapons but fear of the escalation ladder which cannot be controlled and end up in unimaginable consequences", he says. "Therefore, lone terrorist attacks like on Mehran base also increase the probability of nuclear terrorism".

In addition to this, Afghanistan lies between four declared nuclear states, the Indian scholar emphasises, suggesting that "if the instability persists in [the Central Asian state] it can be a hub for the black market for nuclear materials". NOPE! It wouldn’t be “THE CENTRAL ASIAN STATE,” it would be the “INDIA, THE RAPES CAPITAL OF THE WORLD” whose nuclear sites were breached many times in the past and URANIUM was stolen. Therefore “RANDIAN Shreyas Deshmukh” needs to STFO.

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kumail-fan · 3 years

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Richard Cobden British politician

Founded by relatives, he also attended a second-rate boarding school and entered his uncle's warehouse at London. In 1828 he along with two other young guys establish a calico wholesale company and at 1831 started a calico-printing mill in industrial Lancashire. He left enough money to allow him to travel overseas, also, between 1833 and 1839, he seen France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, and also the Middle East. Throughout this time he wrote two powerful pamphlets--England, Ireland, and America (1835) and Russia (1836)--where he wanted a new strategy to foreign policy, predicated not on efforts to keep up a equilibrium of power however on the comprehension of the prime requirement of promoting global economic growth throughout the complimentary motion of materials and men. He continued to progress similar free-trade arguments during his lifetime.

Between 1839 and 1846 he became a dominant figure in British politics, devoting most of his energies into the repeal of the British Corn Legislation , he claimed were equally economically devastating and wrong. In his opinion, the only course that gained from defense were the landlords, and they had been improved at the expense of the middle classes and working classes equally. He proved himself a planner, establishing the Anti-Corn Law League, that became a national company in 1839 and also the most effective and effective of 19th-century British pressure groups. He entered Parliament in 1841, 1 year after he'd married a Welsh woman, Catherine Williams. Thereafter, he can run his political effort not just by mobilizing public comment but also by directly facing Sir Robert Peel, the prime minister, in disagreement. Cobden played a substantial role in converting Peel to take the controversial choice to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846. Peel subsequently paid a remarkable tribute to Cobden since the guy whose title, over all others, should be connected with the measure.

The seven-year battle established Cobden's standing but abandoned him financially destroyed. A public subscription was raised for him in 1847, also, with a part of their profits, he purchased the home in Sussex where he was born and continued to reside there for the remainder of his life together with his wife and five brothers (his only son died suddenly in 1856). Unlike the majority of the radicals that shared his own perspectives, Cobden came in the south east England. Nor was heas the majority of these werea religious dissenter but instead was a part of this Church of England. Nevertheless the Quaker John Bright were the recognized leaders of what was known as the Manchester college , which espoused free trade and an economic system with no government interference.

His affiliation with Bright was shut. They had been at one in thinking that free trade would lead to the reduction of armaments as well as the promotion of global peace. They had been one in demanding a decrease in taxation and also a check on royal expansion. Among Cobden's strongest pamphlets, 1793 and 1853, in Three Letters (1853), was a plea to his contemporaries to prevent"past mistakes" and keep from war with France. Throughout the subsequent 3 decades, he asserted that Britain ought to be friendly with Russia, even following the Crimean War had started. He was attacked because of his remarks throughout the war, even when he Bright often appeared to be standing in face of belligerent public comment. In 1857 he had been effective in rallying members from all areas of their House of Commons to encourage a movement criticizing the competitive China policy of Lord Palmerston, the prime minister. In the general election that followed, nevertheless, Palmerston won overwhelming federal support, and Cobden dropped his chair.

The strikes and his defeat bolstered his radicalism on national problems, and he had been openly scornful of Palmerston's middle-class supporters. Really, he requested the working classes in 1861 why they didn't have a pioneer among them who might lead a revolt from their political tormentors. There was not any 19th-century Englishman who had a more positive belief in the future of America compared to Cobden. His correspondence with Charles Sumner, an American statesman and abolitionist, given a significant unofficial connection between Britain and the USA.

The most significant action of the past years of his lifetime was his successful effort to improve relations between Britain and France. Regardless of the differences in their political viewpoints, Palmerston had encouraged Cobden to combine with his broad-based ministry in 1859 as president of the Board of Trade. Even the"most favoured nation" clause included in the treaty, which stipulated that neither party would impose against another any prohibition on exports or imports which did not apply to other countries, was duplicated in several afterwards agreements with other states. Cobden didn't live long enough to find that the eclipse of his free-trade expects, which continued to be shared with the Cobden Club, based on perpetuate his fundamentals. The strain of this protracted Anglo-French negotiations jeopardized his health, and he needed to spend several months out London. He died in 1865, having left a previous attempt to depart his sickbed and wait for Parliament to vote against fresh expenses on federal fortifications.

Read more about Richard Cobden British politician

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fosterjoel · 3 years

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Scale Up Your Real Estate Business with Word-of-Mouth Marketing

So you’ve decided that you want to try word-of-mouth marketing to sell your Utah real estate. Congratulations! This unique method of connecting with customers has proven to be a valuable tool in getting properties sold. It’s much more cost-effective and ultimately more profitable, plus, word-of-mouth marketing is enjoyable. This report will help you use this time-tested method in today’s modern world repeatedly, reliably, consistently, and effectively. Why should you consider implementing word-of-mouth marketing? ● The very foundations of traditional marketing are crumbling. ● The reliable methods that worked just a few years ago may not be as effective in today’s world of marketing Here’s what major marketing firms have to say about today’s conventional methods: ● Traditional advertising options are less available, newspapers, radio, and television channels struggle to survive. ● If your ad is seen at all, it may not be believed. Nearly 80 percent of Americans do not believe advertising by companies, and trust in businesses, brands, and ads have tumbled for 10 consecutive years. ● Social media, meant to be the great equalizer for organizations of all sizes, is under suspicion as people wade through advertising scams and fake news. The average reach for your Fan page is probably well below 5 percent. ● Research shows that direct mail responses are in decline nationwide. This intense rate of change is just the beginning, and we’ll see more changes in the marketing world in the next two years than in the last 20. The Consumer Market Has Changed According to a groundbreaking 2010 Report by McKinsey & Company, up to 50% of all purchasing decisions are based on a friend's recommendation. And according to research firm Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, while just 70% trust online recommendations from strangers. While this may seem completely overwhelming, there is a way forward that makes complete sense. Let’s focus our efforts on a marketing channel that has NOT changed, and that is reliable, steadfast, cost-efficient, and time-tested.

Communication Connects Us 92 percent of Americans view word of mouth conversations as the best source for product recommendations. While trust in companies and advertising is on the decline, trust in friends, experts, and entrepreneurs are up. Simply put, people trust people. When it comes to Salt Lake City homes for sale, why not rely on the oldest most powerful form of marketing? Consumers are looking for social proof in this world of overwhelming choice. People are desperate for clues about the best sources to obtain money-saving information and the ideal products/services to purchase. This is especially true with Utah Real Estate. The Importance of Marketing to Advocates This group of individuals may be the most reliable and desirable of all. Advocates are those who support you, can’t get enough of you, and are genuinely interested in what you have to say. They don’t need to be paid or convinced nor do they want to be paid or convinced. Once they know about you and your story, they will authentically and passionately spread the word through their conversations with others. Advocates make up about 10% of the people you know. Advocates Are Committed To Helping You WOM Efforts In the long term, nothing can match the effectiveness and value of the word-of-mouth individual as they are the true influencers that help promote your product. Advocates are intrinsically motivated. They are compelled by something deep inside themselves to share stories. They want to build bonds with people. Trying to motivate them through discounts or coupons won’t work. Three “rules” of connecting with word-of-mouth influencers. 1) Let them come to you. Truly passionate influencers will seek out good stories and new information. 2) Use the right product. To attract attention, provide something authentic, new, and cool. In short, something worth talking about. 3) Fish where the fish are. Influencers tend to congregate based on shared interests.

What Makes Your Brand Word-Of-Mouth Worthy? AUTHENTIC- Influencers are sharers, not sellers. They do not want to be bought, and they will have a negative reaction to anyone they suspect is trying to sell them something. Your story has to be true- It has to be honest, and it has to respect your audience’s intelligence. If your story is not authentic, influencers will not share it because that story will hurt their credibility with the people they are trying to influence. INTERESTING- A story has to be interesting, so an influencer will pick it up and investigate it. “Interesting” presents information in a novel or noteworthy manner. If you can present people with something really new, they will stop and pay attention. RELEVANT- If it’s going to be trackable, the story of your brand has to be meaningful to your audience. Not many people are going to talk about things that are only relevant to you and your business. For a story to get passed around, it has to be somehow connected to the lives of the people doing the talking. If you don’t know what really matters to your audience you can perform a quick survey. We created our Abundance Certified Home process by finding out what really matters to our audience. We found consumers were most concerned about how much they can sell their home, how fast it will sell, how to organize and stage it, and how to keep the home show ready while on the market. We apply a lot of unique and effective methods that give people something to talk about. Now we’ll apply each of these ideas to you and your business to develop authentic, interesting, and relevant conversations. Exercise: Write a list of things that make your service or brand unique and interesting. Which of these ideas would people find interesting at a party, over dinner with friends, at a barbecue? Through this exercise, you’ve now developed a list of conversational topics that are authentic, interesting, and relevant. Word of mouth is ultimately a numbers game. You need a lot of people to share your story so the bigger the group, the more customers you can potentially get. TRIBE BUILDING: How to lure people into your “tribe”. You can do that by giving them a sample of your services. How? Try holding short classes or community events. SOCIAL MEDIA With Social Media, you're looking for an Advocacy not Engagement. Customers are looking for Social Proof, not self-promotion ● Testimonials ● Reviews ● Photos/Videos of Happy Customers ● Awards ● Community Presence

We should look at Social Media campaigns as “Social Validation” to back up the story the consumer might be hearing through word-of-mouth marketing or reviews. TESTIMONIALS – People want to see real people with real opinions on your website. Do everything you can to encourage customers to provide testimonies. REVIEWS AND REVIEW SITES – According to Nielsen, 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations. from the people they know, and 70 percent trust online recommendations from strangers. PHOTOS AND VIDEOS – Most websites, feature content like business photos and videos. Don’t overlook this opportunity to present yourself as a smiling, confident professional, who is involved in the community. Focus on positive photos featuring real people from your business instead of cheesy stock photos. AWARDS – Company awards are nice to see on a site and will position you as a “winner” and a company. That can be counted on. Don’t forget to include community and service awards. SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE – Increasingly, consumers are going to stalk you on social media to see if you are a person or company, they want to do business with. Remember that everything you post on social media becomes part of your image, your social proof, and your company brand. Research shows that stories shared on social media by others are more credible and gain 600-700 percent more engagement. Remember: Word of Mouth Marketing works, and many of the alternatives out there don’t work as well anymore. But it does require patience. That will not be determined by how much money you put into it, but HOW MANY PEOPLE you put into it. Would you like to master the art of working by referral? Join our Facebook Work by Referral Group today for more education and support. Brought to you by Abundance Realty and Staging Company For more information about being an Abundance Agent contact Bill Brimley (801) 896-7619 Shane Hughes (801) 631-7653 For more reading, we highly recommend Marketing Rebellion by Mark W Schaffer and Fizz by Ted Wright.

#Homes For Sale in Utah #Wasatch Front Real Estate

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dailynewswebsite · 3 years

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In Trump election fraud cases, federal judges upheld the rule of law – but that’s not enough to fix US politics

Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for President Donald Trump, speaks on Nov. 19 at a information convention about lawsuits associated to the presidential election. Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Put up by way of Getty Pictures

A wholesome constitutional tradition, during which the folks and their leaders respect the authority of their Structure, requires a baseline of belief within the authorities – a baseline that, in the USA, has eroded from 77% within the early 1960s to 17% at this time.

This collapse of public confidence paved the best way for a populist type of management that redirected public religion away from the establishments of presidency towards a extra autocratic chief – Donald Trump – whom voters trusted to consolidate energy, neutralize opposition and “drain the swamp” of the consultants and bureaucrats he deemed chargeable for the federal government’s malaise.

Prior to now 4 years, President Trump has consolidated energy to such an extent that the Republican Get together has actually declined to undertake a celebration platform and successfully embraced the president as its alter ego.

After dropping the 2020 election by a cushty margin, Trump counted on the populist energy he had accrued to power the fingers of Republican officers throughout the nation to invalidate the election, regardless of no creditable proof of widespread fraud.

The gambit virtually labored. Trump’s affect – made muscular by an brisk base poised to punish disobedient elected officers – quieted intraparty criticism, moved a authorized staff to launch a battery of meritless lawsuits and impressed 18 state attorneys normal to request that the Supreme Courtroom overturn a presidential election.

However that technique finally failed, as a result of Trump’s populist management didn’t lengthen to the federal courts.

Legal professionals who helped with Trump marketing campaign lawsuits confronted protests, like this one outdoors Rudy Giuliani’s residence constructing in New York. Erik McGregor/LightRocket by way of Getty Pictures

Instances want details

The authorized assault on the election was spearheaded by attorneys who had been prepared to file fits based mostly on unsupported suspicions and beliefs to perpetuate the president’s populist regime by any means vital. These groundless suspicions and beliefs – bellowed loudly and sometimes by the president and his entourage – could have gotten traction in politics, however they bought none in courts of legislation. The judiciary’s firewall withstood the populist bomb that President Trump detonated.

Aside from the truth that neither the president nor his lovers might threaten the tenure of unelected federal judges who’re appointed for all times, judges are a distinct type of public official, and the lies, bullying and bombast that work properly in populist politics fall flat in courts of legislation.

When judges hear instances, they observe a uniform system of procedural guidelines that allow them to judge the claims that the events make and amass a physique of data on which they rely to find out details and confirm reality. It’s a system that has served the judiciary properly for generations, and served it properly within the postelection instances that the courts determined in current weeks.

Judges are attorneys who’ve been steeped within the rule of legislation for many years. It begins with three years of legislation faculty, the place they “study to suppose like attorneys” and are graded on their command of substantive and procedural legislation. Upon commencement, they need to display their proficiency in legislation by passing a bar examination, after which apply legislation for years and usually many years earlier than ascending the bench.

‘Trump judges’ aren’t Trump judges

Trump has been criticized for appointing an unprecedented 10 judges whose credentials and expertise the American Bar Affiliation deemed so poor as to warrant an “unqualified” score. However the overwhelming majority of his 227 appointees possess the standard {qualifications} wanted to perpetuate the federal judiciary’s entrenched dedication to the rule of legislation.

Among the judges who dismissed the Trump election instances had been appointed by the president. That will have shocked Trump and his followers, however is unlikely to have shocked Chief Justice John Roberts. In 2018, Roberts referred to as out Trump for attacking “Obama judges.”

“We don’t have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts stated in an announcement. “What we have now is a unprecedented group of devoted judges doing their stage finest to do equal proper to these showing earlier than them. That unbiased judiciary is one thing we must always all be grateful for.”

Some criticized Roberts as naïve or duplicitous. In spite of everything, the info present that federal judges are influenced by their ideological preferences. Voters know this and select a president who will appoint ideologically appropriate judges.

These critics, nevertheless, miss the mark. Sure, judges are topic to ideological influences in shut instances, when the legislation is topic to conflicting interpretations, and judges are likely to favor interpretations that align with their frequent sense and coverage perspective.

However this doesn’t refute Roberts’ level: Federal judges are skilled to take legislation severely and do their finest to uphold the legislation as they perceive it to be written. So when confronted with postelection fraud instances that weren’t shut – that lacked factual allegations important to continuing with the case – judges dominated towards the president.

As one choose stated to Trump marketing campaign attorneys, “Come on now!”

Chief Justice John Roberts, proper, as soon as chastised President Trump for saying that judges make rulings based mostly on their politics. Right here, the 2 shake fingers at this yr’s State of the Union tackle Feb. 4. Leah Millis-Pool/Getty Pictures

Information and reality

Because of these judges, the rule of legislation held agency towards a populist assault.

Celebrating the triumph of the rule of legislation within the courts, nevertheless, obscures the truth that innumerable voters, public officers and attorneys who had been ostensibly dedicated to that rule of legislation stood prepared – for the primary time in U.S. historical past – to overturn a presidential election.

Prior to now, the vast majority of Individuals drew their conclusions from a standard physique of data obtained from the identical night information and morning newspapers.

With the explosion of the knowledge age and the decline of conventional media, that frequent physique of data has disappeared, as {the marketplace} of concepts has been flooded with limitless info, the reality or falsity of which is more and more troublesome to evaluate. The results are voiced by a nihilistic spy within the newest “Name of Obligation” online game: “There isn’t a reality – solely who you select to imagine.” And this, it might appear, has grow to be the mantra for a lot of public officers and their constituents.

Individuals encountered an identical downside as soon as earlier than, throughout industrialization, when the nation was deluged with a flood of false and deceptive details about new medication, meals and shopper merchandise – an issue that the executive state finally emerged to manage.

The difficulty is that the federal government can’t regulate {the marketplace} of concepts the best way it does {the marketplace} of products and companies – the First Modification gained’t permit it. Typically, the federal government can not prohibit you, media shops or politicians from telling lies.

So the problem is to reestablish a option to consider the reliability of data upon which we should rely for locating details and ascertaining reality. As a result of if that may’t be finished, the nation’s skill to elect its leaders and govern itself in an orderly and principled approach will likely be misplaced.

The Structure is fragile. It really works as a result of we the folks will it to work, and that can is being examined, maybe as by no means earlier than. The judiciary handed its newest check. The American folks will likely be examined once more within the years to come back – and the way forward for the democracy hangs within the stability.

Charles Gardner Geyh doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that will profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

from Growth News https://growthnews.in/in-trump-election-fraud-cases-federal-judges-upheld-the-rule-of-law-but-thats-not-enough-to-fix-us-politics/ via https://growthnews.in

#Growth News

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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The Uncertain Future of Pop-Up Restaurants

Leigh-Ann Martin chats with guests at one of her pop-up dinners. | Dahli Durley

As the restaurant industry faces an ongoing crisis, pop-up chefs confront unique challenges during the pandemic

Three months ago, Omar Tate was serving an $150 eight-course tasting menu out of a penthouse event space in New York’s Financial District. The dinner, featuring such dishes called Notes From a Black Pantry and Cart of Yams, was one of Tate’s Honeysuckle pop-ups, which explore and pay homage to the black experience through food and art. Now, Tate is staying in a spare room at his mom’s house in Philadelphia. With multicourse dinners out of the question during the coronavirus pandemic, he’s cooking in her kitchen, posting a menu on his Instagram, and selling dishes to the public for $10 to $12 each. The setting is dissimilar to that of a New York penthouse, but he plans each menu as thoughtfully as ever, still tracing and celebrating black American foodways. Last week, Tate cooked lamb in a pit, serving the meat — marinated in palm oil and smoky from the oak he’d used as fuel — along with pickled vegetables and tart, lemony potatoes.

“All the things that go into what I make still have that same intentionality,” he says. “It was never about the theater of it all, which is the dining room. It’s not about that.”

“The beauty of a pop-up is that they are malleable. They’re kind of like an amoeba.”

The pop-up model has long been an alternative for cooks who lack access to the capital needed to launch and operate a restaurant, or who are disenfranchised by the culture and structure of traditional kitchens. For women and people of color in the restaurant industry, who are all too often refused the opportunities and resources that their white male counterparts enjoy, the pop-up model serves to democratize the cooking and sharing of food.

In some cities, pop-ups — particularly those in home kitchens — face legal challenges, but in most, they can operate as long as food is prepared in a commissary or restaurant kitchen. This shape-shifting model isn’t just a second choice for would-be restaurant owners. The fluidity and flexibility of the pop-up allows for a certain kind of creativity — blending art, history, performance, and food into a single dinner, for instance — that the constraints of most restaurants don’t allow.

Without brick-and-mortar locations, deep pockets, or much government assistance, pop-up chefs face unique challenges during the pandemic. But as it becomes increasingly unclear what restaurants will look like in a post-pandemic world, these businesses are also uniquely positioned to meet the needs of local communities, and maybe even offer a vision for dining in the future — if they can last that long.

“The beauty of a pop-up — and I’ve only learned this since I’ve been forced out of [restaurant] spaces because of the current situation that we’re in — is that they are malleable,” Tate says. “They’re kind of like an amoeba.”

Haamza Edwards

For a recent pop-up dinner, Tate slow-smoked lamb legs in a pit.

A change of plans

Three years after launching the Vegan Hood Chefs in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, Ronnishia Johnson and Rheema Calloway were ready to turn their pop-up into a permanent space this year.

“As a minority-owned [business], we were looking to use this year as a way to show that we are profitable, in order to be able to apply for capital to reach our ultimate goal, which is to get a brick-and-mortar [location],” Johnson says. The pair, neither of whom had any restaurant experience before launching, started the Hood Vegan Chefs out of necessity. In their predominantly black San Francisco neighborhood, there were no grocery stores in sight, and Johnson and Calloway were confronted by an unpleasant truth: No one was going to come into their community and create more options for healthy living. Opening a restaurant seemed the most effective way to take matters into their own hands and provide fresh food to their neighbors.

Ronnishia Johnson (left) and Rheema Calloway

The dream of restaurant ownership is off the table, for now at least. Like so many other pop-up restaurant owners across the country, Johnson and Calloway are glad just to be breaking even. But in the face of a crisis that has put restaurants on the brink of permanent closure, many pop-up chefs are questioning whether restaurant ownership is the end goal after all.

“We’re putting the brick and mortar on hold. It may not necessarily be what the community needs right now,” Johnson says. “What they need may be [for us] to keep this pop-up sustainable. And that looks like using the money we would have put down on a brick and mortar to possibly build our team so that we have more individuals who are able to pop up at already existing restaurants, to be able to provide food for the community.” Though the Vegan Hood Chefs doesn’t have the capital to expand in the way Johnson and Calloway had hoped to this year, their fresh vegan offerings are delivered throughout the Bay Area once a week, providing customers with trays of prepared grains, greens, and meat substitutes.

Before the pandemic, a majority of the Vegan Hood Chefs’ revenue was generated through large events, all of which have been canceled. The same is true for many pop-up chefs, who relied on large food events and ticketed dinners to provide the bulk of their income. But with no massive overhead costs, and a business model already designed to be adaptable, pop-ups around the country are adjusting quickly.

Until recently, Salimatu Amabebe traveled state to state hosting their dinner series, Black Feast. Each dinner was informed by and centered around the work of a black artist, the art inspiring the menu. The meal was never just a dinner, nor was it a gallery exhibition. Often, the hardest part of planning the events was finding a space where art and food could coexist.

It has been hard for Amabebe to imagine what such an experiential dinner could look like as a takeout-only operation. On a recent Sunday night in Berkeley, California, they decided to give it a try. After planning what would be the first Black Feast event with no communal dining element, Amabebe became weighed down by videos circulating online of the violence black people are facing during the pandemic. Ordinarily, a Black Feast dinner would serve as a way to bring people together over a meal, a chance to process current events or just relax in the comfort of community. With in-person gatherings out of the question, Amambebe had to find other ways to deliver that same feeling through a takeout window.

“What do people need right now, what does my community need right now?” Amabebe asked themself as they planned the meal. The menu that they came up with was inspired by the work of Oakland-based artist Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, and captured the urgency and frustration of the moment.

Jessa Carter

Salimatu Amabebe (right) poses in front of the takeout window with artist Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.

Each to-go order was wrapped in a print designed by Lukaza, featuring painted phrases such as “Say her name,” the other side printed with a transcribed interview between Amabebe and Lukaza. Inside the paper wrapping were containers of rich and mellow black-eyed pea and tomato stew, and big slices of ever-so-slightly earthy spinach-vanilla cake with yam buttercream.

With donations from friends and past Black Feast guests around the country, Amabebe was able to give free meals to black customers who came to pick them up. “It was really cool to see that it’s possible to change this model and share food with people, and nourish people in the community. And not all have to come together at the table,” they say.

When Amabebe isn’t planning for the next Black Feast dinner, they sell loaves of bread and jars of Nigerian chai from the takeout window of the building where they’re currently finishing an artist’s residency. As restaurants reopen across the country, and chefs try to work out what cooking for the public again will look like, Amabebe doesn’t really have a plan for the future. “It’s difficult because when you base the model of what you do on community care for others and not on profit, it puts you in a position that is, in some ways, freeing,” Amabebe says. “But also, there isn’t always a specific plan for how things are going to go, and there aren’t a lot of funds to move around. In some ways, it’s easy to shut down: ‘Okay, well, we’re not doing these events.’ But also, what the fuck do we do?”

What comes next

There are fewer barriers to entry for chefs launching pop-ups than for those opening restaurants. There are usually no investors to answer to, fewer overhead costs, and few or no employees to pay. Some of the pop-up chefs I spoke to had not registered their operations with the government, and had — at one point or another — done business under the table, not paying taxes. During a pandemic, the lack of structure that once felt liberating can bring on a sense of uncertainty and anxiousness.

“All of my money was coming from pop-ups, all of it,” Tate says. While peers with investors or savings accounts cushioned by parents or spouses have put money aside, Tate couldn’t plan for a rainy day, let alone an all-out storm. “That was literally my entire financial life and safety net. I was living contract to contract.” Tate applied for a $10,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan, and was granted $1,000. He hasn’t been able to get through to the overwhelmed unemployment application portal.

With no money left in her bank account, Illyanna Maisonet decided to halt her pop-up dinners during the pandemic. The chef and writer (she’s written for Eater on several occasions) ran social media for a popular San Francisco blogger, and in her spare time, she’s hosted Puerto Rican dinners in her small casita — a separate dining space in her Sacramento, California backyard. Maisonet never thought of herself as a brand or a business before the pandemic. Now, it feels like there’s nowhere to turn for help. “I have no hustle because all my side hustles require being outside,” she says. “So [there’s] no money coming in, no income.” The final blow came when Maisonet had to cancel a dinner she had already sold tickets for, and some of her guests refused her offer to deliver meals to their front door. “That was, like, a really good chunk of money... So now I have negative money in my bank account. I haven’t been negative in my bank account since I was in my 20s.”

Ryan Soule

Solomon Johnson prepares for dinner service.

Refunding customers right now could force small pop-ups to shut down for good. When Solomon Johnson, the chef behind the Oakland, California-based pop-up and catering company Omni World Kitchen, had to return $13,000 for canceled events, it felt inevitable that he would have to close his business. “I’m on a shoestring budget,” he says. “So after giving back all those refunds, I was almost convinced that I was going to have to completely shut down.” Solomon managed to secure a loan through the micro-loan organization Kiva, which kept his business just barely afloat, as he watched major restaurant chains receive the same PPP loan he’d been denied.

Johnson isn’t in a rush to start delivering plates of food during quarantine, citing concerns about his own health. While in-person events are on hold, he’s taken his business online, looking for new ways to create income. He’s just finished designing a line of merchandise, and completed edits on his first cookbook. “I really decided to think on my feet,” he says.

Meeting diners where they are

While many pop-up chefs express uncertainty about what the future might bring, others are hopeful they’ll be among the first to get back on their feet. When the time comes for restaurants to reopen in New Jersey, Leigh-Ann Martin has one of the most intimate dining spaces in town: Her kitchen table. Martin’s pop-up, A Table for Four — named for the snug table in her dining room where she serves guests — revolves around Trinidadian dishes cooked in her Union City kitchen.

As diners begin to reenter society, Martin suspects they’ll want a level of intimacy that restaurants in the early phases of reopening won’t be able to provide. “If people are going to feel safe enough to leave their home to come out, I feel like they’re going to want to do more than eat,” Martin says. She hopes to offer them an experience that falls somewhere between restaurant dining and eating at home. She’ll send them packing with recipes from the menu she serves, so they can recreate favorite Trinidadian dishes in their own kitchens, until the next time they brave the outside world.

Though his Oakland pop-up remains closed for now, Solomon Johnson also sees a future for his business when Northern Californians reemerge from the shutdown. “I know people will be excited to go out and eat again,” he says. “But the last thing you want to do is go to a restaurant that feeds 150 people... So I think that having a business model structured around smaller, intimate gatherings will probably be very lucrative after all of this. And that’s what I’ve been doing for almost five years now.”

In some ways, pop-ups have become more and more like traditional restaurants over the years, serving food out of restaurant dining rooms or large event spaces in place of home kitchens and front porches. With restaurants still closed in many states, and event spaces and bars unlikely to welcome pop-ups back any time soon, the model has been stripped down to its simplest form. “The future of pop-ups, now that people are paying attention,” Tate says, “is what they’ve always been: Something that pops up somewhere to feed people. And all that’s required is trust.”

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Leigh-Ann Martin chats with guests at one of her pop-up dinners. | Dahli Durley

As the restaurant industry faces an ongoing crisis, pop-up chefs confront unique challenges during the pandemic

“All the things that go into what I make still have that same intentionality,” he says. “It was never about the theater of it all, which is the dining room. It’s not about that.”

“The beauty of a pop-up is that they are malleable. They’re kind of like an amoeba.”

Haamza Edwards

For a recent pop-up dinner, Tate slow-smoked lamb legs in a pit.

A change of plans

Three years after launching the Vegan Hood Chefs in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, Ronnishia Johnson and Rheema Calloway were ready to turn their pop-up into a permanent space this year.

Ronnishia Johnson (left) and Rheema Calloway

Jessa Carter

Salimatu Amabebe (right) poses in front of the takeout window with artist Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.

What comes next

Ryan Soule

Solomon Johnson prepares for dinner service.

Meeting diners where they are

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