“
Tell me what to do, not how to do it.' Decentralize command and allow subordinates to operate freely within the framework of the commander's intent. Train them as a team. Develop trust, loyalty, initiative.
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Nathaniel Fick (One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer)
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Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.
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Carolyn Custis James (The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules)
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A public official must understand from his first day in office that any show of initiative will signal the end of his career because he isn't there to be meritorious but to reach his level of incompetence with dignity.
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Isabel Allende
“
Recently I interviewed a psychopath. This is always a humbling experience because it teaches over and over how much of human motivation and experience is outside my narrow range. Despite the psychopath's lack of conscience and lack of empathy for others, he is inevitably better at fooling people than any other type of offender. I suppose conscience just slows you down. A child convicted molester, this particular one made friends with a correctional officer who invited him to live in his home after he was released - despite the fact the officer had a nine-year-old daughter.
The officer and his wife were so taken with the offender that, after the offender lived with them for a few months, they initiated adoption proceedings- adoption for a man almost their age. Of course, he was a child molester living in the same house as a child. Not surprisingly, he molested the daughter the entire time he lived there. [...]
What these experiences taught have me is that even when people are warned of a previously founded case of even a conviction, they still routinely underestimate the pathology with which they are dealing.
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Anna C. Salter (Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders)
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Principle number one: Let the person say what he wants as long as he does what you say. I even tell cops that. I say, “Let them chip at you as long as they’re cooperating with you. What do you care what they say? Your attitude should be ‘Say what you want, but do as I say!’” The only time this would not work is when the words the citizen uses serve only to inflate him with adrenaline, making him or his companions more of a problem. The officer has to carefully watch a person’s body language to see when he might explode from his own initiative. It’s important to intervene before these situations get out of hand.
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George J. Thompson (Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion)
“
From Slim to Fulford—both promoted to four-star general—came the same message: at the executive level, your job is to reward initiative in your junior officers and NCOs and facilitate their success.
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Jim Mattis (Call Sign Chaos)
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I prefer Ms. because it is similar to Mr. A man is Mr. whether married or not, a woman is Ms. whether married or not. So please teach Chizalum that in a truly just society, women should not be expected to make marriage-based changes that men are not expected to make. Here’s a nifty solution: Each couple that marries should take on an entirely new surname, chosen however they want as long as both agree to it, so that a day after the wedding, both husband and wife can hold hands and joyfully journey off to the municipal offices to change their passports, driver’s licenses, signatures, initials, bank accounts, etc.
”
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
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It’s striking that so many of the great economic initiatives of the Clinton presidency led eventually to catastrophe. But what really makes this story poisonous is that liberals by and large convinced themselves for many years that nothing had gone wrong at all. Everything Clinton’s team had done was an act of professional-class consensus. Because most of the fuses lit by Clinton and Co. didn’t actually detonate until after he had left office—and by then some science-denying Republican was in the Oval Office—they found it easy to absolve the Democrat from blame.
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Thomas Frank (Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People)
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(Currently, we count ourselves fortunate to have functional toilets. I don’t know what your living conditions are at Lattimore—tidy and sterile, I suspect—but here, given a construction project initiated on behalf of our Economics faculty, who Must Be Kept Comfortable at All Times, we are alternately frozen and nearly smoked, via pestilent fumes, out of our building. Between the construction dust and the radiators emitting erratic bursts of steam heat, the intrepid faculty members who have remained in their offices over the winter break are humid with sweat and dusted with ash and resemble two-legged cutlets dredged in flour.)
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Julie Schumacher (Dear Committee Members)
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When I came back from lunch and found out you'd been reassigned to Nick, I went up to be certain that you were doing all right. Mary told me that you'd just gone into Nick's office, so I opened the door and looked in to see if you needed rescuing. There you were-smiling angelically at him while you gave him messages from other women and turned down his offer of an 'affair.'"
Resting his head against the back of his chair, Jim closed his eyes and laughed. "Oh Lauren, you were magnificent! I was just about to leave when you pushed him too far and told him you'd call him when your daughter was of age, so that he could, er, initiate her,as I gather he initiated you?
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Judith McNaught (Double Standards)
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I was surprised to find such an overwhelming preponderance of nervous wrecks who cracked under the initial "strain." There is a great deal of stupidity in the management of this place. The petty officers etc. are all fat buttocked Marine sergeants with loud voices. They talk a lot about order and discipline but the administrative and ordering sections are the most confused, contradictory, undisciplined and disorderly crowd I've ever met with and the atmosphere breathes lack of definition and fosters anxiety.
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Allen Ginsberg (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters)
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If diversity and inclusion initiatives are approached as a form of charity, it will result in some people benefiting at the expense of others. Instead, diversity and inclusion should be approached as a way to expand capacity and as a hedge against risk. If you look at nature, that’s what diversity does… expand capacity and hedge against risk.
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr. (Business Essentials)
“
Although upon reflection, Jole wasn’t sure of the advisability of introducing a keen young officer to Vorkosigan notions of initiative. Metaphors about fighting fire with gasoline rose to his mind.
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Lois McMaster Bujold (Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga (Publication) #16))
“
Rituals are central to virtually all of our social institutions. Think of a judge waving a gavel or a new president taking an oath of office," he writes. They are held by militaries, governments and corporations, in initiation ceremonies, parades, and costly displays of commitment. They are used by athletes who always wear the same socks in important games, and by gamblers who kiss the dice or cling on to lucky charms when the stakes are high.
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Dimitris Xygalatas (Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living)
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The average person walks into their doctor's office ready to accept whatever is said and handed to them. Without taking time to research or gain more insight, they accept pills and treatment
without looking into other options.
Our nation overeats. We put toxic fake food into our bodies, but wonder why we're sick. We continue a vicious cycle of consuming the wrong foods and drinks along with a stressful lifestyle, yet
question why cancer is so rampant. Most of our society live in fear and believe they have no control.
My positive message is that we do have control. We need to take back ownership of our bodies and minds. Don't blindly fill prescriptions without first checking into potential side effects, adverse reactions, and long-term damage to your body and mind. Be conscious of what you are consuming. Be informed. Take the initiative to gain more knowledge. Understand your options so you may be in a better position to make an informed choice.
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Dana Arcuri (Harvest of Hope: Living Victoriously Through Adversity)
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With this warning, Mussolini demanded and was given authority to do just about whatever he wanted; but his initial priority, surprisingly, was good government. He knew that citizens were fed up with a bureaucracy that seemed to grow bigger and less efficient each year, so he insisted on daily roll calls in ministry offices and berated employees for arriving late to work or taking long lunches. He initiated a campaign to drenare la palude (“drain the swamp”) by firing more than 35,000 civil servants. He repurposed Fascist gangs to safeguard rail cargo from thieves. He allocated money to build bridges, roads, telephone exchanges, and giant aqueducts that brought water to arid regions. He gave Italy an eight-hour workday, codified insurance benefits for the elderly and disabled, funded prenatal health care clinics, established seventeen hundred summer camps for children, and dealt the Mafia a blow by suspending the jury system and short-circuiting due process. With no jury members to threaten and judges answerable directly to the state, the courts were as incorruptible as they were docile. Contrary to legend, the dictator didn’t quite succeed in making the trains run on time, but he earned bravos for trying.
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Madeleine K. Albright (Fascism: A Warning)
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The poor could never rise to the top of Roman politics; the common people could never seize the political initiative; and it was axiomatic that the richer an individual citizen was, the more political weight he should have. But this form of disequilibrium is familiar in many modern so-called democracies: at Rome too the wealthy and privileged competed for political office and political power that could only be granted by popular election and by the favour of ordinary people who would never have the financial means to stand themselves.
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Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
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Well, we actually never went around. We worked together, struggled through the corporate maze, shared our dreams, and, somewhere along the way, we came closer to each other. At the end, we touched each other’s heart. The impact was profound, much more than I thought it was initially.
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Sandhya Jane (Second Spring)
“
at the executive level, your job is to reward initiative in your junior officers and NCOs and facilitate their success. When they make mistakes while doing their best to carry out your intent, stand by them. Examine your coaching and how well you articulate your intent. Remember the bottom line: imbue in them a strong bias for action.
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Jim Mattis (Call Sign Chaos)
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I am going to need a corps of officers who are something more than merely loyal. I want men who can act on their own initiative without ruining my grand design—men who will add to my own ability and efficiency, rather than drain me. I don’t care about sharing the credit, there’s plenty of credit and glory to go around when things are well run.
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Colleen McCullough (The First Man in Rome (Masters of Rome, #1))
“
Here’s a nifty solution: Each couple that marries should take on an entirely new surname, chosen however they want as long as both agree to it, so that a day after the wedding, both husband and wife can hold hands and joyfully journey off to the municipal offices to change their passports, driver’s licenses, signatures, initials, bank accounts, etc.
”
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Dear Ijeawele; or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions)
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Anger over Garner’s death is understandable. No one should die for selling untaxed cigarettes or even for resisting arrest, though the officers certainly did not intend to kill Garner, and a takedown may be justified when a suspect resists. Protests initially centered on the officer’s seeming use of a choke-hold, which is banned by NYPD policy. But critics of the NYPD expanded the campaign against the police to include misdemeanor enforcement itself. This is pure opportunism. There is no connection between the theory and practice of quality-of-life enforcement, on the one hand, and Garner’s death, on the other. It was Garner’s resistance to arrest that triggered the events leading to his death, however disproportionate that outcome, not the policing of illegal cigarette sales. Suspects resist arrest for all sorts of crimes. The only way to prevent the remote possibility of death following an attempted arrest, beyond eliminating the use of choke-holds (if that is indeed what caused Garner’s heart attack), is to make no arrests at all, even for felonies.
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Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
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I AM WRITING IN A time of great anxiety in my country. I understand the anxiety, but also believe America is going to be fine. I choose to see opportunity as well as danger. Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good in this nation. We all bear responsibility for the deeply flawed choices put before voters during the 2016 election, and our country is paying a high price: this president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven, and about personal loyalty. We are fortunate some ethical leaders have chosen to serve and to stay at senior levels of government, but they cannot prevent all of the damage from the forest fire that is the Trump presidency. Their task is to try to contain it. I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while deemphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and morally wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I’ve said this earlier but it’s worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, “I hope you will let it go,” about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to almost be darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.
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James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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But “Inquisition” can also mean a new kind of legal process that, when the pope introduced it in the thirteenth century, was one of the greatest leaps forward in legal history. Among its innovations was the office of state prosecutor. Investigations were now initiated by this office, and not—as had previously been the case—purely on the grounds of an accusation.
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Hubert Wolf (The Nuns of Sant'Ambrogio: The True Story of a Convent in Scandal)
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So what are people actually referring to when they talk about "deregulation"? In ordinary usage, the word seems to mean "changing the regulatory structure in a way that I like." In practice this can refer to almost anything. In the case of airlines or telecommunications in the seventies and eighties, it meant changing the system of regulation from one that encouraged a few large firms to one that fostered carefully supervised competition between midsize firms. In the case of banking, "deregulation" has usually meant exactly the opposite: moving away from a situation of managed competition between mid-sized firms to one where a handful of financial conglomerates are allowed to completely dominate the market. This is what makes the term so handy. Simply by labeling a new regulatory measure "deregulation," you can frame it in the public mind as a way to reduce bureaucracy and set individual initiative free, even if the result is a fivefold increase in the actual number of forms to be filled in, reports to be filed, rules and regulations for lawyers to interpret, and officious people in offices whose entire job seems to be to provide convoluted explanations for why you're not allowed to do things. (p. 17)
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David Graeber (The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy)
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The CIA plan to capture bin Laden also had to accommodate another layer of American law governing covert action: the presidential ban on assassination by the CIA or its agents, a ban initiated by President Gerald R. Ford in 1976 and renewed by Reagan in the same Executive Order 12333. To comply with this part of the law, when they met with their agents to develop their plan, the CIA officers had to make clear that the effort to capture bin Laden could not turn into an assassination hit. The Afghans had to try to take bin Laden alive. CIA officers were assigned to sit down with the team leaders to make it as clear as possible. “I want to reinforce this with you,” station chief Gary Schroen told the Afghans, as he later described the meeting in cables to Langley and Washington. “You are to capture him alive.”9
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Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
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The Common Core State Standards Initiative, as it’s officially known, is the product of three private organizations, two of which have official-sounding names: the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The third private group is Achieve Inc., which boasts on its Web page that it helped take the idea of nationalized learning standards from “a radical proposal into a national agenda.
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Glenn Beck (Conform: Exposing the Truth About Common Core and Public Education (The Control Series Book 2))
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Truman repeatedly stressed the unique nature of the American presidency. He called it the greatest office ever created by the mind of man. In the Truman Presidential Library, only a few blocks from his house, he had ordered an inscription to be prominently displayed, listing the six tasks of the president. He was commander-in-chief of the armed forces, leader of his political party, initiator of legislation, maker of foreign policy, the head of state and the chief executive, responsible for seeing that the laws passed by Congress were respected and obeyed.
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Thomas Fleming (Storms Over the Presidency (The Thomas Fleming Library))
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Under such a system, how do you avoid mistakes? You don’t entirely. Mission-type orders and a “zero-defects mentality” are contradictory. Several years ago, a member of Congress told a German Army colonel that he wanted to organize his Congressional office on the basis of mission-type orders. The colonel replied, “That is very good, but I hope you realize it means allowing your staff to make mistakes.” A maneuver warfare military believes it is better to have high levels of initiative among subordinate officers, with a resultant rapid Boyd Cycle, even if the price is some mistakes.
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William S. Lind (Maneuver Warfare Handbook)
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Why are you stopping people in places where there’s no crime?” Weisburd says. “That doesn’t make sense to me.” Sherman is just as horrified. “At that hour of the day in that location, stopping [Sandra Bland] for changing lanes is not justifiable,” he said. Even during the initial Kansas City gun experiment—in a neighborhood a hundred times worse than Prairie View—Sherman said that the special police officers made their stops solely at night. That’s the only time of day when the crime rate was high enough to justify aggressive policing. Sandra Bland was pulled over in the middle of the afternoon.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know)
“
Command culture” is in this study to be understood as how an officer considers himself to be in command, i.e., does he command as a visible person close to the action or rather through orders by his staff from his command post? It also means the way an officer tackles the turmoil and chaos of battle and war—whether he tries to make sense of it by the application of doctrine or rather utilizes the pandemonium to make bold moves. This study will therefore also deal with the question of whether the command culture of an officer corps emphasizes personal initiative or playing by the rules and regulations.
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Jörg Muth (Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II)
“
Wallace would never realize his political ambitions, but he would certainly play a part in seeing that Johnson realized his. After the assassination of President Kennedy, a fingerprint was found on a cardboard box in the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. It could not be linked with Oswald, any other employee of the Texas School Book Depository, or any law enforcement officer who had handled the box. Wallace’s print from his previous conviction and the one found on the box were a match, according to fingerprint expert A. Nathan Darby, former head of Austin’s police identification unit. Darby was the most experienced certified latent print examiner in America, with more than thirty-five years of military forensic and police experience. An initial comparison found a match between the two prints on fourteen unique points while Darby ultimately ascertained that the two prints had thirty-two matching points,65 far exceeding the requirement for identification and conviction. “I’m positive,” said Darby. “The finger that made the ink print also made the latent print. It’s a match.” In comparison, “the Dallas police found only three partial fingerprints of Oswald on only two of the boxes in the area.”66
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Roger Stone (The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ)
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Many a tale of inguldgent parenthood illustrates the antique idea that when the roles of life are assumed by the improperly initiated, chaos supervenes. When the child outgrows the popular idyle of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father-who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the good and evil, so does now the father, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world.
The traditional idea of initiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectually purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes-for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment. Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent consequently now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of good and evil to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in understanding the revelation of being.
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Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces)
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Long live the shameful peace,’ was Jean Cocteau’s pithy summation of the views of many. It was due to this that France could initially be held down by as few as 30,000 German troops in 1941.75 During the first eighteen months of the Occupation, no Germans were deliberately killed by any French in Paris, and only one French patriotic demonstration was held, during which all of the one hundred people involved were arrested. Everything reopened, except of course the Assemblée Nationale, whose building had been converted into German administrative offices with a huge banner hanging from it proclaiming Germany’s victories ‘on all fronts’.
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Andrew Roberts (The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War)
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The only thing that Apollon might not cede to his brother was the power of high soothsaying; for Apollon alone was entrusted with the knowledge of the decisions of Zeus. But he gave Hermes the soothsaying of three swarming virgins—three sister bees on Parnassus—and also his own former dominion over the beasts, together with the office of initiated Messenger on the path leading to the House of Hades in the Underworld: the office of Psychopompos, the escort of souls. Such a liking had Apollon taken to the son of Maia, who furthermore received from Zeus the right to traffic with immortals and mortals: the office of Messenger of the Gods.
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Karl Kerényi (The Gods of The Greeks)
“
When Lauren returned from lunch there were two dozen breathtakingly gorgeous red roses in a vase on her desk. She removed the card from its envelope and stared at it in blank amazement. On it was written "Thank you, sweetheart," followed by the initial J.
When Lauren looked up,Nick was standing in the doorway,his shoulder casually propped against the frame. But there was nothing casual about the rigid set of his jaw or the freezing look in his gray eyes. "From a secret admirer?" he asked sarcastically.
It was the first personal comment he had addressed to her in four days. "Not a secret admirer exactly," she hedged.
"Who is he?"
Lauren tensed. He seemed so angry she didn't think it would be wise to mention Jim's name. "I'm not absolutely certain."
"You aren't absolutely certain?" he bit out. "How many men with the inital J are you seeing? How many of them think you're worth more than a hundred dollars in roses as a way of saying thank you?"
"A hundred dollars?" Lauren repeated, so appalled at the expense that she completely overlooked the fact that Nick had obviously opened the envelope and read the card.
"You must be getting better at it," he mocked crudely.
Inwardly Lauren flinched, but she lifted her chin. "I have much better teachers now!"
With an icy glance that raked her from head to toe,Nick turned on his heel and strode back into his office. For the rest of the day he left her completely alone.
”
”
Judith McNaught (Double Standards)
“
The world looks different from above, and the first time people go up in helicopters the reaction is always the same. The takeoff, rather like jerking aloft in an amusement-park cable-car ride, is initially startling, but then the fascination begins. The world transformed itself before the eyes of both officers, and it was as though it all suddenly made sense. They could see the roads and the farms all laid out like a map. Freeland grasped it first. Knowing his territory as he did, he instantly saw that his mental picture of it was flawed; his idea of how things really were was not quite right. He was only a thousand feet above it, a linear distance his car traversed in seconds, but this perspective was new, and he immediately started learning from it.
”
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Tom Clancy (Without Remorse (John Clark, #1; Jack Ryan Universe, #1))
“
Overall, Zinni’s rules read like an updating of how to apply the Marine Corps culture to today’s conflicts: Stay loose. Stay focused. Keep it simple. And be honest. Similar messages can be heard in many parts of the Corps, wherever there are good officers willing to seize the initiative—that is, who care more about their mission and their Marines than they do about their careers. This is how Major Davis at the Drill Instructors School summarizes the Marine Corps way of doing business: “Concentrate on doing a single task as simply as you can, execute it flawlessly, take care of your people, and go home.”That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the “doctrine”that the Army so loves to write and cite. But those four steps offer an efficient way to run any organization.
”
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Thomas E. Ricks (Making the Corps)
“
Original Statement by Hunger Strikers to Psychiatric Association, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the U.S. Office of the Surgeon General 1. A Hunger Strike to Challenge International Domination by Biopsychiatry. This fast is about human rights in mental health. The psychiatric pharmaceutical complex is heedless of its oath to “first do no harm.” Psychiatrists are able with impunity to: Incarcerate citizens who have committed crimes against neither persons nor property. Impose diagnostic labels on people that stigmatize and defame them. Induce proven neurological damage by force and coercion with powerful psychotropic drugs. Stimulate violence and suicide with drugs promoted as able to control these activities. Destroy brain cells and memories with an increasing use of electroshock (also known as electro-convulsive therapy). Employ restraint and solitary confinement—which frequently cause severe emotional trauma, humiliation, physical harm, and even death—in preference to patience and understanding. Humiliate individuals already damaged by traumatizing assaults to their self-esteem. These human rights violations and crimes against human decency must end. While the history of psychiatry offers little hope that change will arrive quickly, initial steps can and must be taken. At the very least, the public has the right to know IMMEDIATELY the evidence upon which psychiatry bases its spurious claims and treatments, and upon which it has gained and betrayed the trust and confidence of the courts, the media, and the public.21
”
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Seth Farber (The Spiritual Gift of Madness: The Failure of Psychiatry and the Rise of the Mad Pride Movement)
“
police officers, like all humans, are subject to a powerful phenomenon that psychologists call confirmation bias. This means that after they have come to a conclusion, especially if it is a conclusion that they have publicly announced (for example, by arresting someone and accusing him of a serious crime), it is very difficult for them to admit that perhaps they have made a terrible mistake. It is much easier and more comfortable for them to convince themselves that they did not make a mistake, and that their initial accusations were correct. Their memories will gladly cooperate in that effort. Even if they are not aware of how it is happening, they might recall nonexistent details to coincide with and corroborate the story they have already begun persuading themselves to believe.
”
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James J. Duane (You Have the Right to Remain Innocent)
“
At least initially, the relationship took on a nineteenth-century epistolatory quality. The only way they could stay in touch was by letter. In 1991, while South Korea was becoming the world's largest exporter of mobile telephones, few North Koreans had ever used a telephone. You had to go to a post office to make a phone call. But even writing a letter was not a simple undertaking. Writing paper was scarce. People would write in the margins of newspapers. The paper in the state stores was made of corn husk and would crumble easily if you scratched too hard. Mi-ran had to beg her mother for the money to buy a few sheets of imported paper. Rough drafts were out of the question; paper was too precious. The distance from Pyongyang to Chongjin was only 250 miles, but letters took up to a month to be delivered.
”
”
Barbara Demick
“
With his tongue between his teeth, Officer Wally cocked his weapon and took aim.
BANG!
Mario felt the bullet enter his left foot, but carried on running undeterred. In place of screams, there was laughter. The golden ecstasy supplied by the drug was at its peak. It wouldn’t be long now; he could feel it.
BANG!
The second bullet caught him in his right foot, yet he dared not stop. It was near now, so near...
BANG!
“He missed,” Mario thought initially, but as he brought his hands to his lips, he tasted iron. Both his palms were bleeding profusely, and so were his feet. He laughed once again – head spinning, heart dancing, mind burdened by his search for meaning – his wet eyes on the velvet sky. The clouds were clearing.
‘The spear!’ he shouted to the heavens above. ‘Don’t forget the spear!’
It happened faster than any pair of eyes could capture it: the fourth bullet cut through the air with a tangible screech, and the nearby building exploded into applause. Like a marionette whose strings had been cut, Mario Fantoccio fell theatrically, the wound at his side painting the cobbles in Marsmeyer’s No.4 vermillion red.
The ground beneath him split down the middle, and from the depths of asphalt, he heard music. It was the Music of Strings, of Celestial Spheres – an underworld rhapsody with dark aftertones, gushing out of the earth like puss from a wound.
It was alluring, resplendent and at the same time, terrifying.
Demonic and eternal, devastating and yet hypnotizing, the Sounds of Hell beckoned, and like an obedient child, Mario followed, sinking deeper and deeper into the Underworld.
In a perfect moment of synchronicity, the orange sun of dusk broke through the rainclouds and cast a single beam of sunlight upon Mario’s forehead. He closed his eyes, his mind at ease, his head full of Music.
The cobbles trembled under the approaching sound of footsteps.
‘Where is he? Where did he go?’ said the pursuing man.
‘H-he just vanished, sarge. In-into thin air!’
‘Don’t be silly, Wally. People don’t just vanish into thin air. I know I got him. Heaven preserve me, I got him four times!’
‘Yes, sarge.’
‘What’s this now?’
‘Rather looks like our man, sarge. Or at least, his rough outline filled out in blood. Well, except—’
‘—except this one’s got wings,’ said the sergeant, his knees cracking as he crouched. He cautiously prodded the red shape with his index.
‘This ain’t blood, either.’
‘Sir?’
The sergeant shoved the finger in his mouth.
‘Theatrical red paint.
”
”
Louise Blackwick (The Underworld Rhapsody)
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It seems we have no clue where to draw the line regarding conversations we shouldn't initiate and questions we shouldn't ask. When it comes to matters of the body, there is already enough hell that one is going through; you do not need to add more fuel to it. Although I may not speak for everyone, I know many of us experience body insecurities somehow. It is a struggle for the vast majority. Questioning people about their weight, sexuality, and fertility are conversations that we should refrain from unless initiated by the concerned parties. Even then, when these conversations come up, it is never an invitation for judgment. If ever there was a time when compassion was needed the most, it is when the affected people bring up such topics. What they need the most are compassion and kindness. And sometimes, empathy is just listening
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Elelwani Anita Ravhuhali (Sometimes it's your workplace: "A toxic workplace doesn't end at the office ,it follows you into every part of your life.")
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Minutes after Eve stepped into her office to coordinate her next move, Peabody rushed in.
“I’ve got the initial sweeper’s report on the room the Lombards vacated—nothing,” Peabody said hurriedly. “Canvassing cops found the bar—one block east, two south of the hotel. Door was unlocked. Zana’s purse was inside on the floor. I have a team heading there now.”
“You’ve been busy,” Eve said. “How did you manage to fit in sex?”
“Sex? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I bet you want coffee.” She darted to the AutoChef, then whirled back. “How do you know I had sex? Do you have sex radar?”
“Your shirt’s not buttoned right, and you’ve got a fresh hickey on your neck.”
“Damn it.” Peabody slapped a hand to the side of her neck. “How bad is it? Why don’t you have a mirror in here?”
“Because, let’s see, could it be because it’s an office?
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J.D. Robb
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My hour with my phone off starts shortly after I get home from work. This is one of the hardest times of the day because my children are ramped up for my attention, but I’m still trying to come down from the workday. My habit is to get changed, make one final email check to make sure things are in order at the office—and if not, to tell someone that I’ll get back to them later that night—and then to turn it off and put it in my dresser drawer. It’s a weird feeling, almost like hiding a valuable under a mattress. You walk away but your mind stays on it. You can visualize it sitting there in the dark. But whether the boys and I are riding bikes to the park, initiating a royal rumble on the living room floor, or setting the table together, my presence is fundamentally different that hour of the day. I am with them. Whatever we’re doing, it is together.
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Justin Whitmel Earley (The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction)
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In his rapid rise, talent, opportunity, and fortune converged improbably—to many, it seemed, providentially. Patton—who earlier in the year had told Eisenhower, “You are my oldest friend”—privately claimed the initials “D.D.” stood for “Divine Destiny.” Thirty months earlier, Eisenhower had been a lieutenant colonel who had never commanded even a platoon in combat. Young Ike, the third son of a failed Midwestern merchant turned creamery worker, had chosen a military career because West Point provided a free education. After an indifferent cadetship he embarked on an ordinary career as a staff officer, stalled at the middling rank of major for sixteen years. Even his first venture into the rarefied circles he would inhabit for two decades was inauspicious: the White House usher’s log for February 9, 1942, recorded the initial visit to the Oval Office of one “P. D. Eisenhauer.
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Rick Atkinson (An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943)
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La dame de la Cour de cassation, c'est un arrêt qui tombe au printemps 2000 et qui dit que le juge ne peut pas relever d'office, c'est-à-dire de sa propre initiative, un manquement à la loi. On reconnaît la théorie libérale : on n'a pas plus de droit que celui qu'on réclame ; pour réparer un tort, il faut que celui qui l'a subi s'en plaigne. Dans le cas d'un litige entre un consommateur et un professionnel du crédit, si le consommateur ne se plaint pas du contrat, ce n'est pas au juge de le faire à sa place. Cela se tient dans la théorie libérale, dans la réalité le consommateur ne s'en plaint jamais, parce qu'il ne connaît pas la loi, parce que ce n'est pas lui qui a porté le litige en justice, parce que neuf fois sur dix il n'a pas d'avocat. Peu importe, dit la Cour de cassation, l'office du juge, c'est l'office du juge : il n'a pas à se mêler de ce qui ne le regarde pas ; s'il est scandalisé, il doit le rester en son for intérieur.
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Emmanuel Carrère (D'autres vies que la mienne)
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Then other memories intruded and a different Robin peeled away from this picture of a safe and ordered past: and there in front of him stood a woman who would not have been out of place in the SIB. This was the Robin who had taken advanced driving courses, who had concussed herself in the pursuit of a killer, who had calmly wrapped her coat like a tourniquet around his bleeding arm after he was stabbed and taken him to hospital. The Robin who had improvised so successfully in interrogating suspects that she had winkled out information that the police had not managed to get, who had invented and successfully embodied Venetia Hall, who had persuaded a terrified young man who wanted his leg amputated to confide in her, who had given Strike a hundred other examples of initiative, resourcefulness and courage that might have turned her into a plain-clothes police officer by now, had she not once walked into a dark stairwell where a bastard in a mask stood waiting.
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Robert Galbraith (Career of Evil (Cormoran Strike, #3))
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George Romney’s private-sector experience typified the business world of his time. His executive career took place within a single company, American Motors Corporation, where his success rested on the dogged (and prescient) pursuit of more fuel-efficient cars.41 Rooted in a particular locale, the industrial Midwest, AMC was built on a philosophy of civic engagement. Romney dismissed the “rugged individualism” touted by conservatives as “nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”42 Nor was this dismissal just cheap talk: He once returned a substantial bonus that he regarded as excessive.43 Prosperity was not an individual product, in Romney’s view; it was generated through bargaining and compromises among stakeholders (managers, workers, public officials, and the local community) as well as through individual initiative. When George Romney turned to politics, he carried this understanding with him. Romney exemplified the moderate perspective characteristic of many high-profile Republicans of his day. He stressed the importance of private initiative and decentralized governance, and worried about the power of unions. Yet he also believed that government had a vital role to play in securing prosperity for all. He once famously called UAW head Walter Reuther “the most dangerous man in Detroit,” but then, characteristically, developed a good working relationship with him.44 Elected governor in 1962 after working to update Michigan’s constitution, he broke with conservatives in his own party and worked across party lines to raise the minimum wage, enact an income tax, double state education expenditures during his first five years in office, and introduce more generous programs for the poor and unemployed.45 He signed into law a bill giving teachers collective bargaining rights.46 At a time when conservatives were turning to the antigovernment individualism of Barry Goldwater, Romney called on the GOP to make the insurance of equal opportunity a top priority. As
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Jacob S. Hacker (American Amnesia: How the War on Government Led Us to Forget What Made America Prosper)
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The priestly hierarchy ran to seven grades or stages of initiation. One became successively Raven, Bridegroom or Newly-wed (Nymphus), Soldier, Lion, Persian, Heliodromus or 'Messenger of the Sun' and finally Father. Each of the mystae attaining these titles wore the costume appropriate to his office, and the frescoes of Sta Prisca give us some idea of them. They were respectively under the protection of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Moon, the Sun and Saturn. The Raven served the guests, the Nymphus gave them light. Marked on his forehead (perhaps branded), the Soldier who had been consecrated by the rite of a crown proffered on a sword-point (Tert., Cor., 15, 3), in his turn put candidates for initiation to the test. The Lion, who was purified by having honey instead of water poured on his hands, looked after the fire. The Persian was the 'guardian of the fruit' (Porph., Antr., 16). In the sacramental meal, the Heliodromus represented the Sun beside the Father representing Mithras. The Raven and the Lion wore masks suitable to their name.
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Robert Turcan (The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times)
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In a rational state it would be more appropriate to ensure that a cobbler passed an examination than an executive civil servant; because shoe-making is a craft in the absence of which it is still possible to be a good citizen and a man in society. But the necessary 'knowledge of the state' is a precondition in the absence of which one lives outside the state, cut off from the air one breathes and from oneself. Thus the 'examination' is nothing but a Masonic initiation, the legal recognition of the knowledge of citizenship, the acknowledgement of a privilege.
This 'link' between the 'individual' and his 'office', this objective bond between the knowledge of civil society and the knowledge of the state, namely the examination, is nothing but the bureaucratic baptism of knowledge, the official recognition of the transubstantiation of profane knowledge into sacred knowledge (it is plain that in every examination the examiner is omniscient).
It is not recorded that Greek and Roman statesmen ever took examinations. But then what is a Roman statesman compared to a Prussian civil servant!
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Karl Marx (A Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State)
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When she was finished with the mailbox, Lisey trudged back down the driveway with her buckets in the long evening light. Breakfast had been coffee and oatmeal, lunch little more than a scoop of tuna and mayo on a scrap of lettuce, and dead cat or no dead cat, she was starved. She decided to put off her call to Woodbody until she had some food in her belly. The thought of calling the Sheriff's Office—anyone in a blue uniform, for that matter—hadn't yet returned to her.
She washed her hands for three minutes, using very hot water and making sure any speck of blood was gone from under her nails. Then she found the Tupperware dish containing the leftover Cheeseburger Pie, scraped it onto a plate, and blasted it in the microwave. While she waited for the chime, she hunted a Pepsi out of the fridge. She remembered thinking she'd never finish the Hamburger Helper stuff once her initial lust for it had been slaked. You could add that to the bottom of the long, long list of Things in Life Lisey Has Been Wrong About, but so what? Big diddly, as Cantata had been fond of saying in her teenage years.
"I never claimed to be the brains of the outfit," Lisey told the empty kitchen, and the microwave bleeped as if to second that.
The reheated gloop was almost too hot to eat but Lisey gobbled it anyway, cooling her mouth with fizzy mouthfuls of cold Pepsi. As she was finishing the last bite, she remembered the low whispering sound the cat's fur had made against the tin sleeve of the mailbox, and the weird pulling sensation she'd felt as the body began, reluctantly, to come forward. He must have really crammed it in there, she thought, and Dick Powell once more came to mind, black-and-white Dick Powell, this time saying And have some stuffing!
She was up and rushing for the sink so fast she knocked her chair over, sure she was going to vomit everything she'd just eaten, she was going to blow her groceries, toss her cookies, throw her heels, donate her lunch. She hung over the sink, eyes closed, mouth open, midsection locked and straining. After a pregnant five-second pause, she produced one monstrous cola-burp that buzzed like a cicada. She leaned there a moment longer, wanting to make absolutely sure that was all. When she was, she rinsed her mouth, spat, and pulled "Zack McCool"'s letter from her jeans pocket. It was time to call Joseph Woodbody.
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Stephen King (Lisey's Story)
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Zaphod paused for a while. For a while there was silence. Then he frowned and said, “Last night I was worrying about this again. About the fact that part of my mind just didn’t seem to work properly. Then it occurred to me that the way it seemed was that someone else was using my mind to have good ideas with, without telling me about it. I put the two ideas together and decided that maybe that somebody had locked off part of my mind for that purpose, which was why I couldn’t use it. I wondered if there was a way I could check.
“I went to the ship’s medical bay and plugged myself into the encephalographic screen. I went through every major screening test on both my heads—all the tests I had to go through under Government medical officers before my nomination for presidency could be properly ratified. They showed up nothing. Nothing unexpected at least. They showed that I was clever, imaginative, irresponsible, untrustworthy, extrovert, nothing you couldn’t have guessed. And no other anomalies. So I started inventing further tests, completely at random. Nothing. Then I tried superimposing the results from one head on top of the results from the other head. Still nothing. Finally I got silly, because I’d given it all up as nothing more than an attack of paranoia. Last thing I did before I packed it in was take the superimposed picture and look at it through a green filter. You remember I was always superstitious about the color green when I was a kid? I always wanted to be a pilot on one of the trading scouts?”
Ford nodded.
“And there it was,” said Zaphod, “clear as day. A whole section in the middle of both brains that related only to each other and not to anything else around them. Some bastard had cauterized all the synapses and electronically traumatized those two lumps of cerebellum.”
Ford stared at him, aghast. Trillian had turned white.
“Somebody did that to you?” whispered Ford.
“Yeah.”
“But have you any idea who? Or why?”
“Why? I can only guess. But I do know who the bastard was.”
“You know? How do you know?”
“Because they left their initials burned into the cauterized synapses. They left them there for me to see.”
Ford stared at him in horror and felt his skin begin to crawl.
“Initials? Burned into your brain?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what were they, for God’s sake?”
Zaphod looked at him in silence again for a moment. Then he looked away.
“Z.B.,” he said quietly.
At that moment a steel shutter slammed down behind them and gas started to pour into the chamber.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” choked Zaphod as all three passed out.
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Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
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To get an initial hint of the distance between the mind-set of parable's original audience and our own twenty-first-century perspectives, we might begin by reflecting briefly on the term 'good Samaritan.' Today, we use the term as if it were not peculiar. Yet as far as I am aware, there are not 'Good Catholic' or 'Good Baptist' hospitals; there are not social service organizations called 'Good Episcopalian' or 'Good Mexican' or 'Good Arab.' To label the Samaritan, any Samaritan, a 'good Samaritan' should be, in today's climate, seen as offensive. It is tantamount to saying, 'He's a good Muslim' (as opposed to all those others who, in this configuration, would be terrorists) or 'She's a good immigrant' (as opposed to all those others who, in this same configuration, are here to take our jobs or scam our welfare system), or, as Heinrich Himmler put it to a gathering of SS officers, every German 'has his decent Jew' - that is, knows one good Jew - and as far as Himmler was concerned, even one was too many, because that might create sympathy. The problem with the labeling is not simply a lack of sensitivity toward the Samaritan people - yes, there are still Samaritans. It is also a lack of awareness of how odd the expression 'good Samaritan' would have seemed to Jesus's Jewish contemporaries.
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Amy-Jill Levine (Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi)
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Once I leave — once I start the car or catch the bus to the airport, by which the voyage is initiated — my brain starts to relax at the absence of my things, and thus the familiar thoughts that they inspire. And it is not just about the books and trinkets on my desk, because a real trip usually means leaving behind innumerable other forms of familiarity: the faces and the voices that we know well, and which cause their own cataracts of memories and associations through their long histories with us. There are the sounds we always hear, and the recognition of what caused them, like the scraping of the gate at the construction site across the square from my apartment, which arrives every morning at 7 a.m. There are the quotidian streets of daily life, lined with memories of events at each address. The shops and offices we visit most often; the foods we buy, with their familiar tastes as we eat them. But as we go away from these things, our own thoughts change, or grow into the space previously occupied by the familiar. The light itself becomes different once we start to travel, as we change setting, latitude, or geography. And with these changes, with the disappearance of the familiar and its many calls upon our thoughts, we finally begin to think differently, or even just begin to think at all.
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Evan Rail (Why We Fly: The Meaning of Travel in a Hyperconnected Age (Kindle Single))
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While amassing one of the most lucrative fortunes in the world, the Kochs had also created an ideological assembly line justifying it. Now they had added a powerful political machine to protect it. They had hired top-level operatives, financed their own voter data bank, commissioned state-of-the-art polling, and created a fund-raising operation that enlisted hundreds of other wealthy Americans to help pay for it. They had also forged a coalition of some seventeen allied conservative groups with niche constituencies who would mask their centralized source of funding and carry their message. To mobilize Latino voters, they formed a group called the Libre Initiative. To reach conservative women, they funded Concerned Women for America. For millennials, they formed Generation Opportunity. To cover up fingerprints on television attack ads, they hid behind the American Future Fund and other front groups. Their network’s money also flowed to gun groups, retirees, veterans, antilabor groups, antitax groups, evangelical Christian groups, and even $4.5 million for something called the Center for Shared Services, which coordinated administrative tasks such as office space rentals and paperwork for the others. Americans for Prosperity, meanwhile, organized chapters all across the country. The Kochs had established what was in effect their own private political party.
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
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The nudge movement spawned by Thaler and Sunstein has been spectacularly successful around the globe. A 2017 review in the Economist described how policy makers were beginning to embrace insights from behavioral science: In 2009 Barack Obama appointed Mr Sunstein as head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The following year Mr Thaler advised Britain’s government when it established BIT, which quickly became known as the “nudge unit”. If BIT did not save the government at least ten times its running cost (£500,000 a year), it was to be shut down after two years. Not only did BIT stay open, saving about 20 times its running cost, but it marked the start of a global trend. Now many governments are turning to nudges to save money and do better. In 2014 the White House opened the Social and Behavioural Sciences Team. A report that year by Mark Whitehead of Aberystwyth University counted 51 countries in which “centrally directed policy initiatives” were influenced by behavioural sciences. Nonprofit organisations such as Ideas42, set up in 2008 at Harvard University, help run dozens of nudge-style trials and programmes around the world. In 2015 the World Bank set up a group that is now applying behavioural sciences in 52 poor countries. The UN is turning to nudging to help hit the “sustainable development goals”, a list of targets it has set for 2030.32
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Robert H. Frank (Under the Influence: Putting Peer Pressure to Work)
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I soon had an occasion to apply what I had learned from Feller. The Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, and my only significant contribution to the war effort was to advise high officers in the Israeli Air Force to stop an investigation. The air war initially went quite badly for Israel, because of the unexpectedly good performance of Egyptian ground-to-air missiles. Losses were high, and they appeared to be unevenly distributed. I was told of two squadrons flying from the same base, one of which had lost four planes while the other had lost none. An inquiry was initiated in the hope of learning what it was that the unfortunate squadron was doing wrong. There was no prior reason to believe that one of the squadrons was more effective than the other, and no operational differences were found, but of course the lives of the pilots differed in many random ways, including, as I recall, how often they went home between missions and something about the conduct of debriefings. My advice was that the command should accept that the different outcomes were due to blind luck, and that the interviewing of the pilots should stop. I reasoned that luck was the most likely answer, that a random search for a nonobvious cause was hopeless, and that in the meantime the pilots in the squadron that had sustained losses did not need the extra burden of being made to feel that they and their dead friends were at fault.
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Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
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Many aspects of the modern financial system are designed to give an impression of overwhelming urgency: the endless ‘news’ feeds, the constantly changing screens of traders, the office lights blazing late into the night, the young analysts who find themselves required to work thirty hours at a stretch. But very little that happens in the finance sector has genuine need for this constant appearance of excitement and activity. Only its most boring part—the payments system—is an essential utility on whose continuous functioning the modern economy depends. No terrible consequence would follow if the stock market closed for a week (as it did in the wake of 9/11)—or longer, or if a merger were delayed or large investment project postponed for a few weeks, or if an initial public offering happened next month rather than this. The millisecond improvement in data transmission between New York and Chicago has no significance whatever outside the absurd world of computers trading with each other. The tight coupling is simply unnecessary: the perpetual flow of ‘information’ part of a game that traders play which has no wider relevance, the excessive hours worked by many employees a tournament in which individuals compete to display their alpha qualities in return for large prizes. The traditional bank manager’s culture of long lunches and afternoons on the golf course may have yielded more useful information about business than the Bloomberg terminal. Lehman
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John Kay (Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance)
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When I first started looking into this depressing state of affairs, I figured America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we had stopped trying to solve the problem. I bought into the idea, popular among progressives, that the election of President Ronald Reagan (as well as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) marked the ascendancy of market fundamentalism, or “neoliberalism,” a time when governments cut aid to the poor, lowered taxes, and slashed regulations. If American poverty persisted, I thought, it was because we had reduced our spending on the poor. But I came to realize that the reality was far messier. President Reagan expanded corporate power, massively cut taxes on the rich, and rolled back spending on some antipoverty initiatives, especially in housing. But he was unable to make large-scale, long-term cuts to many of the programs that make up the American welfare state. When the president proposed reducing Social Security benefits in 1981, Congress rebuffed him.[7] Throughout Reagan’s eight years in office, antipoverty spending did not shrink. It grew and continued to grow after he left office. In fact, it grew significantly. Spending on the nation’s thirteen largest means-tested programs—aid reserved for Americans who fall below a certain income level—went from $1,015 a person the year Ronald Reagan was elected president to $3,419 a person one year into Donald Trump’s administration.[8] That’s a 237 percent increase.
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Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
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Situation awareness means possessing an explorer mentality A general never knows anything with certainty, never sees his enemy clearly, and never knows positively where he is. When armies are face to face, the least accident in the ground, the smallest wood, may conceal part of the enemy army. The most experienced eye cannot be sure whether it sees the whole of the enemy’s army or only three-fourths. It is by the mind’s eye, by the integration of all reasoning, by a kind of inspiration that the general sees, knows, and judges. ~Napoleon 5 In order to effectively gather the appropriate information as it’s unfolding we must possess the explorer mentality. We must be able to recognize patterns of behavior. Then we must recognize that which is outside that normal pattern. Then, you take the initiative so we maintain control. Every call, every incident we respond to possesses novelty. Car stops, domestic violence calls, robberies, suspicious persons etc. These individual types of incidents show similar patterns in many ways. For example, a car stopped normally pulls over to the side of the road when signaled to do so. The officer when ready, approaches the operator, a conversation ensues, paperwork exchanges, and the pulled over car drives away. A domestic violence call has its own normal patterns; police arrive, separate involved parties, take statements and arrest aggressor and advise the victim of abuse prevention rights. We could go on like this for all the types of calls we handle as each type of incident on its own merits, does possess very similar patterns. Yet they always, and I mean always possess something different be it the location, the time of day, the person you are dealing with. Even if it’s the same person, location, time and day, the person you’re dealing who may now be in a different emotional state and his/her motives and intent may be very different. This breaks that normal expected pattern. Hence, there is a need to always be open-minded, alert and aware, exploring for the signs and signals of positive or negative change in conditions. In his Small Wars journal article “Thinking and Acting like an Early Explorer” Brigadier General Huba Wass de Czege (US Army Ret.) describes the explorer mentality: While tactical and strategic thinking are fundamentally different, both kinds of thinking must take place in the explorer’s brain, but in separate compartments. To appreciate this, think of the metaphor of an early American explorer trying to cross a large expanse of unknown terrain long before the days of the modern conveniences. The explorer knows that somewhere to the west lies an ocean he wants to reach. He has only a sketch-map of a narrow corridor drawn by a previously unsuccessful explorer. He also knows that highly variable weather and frequent geologic activity can block mountain passes, flood rivers, and dry up desert water sources. He also knows that some native tribes are hostile to all strangers, some are friendly and others are fickle, but that warring and peace-making among them makes estimating their whereabouts and attitudes difficult.6
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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George W. Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS around the world, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), saved millions of lives in Africa and elsewhere. From the program’s launch in 2003 to the time Bush left office, the number of HIV-infected people in Africa getting proper treatment went from fewer than fifty thousand to two million. 19 His efforts didn’t go unnoticed by the people of the African continent. When President Bush took a farewell tour of Africa near the end of his second term, massive crowds of grateful Africans cheered for him. 20 Despite massive spending increases spearheaded by Obama, he cut funding for PEPFAR21 and deprived hundreds of thousands of people around of treatment. This inexplicable decision had a devastating effect on Africa, where most AIDS deaths occur. 22 The AIDS Healthcare Foundation was highly critical of Obama’s cuts, which came after he had promised to expand the fight against AIDS months earlier: “This latest action merely confirms what people with HIV/ AIDS and their advocates have long suspected—the President simply is not committed to fighting global AIDS. Coming on the heels of the President’s flowery rhetoric last December, the cynicism is simply breathtaking,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which provides free HIV/ AIDS medical care to over 125,000 people in 26 countries abroad. 23 The lesson for Africans: American friendship was fickle and patronizing and they couldn’t trust our promises. And we wonder why ISIS propaganda was so attractive to North Africans.
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Matt Margolis (The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama)
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I do not know the substance of the considerations and recommendations which Dr. Szilárd proposes to submit to you,” Einstein wrote. “The terms of secrecy under which Dr. Szilárd is working at present do not permit him to give me information about his work; however, I understand that he now is greatly concerned about the lack of adequate contact between scientists who are doing this work and those members of your Cabinet who are responsible for formulating policy.”34 Roosevelt never read the letter. It was found in his office after he died on April 12 and was passed on to Harry Truman, who in turn gave it to his designated secretary of state, James Byrnes. The result was a meeting between Szilárd and Byrnes in South Carolina, but Byrnes was neither moved nor impressed. The atom bomb was dropped, with little high-level debate, on August 6, 1945, on the city of Hiroshima. Einstein was at the cottage he rented that summer on Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks, taking an afternoon nap. Helen Dukas informed him when he came down for tea. “Oh, my God,” is all he said.35 Three days later, the bomb was used again, this time on Nagasaki. The following day, officials in Washington released a long history, compiled by Princeton physics professor Henry DeWolf Smyth, of the secret endeavor to build the weapon. The Smyth report, much to Einstein’s lasting discomfort, assigned great historic weight for the launch of the project to the 1939 letter he had written to Roosevelt. Between the influence imputed to that letter and the underlying relationship between energy and mass that he had formulated forty years earlier, Einstein became associated in the popular imagination with the making of the atom bomb, even though his involvement was marginal. Time put him on its cover, with a portrait showing a mushroom cloud erupting behind him with E=mc2 emblazoned on it. In a story that was overseen by an editor named Whittaker Chambers, the magazine noted with its typical prose flair from the period: Through the incomparable blast and flame that will follow, there will be dimly discernible, to those who are interested in cause & effect in history, the features of a shy, almost saintly, childlike little man with the soft brown eyes, the drooping facial lines of a world-weary hound, and hair like an aurora borealis… Albert Einstein did not work directly on the atom bomb. But Einstein was the father of the bomb in two important ways: 1) it was his initiative which started U.S. bomb research; 2) it was his equation (E = mc2) which made the atomic bomb theoretically possible.36 It was a perception that plagued him. When Newsweek did a cover on him, with the headline “The Man Who Started It All,” Einstein offered a memorable lament. “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb,” he said, “I never would have lifted a finger.”37 Of course, neither he nor Szilárd nor any of their friends involved with the bomb-building effort, many of them refugees from Hitler’s horrors, could know that the brilliant scientists they had left behind in Berlin, such as Heisenberg, would fail to unlock the secrets. “Perhaps I can be forgiven,” Einstein said a few months before his death in a conversation with Linus Pauling, “because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb and become the master race.”38
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Walter Isaacson (Einstein: His Life and Universe)
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If that sounds cultish, I’m unapologetic. When organizations talk about creating an innovative business culture, a lot of people focus on the external symbols. The ping-pong and foosball tables in the office, the team-building Thursday beers after work, the company ski weekends, and the anything-goes dress code. At TMHQ we have all those things. But they are marginal to what we are really about. A culture is built up over months and years of good practice, questioning, and improvement. Of doing things the right way and having anyone who comes into the group or participates in an event recognize what that means. Culture is all the things that happen in an organization when the boss isn’t looking. Tony Hsieh describes, in his book Delivering Happiness, how he built his online shoe business Zappos by concentrating on service and integrity above all else. “Your personal core values define who you are,” he argued, “and a company’s core values ultimately define the company’s character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny.” I think that’s true, and doubly so when you are “delivering happiness” as an experience that asks people to take on and display some of the virtues of that culture themselves. In this sense, we believed, in our initial phase of recruiting, that a candidate’s previous career path and qualifications were less important than his or her willingness to embrace our credo. Though we had no experience in event management, the plan was never to go out and hire people from the event industry. We had obstacles where participants jump through flames and we feared the first thing an outside event person might instinctively do was pull out a fire extinguisher.
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Will Dean (It Takes a Tribe: Building the Tough Mudder Movement)
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A major source of conflict is that men sometimes infer sexual interest on the part of a woman when it does not exist. A series of experiments has documented this phenomenon (Abbey, 1982; Lindgren, George, & Shoda, 2007). In one study, 98 male and 102 female college students viewed a 10-minute videotape of a conversation in which a female student visits a male professor’s office to ask for more time to complete a term paper. The actors in the film were a female drama student and a professor in the theater department. Neither the student nor the professor acted flirtatious or overtly sexual, although both were instructed to behave in a friendly manner. People who witnessed the tape then rated the likely intentions of the woman using a seven-point scale. Women watching the interaction were more likely to say that she was trying to be friendly, with an average rating of 6.45, and not sexy (2.00) or seductive (1.89). Men, also perceiving friendliness (6.09), were significantly more likely than women to infer seductive (3.38) and sexual intentions (3.84). A speed-dating laboratory procedure had men rate women’s sexual interest in them a er a brief interaction and compared those ratings to women’s self-reported sexual interest in each of the men (Perilloux et al., 2012). Again, men exhibited a sexual misperception bias, perceiving women as significantly more interested in them than women actually were. Men high in self-perceived attractiveness and female-evaluated mate value are especially vulnerable to the sexual over-perception bias (Kohl & Robertson, 2014; Perilloux et al., 2012). And men who pursue a short-term mating strategy are also more prone to the sexual over-perception bias (Perilloux et al., 2012), likely because this bias facilitates more frequent attempts to initiate sexual overtures.
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David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
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On the eve of Fort Sumter, the governor of South Carolina, Francis Pickens, reportedly acknowledged the clash of realities in a private conversation with a U.S. Army officer in Charleston. Pickens told the army man about “the whole plan and secret of the Southern conspiracy,” admitting that “the South had never been wronged, and that all their pretenses of grievance in the matter of tariffs, or anything else, were invalid. ‘But,’ said [Pickens], ‘we must carry the people with us; and we allege these things, as all statesmen do many things that they do not believe, because they are the only instruments by which the people can be managed.’ He then and there declared that the two sections of the country were so antagonistic in ideas and policies that they could not live together, that it was foreordained that Northern and Southern men must keep apart…and that all the pretenses of the South about wrongs suffered were but pretenses, as they very well knew.” As news of the attack reached Washington—it had rained all night in the national capital as Friday became Saturday—the president of the United States pithily but unmistakably made himself clear. “And, in every event,” Lincoln wrote on Saturday, April 13, “I shall, to the extent of my ability, repel force by force.” His initial policy to hold the nation together had failed. “The last ray of hope for preserving the Union peaceably expired at the assault upon Fort Sumter,” Lincoln remarked. To his friend Orville Browning, the president confided, “Browning, of all the trials I have had since I came here, none begin to compare with those I had between the inauguration and the fall of Fort Sumter. They were so great that could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.” The rebel South would not be convinced. The Union would not hold. War had come.
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Jon Meacham (And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle)
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Thakur’s findings were not news to Ranbaxy’s top executives. Just ten months earlier, in October 2003, outside auditors started investigating Ranbaxy facilities worldwide. In this case, the audits had been ordered up by Ranbaxy itself. This was a common industry practice: drug companies often hired consultants to audit their facilities as a dry run to see how visible their problems were. If the consultants could find it, they reasoned, then most likely regulators could too. The fact-finding mission by Lachman Consultant Services left Ranbaxy officials under no illusion as to the extent of the company’s failings. At Ranbaxy’s Princeton, New Jersey, facility, auditors found that the company’s Patient Safety Department barely functioned and training was essentially “non-existent.” The staff had no written protocols for investigating patient complaints, which piled up in boxes, uncategorized and unreported. They had no clerical help for basic tasks like mailing out the patients’ samples for testing. “I don’t think there’s the same medicine in this medicine,” was a common refrain from patients. Even when there were investigations, they were so perfunctory and half-hearted that expiration dates were listed as “unknown,” even when they could easily have been found from a product’s lot number. An audit of Ranbaxy’s main U.S. manufacturing plant, Ohm Laboratories in New Jersey, found that the company, though required to report adverse events to the FDA, rarely did so. There was no system to capture patient complaints after hours, and no global medical officer to ensure that any potential negative consequences for patients were being monitored. The consultants from Lachman urged Ranbaxy to address these problems globally. Ranbaxy’s initial reaction to the findings was to question the number of hours, and the resulting invoice, that Lachman had sent for its work.
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Katherine Eban (Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
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Baron, Baroness
Originally, the term baron signified a person who owned land as a direct gift from the monarchy or as a descendant of a baron. Now it is an honorary title. The wife of a baron is a baroness.
Duke, Duchess, Duchy, Dukedom
Originally, a man could become a duke in one of two ways. He could be recognized for owning a lot of land. Or he could be a victorious military commander. Now a man can become a duke simply by being appointed by a monarch. Queen Elizabeth II appointed her husband Philip the Duke of Edinburgh and her son Charles the Duke of Wales. A duchess is the wife or widow of a duke. The territory ruled by a duke is a duchy or a dukedom.
Earl, Earldom
Earl is the oldest title in the English nobility. It originally signified a chieftan or leader of a tribe. Each earl is identified with a certain area called an earldom. Today the monarchy sometimes confers an earldom on a retiring prime minister. For example, former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is the Earl of Stockton.
King
A king is a ruling monarch. He inherits this position and retains it until he abdicates or dies. Formerly, a king was an absolute ruler. Today the role of King of England is largely symbolic. The wife of a king is a queen.
Knight
Originally a knight was a man who performed devoted military service. The title is not hereditary. A king or queen may award a citizen with knighthood. The criterion for the award is devoted service to the country.
Lady
One may use Lady to refer to the wife of a knight, baron, count, or viscount. It may also be used for the daughter of a duke, marquis, or earl.
Marquis, also spelled Marquess.
A marquis ranks above an earl and below a duke. Originally marquis signified military men who stood guard on the border of a territory. Now it is a hereditary title.
Lord
Lord is a general term denoting nobility. It may be used to address any peer (see below) except a duke. The House of Lords is the upper house of the British Parliament. It is a nonelective body with limited powers. The presiding officer for the House of Lords is the Lord Chancellor or Lord High Chancellor. Sometimes a mayor is called lord, such as the Lord Mayor of London. The term lord may also be used informally to show respect.
Peer, Peerage
A peer is a titled member of the British nobility who may sit in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament. Peers are ranked in order of their importance. A duke is most important; the others follow in this order: marquis, earl, viscount, baron. A group of peers is called a peerage.
Prince, Princess
Princes and princesses are sons and daughters of a reigning king and queen. The first-born son of a royal family is first in line for the throne, the second born son is second in line. A princess may become a queen if there is no prince at the time of abdication or death of a king. The wife of a prince is also called a princess.
Queen
A queen may be the ruler of a monarchy, the wife—or widow—of a king.
Viscount, Viscountess
The title Viscount originally meant deputy to a count. It has been used most recently to honor British soldiers in World War II. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was named a viscount. The title may also be hereditary. The wife of a viscount is a viscountess. (In pronunciation the initial s is silent.)
House of Windsor
The British royal family has been called the House of Windsor since 1917. Before then, the royal family name was Wettin, a German name derived from Queen Victoria’s husband. In 1917, England was at war with Germany. King George V announced that the royal family name would become the House of Windsor, a name derived from Windsor Castle, a royal residence. The House of Windsor has included Kings George V, Edward VII, George VI, and Queen Elizabeth II.
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Nancy Whitelaw (Lady Diana Spencer: Princess of Wales)
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Did you know that if you’re a middle-aged woman, you have only a small window of opportunity between the beginning of perimenopause and the start of menopause to start estrogen replacement therapy to protect not only your brain but also your bones and cardiovascular system? I did not, until I dug into the science, because as a woman who was diagnosed with a stage 0 breast lump, I was scared off like so many of us from the results of the Women’s Health Initiative, which got blasted out all over the news and initially showed a link between estrogen replacement therapy and breast cancer, but guess what? That study had so many flaws, its findings are little more than useless and possibly harmful. Worse, women like me without uteri show a decrease in breast cancer with estrogen replacement therapy. But this information never made it either into the headlines or into our gynecologists’ offices. I had to find it in scientific publications such as The Lancet online. In fact, get this: Our medical system barely trains gynecologists in menopausal medicine. A recent study found that only 20 percent of ob-gyn residency programs in the U.S. provide any menopause training. Yes, any. Which means that 80 percent of all gynecological residents in school today are getting no training whatsoever in post-reproductive women’s health. These are people whose job it is to know everything going on in our ladyparts, but they have not been taught the basic tenets of how to care for either us or our plumbing after we stop menstruating. And by “us” I mean 30 percent of all women alive on earth at any given moment. Half of my middle-aged female friends deal with chronic urinary tract infections. Oh, well, we think, throwing up our hands in defeat and consuming far too many antibiotics than are rational or safe or even good for the future safety of humanity. It took Dr. Rachel Rubin, a urologist in Washington, D.C., reaching out to me over Twitter to explain that UTIs in menopausal women do not have to be recurrent. They can be mitigated with, yes, vaginal estrogen. Not once was I ever
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Deborah Copaken (Ladyparts)
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The outermost reach of fascist radicalization was the Nazi murder of the Jews. No mere prose can do justice to the Holocaust, but the most convincing accounts have two qualities. For one, they take into account not only Hitler’s obsessive hatred of Jews but also the thousands of subordinates whose participation in the increasingly harsh actions against them that made the mechanism function. Without them, Hitler’s murderous fantasy would have remained only a fantasy.
The other quality is the recognition that the Holocaust developed step by step, from lesser acts to more heinous ones.
Most scholars accept today that the Nazi assault upon the Jews developed incrementally. It grew neither entirely out of the disorderly local violence of a popular pogrom, nor entirely from the imposition from above of a murderous state policy. Both impulses ratcheted each other up in an ascending spiral, in a way appropriate to a “dual state.” Local eruptions of vigilantism by party militants were encouraged by the language of Nazi leaders and the climate of toleration for violence they established. The Nazi state, in turn, kept channeling the undisciplined initiatives of party militants into official policies applied in an orderly fashion.
The first phase was segregation: marking the internal enemies, setting them apart from the nation, and suppressing their rights as citizens. . . .Segregation reached its climax with the marking of the Jewish population. First
in occupied Poland in late 1939 and then in the Reich in August 1941, all Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David sewn to the chest of their external garments. By this time, the next phase—expulsion—had already begun.
The policy of expulsion germinated in the mixture of challenge and opportunity presented by the annexation of Austria in March 1938. This increased the number of Jews in the Reich, and, at the same time, gave the Nazis more freedom to deal harshly with them. The SS officer Adolf Eichmann worked out in Vienna the system whereby wealthy Jews, terrorized by Nazi thugs, would pay well for exit permits, generating funds that could be applied to the expulsion of the others.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while de-emphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I've said this earlier but it's worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, 'I hope you will let it go,' about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to be almost darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.
Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president so brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check...without these checks on our leaders, without those institutions vigorously standing against abuses of power, our country cannot sustain itself as a functioning democracy. I know there are men and women of good conscience in the United States Congress on both sides of the aisle who understand this. But not enough of them are speaking out. They must ask themselves to what, or to whom, they hold a higher loyalty: to partisan interests or to the pillars of democracy? Their silence is complicity - it is a choice - and somewhere deep down they must know that.
Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington - to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or different immigration policy.
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James B. Comey (A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership)
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When Musk took delivery of his F1, CNN was there to cover it. “Just three years ago I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor,” he told the camera sheepishly, “and now obviously, I’ve got a million-dollar car… it’s just a moment in my life.” While other McLaren F1 owners around the world—the sultan of Brunei, Wyclef Jean, and Jay Leno, among others—could comfortably afford it, Musk’s purchase had put a sizable dent in his bank account. And unlike other owners, Musk drove the car to work—and declined to insure it. As Musk drove Thiel up Sand Hill Road in the F1, the car was the subject of their chat. “It was like this Hitchcock movie,” Thiel remembered, “where we’re talking about the car for fifteen minutes. We’re supposed to be preparing for the meeting—and we’re talking about the car.” During their ride, Thiel looked at Musk and reportedly asked, “So, what can this thing do?” “Watch this,” Musk replied, flooring the accelerator and simultaneously initiating a lane change on Sand Hill Road. In retrospect, Musk admitted that he was outmatched by the F1. “I didn’t really know how to drive the car,” he recalled. “There’s no stability systems. No traction control. And the car gets so much power that you can break the wheels free at even fifty miles an hour.” Thiel recalls the car in front of them coming fast into view—then Musk swerving to avoid it. The McLaren hit an embankment, was tossed into the air—“like a discus,” Musk remembered——then slammed violently into the ground. “The people that saw it happen thought we were going to die,” he recalled. Thiel had not worn a seat belt, but astonishingly, neither he nor Musk were hurt. Musk’s “work of art” had not fared as well, having now taken a distinctly cubist turn. Post-near-death experience, Thiel dusted himself off on the side of the road and hitchhiked to the Sequoia offices, where he was joined by Musk a short while later. X.com’s CEO, Bill Harris, was also waiting at the Sequoia office, and he recalled that both Thiel and Musk were late but offered no explanation for their delay. “They never told me,” Harris said. “We just had the meeting.” Reflecting on it, Musk found humor in the experience: “I think it’s safe to say Peter wouldn’t be driving with me again.” Thiel wrung some levity out of the moment, too. “I’d achieved lift-off with Elon,” he joked, “but not in a rocket.
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Jimmy Soni (The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley)
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Some years ago I saw a documentary on dying whose main theme was that people die as they lived. That was Jimmy. For five years, since he began undergoing operations for bladder cancer and even after his lung cancer was diagnosed, he continued the activities that he considered important, marching against crackhouses, campaigning against the demolition of the Ford Auditorium, organizing Detroit Summer, making speeches, and writing letters to the editor and articles for the SOSAD newsletter and Northwest Detroiter. In 1992 while he was undergoing the chemotherapy that cleared up his bladder cancer, he helped form the Coalition against Privatization and to Save Our City. The coalition was initiated by activist members of a few AFSCME locals who contacted Carl Edwards and Alice Jennings who in turn contacted us. Jimmy helped write the mission statement that gave the union activists a sense of themselves as not only city workers but citizens of the city and its communities. The coalition’s town meetings and demonstrations were instrumental in persuading the new mayor, Dennis Archer, to come out against privatization, using language from the coalition newsletter to explain his position. At the same time Jimmy was putting out the garbage, keeping our corner at Field and Goethe free of litter and rubbish, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, picking cranberries, and keeping up “his” path on Sutton. After he entered the hospice program, which usually means death within six months, and up to a few weeks before his death, Jimmy slowed down a bit, but he was still writing and speaking and organizing. He used to say that he wasn’t going to die until he got ready, and because he was so cheerful and so engaged it was easy to believe him. A few weeks after he went on oxygen we did three movement-building workshops at the SOSAD office for a group of Roger Barfield’s friends who were trying to form a community-action group following a protest demonstration at a neighborhood sandwich shop over the murder of one of their friends. With oxygen tubes in his nostrils and a portable oxygen tank by his side, Jimmy spoke for almost an hour on one of his favorite subjects, the need to “think dialectically, rather than biologically.” Recognizing that this was probably one of Jimmy’s last extended speeches, I had the session videotaped by Ron Scott. At the end of this workshop we asked participants to come to the next session prepared to grapple with three questions: What can we do to make our neighborhoods safe? How can we motivate people to transform? How can we create jobs?
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Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography)
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Standing, balanced precariously on the narrow top of a drainpipe, you had to give a good leap up to grab hold of the narrow ledge, and then swing your whole body up and over.
It took some guts, and a cool head for heights.
Get it wrong and the fall was a long one, onto concrete.
In an attempt to make it harder, the school security officers had put barbed wire all around the lip of the roof to ensure such climbs were “impossible.” (This was probably installed after Ran Fiennes’s escapades onto the dome all those years earlier.) But in actual fact the barbed wire served to help me as a climber. It gave me something else to hold on to.
Once on the roof, then came the crux of the climb.
Locating the base of the lightning conductor was the easy bit, the tough bit was then committing to it.
It held my weight; and it was a great sense of achievement clambering into the lead-lined small bell tower, silhouetted under the moonlight, and carving the initials BG alongside the RF of Ran Fiennes.
Small moments like that gave me an identity.
I wasn’t just yet another schoolboy, I was fully alive, fully me, using my skills to the max.
And in those moments I realized I simply loved adventure.
I guess I was discovering that what I was good at was a little off-the-wall, but at the same time recognizing a feeling in the pit of my stomach that said: Way to go, Bear, way to go.
My accomplice never made it past the barbed wire, but waited patiently for me at the bottom. He said it had been a thoroughly sickening experience to watch, which in my mind made it even more fun.
On the return journey, we safely crossed one college house garden and had silently traversed half of the next one.
We were squatting behind a bush in the middle of this housemaster’s lawn, waiting to do the final leg across. The tutor’s light was on, with him burning the midnight oil marking papers probably, when he decided it was time to let his dog out for a pee. The dog smelled us instantly, went bananas, and the tutor started running toward the commotion.
Decision time.
“Run,” I whispered, and we broke cover together and legged it toward the far side of the garden.
Unfortunately, the tutor in question also happened to be the school cross-country instructor, so he was no slouch.
He gave chase at once, sprinting after us across the fifty-meter dash. A ten-foot wall was the final obstacle and both of us, powered by adrenaline, leapt up it in one bound. The tutor was a runner but not a climber, and we narrowly avoided his grip and sprinted off into the night.
Up a final drainpipe, back into my open bedroom window, and it was mission accomplished.
I couldn’t stop smiling all through the next day.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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If we do not stop these mar-makers not,...it will soon be too late. We are the only nation that can halt this crusade. It might be too late in America, but it isn't too late here. Without British support the whole scheme would collapse. For that reason the future of all nations depends upon the policy which is decided in this House. More than that, the final position of Britain in the world is being decided. If we support these anti-Communist crusades through the world as we have supported it in Greece, then our good name and existence will be threatened by the hatred of all free-thinking men. We cannot suppress all desire in Europe and Asia for social change by branding it communism from Russia and persecuting its supporters. Social change doesn't have to come from Russia, whatever the Foreign Office or the Americans say. It is a product of the miserable conditions under which the majority of the earth's population exist. There are fighters for social change in every land, here as well as anywhere.... We Socialists are among them. That is the reason for our predominance in the House to-day. The very men that we try to suppress in other countries are asking for far less liberty than we enjoy here, far less social change than we Socialists hope to initiate in Great Britain. Are we going to betray these men by labelling them Communists and crushing them wherever we find them until we have launched ourselves at Russia herself in a war that will wipe this island off the face of the earth? The American imperialists say that this is the American Century. ARe we to sacrifice ourselves for that great ideal, or are we to stand beside the people of Europe and Asia and other lands who seek independence, economic stability, self-determination, and the right to conduct their own affairs? Are we going to partake in an anti-Red campaign when we ourselves are Reds?
......
Some among us might think that there is political expediency in following this anti-Russian crusade without really getting enmeshed in it, creating a Third Force in Europe of their friends, a balancing force for power politics. In that you have the real policy of our Government to-day. But how can we avoid final involvement? Our American vanguard will stop at nothing. They hold their atom bomb aloft with nervous fingers. It has become their talisman and their faith. It is their new weapon of anti-Communism, a more efficient Belsen and Maidenek. Its first usage was morally anti-Russian. It was used to end Japan quickly so that Russia would play no part in the final settlement with that country. No doubt they would have used it on Russia already if they could be certain that Russian did not have an equal or better atomic weapon. That terrible uncertainty goads them into fiercer political and economic activity against the world's grim defenders of great liberties. In that you have the heart of this American imperial desperation. They cannot defeat the people of Europe and Asia with the atomic bomb alone. They cannot win unless we lend them our name and our support and our political cunning. To-day they have British support, in policy as well as in international councils where the decisions of peace and security are being made. With our support America is undermining every international conference with its anti-Russian politics.
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James Aldridge (The Diplomat)
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Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory. Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of Mexico. It extended from the Sabine River on the east to the Rio Grande on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the territory of the United States and New Mexico – another Mexican state at that time – on the north and west. An empire in territory, it had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution. Soon they set up an independent government of their own, and war existed, between Texas and Mexico, in name from that time until 1836, when active hostilities very nearly ceased upon the capture of Santa Anna, the Mexican President. Before long, however, the same people – who with permission of Mexico had colonized Texas, and afterwards set up slavery there, and then seceded as soon as they felt strong enough to do so – offered themselves and the State to the United States, and in 1845 their offer was accepted. The occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union. Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot. The fact is, annexationists wanted more territory than they could possibly lay any claim to, as part of the new acquisition. Texas, as an independent State, never had exercised jurisdiction over the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Mexico had never recognized the independence of Texas, and maintained that, even if independent, the State had no claim south of the Nueces. I am aware that a treaty, made by the Texans with Santa Anna while he was under duress, ceded all the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande – , but he was a prisoner of war when the treaty was made, and his life was in jeopardy. He knew, too, that he deserved execution at the hands of the Texans, if they should ever capture him. The Texans, if they had taken his life, would have only followed the example set by Santa Anna himself a few years before, when he executed the entire garrison of the Alamo and the villagers of Goliad. In taking military possession of Texas after annexation, the army of occupation, under General Taylor, was directed to occupy the disputed territory. The army did not stop at the Nueces and offer to negotiate for a settlement of the boundary question, but went beyond, apparently in order to force Mexico to initiate war. It is to the credit of the American nation, however, that after conquering Mexico, and while practically holding the country in our possession, so that we could have retained the whole of it, or made any terms we chose, we paid a round sum for the additional territory taken; more than it was worth, or was likely to be, to Mexico. To us it was an empire and of incalculable value; but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive
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Ulysses S. Grant (Personal Memoirs)
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1 It was early December. The streets of Milan glistened with Christmas decorations, with people coming and going carefree, carrying elegant shopping bags. It was past eight, and several minutes earlier I had closed behind me the door of Passerella, the modelling agency I ran. I had let my assistant, Giovanni, file the photos of the new faces we had initially chosen for Dante’s summer collection. He was an up-and-coming designer. The minute I walked down Monte Napoleone, one of the city’s most commercial streets, the chilly air forced me to wrap up well in my brand new light green coat. An original piece of cashmere, the five letters embossed on its lapel making it even more precious in that cold weather. My fingers contentedly groped for the word “Prada” before I stuck my hand into its warm pocket, while clutching my favourite handbag tight. A huge red ostrich Hermes where you could find cosmetics, scarves, and accessories, which I could use throughout the day, giving a different twist to my appearance. I wanted to walk a little bit to let off steam. My job may have been pleasant as it had to do with the world’s most beautiful creatures, men and women, but it wasn’t without its tensions. Models went to and fro, trade representatives looking for new faces, endless castings, phone calls, text messages, tailors, photographers, reports from my secretary and assistants—a rowdy disorder! I had already left the building where my job was, and I was going past another two entrances of nearby premises, when my leg caught on something. I instantly thought of my brand new Manolo Blahnik shoes. I’d only put them on for the second time, and they were now falling victim to the rough surface of a cardboard box, where a homeless man slept, at the entrance of a building. My eyes sparked as I checked if my high heels were damaged. On the face of it, they were intact. But that wasn’t enough for me. I found a lighter, and tried to check their red leather in the dim light. Why should the same thing happen over and over again every time I buy new shoes? I wondered and walked on, cursing. Why had that bloke chosen that specific spot to sleep, and why had I headed for his damn cardboard box! As I held my lighter, my angry gaze fell on the man who was covered with an impermeable piece of nylon, and carried on sleeping. He looked so vulnerable out in the cold that I didn’t dare rouse him from his sleep. After all, how could I hold him responsible in this state? I quickened my gait. Bella was waiting for me to start our night out with a drink and supper at Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, the imposing arcade with a dome made of glass, its ambience warm and romantic. Bella’s office was nearby, and that meeting place was convenient for both of us. That’s where we made up our minds about how to spend the night.I walked several metres down the road, but something made me stop short. I wanted to have a second look at that man. I retraced my steps. He was a young man who, despite his state, seemed so out of place. His unkempt hair and unshaven face didn’t let me see anything else but his profile, which reminded of an ancient Greek statue, with pronounced cheekbones and a chiselled nose. This second time, he must have sensed me over him. The man’s body budged, and he eyed me without making me out, dazzled by the lighter flame. As soon as I realised what I had done, I took to my heels. What had made me go back? Maybe, the sense of guilt I felt inside my warm Prada coat, maybe, the compassion I had to show as Christmas was just around the corner. All I knew was that a small bell jingled within, and I obeyed it. I walked faster, as if to escape from every thought. As I left, I stuck my hand in my bag, and got hold of my mobile. My secretary’s voice on the other end of the line sounded heavy and imposing. Giovanni wasn’t the embodiment of “macho” man, but he had all it takes to be the perfect male. Having chosen to quit modelling, he still looked gorgeous at the age of
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Charlotte Bee (SLAVE AT MY FEET)
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While I’d initially been attracted to her beauty, I couldn’t discount how attractive her sympathetic side was. She was the ultimate package of brains, beauty, and a beautiful heart and soul.
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Katie Ashley (Office Mate (Running Mate, #2))
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Of all organizations, it was oddly enough Wal-Mart that best recognized the complex nature of the circumstances, according to a case study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Briefed on what was developing, the giant discount retailer’s chief executive officer, Lee Scott, issued a simple edict. “This company will respond to the level of this disaster,” he was remembered to have said in a meeting with his upper management. “A lot of you are going to have to make decisions above your level. Make the best decision that you can with the information that’s available to you at the time, and, above all, do the right thing.” As one of the officers at the meeting later recalled, “That was it.” The edict was passed down to store managers and set the tone for how people were expected to react. On the most immediate level, Wal-Mart had 126 stores closed due to damage and power outages. Twenty thousand employees and their family members were displaced. The initial focus was on helping them. And within forty-eight hours, more than half of the damaged stores were up and running again. But according to one executive on the scene, as word of the disaster’s impact on the city’s population began filtering in from Wal-Mart employees on the ground, the priority shifted from reopening stores to “Oh, my God, what can we do to help these people?” Acting on their own authority, Wal-Mart’s store managers began distributing diapers, water, baby formula, and ice to residents. Where FEMA still hadn’t figured out how to requisition supplies, the managers fashioned crude paper-slip credit systems for first responders, providing them with food, sleeping bags, toiletries, and also, where available, rescue equipment like hatchets, ropes, and boots. The assistant manager of a Wal-Mart store engulfed by a thirty-foot storm surge ran a bulldozer through the store, loaded it with any items she could salvage, and gave them all away in the parking lot. When a local hospital told her it was running short of drugs, she went back in and broke into the store’s pharmacy—and was lauded by upper management for it.
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Atul Gawande (The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right)
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Planters were more than willing to play their role in the drama. Enfranchised by the creation of a popularly elected territorial legislature, they achieved far more power than they ever had under Spanish or even French rule, and they were quick to turn it on the free people of color. In 1806, within three years of American accession, the planter-dominated legislature contained the growth of the free black population, severely circumscribing the rights of slaves to initiate manumission. Thereafter slaves could be freed only by special legislative enactment.
That done, the legislature struck at the privileges free people of color had enjoyed under Spanish rule, issuing prohibitions against carrying guns, punishing free black criminals more severely than white ones, and authorizing slaves to testify in court against free blacks but not whites. In an act that represented the very essence of the planters' contempt for people of color, the territorial legislature declared that 'free people of color ought never to insult or strike white people, nor presume to conceive themselves equal to whites, but on the contrary . . . they ought to yield to them on every occasion and never speak or answer them but with respect.'
With planters now in control, the free people's position in the society of the lower Mississippi Valley slipped sharply. Claiborne slowly reduced the size of the black militia, first placing it under the control of white officers and then deactiviting it entirely when the territorial legislature refused to recommission it. The free black population continued to grow, but - with limitations on manumission and self-purchase - most of the growth derived from the natural increase and immigration. The dynamism of the final decades of the eighteenth century, when the free black population grew faster than either the white or slave population, dissipated, prosperity declined, and the great thrust toward equality was blunted as the new American ruler turned its back on them.
In the years that followed, as white immigrants flowed into the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf ports grew whiter, American administrators found it easier to ignore the free people of color or, worse yet, let the planters have their way. Occasionally, new crises arose, suddenly elevating free people to their old importance. In 1811, when slaves revolted in Pointe Coupee, and in 1815, when the British invaded Louisiana, free colored militiamen took up their traditional role as the handmaiden of the ruling class in hopes that their loyalty would be rewarded. But long-term gains were few. Free people of color were forced to settle for a middling status, above slaves but below whites.
The collapse of the free people's struggle for equality cleared the way for the expansion of slavery. The Age of Revolution had threatened slavery in the lower Mississippi Valley, as it had elsewhere on the mainland. Planters parried the thrust with success. As in the Upper and Lower South, African-American slavery grew far more rapidly than freedom in the lower Mississippi Valley during the post-revolutionary years. The planters' westward surge out of the seaboard regions soon connected with their northward movement up the Mississippi Valley to create what would be the heartland of the plantation South in the nineteenth century. As the Age of Revolution receded, the plantation revolution roared ahead, and with it the Second Middle Passage.
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Ira Berlin (Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves)
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Dating exposes us to a far wider range of people than we generally encounter when we exist within the protection of a couple. It throws us into the wide sea of humanity and our encounters may lead us to a large and sobering conclusion: that human beings can be really very strange. Characters who might be plausible as mere acquaintances or office colleagues can reveal peculiarities normally concealed in ordinary social life. We’re not only unlucky if our dates initiate us like this. We should accept that there are simply many fascinating things that can go wrong with the human spirit. If we’re going to keep on dating, we have to take on board with a degree of good humour and open-hearted curiosity the fact that we will often be conducting incidental psychological experiments in the distortions that can occur to the psyche. Rather than complain about how awful most of our dates turn out to be, we should get interested in understanding – and even sympathising with – the varieties of human brokenness.
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The School of Life (Dating (The Love Series))
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The professional expertise and training of a force, as well as the importance of a professional non-commissioned officer corps, must also be highlighted, as it is non-commissioned officers who are the standard bearers, standard enforcers and trainers at the critical small-unit level. Rigorous and demanding training will always be a vital component of combat readiness. So should be the intangible but critical element of initiative, especially of competent junior leaders empowered and encouraged to exercise initiative and acting in accordance with one of the admonitions in the counter-insurgency guidance issued during the Surge in Iraq: “In the absence of orders, figure out what they should have been and execute aggressively.
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David H. Petraeus (Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine)
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Even as this impressive armada returned to Hampton Roads, Virginia, in February 1909, its battleships were being surpassed by increasingly larger and heavier dreadnoughts packing ever more firepower. In 1916 alone, the United States Navy commissioned four newcomers: Nevada (BB-36) and Oklahoma (BB-37), measuring 583 feet in length and carrying ten fourteen-inch guns in two triple and two twin turrets, and Pennsylvania (BB-38) and Arizona (BB-39), 608 feet in length and mounting twelve fourteen-inch guns in four turrets of three each. Ships are usually built in classes of comparable specifications named after the lead ship, even if there are only two ships in the class. Hence, the Arizona was a Pennsylvania-class battleship. While there were small differences among the classes, pre–World War II battleships, beginning with Nevada, were “standard-type,” with generally the same top speed (21 knots), turning radius (700 yards), and armor, to facilitate steaming together. Arizona’s commissioning—its official acceptance into active service—occurred in the Brooklyn Navy Yard on October 17, 1916. Europe had been at war for two years, and it looked as if the United States would soon enter the conflict. The new ship and its sister, Pennsylvania, were, the New York Times reported, the “most powerful fighting craft afloat.” From keel laying to commissioning, Arizona’s construction had taken two and one-half years and cost $16 million (comparable to $369,000,000 in 2017 purchasing power). An initial complement of 1,034 officers and men took up their stations onboard.
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Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
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The khateeb reiterates that his role is vital and positions himself as the spiritual teacher of the recruits. This position is belied somewhat by my earlier description of my encounter with him and his superiors, an impression strengthened by my conversation with other senior army officers. A retired infantry general shared with me how he had confronted the khateeb’s influence in the barracks while he was in services. A particular khateeb under his command during the Kargil war was asked to go to a post nearer the combat zone to motivate the troops. The cleric refused on the grounds that certain requirements of jihad29 had not been fulfilled, so he could not support the effort. “I summoned him and told him, ‘You talk of jihad; God will decide what is jihad. This is a war zone, and I am ordering a district court martial of you, and I will ensure that you are put before a firing squad right over here in front of my office.’” He then had him posted out of the area with immediate effect. The khateeb is told here that he is in no position to adjudicate what jihad is, the implication being that the military, in this case the commanding officer, has the right to adjudicate this over and above religious authority, whose only role is to motivate troops in the name of jihad as and when ordered by the military officer. The khateeb is a spiritual guide, then, with no real official authority, an army person but not regular army personnel. He is a “harmless” person yet one who must be monitored, as evidenced by the colonel’s initial reluctance to let me talk to him. As another retired infantry general jokingly put it, “He [the khateeb] is uneducated but very motivating.” Much like his soldier-class contemporaries, he is regarded by the officer class as somewhat uncouth but nonetheless essential for the training center. He has the specific task of motivating troops and acting as a religious mascot to lend credence to the militarism project. 265/378
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Maria Rashid (Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army)
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Local police were too few in number and were sometimes sympathetic to the workers, so mine and factory owners turned to the state to provide them with armed forces to control strikes and intimidate organizers. The state’s initial response was to authorize a completely privatized police force called the Coal and Iron Police.18 Local employers had only to pay a commission fee of one dollar per person to deputize anyone of their choosing as an official officer of the law.
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Alex S. Vitale (The End of Policing)
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Who is God’s Brother? Laton asked the house’s sub-sentient bitek processor network. Satan. The Christian devil. Is this a term in wide use? The term is common among Earth’s waster population. Most arcologies have sects built up around the worship of this deity. Their priest/acolyte hierarchy is a simple variant on that of the more standard officer/soldier criminal organization. Those at the top control those at the bottom through a quasi-religious doctrine, and status is enforced by initiation rituals. Their theology states that after Armageddon has been fought, and the universe abandoned to lost souls, Satan will return bringing light. The sects are unusual only in the degree of violence involved to maintain discipline among the ranks. Because of the level of devotion involved, the authorities have been generally unsuccessful in eradicating the sects. That explains Quinn,
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Peter F. Hamilton (The Reality Dysfunction (Night's Dawn, #1))
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It is present in our experience of human beauty. And it is equally present in an experience that anthropologists have puzzled over for two centuries or more, and which appears to be a human universal: the experience of the sacred. In every civilization at every period of history people have devoted time and energy to sacred things. The sacred, like the beautiful, includes every category of object. There are sacred words, sacred gestures, sacred rites, sacred clothes, sacred places, sacred times. Sacred things are not of this world: they are set apart from ordinary reality and cannot be touched or uttered without rites of initiation or the privilege of religious office. To meddle with them without some purifying preparation is to run the risk of sacrilege. It is to desecrate and pollute what is holy, by dragging it down into the sphere of everyday events.
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Roger Scruton (Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions))
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The need for international engagement became all the more urgent in 1931, when the Japanese army, at its own initiative, invaded and occupied Manchuria and established an imperial colony, crowned by a puppet state, in this vast northern corner of China. Unable to have the occupation sanctioned by the League of Nations, Japan left the organization in 1933. Reporting back to the foreign office from the Los Angeles games, Japan’s consul, Satô Hayato, declared that, ‘This Olympic Games has been very beneficial in erasing anti-Japanese sentiment.’ Alternatively, for the more liberal and cosmopolitan wing of Japanese society, this kind of impact meant that the games could be ‘an opportunity for a national people’s diplomacy’, making peaceful inter-societal connections when the inter-state realm was so bellicose.3 However, Consul Satô spoke for many in the imperial bureaucracy, armed forces and ultra-nationalist circles, arguing that, ‘The best way to get the Americans to understand the real Japan is to defeat America and show them the true strength of the Japanese. Rational discourse is completely useless. Americans probably first understood the true strength of the Japanese when the Rising Sun flag was raised . . . during the Olympic Games.
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David Goldblatt (The Games: A Global History of the Olympics)
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IN MANY RESPECTS, modern-day India counted as a success story, having survived repeated changeovers in government, bitter feuds within political parties, various armed separatist movements, and all manner of corruption scandals. The transition to a more market-based economy in the 1990s had unleashed the extraordinary entrepreneurial talents of the Indian people—leading to soaring growth rates, a thriving high-tech sector, and a steadily expanding middle class. As a chief architect of India’s economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed like a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who’d risen to the highest office in the land, and a self-effacing technocrat who’d won people’s trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt. Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency; and during my visit to the capital city of New Delhi, we reached agreements to strengthen U.S. cooperation on counterterrorism, global health, nuclear security, and trade.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
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The initiation of a friendship may be a mystery. Someone comes into your life, and you are attracted to him, to how he sees the world, or perhaps to how he is, how he comports himself, how he acts in the world. A classmate, an office worker, a barista, someone who goes to your church: it can happen in any part of life, the recognition that here is a person you'd like to get to know better. This person and I might be able to become friends.
The development of a friendship is different. Development doesn't 'just happen'; you must choose to spend time together doing various things and talking....
Friendship takes time and a certain measure of deliberation. One seeks opportunities to meet fact to face; between meetings, one tries to talk, or write, or email, or text. The physical meeting needs to happen: from the ancients to today, those who think about friendship realize the irreplaceability of being in the same space, breathing the same atmosphere.
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Victor Lee Austin (Friendship: The Heart of Being Human)
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But the secret of Japan's success is simple - laissez faire. The Emperor may have initiated his capitalist Restoration in 1868, but after 1884 it became State policy to leave industry to its own devices. Having germinated it, the Japanese government understood that capitalism runs best unfettered. This is ironic, since the popular perception abroad has been that Japan has prospered because of MITI’s direction of the economy, whereas the reality is that since 1884 Japan's government has seen itself as the servant of industry, anxious to tax it and its customers as lightly as possible. A 1988 survey by the British Central Statistical Office showed that Japan was one of the three most lightly-taxed industrialised countries, the other two being the USA and Switzerland. Those three countries' governments only sequester 32-35 per cent of GNP compared to the British State's 44 per cent, the West German's 45 per cent, and the French 52 per cent.
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Terence Kealey (The Economic Laws of Scientific Research)
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In November 2003, for example, police raided Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina. The raid was recorded by the school’s surveillance cameras as well as a police camera. The tapes show students as young as fourteen forced to the ground in handcuffs as officers in SWAT team uniforms and bulletproof vests aim guns at their heads and lead a drug-sniffing dog to tear through their book bags. The raid was initiated by the school’s principal, who was suspicious that a single student might be dealing marijuana. No drugs or weapons were found during the raid and no charges were filed. Nearly all of the students searched and seized were students of color.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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Important factors included growing Muslim hostility toward Jews as a result of nationalist mobilization, the creation of Israel, rampant poverty, and the ongoing refusal of citizenship by the French as well as negative experiences with the anti-Semitic Vichy regime during the war.100 Tension with the Muslim majority population started to grow in Morocco in 1947 against the backdrop of the war in Palestine. Following the June 1948 pogroms in Oudjda and Djérada in eastern Morocco on the border with Algeria, emigration of Jews from Morocco to Israel became a more widespread phenomenon.101 When the French colonial rulers realized that the constant illegal flow of migrants could not be stopped, they allowed for the organized emigration of Jews, giving the Jewish Agency free rein in processing and selecting the migrants. For this purpose, the Jewish Agency–operated Kadima (forward) office was created in April of that year.102 A similar office had operated in Tunis since the second half of 1948, when the French authorities had started tolerating, if initially not fully legalizing, Aliyah.103
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Jannis Panagiotidis (The Unchosen Ones: Diaspora, Nation, and Migration in Israel and Germany)
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session itself, I’ll change into a silk robe and some underwear that they’ll provide, so it doesn’t particularly matter what I wear for this initial part of the evening. I’m just here to get my bearings, have some (more) Dutch courage with Maddy in the bar area, and soak up the atmosphere. A sleek, beautiful brunette ushers us through the double doors at the end of the lobby, and we find ourselves in a stunning room. There’s an aesthetic overlap with Genevieve’s office and no suggestion of the den-of-sin vibe I was expecting. No black walls, or red leather banquettes, or sex swings. Maybe they’re all next door. No, the room here is all white, with luscious mouldings and spectacular deco chandeliers dimmed to their lowest setting. The massive picture windows facing the back of the building have their shutters closed, and it’s pretty dark, but nowhere near dingy. The focal point of the entire space is a huge bar, crafted entirely from backlit pink onyx, a line of sleek kelly green bar stools dotted in front of it. It’s utterly gorgeous. And the people? I glance around quickly. First impression is that I’m at the bar of Nobu or Sexy Fish. It’s a Mayfair crowd. Well-heeled. International. Accomplished-looking. Phew. Despite Genevieve’s reassurances to the contrary, I did wonder if this place was going to be this young virgin and a load of leering old men.
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Elodie Hart (Unfurl (Alchemy, #1))
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Despite rumors to the contrary, there’s no evidence that the police officer who killed black American George Floyd in May 2020, Derek Chauvin, learned his fatal knee-on-the-neck technique from training in Israel. Regardless, the IDF routinely uses this suffocating move on Palestinians. The aim of the police program, according to the ADL’s director of national law enforcement initiatives, David C. Friedman, was to build connections “between law enforcement agencies in two democracies.” The US police who went “come back and they are Zionists. They understand Israel and its security needs in ways a lot of audiences don’t.”24
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Antony Loewenstein (The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World)
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The possible negative failure is that the leaders may infect themselves with the hypnotism which they have induced in their followers. In that event, the docility of the rank and file will have been purchased at the disastrous price of a loss of initiative in the officers. This is what happened in the arrested civilizations, and in all periods in the histories of other civilizations which are to be regarded as periods of stagnation.
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Arnold Joseph Toynbee
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Long ago, the dream of an electronic switch had prompted Kelly’s initial push on semiconductors. As the Fortune story pointed out, a switching office with 65,000 electromechanical relays could do “slightly less than 1,000 switching operations a second.” Transistors—using a fraction of the power and lasting far longer—could potentially do a million.
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Jon Gertner (The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation)
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what they saw as a British retreat from Basra. The initial British arrogance in Iraq, based on their belief that unlike the Americans they knew how to deal with peacekeeping because of long experience in Northern Ireland, had long faded as they found themselves locked in battle with the Mahdi army, the murderous followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and other extremist militias. Without enough troops to deal with the situation they had ended up making a secret deal with the Mahdis to be able to withdraw in peace. On 2 September 2007 British troops left Basra Palace, their last base in the city, for the airport in a retreat described by one officer as ‘utter
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Christina Lamb (Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World)
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Uber had to get creative to unlock the hard side of their network, the drivers. Initially, Uber’s focus was on black car and limo services, which were licensed and relatively uncontroversial. However, a seismic shift occurred when rival app Sidecar innovated in recruiting unlicensed, normal people as drivers on their platform. This was the “peer-to-peer” model that created millions of new rideshare drivers, and was quickly copied and popularized by Lyft and then Uber. Jahan Khanna, cofounder/chief technology officer of Sidecar, spoke of its origin: It was obvious that letting anyone sign up to be a driver would be a big deal. With more drivers, rides would get cheaper and the wait times would get shorter. This came up in many brainstorms at Sidecar, but the question was always, what was the regulatory framework that allows this to operate? What were the prior examples that weren’t immediately shut down? After doing a ton of research, we came onto a model that had been active for years in San Francisco run by someone named Lynn Breedlove called Homobiles that answered our question.22 It’s a surprising fact, but the earliest version of the rideshare idea came not from an investor-backed startup, but rather from a nonprofit called Homobiles, run by a prominent member of the LGBTQ community in the Bay Area named Lynn Breedlove. The service was aimed at protecting and serving the LGBTQ community while providing them transportation—to conferences, bars and entertainment, and also to get health care—while emphasizing safety and community. Homobiles had built its own niche, and had figured out the basics: Breedlove had recruited, over time, 100 volunteer drivers, who would respond to text messages. Money would be exchanged, but in the form of donations, so that drivers could be compensated for their time. The company had operated for several years, starting in 2010—several years before Uber X—and provided the template for what would become a $100 billion+ gross revenue industry. Sidecar learned from Homobiles, implementing their offering nearly verbatim, albeit in digital form: donations based, where the rider and driver would sit together in the front, like a friend giving you a ride. With that, the rideshare market was kicked off.
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Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
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Those who aspired to a role on the council of Tlaxcala, far from being expected to demonstrate personal charisma or the ability to outdo rivals, did so in a spirit of self-deprecation – even shame. They were required to subordinate themselves to the people of the city. To ensure that this subordination was no mere show, each was subject to trials, starting with mandatory exposure to public abuse, regarded as the proper reward of ambition, and then – with one’s ego in tatters – a long period of seclusion, in which the aspiring politician suffered ordeals of fasting, sleep deprivation, bloodletting and a strict regime of moral instruction. The initiation ended with a ‘coming out’ of the newly constituted public servant, amid feasting and celebration.63 Clearly, taking up office in this indigenous democracy required personality traits very different to those we take for granted in modern electoral politics.
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David Graeber (The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity)
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Jason Kurland, forty-seven, represented them all. In fall 2011, Kurland, then an attorney at the Long Island branch of the firm Rivkin Radler specializing in commercial real estate law, received a phone call that would determine his future. The caller, seeking legal advice, had gotten Kurland’s name from another client. Payment would not be an issue because he and two coworkers had just won a $254 million Powerball jackpot. After taxes on their lump-sum payout, they would have $104 million to share. We stereotype lottery winners as financially unsophisticated. Not these guys. They were a founding partner, senior portfolio manager, and chief investment officer for Belpointe Asset Management, a financial firm in Greenwich, Connecticut, where mansions sprout from spacious lots and single-family homes list for quintuple the national median price. Kurland was no lottery expert, but he quickly made it his business to become one. He researched how different states tax lottery winnings, whether and how big jackpot winners need to be identified (at least eight states let them remain anonymous), and the legal tricks one might use, depending on location, to claim a monster windfall. Claiming in the name of a trust or a limited liability corporation, for instance, won’t reduce the initial tax hit, but it may limit a winner’s public exposure. Some states let you claim using a legal entity and others don’t. Some require press conferences. Some allow an attorney to claim the prize as a trustee. “In that case, the attorney signs the back of the ticket—and you have to make sure you trust that attorney,” Kurland said. (We will come to see the irony in that advice.)
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Michael Mechanic (Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All)
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the Geneva Convention on POWs, signed by Germany and thirty-six other nations in 1929, laying down regulations governing the feeding, housing, and punishment of POWs. Prisoner welfare was monitored by a neutral “protecting power,” initially America and then Switzerland. Under the Convention, captured officers enjoyed certain privileges, including being “treated with the regard due to their rank.
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Ben Macintyre (Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison)
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If she happened to pass this initial hurdle, the real test would begin. Her Asian girlfriends all knew this test. They called it the “SATs.” The Asian male would begin a not so covert interrogation focused on the Asian female’s social, academic, and talent aptitudes in order to determine whether she was possible “wife and bearer of my sons” material. This happened while the Asian male not so subtly flaunted his own SAT stats—how many generations his family had been in America; what kind of doctors his parents were; how many musical instruments he played; the number of tennis camps he went to; which Ivy League scholarships he turned down; what model BMW, Audi, or Lexus he drove; and the approximate number of years before he became (pick one) chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief technology officer, chief law partner, or chief surgeon.
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Kevin Kwan (Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians, #1))
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Amar Bhairam graduated from St John’s University with a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice and has been with the NYPD since 2010. He protects high-crime areas, leads crime reduction initiatives, and supervises officer patrols. Amar loves basketball, working out, and the New York Knicks.
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Amar Bhairam
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The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, put the Soviet Union at risk of collapsing altogether. In this environment, the Soviet tendency to merge espionage and sabotage into a single mission came to the fore, strengthening practices Soviet intelligence and state security services had implemented from the beginning of the Soviet era. Soviet intelligence activities were divided into two lines: intelligence and diversion. Initially, the intelligence directorate, led during World War II by Pavel Fitin, was responsible for collecting intelligence about Germany and its allies. The diversionary directorate, led by Pavel Sudoplatov, dispatched "intelligence sabotage" teams behind German lines to disrupt Germany's supply lines, command and control, and rear areas and to assassinate German officers. According to Fitin, the intelligence directorate supplied intelligence for the diversionary directorate, and officers were regularly exchanged between the two. This crossover between intelligence and sabotage operations is a continuing characteristic of Russian intelligence services today.
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Kevin P. Riehle (Russian Intelligence: A Case-based Study of Russian Services and Missions Past and Present)
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Paige Goepfert is a managing director of the Andersen Private Client Services team and works with ultra-high-net-worth families, family offices, business owners, and executives on tax planning and income tax compliance. Paige says that, “before considering the tax implications of a family office, family office principals are well served to think about the catalysts for and objectives of their family office. The structure, including how the management services are going to be provided and the type of entity formed for the management company, will determine the tax impact. “A common mistake I see is when families initially contemplate forming a family office solely because of the tax benefits they hope to obtain. While there may be tax benefits from a family office structure, anticipated tax benefits should not be the catalyst for setting up a family office . . . We [also] sometimes see families stuck in a certain mindset even when their goals and tax laws are constantly changing. For example, an older family member may feel like they have already given too much to the next generation or their grandchildren and, on principle, will not consider what they are leaving
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Scott Saslow (Building a Sustainable Family Office: An Insider’s Guide to What Works and What Doesn’t)
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How to Use the Biker Service for CNIC Applications
In an effort to streamline the application process for CNICs (Computerized National Identity Cards) and make government services more accessible, the Biker Service has been introduced as a part of Pakistan’s initiative to modernize its registration systems. This service allows citizens to complete their CNIC applications from the comfort of their homes through mobile service officers who assist in the process. Here’s a guide on how to effectively use the Biker Service for your CNIC application.
1. What is the Biker Service?
The Biker Service is an outreach program that sends mobile registration officers directly to applicants’ homes. This service is especially beneficial for individuals who face difficulties visiting local NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) centers due to health, age, or mobility issues. It provides doorstep assistance to ensure all parts of the CNIC application, including biometric verification and photo capture, are done seamlessly.
2. Key Benefits
Convenience: Eliminates the need to visit physical centers.
Time-Saving: Reduces waiting times associated with in-person visits.
Accessibility: Helps those in remote or underserved areas complete their applications.
Professional Assistance: Ensures the application is correctly filled and all necessary steps are completed.
3. Steps to Use the Biker Service for CNIC Applications
Booking an Appointment:
Contact NADRA’s helpline or visit their online service portal to schedule a biker appointment.
Provide your personal details and address to confirm the visit.
Prepare Required Documents:
Ensure that you have all necessary documents ready, such as your old CNIC (if renewing), a copy of your birth certificate, or any relevant supporting paperwork for a new CNIC application.
The Biker Visit:
On the scheduled day, a NADRA officer on a motorcycle will arrive at your address.
The officer will verify your identity, take your photograph, and collect your biometric data (fingerprints and thumb impressions) directly at your home.
Completion and Confirmation:
The mobile officer submits your application to the NADRA system.
You will receive a receipt or application tracking number for follow-up.
Payment and Fees:
The cost of the Biker Service includes standard CNIC processing fees plus an additional convenience charge. Ensure you have the means to make a payment, whether via cash or through any payment method recommended during the booking.
4. Tracking Your Application
Once your application is submitted, you can track its progress using NADRA’s online tracking system. Enter your application or tracking number to check the status and receive updates on when your CNIC will be ready for collection or delivery.
Final Thoughts
The Biker Service by NADRA is a major advancement in making government services more user-friendly and accessible to a broader population. It saves applicants from the hassle of traveling and long queues, making it especially useful for senior citizens, individuals with disabilities, and those living in remote areas. If you’re eligible and looking for a hassle-free way to apply for a CNIC, this service is a great option to consider.
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Abdul Rehman
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A vocal group of Negro leaders, including a courageous and influential Negro woman named Mary McLeod Bethune, was beginning to help women officers and military officials break down even more barriers than the initial campaigns by the Negro press.
The first fights were for Negro soldiers to serve in combat and for Negro women to be allowed in the women’s army.
Segregation in civilian life was still very much the law of the land, but the wartime needs in all areas of the military forced the government to admit that they would need to make some exceptions in order to win the war.
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Joshunda Sanders (Women of the Post)
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Several premises shaped the Marshall Plan: that the gravest threat to western interests in Europe was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and despair might cause Europeans to vote their own communists into office, who would then obediently serve Moscow’s wishes; that American economic assistance would produce immediate psychological benefits and later material ones that would reverse this trend; that the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War.
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John Lewis Gaddis (The Cold War: A New History)
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Senior management approval and buy-in is essential to the success of the overall BCP effort. If possible, you should attempt to have the plan endorsed by the top executive in your business—the chief executive officer, chairman, president, or similar business leader. This move demonstrates the importance of the plan to the entire organization and showcases the business leader’s commitment to business continuity. The signature of such an individual on the plan also gives it much greater weight and credibility in the eyes of other senior managers, who might otherwise brush it off as a necessary but trivial IT initiative.
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James Michael Stewart (CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional Study Guide)
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Ostensibly, the most important governance reform was supposed to be the Right to Information (RTI) Act that aimed to impose greater accountability on the government. It was an NAC initiative. Several senior and retired civil servants cautioned Dr Singh against the RTI, worrying that rather than expose corruption and sloth in government, it would sap initiative and encourage officers to pass the buck. The jury is still out on whether or not RTI was a wise move and what its impact on governance has been. Has it made the government more transparent and accountable or has it made civil servants risk averse and unwilling to take difficult decisions? In UPA-1, when there was considerable euphoria over the RTI Act, few would have imagined that analysts would hold the RTI Act responsible for at least some of the so-called ‘policy paralysis’ that UPA-2 came to be charged with.
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Sanjaya Baru (The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh)
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Some have asked why we don’t just stay there in the target’s office until they’ve resolved the problem. No doubt occasionally this would scare them into giving in on the spot. But what about the other times, when they decide to be stubborn and refuse to give in? To counter us, all they’d have to do would be to call the cops and wait. After a while the cops would arrive to forcibly remove us, and with our current strength we would not be able to hold out for long. Then we’d be stuck spending our time on legal defense instead of planning further action against the boss or landlord. Plus, having started off our campaign with such an intense action, we’d have little or no room to further escalate the pressure. By choosing to leave once we’ve delivered our message, with a promise of more action to come, we keep the initiative. Instead of trying to defend a space that we wouldn’t actually be able to defend, we stay on the attack. This makes it very hard for the boss or landlord to counter us. We’re there in their face before they know what’s going on, and then we’re gone before they can bring in the cops. We leave them with an impression of strength, and we leave them wondering what we’ll do next.
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Anonymous
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By this time, around 0745, unknown others were doing the same, whether NCOs or junior officers or, in some cases, privates. Staying on the beach meant certain death; retreat was not possible; someone had to lead; men took the burden on themselves and did. Bingham put it this way: “The individual and small-unit initiative carried the day. Very little, if any, credit can be accorded company, battalion, or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and/or their coordination of the action.
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Stephen E. Ambrose
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tenure at Treasury was not as successful as his career at Alcoa. Almost immediately after taking office he began focusing on a couple of key issues, including worker safety, job creation, executive accountability, and fighting African poverty, among other initiatives. However, O’Neill’s politics did not line up with those of President Bush, and he launched an internal fight opposing Bush’s proposed tax cuts. He was asked to resign at the end of 2002. “What I thought was the right thing for economic policy was the opposite of what the White House wanted,” O’Neill told me. “That’s not good for a treasury secretary, so I got fired.
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Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
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California had organized itself, not accidentally, into highly partisan legislative districts. It elected highly partisan people to office and then required these people to reach a two-thirds majority to enact any new tax or meddle with big spending decisions. On the off chance that they found some common ground, it could be pulled out from under them by voters through the initiative process. Throw in term limits—no elected official now serves in California government long enough to fully understand it—and you have a recipe for generating maximum contempt for elected officials. Politicians are elected to get things done and are prevented by the system from doing it, leading the people to grow even more disgusted with them. “The vicious cycle of contempt,” as Mark Paul calls it. California state government was designed mainly to maximize the likelihood that voters will continue to despise the people they elect.
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Michael Lewis (Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World)
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Cases of unauthorized absence, over-stayal, insubordination, use of abusive language, etc. do not have any vigilance angle. There are some border line cases, such as gross or willful negligence; recklessness in decision making; blatant violations of systems and procedures; exercise of discretion in excess, where no ostensible public interest is evident; failure to keep the controlling authority/superiors informed in time – these are some of the irregularities where the disciplinary authority with the help of the CVO should carefully study the case and weigh the circumstances to come to a conclusion whether there is reasonable ground to doubt the integrity of the officer concerned.4. What are the two parts of the register for recording complaints? One part of the register is meant for registering the complaints in respect of category ‘A’ officers i.e. those in respect of whom the advice of the CVC is required. The other part pertains to Category ‘B’ officers are those in respect of whom CVC advice is not required. As far as central Government employees are concerned Category ‘A’ refers to Group ‘A’ officers. If a complaint involves both the categories of officers, it shall be entered in the higher category i.e. category ‘A’.5. How to deal with anonymous and pseudonymous complaints? Para 3.8.1 of the CVC Manual provides that as a general rule, no action is to be taken by the administrative authorities on anonymous/pseudonymous complaints received by them. It is also open to the administrative authorities to verify by enquiring from the signatory of the complaint whether it had actually been sent by him so as to ascertain whether it is pseudonymous. CVC has also laid down that if any department/organisation proposes to look into any verifiable facts alleged in such complaints, it may refer the matter to the Commission seeking its concurrence through the CVO or the head of the organisation, irrespective of the level of employees involved therein.Besides, any complaint referred to by the Commission is required to be investigated and if it emerges to be a pseudonymous, the matter must be reported to the Commission.6. What action is required in the case of false complaints? If a complaint is found to be malicious, vexatious or unfounded, departmental or criminal action as necessary should be initiated against the author of false complaints 33
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Anonymous
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Many banks do not advertise they are portfolio lenders and many people working at the bank may not even know what a portfolio lender is. If you are calling up a bank and they say they aren’t a portfolio lender, don’t give up! Ask to talk to a loan officer and ask specific questions about what type of investor programs they offer. Here are some good questions to ask; Do you loan to investors who already have four mortgages? Do you sell your loans or keep them in-house? Do you allow investors with four or more mortgages to do cash out refinance? What terms and loan programs do you offer investors? ARM, 15, 30 year fixed, balloon? What interest rates are you charging and what are the initial costs for your loans? What
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Mark Ferguson (How to Get Financing on Multiple Investment Properties)
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Within a few months, more than 40,000 pieces of mail totaling over $600,000 were given to the Tippit family. The largest single donation came from Abraham Zapruder, who contributed the initial payment of $25,000 he received from Life magazine for his home movie of the assassination.
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Dale K. Myers (With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J. D. Tippit)
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• Launched Real Time Talent, one of the most innovative workforce development initiatives in the country. It links the curriculum and training for more than four hundred thousand postsecondary students with the skill requirements of employers in the state (RealTimeTalentMN.org). • Created the Business Bridge, which facilitates connections between the procurement functions of large corporations and smaller potential suppliers located in the region. As a result of this effort, participating businesses added more than $1 billion to their spending with local businesses in two years—a year ahead of their goal. • Helped to build the case for investing more aggressively in higher education. By strengthening relationships between business and higher education leaders, and using a fact-based set of findings to justify investing more than an incremental amount, a coalition organized by Itasca helped increase spending in the state by more than $250 million annually. That’s not bad for a group of people with no budget, no office, no charter, virtually no Internet presence, virtually no staff—but a huge abundance of trust.
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Thomas L. Friedman (Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations)
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As Lynley watched her, he thought how ironic it was that he had come to depend upon having Havers as his partner. Initially he had believed that no one could possibly be less likely to suit him. She was prickly, argumentative, easily given to anger, and bitterly aware of the enormous gap that existed between them, an impassable chasm created by birth, by class, by money, by experience. They could not have been more antithetical, Havers struggling with a fierce determination to rise out of a working-class neighbourhood in a grimy suburb of London while he moved effortlessly from his home in Cornwall to his town house in Belgravia to his office in New Scotland Yard. But their differences went far beyond mere background. Their perceptions of life and humanity occupied two opposite ends of the spectrum as well. Hers was ruthless, without sympathy, suspicious of motives, and based on distrust of a world that had given her nothing. His was laced with compassion, rich with understanding, and based almost entirely upon a guilt that insisted he reach out, learn, expiate, rescue, make amends. He smiled at the thought that Superintendent Webberly had been absolutely right to put them together, to insist they remain in partnership even at moments when Lynley believed it was an impossible situation that could only grow worse.
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Elizabeth George (Well-Schooled in Murder (Inspector Lynley, #3))
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Can’t you reach your goal through peaceful means? Revolution doesn’t essentially mean war and bloodshed.” “Don’t be silly. India can only be changed by violence.” “We achieved independence through non-violent means.” “You are a fool. Had the British not gone bankrupt they would have retained the colony for another two hundred years. Thanks to Hitler that he initiated the process of decolonisation by destroying the coffers of the colonists. The British simply escaped from India.
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Maloy Krishna Dhar (Open Secrets: The Explosive Memoirs of an Indian Intelligence Officer)
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A Rationale for Violence At first, I thought I was merely witnessing the shocked aftermath of a shocking election. The Left did not expect Trump to win. As late as October 20, 2016, the American Prospect published an article, “Trump No Longer Really Running for President,” the theme of which was that Trump’s “real political goal is to make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to govern.” The election result was, in the words of columnist David Brooks, “the greatest shock of our lifetimes.”25 Trump won against virtually insurmountable odds, which included the mainstream media openly campaigning for Hillary and a civil war within the GOP with the entire intellectual wing of the conservative movement refusing to support him. Initially I interpreted the Left’s violent upheaval as a stunned, heat-of-the-moment response to the biggest come-from-behind victory in U.S. political history. Then I saw two things that made me realize I was wrong. First, the violence did not go away. There were the violent “Not My President’s Day” rallies across the country in February; the violent March 4 disruptions of Trump rallies in California, Minnesota, Tennessee, and Florida; the April anti-Trump tax rallies, supposedly aimed at forcing Trump to release his tax returns; the July impeachment rallies, seeking to build momentum for Trump’s removal from office; and the multiple eruptions at Berkeley.26 In Portland, leftists threw rocks, lead balls, soda cans, glass bottles, and incendiary devices until police dispersed them with the announcement, “May Day is now considered a riot.” Earlier, at the Minnesota State Capitol, leftists threw smoke bombs into the pro-Trump crowd while others set off fireworks in the building, sending people scrambling in fear of a bomb attack. Among those arrested was Linwood Kaine, the son of Hillary’s vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine.27 More of this, undoubtedly, is in store from the Left over the next four years. What this showed is that the Left was engaging in premeditated violence, violence not as outbreak of passion but violence as a political strategy.
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Dinesh D'Souza (The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left)
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After World War II the Allies refused to recognize Karl Dönitz as the president or führer, Reichspräsident, of Germany. Instead they declared the complete legal extinction of the Third Reich, following the death of Adolf Hitler on April 30, 1945. At the Nuremberg Trials following the war, Dönitz was tried on three criminal counts: (1) conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; (2) planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; and (3) crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on the first count of the indictment, but guilty on the rest. Many high ranking Allied officers backed him and recommended leniency.
After the trial, Admiral Dönitz was imprisoned for 10 years in Spandau Prison. He was released on October 1, 1956, and retired to the small village of Aumühle. He died there of a heart attack on December 24, 1980. As the last German naval officer to hold the highest rank of Grand Admiral, he was praised and honored by many former German officers and servicemen, as well as British and other foreign naval officers, who came to his funeral in full dress uniform, to pay their final respects.
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Hank Bracker
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can therefore attribute the many reporting failures at Jutland to a cocktail of factors, including: (a) lack of initiative, and ‘seniority knows best’; (b) fear of being direction-found; and (c) insidious organizational flaws. Perhaps all senior officers, not just Goodenough, should have gone to their cabins at nightfall on the 31st of May, had a glass of port, and thought through the enemy’s options. But that
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Andrew Gordon (Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command)
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The discipline of the Marines, however, is thorough, and we make no apology for it. Respect for officers and absolute, unquestioning obedience to orders is taught from the beginning, but we proceed on the principle that we are dealing with intelligent men. We believe in leaving something to their own initiative and resourcefulness, and the theory has panned out on a hundred occasions
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Albertus Wright Catlin ("With the Help of God and a Few Marines": The Battles of Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood)
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I also believe strongly in the powerful words: “I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.” They are good ones to live by.
The big, final motivator was that I really wasn’t enjoying my university studies.
I loved the Brunel and our small group of buddies there, but the actual university experience was killing me. (Not the workload, I hasten to add, which was pleasantly chilled, but rather the whole deal of feeling like just another student.)
Sure, I like the chilled lifestyle (like the daily swim I took naked in the ornamental lake in the car park), but it was more than that. I just didn’t like being so unmotivated.
It didn’t feel good for the soul.
This wasn’t what I had hoped for in my life.
I felt impatient to get on and do something.
(Oh, and I was learning to dislike the German language in a way that was definitely not healthy.)
So I decided it was time to make a decision.
Via the OTC, Trucker and I quietly went to see the ex-SAS officer to get his advice on our Special Forces Selection aspirations.
I was nervous telling him.
He knew we were troublemakers, and that we had never taken any of the OTC military routine at all seriously. But to my amazement he wasn’t the least bit surprised at what we told him.
He just smiled, almost knowingly, and told us we would probably fit in well--that was if we passed. He said the SAS attracted misfits and characters--but only those who could first prove themselves worthy.
He then told us something great, that I have always remembered.
“Everyone who attempts Selection has the basic mark-one body: two arms, two legs, one head, and one pumping set of lungs. What makes the difference between those that make it and those that don’t, is what goes on in here,” he said, touching his chest. “Heart is what makes the big difference. Only you know if you have got what it takes. Good luck…oh, and if you pass I will treat you both to lunch, on me.”
That was quite a promise from an officer--to part with money.
So that was that.
Trucker and I wrote to 21 SAS HQ, nervously requesting to be put forward for Selection. They would do their initial security clearances on us both, and then would hopefully write, offering us (or not) a place on pre-Selection--including dates, times, and joining instructions.
All we could do was wait, start training hard, and pray.
I tossed all my German study manuals unceremoniously into the bin and felt a million times better. And deep down I had the feeling that I might just be embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.
On top of that, there was no Deborah Maldives saying I needed a degree to join the SAS. The only qualification I needed was inside that beating heart of mine.
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Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
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Faced with the task of building a strong, cohesive corporate culture, many software companies have borrowed heavily from other organizations. Trilogy Software made headlines by sending its new recruits to a training “boot camp” for three months—with classes running from 8:00 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, for the first month. Other companies, such as Scient, subject their new recruits to intense pep rallies, with constant repetition of the company slogan— “I’m on fire!” The popularity of these tactics has even led to some hand-wringing about the cult-like character of many business initiation rituals. One writer for Shift magazine captured the dilemma quite well in a brilliant article entitled “Why Your Fabulous Job Sucks.” “Work is a blast. Your colleagues are cool and they dig having your dog around. But something evil lures you to the company beer fridge. Ever wonder why you’re never home?” The observation here is quite astute. Creating a cool work environment, holding fabulous office parties with great bands, letting people wear whatever they want, setting up the LAN for multiplayer gaming— this may all seem like corporate generosity. But it also has a sound economic rationale. All these devices help to build among young employees allegiance, loyalty, and a willingness to work. The easiest way to persuade people to pull an all-nighter is to make being at the office more fun than being at home.
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Joseph Heath (The Efficient Society: Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets)
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Emmie had not told her vicar she would marry him, but as October drifted into November, St. Just knew she hadn’t turned the man down, either. It had taken some time to see why the decision was difficult, though he’d initially considered that he held the trump card—Winnie. Except there were low cards in his hand, as well, something he was finding it difficult to come to grips with. In the army, his men had become loyal to him for three reasons. He did not have charm, luck, or diplomacy in sufficient quantity to inspire followers, but he was, first, foremost, and to the marrow of his bones, a horseman. In the cavalry, a man who truly admired and understood the equine, and the cavalry mount in particular, was respected. St. Just’s unit was always a little better mounted, their tack in a little better shape, and their horses in better condition, primarily because St. Just saw to it. He commandeered the best fodder, requisitioned the best gear, and insisted on sound, sane animals, though it might cost him his personal coin to see to it. The second attribute that won him the respect of his subordinates was a gentleman’s quotient of simple common sense. Stupid orders, written for stupid reasons, were commonplace. St. Just would not disobey such an order, but he would time implementation of it to ensure the safety of his men. In rare cases, he might interpret an order at variance with its intended meaning, if necessary, again, to protect the lives of his men and their mounts. But when battle was joined, St. Just’s third strength as a commander of soldiers manifested itself. His men soon found those fighting in St. Just’s vicinity were safer than their comrades elsewhere. Once the order to charge was given, St. Just fought with the strength, size, speed, and skill of the berserkers of old, leaving murder, mayhem, and maiming on all sides until the enemy was routed. His capacity for sheer, cold-blooded brutality appalled, even as it awed, particularly when, once victory was assured, his demeanor became again the calm, organized, slightly detached commanding officer. And Emmie Farnum had no use for that latent capacity for brutality. She’d seen its echoes in his setbacks and his temper, in his drinking and insomnia, and St. Just knew in his bones she was smart enough to sense exactly what she’d be marrying were she to throw in with him. Barbarians might be interesting to bed, but no sane woman let one take her to wife. Nonetheless, having reasoned to this inevitable, uncomfortable conclusion, St. Just was still unable to fathom why, on the strength of one intimate interlude, he could not convince himself to stop wanting her to do just that.
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Grace Burrowes (The Soldier (Duke's Obsession, #2; Windham, #2))
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The preliminary constitution’s list of organizational officers included a “Ball Guy” to “maintain any balls owned by the league collectively.” The university rejected this initial draft because “Ball Guy” implied gender specificity. Evan and I fixed this problem, then added “he or she” after each reference to the captain position as further evidence of our “open to women” policy. Then, for our own amusement, we shoehorned in hilarious jargon to see if they’d catch it. Here is an excerpt from the final ratified constitution: At
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Andrew Heaton (Laughter is Better Than Communism)
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Ask any experienced prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys, and they will all tell you the same thing: after a police officer arrests you, if he later remembers additional details that he initially forgot to write down, those additional details will always confirm the original accusation and help the prosecutor. Those “new memories” will never undermine the original charges and help the defense. There
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James J. Duane (You Have the Right to Remain Innocent)
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Fanton, Vice President Julia Stasch, and our Program Officers for MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning Initiative, Craig Wacker and Ben Stokes. Michael Carter has been key also in seeing us through the final stages to publication,
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Cathy N. Davidson (The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age)
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MATCH THE MODE OF COMMUNICATION TO THE BOSS On a daily basis, adjust your method of communication to reflect the preferences of your boss. Take notice of the types of interactions that he or she initiates. Does your boss call you to ask for information on a current project? Does he or she tend to stop by your office for a chat? Or does he or she simply send you an email asking you for information? Most likely, the form of outgoing communication reflects his or her desired form of incoming communication. So you should generally respond to your boss using whatever medium your boss typically uses.
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Robert C. Pozen (Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours)
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In the Army Headquarters, I was surprised to find several senior officers who during the liberation war had remained with the Pakistan Army in East Pakistan. One such officer was Lieutenant Colonel Feroze Salauddin. He was one of the directors of Razakars during the liberation war, but he was cleared for the Bangladesh Army because he was Osmany's pet. Salauddin was a subaltern in 1 East Bengal when Osmany was the commanding officer. His record of being a Director of Razakars was conveniently overlooked. He was now the Director of Welfare in the Army Headquarters. What welfare could the Bangladesh Army, which was almost entirely composed of freedom fighters, expect from him who only two months ago was doing his best to kill freedom fighters? If anything, he would be blocking all genuine welfare initiatives.
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A. Qayyum Khan (Bittersweet Victory A Freedom Fighter's Tale)
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While the Reconstruction Era was fraught with corruption and arguably doomed by the lack of land reform, the sweeping economic and political developments in that period did appear, at least for a time, to have the potential to seriously undermine, if not completely eradicate, the racial caste system in the South. With the protection of federal troops, African Americans began to vote in large numbers and seize control, in some areas, of the local political apparatus. Literacy rates climbed, and educated blacks began to populate legislatures, open schools, and initiate successful businesses. In 1867, at the dawn of the Reconstruction Era, no black men held political office in the South, yet three years later, at least 15 percent of all Southern elected officials were black. This is particularly extraordinary in light of the fact that fifteen years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - the high water mark of the Civil Rights Movement - fewer than 8 percent of all Southern elected officials were black.
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Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
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Watching trips driving under the influence of alcohol, details
Since a randomized control the peaks. From the perspective of travel between the armed forces and the strategy for the enforcement of the initiation of a hasty road block using the techniques that are considered disturbing the police only with unauthorized functions this movement control points on the basis of many DUI action initiated. Every time the checkpoints suspicious driver drunk driving, Kits, laws applications traversing the streets to protect the driver. Then, when the driver suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, it would be towards getting a DUI lawyer to be soon after fertilization. DUI prices could the lives of sick people are taken in the context concerned, so that the money really is removed before use. To clarify this point, it is important to achieve the experience in DUI legal knowledge based on track to use to get rid of costs.
General address is to escape unnoticed a trip to the environment in which they can find through future target for it to rotate too slowly. In many situations, under the influence of alcohol, driving, fast that the driver Checkpoint see some time, immediate auto or truck and escapes through the information on the screen. Show information about the tours, the driver will have the opportunity not only to avoid the checkpoint.
The decrease is the result of a DUI is a criminal offense, or the great nations. Suspension of driver's license penalty for a crime, loved. Large trigger additional sanctions crime and that if all packets death only a misdemeanor. Unlike the provisions in relation to the position of DUI in the direction of the nation. DUI attorney knows all the DUI laws, the only country. So it is very good in the sense speaks DUI lawyer immediately after his arrest, stay away from most of the impact.
If the driver can be caught in DUI checkpoints on the road licenses are revoked. If the error in transit, these people are in high demand because of a drunk driver, it is more important. Asked the pilot, from the breath alcohol tests and inspections. If the driver refuses, blood test or breathing difficulties, law enforcement agencies, including the authority to proceed under the influence of alcohol to manage directly in the driver's driving.
Control or DUI checkpoints to protect positions of police officers, the general requirements of each tram and to check that the driver may influence the direction of the excitation. This type of set up checkpoints to travel a few hours in the morning or at the weekend overnight when the possibility of impaired drivers generally.
Experience driver search on the phone all alcoholic breath test and operation of a one-car conveyor belt. Again, a simple test is not available, the agenda requires sophisticated. The driver stopped and should work out of the car and then seriously consider. He is seriously considering an indication of the psychological stability and capacity. If the driver is not necessary to work the sober to catch your breath.
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duiion
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Lee Tran & Liang tried to have Quinn Emmanuel thrown off the case, as Reggie had tried to get another Quinn Emmanuel lawyer to take his side of the case before he went to Lee Tran & Liang. Ultimately, the judge ruled against Reggie and said the waiver Reggie had signed and the ethical wall Quinn Emmanuel erected were sufficient for them to continue representing Evan, Bobby, and Snapchat. Lee Tran & Liang also tried to sue all of Snapchat’s investors, claiming their shares were diluting Reggie’s one-third stake. They even lined up a tell-all interview for Reggie with GQ magazine, but he backed out at the last minute. At one point, Lee’s partner Luan Tran took a copy of Forbes magazine with Evan on the cover, scrawled red devil horns over his head, and pinned it to the wall in his office. The combative trial would wage for months, and each side had plenty more cards to play. Reggie claimed he owned one-third of Snapchat’s intellectual property since he filed the original patent (which, again, was never approved). He also claimed that they had entered into an oral partnership agreement when he and Evan initially agreed to split everything 50/ 50 (before they brought Bobby in). Evan and Bobby claimed Reggie was merely working with them on a project, and they never agreed to an equity split; because they used the Limited Liability Company (LLC) structure that Evan and Bobby had set up for Future Freshman rather than a whole new one, they claimed Reggie should know he had no equity in the venture.
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Billy Gallagher (How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story)
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Hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows that entombed them in suffocating private spaces where visitors came infrequently and the air was heavy and still. Among these victims, the bodies and belongings of roughly 170 people went unclaimed until the Public Administrators Office initiated an aggressive campaign to seek out relatives who had not noticed that a member of their family was missing. Even then, roughly one-third of the cases never moved beyond the public agency. The personal possessions of dozens of the heat wave victims, including Laczko, remain filed in cardboard boxes at the County Building to this day.
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Eric Klinenberg (Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago)
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c) Taking a view as to whether there is any need to keep the delinquent employee under suspension (d) Taking a view on the preliminary investigation report and deciding about the future course of action thereon, such as warning, training, counseling, initiation of major or minor penalty proceeding, prosecution, discharge simpliciter, etc.(e) Consultation with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) where necessary (f) Deciding whether there is any need to issue of charge sheet or penalty may be imposed dispensing with inquiry under the appropriate provision (g) Issue of charge sheet where necessary - Rule 14(3) (h) In the case of minor penalty proceedings, deciding, either suo motu or based on the request of the delinquent employee, as to whether it is necessary to conduct a detailed oral hearing.(i) In the case of minor penalty proceedings, forming tentative opinion about the quantum of penalty based on the representation of the delinquent employee, if any, and ordering for a detailed oral hearing where necessary.(j) After issue of charge sheet, deciding as to whether there is any need to conduct inquiry, or the matter may be closed, or the penalty can be imposed, based on the unambiguous, unconditional and unqualified admission by the delinquent employee.(k) Passing final order imposing penalty or closing the case, based on the response of the delinquent employee (l) Appointment of Inquiry Authority and Presenting Officer, where necessary (m)Taking a view on the request, if any, of the delinquent employee for engagement of a Legal Practioner as Defence Assistant (n) Making originals of all the listed documents available to the Presenting Officer so that the same could be presented during the inspection of documents.(o) Examination of the inquiry report to decide as to whether the same needs to be remitted back to the inquiry authority - Rule 15(1) (p) Deciding as to whether the conclusion arrived at by the Inquiring Authority is acceptable and to record reasons for disagreement if any – Rule 15(2) 6
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Anonymous
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At the G-20 meeting in Paris in 2011, finance ministers expressed fears that U.S.-driven global inflation was threatening global stability. George Melloan was among those who made the connection between this unrest and QE. He acknowledged in the Wall Street Journal: “Probably few of the protesters in the streets connect their economic travail to Washington. But central bankers do.” To appreciate the depth of political upheaval created by the 2008 financial crisis, just tally the power shifts that occurred in its wake. In addition to the turmoil in the Middle East, 13 out of 17 European governments changed over as a result of the initial financial crisis. In the United States, the stock market panic in September 2008 reversed the slight lead of John McCain and helped sweep the far-left Barack Obama into office.
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Steve Forbes (Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It)
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Summary
There is a small group of cases, initially treated as rape where there is no evidence of an assault: primarily where a third party makes the report and the victim subsequently denies; or where the victim suspects being assaulted while asleep, unconscious or affected by alcohol/drugs but the medical/forensic examination suggests no sex has taken place. How the police should designate such cases is problematic.
- Eight per cent of reported cases in the sample were designated false by the police.
- A higher proportion of cases designated false involved 16- to 25-year-olds.
- A greater degree of acquaintance between victim and perpetrator decreased the likelihood of cases being designated false.
- Cases were most commonly designated false on the grounds of: the complainant
admitting it; retractions; evidential issues; and non co-operation by the complainant.
- In a number of cases the police also cited mental health problems, previous allegations, use of alcohol/drugs and lack of CCTV evidence.
- The pro formas and the interviews with police officers suggested inconsistencies in the complainant’s account could be interpreted as ‘lying’.
- The authors’ analysis suggests that the designation of false allegations in a number of cases was uncertain according to Home Office counting rules, and if these were excluded, would reduce the proportion of false complaints to three per cent of reported cases.
- This is considerably lower than the estimates of police officers interviewed."
A gap or a chasm?: attrition in reported rape cases.
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Liz Kelly
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Some grant programs are structured as competitions. New York City’s Industrial Growth Initiative, now in its second year, is a two-stage process that requires businesses to attend a growth workshop and then apply for a more in-depth workshop series covering topics like human resources and marketing. The program culminates with a business plan competition, where participants put what they have learned to work and create expansion plans to guide their next stage of growth. The plans are pitched to an audience of judges and business leaders, and three winners split a $150,000 prize. One recent winner was Eric Campione, chief administrative officer for P.A.C. Plumbing, Heating, & Air Conditioning. Mr. Campione submitted a plan to bring the third-generation family-owned business on Staten Island into the digital age with new technology, such as iPads for field technicians. It is about more than money, though.
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Anonymous
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Reciprocal altruism, meanwhile, is rampant in Washington and is the primary channel through which interest groups have succeeded in corrupting government. As the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig points out, interest groups are able to influence members of Congress legally simply by making donations and waiting for unspecified return favors. And sometimes, the legislator is the one initiating the gift exchange, favoring an interest group in the expectation that he will get some sort of benefit from it after leaving office.
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Anonymous
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As a federal district court in Texas recently ruled, federal law “mandates the initiation of immigration removal proceedings whenever an immigration officer encounters an illegal alien who is not ‘clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted.’” Moreover, the court explained, the Department of Homeland Security does not have “prosecutorial discretion” to ignore this requirement; Congress, not the president, has the plenary power to make immigration law; and the executive branch may not “implement measures that are incompatible with Congressional intent.
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Andrew McCarthy (Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama s Impeachment)
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President of the MacArthur Foundation, Jonathan F. Fanton, Vice President Julia Stasch, and our Program Officers for MacArthur's Digital Media and Learning Initiative,
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Cathy N. Davidson (The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age)
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everything for miles in all directions. The Space Needle. The aquarium and the science center. Amazon.com’s headquarters. Safeco Field. And every Starbucks in between. All of it was gone in the snap of a finger. None of the city’s twenty-one state-of-the-art air raid sirens went off. They had originally been installed in the early 1950s during the Cold War. They’d been cosmetically upgraded in 2006 at a cost of $91,000. But they’d been useless. No one in the mayor’s office or the police department or the fire department knew the missile was coming. No one knew the threat that was inbound. Thus no one had activated the sirens. But even if someone had, would anyone in Seattle have known what to do or where to go? Would there have been any time to seek shelter? No one was left to ask the questions, for now the air raid sirens and the city they were designed to protect were gone entirely. Untold thousands lay dead and dying. More would join them soon. Indeed, the death toll in Seattle alone would soar into the hundreds of thousands within hours. An enormous mushroom cloud, crackling with toxic radioactive dust, now formed over the city. Those not blinded by the initial
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Joel C. Rosenberg (Dead Heat: A Jon Bennett Series Political and Military Action Thriller (Book 5) (The Last Jihad series))
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For an American, though, Australia seems pretty familiar: same wide streets, same office towers. It’s Canada in a thong, or that’s the initial impression.
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David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
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population. By the end of 1915 the Allies found the situation so menacing that the Russians, supported by the 8,000-strong Russian-officered Persian Cossacks, occupied the north of the country, taking over the capital city of Teheran and, with it, the weak, recently crowned young Shah. The most pro-German of the politicians fled, initially to the holy city of Qum, and later to Kermanshah, near the Ottoman frontier, where a German puppet government was established, backed by Ottoman troops.
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David Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East)
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By the end of 1915 the Allies found the situation so menacing that the Russians, supported by the 8,000-strong Russian-officered Persian Cossacks, occupied the north of the country, taking over the capital city of Teheran and, with it, the weak, recently crowned young Shah. The most pro-German of the politicians fled, initially to the holy city of Qum, and later to Kermanshah, near the Ottoman frontier, where a German puppet government was established, backed by Ottoman troops.
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David Fromkin (A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East)
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As will be discussed in detail below, it is my contention that such reluctance or delay will actually result in the risk of greater police force being used, because the officer who loses the initiative to an assaultive person will experience an instinctive urgency to "catch up" to protect them from the threat.
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Lawrence N. Blum (Stoning the Keepers at the Gate: Society's Relationship with Law Enforcement)
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The Democrats did play a role in Reconstruction—they worked to block it. The party struck out against Reconstruction in two ways. The first was to form a network of terrorist organizations with names like the Constitutional Guards, the White Brotherhood, the Society of Pale Faces, and the Knights of the White Camelia. The second was to institute state-sponsored segregation throughout the South. Let us consider these two approaches one by one. The Democrats started numerous terror groups, but the most notorious of these was the Ku Klux Klan. Founded in 1866, the Klan was initially led by a former Confederate army officer, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who served two years later as a Democratic delegate to the party’s 1868 national convention. Forrest’s role in the Klan is controversial; he later disputed that he was ever involved, insisting he was active in attempting to disband the organization. Initially the Klan’s main targets weren’t blacks but rather white people who were believed to be in cahoots with blacks. The Klan unleashed its violence against northern Republicans who were accused of being “carpetbaggers” and unwarrantedly interfering in southern life, as well as southern “scalawags” and “white niggers” who the Klan considered to be in league with the northern Republicans. The Klan’s goal was to repress blacks by getting rid of these perceived allies of the black cause. Once again Republicans moved into action, passing a series of measures collectively termed the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1871. These acts came to be known as the Force Bill, signed into law by a Republican President, Ulysses Grant. They restricted northern Democratic inflows of money and weapons to the Klan, and also empowered federal officials to crack down on the Klan’s organized violence. The Force Bill was implemented by military governors appointed by Grant. These anti-Klan measures seem modest in attempting to arrest what Grant described as an “invisible empire throughout the South.” But historian Eric Foner says the Force Bill did markedly reduce lawless violence by the Democrats. The measures taken by Republicans actually helped shut down the Ku Klux Klan. By 1873, the Klan was defunct, until it was revived a quarter-century later by a new group of racist Democrats.
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Dinesh D'Souza (Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party)
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In 1874, Brevet Maj. Gen. Emory Upton initially came to the same conclusion. His analysis of the war produced no lessons that the US Army should incorporate into its new tactical doctrine.[96] However when Upton visited Berlin in 1876, his view changed. He observed that a small, but educated officer corps served as the backbone of Germany’s army. The professional school system enabled it to develop a general staff capable of executing complex tactical problems.[97]
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Michael J. Gunther (Auftragstaktik: The Basis For Modern Military Command)
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If they are looking for a rewarding long term business with a plumber to perform tasks
There are many companies who are working to decide what kind of vocational schools, replacement or installation of higher education institutions. For your education initiative must be the only option that is able to provide intensive plumber work relevant by the classic Nationwide Plumbing Code. After completing the program, each providing accreditation to another relevant effort and hard work as a plumber. The program includes training in the relevant programs to install and configure resources. It also includes mechanical design, troubleshooting, piping plans and key ingredients. Bacteriology and sanitation is also part of an important program for plumbers exercise.
Although few plumbing works carried out in the classroom, the most important part of the class exercise is comfortable on the stage. The most important bands in principle were supposed to be a plumber in the direction of the company to do the exercises. It is organized in such a way that the student really easy, because you need a plumber's apprentice as an assistant purchasing palms running plumbing parts training. The student gets serious compensated despite the hour discovery replacement rate. He always takes four-year students to get the name of the certificate. In this position, the plumber will be held against the craftsman marketing consultant.
When the full study plumbing, plumber charges may choose the next action plan for the office or a plumber, or may be may decide to acquire its own plumber in person in the office. System officeholder has more tasks and also includes all However, more flexibility. He came to power to decide employment opportunities for leadership simply do not want to take, and it can also maintain services in other management plumbers enough to have a lot less work if you need a cute hat.
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Boiler Service
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Mayfield Realties was situated on the sixtieth floor of Trump Tower in the bourgeoning business district of New York City. A little after eight a.m. Jett Mayfield sat in his office overlooking the busy street below. The people and yellow taxis looked like ants in constant motion: always hurried, always tense. Like the city, Jett had once been abuzz with life—or his former interpretation of it: live hard, work even harder. Until he met her. There was something about Brooke Stewart that had changed something inside him. It wasn’t her beautiful chestnut eyes, nor the way she moved—confident and yet reserved. She had talked to him on a deeper level, touching something he had thought untouchable. His initial intention had been different though. His agenda had been to make her fall for him, not through words, but through actions and sex, lots of the latter, because he had wanted something she had. Not for himself, but for the man and for the company to which he owed everything. But events
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J.C. Reed (Conquer Your Love (Surrender Your Love, #2))
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for several years starting in 2004, Bezos visited iRobot’s offices, participated in strategy sessions held at places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and became a mentor to iRobot chief executive Colin Angle, who cofounded the company in 1990. “He recognized early on that robots were a very disruptive game-changer,’’ Angle says of Bezos. “His curiosity about our space led to a very cool period of time where I could count upon him for a unique perspective.’’ Bezos is no longer actively advising the company, but his impact on the local tech scene has only grown larger. In 2008, Bezos’ investment firm provided initial funding for Rethink Robotics, a Boston company that makes simple-to-program manufacturing robots. Four years later, Amazon paid $775 million for North Reading-based Kiva, which makes robots that transport merchandise in warehouses. Also in 2012, Amazon opened a research and software development outpost in Cambridge that has done work on consumer electronics products like the Echo, a Wi-Fi-connected speaker that responds to voice commands. Rodney Brooks, an iRobot cofounder who is now chief technology officer of Rethink, says he met Bezos at the annual TED Conference. Bezos was aware of work that Brooks, a professor emeritus at MIT, had done on robot navigation and control strategies. Helen Greiner, the third cofounder of iRobot, says she met Bezos at a different technology conference, in 2004. Shortly after that, she recruited him as an adviser to iRobot. Bezos also made an investment in the company, which was privately held at the time. “He gave me a number of memorable insights,’’ Angle says. “He said, ‘Just because you won a bet doesn’t mean it was a good bet.’ Roomba might have been lucky. He was challenging us to think hard about where we were going and how to leverage our success.’’ On visits to iRobot, Greiner recalls, “he’d shake everyone’s hand and learn their names. He got them engaged.’’ She says one of the key pieces of advice Bezos supplied was about the value of open APIs — the application programming interfaces that allow other software developers to write software that talks to a product like the Roomba, expanding its functionality. The advice was followed. (Amazon also offers a range of APIs that help developers build things for its products.) By spending time with iRobot, Bezos gave employees a sense they were on the right track. “We were all believers that robotics would be huge,’’ says former iRobot exec Tom Ryden. “But when someone like that comes along and pays attention, it’s a big deal.’’ Angle says that Bezos was an adviser “in a very formative, important moment in our history,’’ and while they discussed “ideas about what practical robots could do, and what they could be,’’ Angle doesn’t want to speculate about what, exactly, Bezos gleaned from the affiliation. But Greiner says she believes “there was learning on both sides. We already had a successful consumer product with Roomba, and he had not yet launched the Kindle. He was learning from us about successful consumer products and robotics.’’ (Unfortunately, Bezos and Amazon’s public relations department would not comment.) The relationship trailed off around 2007 as Bezos got busier — right around when Amazon launched the Kindle, Greiner says. Since then, Bezos and Amazon have stayed mum about most of their activity in the state. His Bezos Expeditions investment team is still an investor in Rethink, which earlier this month announced its second product, a $29,000, one-armed robot called Sawyer that can do precise tasks, such as testing circuit boards. The warehouse-focused Kiva Systems group has been on a hiring tear, and now employs more than 500 people, according to LinkedIn. In December, Amazon said that it had 15,000 of the squat orange Kiva robots moving around racks of merchandise in 10 of its 50 distribution centers. Greiner left iRo
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Anonymous
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The metaphor of the early American explorer fits policing and the complex problems we face on the street daily. As we search for peaceful outcomes to the situations we encounter numerous unknowns despite the similarities, in the types of incidents and crises we observe day to day. Standard operating procedures, policy and procedure practices are all very useful when we have standard problem and things go as we plan but what happens when things deviate from the standard and go outside the normal patterns? Here is where we must rely on resilience and adaptation, our ability and knowhow. Experienced people using their insights, imagination and initiative to solve complex problems as our ancestors, the early American explores did. As we interact with people in dynamic encounters, the explorer mentality keeps us in the game; it keeps us alert and aware. The explorer mentality has us continually learning as we accord with a potential adversary and seek to understand his intent to the best of our ability. An officer who possesses the explorer mentality understands that an adversary has his own thoughts objectives and plans, many which he cannot hear, such as: “I will do what I am asked,” “I will not do what I am asked,” “I will escape,” “I will fight,” “I will assault,” “I will kill,” “I will play dumb until...,” “I will stab,” “I will shoot,” “he looks prepared I will comply,” “he looks complacent I will not comply, etc.” The explorer never stops learning and is ever mindful of both obvious and subtle clues of danger and or cooperation.
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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SCANDALS AND MISMANAGEMENT If Secretary Clinton’s political career had ended with her defeat for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, her skills as a manager would have been judged by her disorganized and drama-filled campaign for the presidency and her disastrous Health Care Task Force as First Lady. President Obama, who defeated her calamitously run campaign, should have been wary of nominating Clinton to a post that was responsible for tens of thousands of federal employees throughout the world. While her tenure in Foggy Bottom didn’t have the highly publicized backstabbing element that tarnished her presidential campaign, Secretary Clinton’s deficiencies as a manager were no less evident. There was one department within State that Secretary Clinton oversaw with great care: the Global Partnerships Initiative (GPI), which was run by long-time Clinton family aide Kris Balderston. Balderston was known in political circles for creating a “hit list” that ranked members of Congress based on loyalty to the Clintons during the 2008 presidential primaries.[434] Balderston was brought to Foggy Bottom to “keep the Clinton political network humming at State.”[435] He focused his efforts on connecting CEOs and business interests—all potential Clinton 2016 donors—to State Department public/private partnerships. Balderston worked alongside Clinton’s long-time aide Huma Abedin, who was given a “special government employee” waiver, allowing her to work both as Secretary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, and for other private sector clients. With the arrangement, Abedin would serve as a consultant to the top Clinton allied firm, Teneo, in a role in which, as the New York Times reported, “the lines were blurred between Ms. Abedin’s work in the high echelons of one of the government’s most sensitive executive departments and her role as a Clinton family insider.”[436] Secretary Clinton and her allies have placed great emphasis on the secretary of state’s historic role in promoting American business interests overseas, dubbing the effort “economic statecraft.”[437] The efforts of the GPI, Abedin, and Balderston ensured that Secretary Clinton’s “economic statecraft” agenda would be rife with the potential for conflicts of interest reminiscent of the favor-trading scandals that emanated from her husband’s White House. While the political office and donor maintenance program was managed with extreme meticulousness, Secretary Clinton ignored her role as manager of the rest of the sprawling government agency.[438] When it came to these more mundane tasks, Secretary Clinton was not on top of what was really going on in the department she ran. While Secretary Clinton was preoccupied with being filmed and photographed all around the world, the State Department was plagued by chronic management problems and scandals, from visa programs to security contractors. And when Secretary Clinton did weigh in on management issues, it was almost always after a raft of bad press forced her to, and not from any proactive steps she took. In fact, she and her department’s first reaction in certain instances was to silence critics or intimidate whistleblowers, rather than get to the bottom of what was actually going on. The events that unfolded in Benghazi were the worst example of Secretary Clinton neglecting her managerial responsibilities. This pattern of behavior, which led to the tragedy, was characteristic of her management style throughout her four years at Foggy Bottom. “Economic Statecraft” A big part of Secretary Clinton’s record-breaking travel—112 countries visited—was her work as a salesperson for select U.S. business interests.[439] Today, her supporters would have us believe her “economic statecraft” agenda was a major accomplishment.[440] Yet, as always seems to be the case with the Clintons, there was one family that benefited more than any other from all this economic statecraft—the Clinton family.
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Stephen Thompson (Failed Choices: A Critique Of The Hillary Clinton State Department)
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Trust is now recognized as a topic worthy of academic effort. In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, researchers Robert Galford and Anne Siebold Drapeau identified five simple ways to destroy trust in any organization:122 1. Inconsistent messages—management proclaims one thing, actually does another 2. Inconsistent standards—people feel that they are being treated differently because of where they work, which legacy organization they came from, etc. 3. Misplaced benevolence—ignoring a poor performing or untrustworthy manager, or employee 4. “Elephants in the parlor”—ignoring the role that office politics actually plays in their organization 5. “Rumors in a vacuum”—senior managers embargo all information, or greatly restrict its flow—i.e., to only certain levels of management—during complex initiatives, merger discussions, restructuring, etc.
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Chet Richards (Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business)
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Even relatively routine misconduct by Ferguson police officers can have significant consequences for the people whose rights are violated. For example, in the summer of 2012, a 32-year-old African-American man sat in his car cooling off after playing basketball in a Ferguson public park. An officer pulled up behind the man’s car, blocking him in, and demanded the man’s Social Security number and identification. Without any cause, the officer accused the man of being a pedophile, referring to the presence of children in the park, and ordered the man out of his car for a pat-down, although the officer had no reason to believe the man was armed. The officer also asked to search the man’s car. The man objected, citing his constitutional rights. In response, the officer arrested the man, reportedly at gunpoint, charging him with eight violations of Ferguson’s municipal code. One charge, Making a False Declaration, was for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”), and an address which, although legitimate, was different from the one on his driver’s license. Another charge was for not wearing a seat belt, even though he was seated in a parked car. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in his possession. The man told us that, because of these charges, he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government that he had held for years.
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U.S. Department of Justice (The Ferguson Report: Department of Justice Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department)
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The prognosis for an officer with a traumatic physical injury is improved by early intervention due to personnel who are increasingly more skilled during each step in the process. The same situation applies to psychological injuries. Officers who receive the best psychological care the soonest are those who have the greatest long-term improvements (Artwohl & Christensen, 1997). Immediate intervention at the scene is vital, followed by more advanced care to ensure stability and to determine the next phase of appropriate assistance. Then finally, definitive care to put things back in order to manage the long-term effects of psychological injuries. Officers facing a traumatic stress injury resulting from a single incident, or officers reaching a breaking point from cumulative strain are in desperate need of some basic psychological first aid. This initial intervention commonly falls to the first responding unit or supervisor to arrive and find an officer in need. Nationwide most law enforcement officers lack the understanding to provide traumatic field care for psychological injury. While officers are trained with multiple options on how to deal with members of the public who have been traumatized as the victim of a crime, those in law enforcement rarely discuss how to take care of each other. The goal of the immediate response is to limit the chances of a temporary injury becoming a longer lasting wound in need of more serious care. On-scene psychological intervention is consistent with the model used when initially dealing with a physical injury, such as a gunshot wound in the field. One-on-one intervention should last no more than a half hour and result in the officer being assured his/her physical and mental responses are normal and they are not alone (Kates, 1999). This initial intervention will be rudimentary in nature, but, if handled properly, it sets the groundwork for all future interventions.
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Karen Rodwill Solomon (The Price They Pay)
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The United States policing style of dealing with conflict and crisis requires intelligent leaders with a penchant for boldness and initiative down to the lowest levels. Boldness is an essential moral trait in a leader for it generates power beyond the physical means at hand. Initiative, the willingness to act on one’s own judgment, is a prerequisite for boldness. These traits carried to excess can lead to rashness, but we must realize that errors by frontline street cops stemming from over boldness are a necessary part of learning. We should deal with such errors leniently; there must be no “zero defects” mentality. Abolishing “zero defects” means that we do not stifle boldness or initiative through the threat of punishment. It does not mean that leaders do not council subordinates on mistakes; constructive criticism is an important element of learning. Nor does it give subordinates free license to act stupidly or recklessly. Not only must we not stifle boldness or initiative, but we must continue to encourage both traits in spite of mistakes. On the other hand, we should deal severely with errors of inaction or timidity. We will not accept lack of orders as justification for inaction; it is each police officers duty to take initiative as the situation demands. We must not tolerate the avoidance of responsibility or necessary risk.
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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the pre-cast votes could be caught before the voting started was by the employees who worked in his office, the very persons who had exclusive access to the machines. The voting machines would be delivered to the various polling locations, and then checked by his fellow election officials to be sure the machines were ready for votes to be cast. The election officials merely had to initial a one page form attesting that the machines bore no votes at the beginning of voting, and were thus ready to vote. No one else would, or could, look at the total vote counter on the machine to confirm a clear machine, with all counters set at zero, before voting started. Classic vote fraud. Right before his eyes.
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John Price (Second Term - A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 1))
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Over the past few months, we have introduced a number of great benefits and tools to make us more productive, efficient and fun. With the introduction of initiatives like FYI, Goals and PB&J, we want everyone to participate in our culture and contribute to the positive momentum. From Sunnyvale to Santa Monica, Bangalore to Beijing—I think we can all feel the energy and buzz in our offices. To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together. Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices. Thanks to all of you, we’ve already made remarkable progress as a company—and the best is yet to come. Jackie
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Nicholas Carlson (Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!)
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Soon, I found myself criss-crossing the country with Steve, in what we called our “dog and pony show,” trying to drum up interest in our initial public offering. As we traveled from one investment house to another, Steve (in a costume he rarely wore: suit and tie) pushed to secure early commitments, while I added a professorial presence by donning, at Steve’s insistence, a tweed jacket with elbow patches. I was supposed to embody the image of what a “technical genius” looks like—though, frankly, I don’t know anyone in computer science who dresses that way. Steve, as pitch man, was on fire. Pixar was a movie studio the likes of which no one had ever seen, he said, built on a foundation of cutting-edge technology and original storytelling. We would go public one week after Toy Story opened, when no one would question that Pixar was for real. Steve turned out to be right. As our first movie broke records at the box office and as all our dreams seemed to be coming true, our initial public offering raised nearly $140 million for the company—the biggest IPO of 1995. And a few months later, as if on cue, Eisner called, saying that he wanted to renegotiate the deal and keep us as a partner. He accepted Steve’s offer of a 50/50 split. I was amazed; Steve had called this exactly right. His clarity and execution were stunning. For me, this moment was the culmination of such a lengthy series of pursuits, it was almost impossible to take in. I had spent twenty years inventing new technological tools, helping to found a company, and working hard to make all the facets of this company communicate and work well together. All of this had been in the service of a single goal: making a computer-animated feature film. And now, we’d not only done it; thanks to Steve, we were on steadier financial ground than we’d ever been before. For the first time since our founding, our jobs were safe. I
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, two Delta operators, won posthumous Medals of Honor for taking the initiative to secure one of the Black Hawk helicopter crash sites until Rangers could reinforce them. They knew the risk. They saw the enemy closing in before they even landed. At the White House during their Medal of Honor ceremony, the father of a Delta operator became unglued, furious that he was to receive the Medal of Honor from President Clinton, who in the father’s words was too cowardly to accept a draft to the Vietnam War at the behest of the president at the time, Lyndon Johnson. He believed President Clinton unworthy to bestow the award on his late son. His wife apologized to me and the other officers for her husband. But we felt the same way.
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Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
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On Sunday, evening, May 2, 2015, in Garland, Texas, an active-shooter incident didn’t end in a massacre. It ended when an armed police officer took the fight to the enemy, literally pushing toward them and killing the duo before they could massacre innocents in a crowded event center. Forget politics. Forget before and after. When the attack is initiated there is no negotiation, no thinking—only fighting, pushing, and close killing. The event in Garland wasn’t quite the soft target the terrorists thought it would be. They didn’t have the access to the defenseless civilians they thought they’d have. Defend yourself—now rather than later. Strength stops strength. Overwhelming strength stops massacres in their tracks.
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Gary J. Byrne (Crisis of Character: A White House Secret Service Officer Discloses His Firsthand Experience with Hillary, Bill, and How They Operate)
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I'm overweight, despise change, and rarely, if ever, initiate anything. Unlike my friends, I’ve had no drama in my life which might qualify as box office material. If a little more drama came my way, however, I would probably need to purchase some courage in order to withstand it. Oh well, if a bit of change equals a bit of drama, I’m willing to risk it.
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J.C. Patrick (The Reinvention of Janey)
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But as a recent study by Harvard Business Review pointed out, the skills associated with high productivity—including knowledge and expertise, driving for results, taking initiative—are almost all indications of individual-oriented competencies. Management requires skills that are other oriented: being open to feedback, supporting colleagues’ development, communicating well, having good interpersonal skills.34
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Charlie Warzel (Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home)
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Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, had visited the Oval Office in March, and I’d found him impressive. A grizzled, engaging former labor leader who’d been jailed for protesting the previous military government and then elected in 2002, he had initiated a series of pragmatic reforms that sent Brazil’s growth rate soaring, expanded its middle class, and provided housing and education to millions of its poorest citizens. He also reportedly had the scruples of a Tammany Hall boss, and rumors swirled about government cronyism, sweetheart deals, and kickbacks that ran into the billions.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
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There were quite a few times in the weeks after my sister's death that I was cornered at the office, the grocery store, or at church by people who initially approached me to offer sympathy, but then went on to share in exhaustive detail their own grief story. By the end of the conversation, they were in tears and I was trying to comfort them. I don't always mind stepping into another person's pain with them, but in an attempt to show understanding, people often inadvertently ask the bereaved, still fresh off of a loss, to shoulder more than they are already carrying.
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Amanda Held Opelt (A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing)
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She sighed and sniffed the air. The smell of dirty water hung thickly in it. They were supposed to be running a clean-up initiative. Whether they had and failed, or they’d succeeded and it had grown filthy again she wasn’t sure. Either way, she wasn’t fancying a swim. ‘Johansson,’ Roper called from the tent, beckoning her over, the report from the uniformed officer already in his hand. ‘Come on.’ She approached and he held the edge of the door-flap open for her so she could pass inside. It was eight feet by eight feet, and the translucent material made everything bright with daylight.
The kid in front of them could have been no more than eighteen or nineteen. He was skinny and had thick curly brown hair. His skin was blued from the cold and had the distinctly greyish look of someone who did more drugs than ate food. He was lying on his back on the bank, eyes closed, hands bound together on his stomach. His clothes were enough to tell them that he was homeless. It was charity shop mix and match. A pair of jeans that were two sizes too big, tied tight around pronounced hip bones with a shoelace. He was wearing a t-shirt with the cookie monster on it that looked as old as he was. But that was it. He had no jacket despite the time of year and no socks or shoes. Jamie crouched down, pulling a pair of latex gloves from her jacket pocket. She had a box of them in the car. ‘We got an ID?’ she asked, not looking up. She knew Roper wouldn’t get down next to her. He didn’t have the stamina for it for one, and with his hangover the smell would make him puke. He’d leave the close inspection to her. ‘Uh, yeah. He matches the description of a missing person’s — Oliver Hammond. Eighteen years old. No positive ID yet though. No picture on file.’ ‘Eighteen,’ Jamie mumbled, looking over him more closely. ‘Jesus.’ ‘Yup.’ Roper sighed. ‘Probably scored, got high, took a little stroll, fell in the river… And here we are.’ ‘Did he zip-tie his hands together before or after shooting up?’ She side-eyed him as he scrolled through something on his phone. She hoped it was the missing person’s report, but thought it was more likely to be one of the daily news items his phone prepared for him. ‘I’m just testing you,’ he said absently. ‘What else d’you see?’ Jamie pursed her lips. No one seemed to care when homeless people turned up dead. There’d been eight this month alone in the city — two of which had been floaters like this. She’d checked it out waiting at some traffic lights. There were more than a hundred and forty homeless missing persons reported in the last six months in London. Most cases were never closed. She grimaced at the thought and went back to her inspection. Oliver’s wrists were rubbed raw from the zip-tie, but that looked self-inflicted. She craned her neck to see his arms. His elbows were grazed and rubbed raw, and the insides were tracked out, like Roper had said. He wasn’t new to the needle. She didn’t need to check his ankles and toes to know that they’d be the same. She lingered on his fingers, honing in on the ones with missing nails. ‘Ripped out,’ Roper said, watching as she lifted and straightened his fingers, careful not to disturb anything before the SOCOs showed up to take their photographs. In a perfect world the body would have stayed in situ in the water, but these things couldn’t be helped. She inspected the middle and the index fingers on the right hand — the nails were completely gone. ‘Torture,’ Roper added to the silence. ‘Probably over the heroin. You know, where’s my money?
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Morgan Greene (Bare Skin (DS Jamie Johansson, #1))
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Inclusion of women creates a segment of the military that is physically weaker, more prone to injury (both physical and psychological), less physically aggressive, able to withstand less pain, less willing to take physical risks, less motivated to kill, less likely to be available to deploy when ordered to, more expensive to recruit, and less likely to remain in the service even for the length of their initial contracts. Women are placed in units with men who do not trust them with their lives and who do not bond with them the way that they do with other men. The groups into which they are introduced become less disciplined and more subject to conflict related to sexual jealousy and sexual frustration, and men receive less rigorous training because of their presence. Officers and NCOs must divert attention from their central missions to cope with the “drama” that sexual integration brings, and they must reassign physical tasks (or do them themselves) because women cannot get them done fast enough, if at all. Men who have traditionally been drawn to the military because of its appeal to their masculinity now find that the military tries to cure them of it to make the environment more comfortable for women.
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Kingsley Browne (Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars)
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To what extent and in what circumstances physical activity shifts metabolisms thus offsetting efforts to lose weight remains to be elucidated, but the fact remains that many studies have shown that exercise, including walking, can lead to weight loss. But to do so, one needs to walk considerably more than half an hour per day for many months. In addition, people who exercise more may compensate metabolically, negating some of the effects of added physical activity. Finally, it truly is faster and it’s often easier to lose weight by dieting because everyone needs to eat but no one has to exercise, and not eating five hundred calories of energy-rich food (four slices of bacon) requires less time and effort than walking five miles a day. Please, I do not wish to trivialize how hard it is to exercise if one is unfit and overweight: it can be uncomfortable, unpleasant, and disheartening, and disabilities can make it challenging or impossible. But for those unwilling or unable to run, swim, or do other vigorous exercises, walking remains an inexpensive and pleasant way to get a moderate and useful dose of physical activity. Even more important, regardless of how one initially loses weight, keeping the weight off almost always demands physical activity. The majority of dieters who do not exercise regain about half their lost pounds within a year, and thereafter the rest typically creeps back slowly but surely. Exercise, however, vastly increases the chances of maintaining weight loss.49 One example of this payoff comes from an experiment conducted here in Boston. When doctors put 160 overweight police officers on low-calorie diets for eight weeks, some with and some without exercise, all the officers lost sixteen to thirty pounds (seven to thirteen kilograms) with the ones who exercised losing slightly more. But once the crash diet was over and the policemen went back to their normal diets, only the officers who continued to exercise avoided weight regain; all the rest regained most or all of the pounds they initially lost.50 Many other studies confirm that physical activity, including walking, helps keep those lost pounds off.51 Maybe those ten thousand steps a day aren’t such a bad idea after all….
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Daniel E. Lieberman (Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding)
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Opening her mouth, she turned to say something to Hugh, but the look on his face knocked all the words right out of her head. Instead, all she said was, “What?”
“What?” he threw back at her. Of course he did. Because having a conversation with Officer Hugh Murdoch was like trying to discuss things with a twelve-year-old. And, for whatever strange reason, it turned her right back into a twelve-year-old as well, fighting the urge to stick out her tongue or kick him in the knee.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
“What?”
“That… Okay, this is stupid.” She didn’t even know what her initial question had been anymore.
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Katie Ruggle (On the Chase (Rocky Mountain K9 Unit, #2))
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BUT THE STORY doesn’t end there. Now that you have gotten used to paying more for coffee, and have bumped yourself up onto a new curve of consumption, other changes also become simpler. Perhaps you will now move up from the small cup for $2.20 to the medium size for $3.50 or to the Venti for $4.15. Even though you don’t know how you got into this price bracket in the first place, moving to a larger coffee at a relatively greater price seems pretty logical. So is a lateral move to other offerings at Starbucks: Caffè Americano, Caffè Misto, Macchiato, and Frappuccino, for instance. If you stopped to think about this, it would not be clear whether you should be spending all this money on coffee at Starbucks instead of getting cheaper coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts or even free coffee at the office. But you don’t think about these trade-offs anymore. You’ve already made this decision many times in the past, so you now assume that this is the way you want to spend your money. You’ve herded yourself—lining up behind your initial experience at Starbucks—and now you’re part of the crowd.
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Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions)
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How is it that in their personal lives, employees can be trusted to buy houses and cars, but at work can’t requisition a $ 300 office chair without a manager’s approval? If we thought about it for a minute, we’d realize this is stupid. Autonomy correlates with initiative and innovation. Shrink an individual’s freedom and you shrink their enthusiasm and creativity.
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Gary Hamel (Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them)
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It took a certain skill to make a living off the city’s poorest trailer park, a certain kind of initiative. Tobin’s strategy was simple. He would walk right up to a drug addict or a metal scrapper or a disabled grandmother and say, “I want my money.” He would pound on the door until a tenant answered. It was almost impossible to hide the fact that you were home. It was hard to hide much of anything. Office Susie knew when your check arrived; she put it in your mailbox. And Lenny could plainly see if you had enough money to buy cigarettes or beer or a new bike for your kid but not enough to pay the rent. When a tenant opened the door, Tobin would thrust out his hand and say, “You got something for me?” Sometimes he knocked for several minutes. Sometimes he walked around the trailer, slapping the aluminum siding. Sometimes he asked Lenny or another tenant to rap on the back door while he assailed the front. He called tenants at work, even talking to their supervisors. When caseworkers or ministers would call and say “Please” or “Wait just a minute,” Tobin would reply, “Pay me the rent.
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Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
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Initially, at the creation, these offices were indeed entrusted to all men, but they were all lost through the fall. Christ has restored these offices to believers.
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Concordia Publishing House (Lives and Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church)
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The eyewitness who saw the recent H-bomb test said that it was as if he were watching the end of the world. Indeed. And who in the world is empowered to initiate the events that would lead to that? Ultimately some individual man. For a current example of such a man, a Kansas City haberdasher who came to that power by way of the usually irrelevant office of vice president, brokered, in his case, by hacks in the back rooms of a Democratic convention. Or the other current example, a former Russian Orthodox seminarian who went on to the religious, racial, ethnic, and political murder of as yet uncounted millions of his own people. Moreover, one can imagine the present state of the world if the sophisticated scientists of Germany had been the first to develop an atomic bomb and thus put it into the hands of Adolf Hitler. But in all the ages to come, in all the countries that will acquire or develop these weapons, who knows what tyrants or fools or incompetents, what heartless egotists of minuscule and reckless intelligence, might come to power and gain control of these weapons?
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Robert Olen Butler (Late City)
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Dental care in children under 20 years of age
This initiative has allowed more than 366,000 women to recover their smile and oral health, improving their quality of life, their self-esteem, and also their opportunities to access employment. It is focused on women beneficiaries of FONASA and/or PRAIS over 15 years of age. The goal is to reach 100,000 annual registrations
Who can access? Women aged 15 or over, and beneficiaries of Fonasa A, B, C, D and Prais (Comprehensive Health Repair and Help Program).
How to access? To access you can register at your health center or at the Sernam office of your commune.
What includes? This program includes carrying out primary care actions, such as fillings, extractions and scaling, as well as dental prosthetics.
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Grants for Public Policy & Public Affairs
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In another, parallel GOP initiative, beginning in the summer of 2021—in thousands of towns, cities, counties, and states—huge numbers of pro-authoritarian, pro-Trump, anti-democracy GOP supporters signed up to become election monitors, precinct officers, and poll workers.
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Resmaa Menakem (The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation's Upheaval and Racial Reckoning)
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Providing information to trustees on the basis suggested here is both difficult and expensive, and it clearly signals a new initiating role for trustees as contrasted with the usual reacting role in which trustees are nominal. If the transition is to be made in a constructive way, with a minimum of loss of vital force and a maximum gain in institutional strength, all constituencies, particularly internal officers and staffs, will need to want trustees to perform so that trustee judgments will stand on a par with all other judgments by or about the institution.
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Robert K. Greenleaf (Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness)
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They Are Unreliable There was a time when you were the center of all their attention, but now you feel like you are no more than an afterthought in their lives. This can mean that they are unfaithful with you. He/She Kisses Less Often If they have started to avoid initiating a kiss and austerely avoid it during sex unless you pull them right into it, then they are cheating. They may also bail on the foreplay, avoid making eye contact, and time out their sex, it is a sign that their mind and heart are wandering someplace else. He/She Is Always “Working” Is he usually late? Does he/she always say that they are at the office and working on something important? It could be their new object of affection… just saying. When a partner cheats, they will try their best to minimize their contact with their spouses and use excuses to stay out of the house. They just feel a little guilty when they are with you, but boy does that stop them from cheating? Certainly not! Every Time You Confront Him/Her, They Call You Crazy Even if in just some casual banter, you bring up the topic of cheating, they start to act all weird and call you crazy for even thinking like that. No one likes to be caught red-handed and a cheater will always say they haven’t cheated. So take the hint if they act too surprised on the idea that you called them a cheater. His/Her Dressing Style Changes If he had a difficult time suiting/dolling up for any occasion previously and has started to do it too often now, it is again a sign that they are trying to impress someone. Also, if they seem obsessed with going to the gym or shopping for more sharp-looking/sexy clothes, it could mean they are cheating.
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Rachael Chapman (Healthy Relationships: Overcome Anxiety, Couple Conflicts, Insecurity and Depression without therapy. Stop Jealousy and Negative Thinking. Learn how to have a Happy Relationship with anyone.)
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IN 1971, as the Vietnam War was heading into its sixteenth year, congressmen Robert Steele from Connecticut and Morgan Murphy from Illinois made a discovery that stunned the American public. While visiting the troops, they had learned that over 15 percent of U.S. soldiers stationed there were heroin addicts. Follow-up research revealed that 35 percent of service members in Vietnam had tried heroin and as many as 20 percent were addicted—the problem was even worse than they had initially thought. The discovery led to a flurry of activity in Washington, including the creation of the Special Action Office of Drug Abuse Prevention under President Nixon to promote prevention and rehabilitation and to track addicted service members when they returned home. Lee Robins was one of the researchers in charge. In a finding that completely upended the accepted beliefs about addiction, Robins found that when soldiers who had been heroin users returned home, only 5 percent of them became re-addicted within a year, and just 12 percent relapsed within three years. In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight. This finding contradicted the prevailing view at the time, which considered heroin addiction to be a permanent and irreversible condition. Instead, Robins revealed that addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment. In Vietnam, soldiers spent all day surrounded by cues triggering heroin use: it was easy to access, they were engulfed by the constant stress of war, they built friendships with fellow soldiers who were also heroin users, and they were thousands of miles from home. Once a soldier returned to the United States, though, he found himself in an environment devoid of those triggers. When the context changed, so did the habit. Compare this situation to that of a typical drug user. Someone becomes addicted at home or with friends, goes to a clinic to get clean—which is devoid of all the environmental stimuli that prompt their habit—then returns to their old neighborhood with all of their previous cues that caused them to get addicted in the first place. It’s no wonder that usually you see numbers that are the exact opposite of those in the Vietnam study. Typically, 90 percent of heroin users become re-addicted once they return home from rehab.
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James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
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Antonio Veciana reveals to Schweiker Subcommittee investigator Fonzi that a CIA masterspy named Maurice Bishop was his secret control officer, initiated the founding of Alpha 66, instigated two Castro assassination plots, and planned anti-Castro raids during the Cuban missile crisis in an attempt to embarrass President Kennedy and provoke Cuban or Russian retaliation that would spark a major U.S. reaction. Veciana also reveals he saw Bishop with Lee Harvey Oswald. After years of sworn denials by the Agency, it is the first evidence that the CIA was directly involved with Oswald.
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Gaeton Fonzi (The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK)
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There’s an official hierarchy. And an operational hierarchy. The official hierarchy decides on personnel, strategic initiatives and resources. The official hierarchy decides which case officers to hire. Where to place them. Who to promote into management. The operational hierarchy decides on operational issues. Which sources to trust. How to work with them. Which moment-by-moment risks make sense. At the top of the official hierarchy is who you would think it would be: the agency director. At the top of the operational hierarchy are the guys on the street: the case officers. Different hierarchies for different decisions. Different hierarchies for organizational decisions and operational decisions.22 Sometimes, there’s a conflict.
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John Braddock (A Spy's Guide to Strategy)
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The Javits legislation, reauthorized in 2001 as part of the No Child Left Behind Act (PL 107–110), was funded at $11.14 million in fiscal year 2004. Congress approved an appropriation of approximately $7.6 million for the Javits program in fiscal year 2008. The Javits funding was eliminated in 2010, curtailing research projects not yet completed. After a gap in funding, the Javits Act was funded again in 2013, and funding reached $12 million in 2016, the highest level in the history of the Javits Act. The National Center for Research on Gifted Education was also funded. Located at the University of Connecticut, the center has a partnership with the University of Virginia. In 2018, the Javits funding continued at $12 million. Academic standards have become increasingly important in the twenty-first century. The National Association for Gifted Children (2010) issued the Pre-K–Grade 12 Gifted Programming Standards. These standards focus on student outcomes and encourage collaboration among general education teachers, special educators, and teachers of the gifted in an effort to assist students in achieving projected outcomes. In 2010, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices in conjunction with the Council of Chief State School Officers put forth the Common Core State Standards Initiative (2019), which provided standards in mathematics and English/language arts for Grades K–12. In 2013, the Next Generation Science Standards (2019) became available and were adopted by several states.
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Richard M. Gargiulo (Special Education in Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Exceptionality)
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If we were to take another example, and apply the same rules, it becomes obvious just how inappropriate and harmful this trope is. For some (not all) trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy, and it can involve surgery. The same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people. Like medical transition, it is vital that we're educated about these processes if there's a chance we'll find ourselves personally affected. And luckily, in both of these cases, the medical information is freely and easily available online, through public health initiatives, in libraries, and from the relevant medical authorities.
But it would never be appropriate to approach a new mother in a cafe and say, 'so, did you rip your vagina giving birth to that one?' When greeting a colleague returning to the office after maternity leave, we don't ask if we can examine the stretch marks and possible scars, or ask about hemorrhaging and post-natal incontinence. If we're close friends or family, we might well talk about the most personal physical aspects of creating and delivering a baby - the same is true of transition. But the need to be honest and close with our loved ones doesn't make the intrusion of strangers okay.
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C.N. Lester (Trans Like Me)
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Karen Pence had been working for days on goodie bags for staffers in her husband’s office, packing them with champagne flutes, honey from their beehive at the Naval Observatory, and cutting boards with the vice presidential seal. She also dropped in a print of her painting of the Naval Observatory, a nod toward her work to bring attention to art therapy, a mental health initiative she had promoted for years.
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Bob Woodward (Peril)
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and prominent intellectual and political elites leaves the playing field open for others to step in and present themselves as advocates for the entire working or middle class or other distinct underrepresented groups. Indeed, politics since 2000 has been marked by the rise of populists—politicians who spurn “out-of-touch experts” and who claim to speak on behalf of millions of people with whom they in fact have no authentic connection, and in whom they have no genuine interest beyond securing votes to support their own often very personal agendas. In America, the first sign of things to come was during the Great Recession, with the emergence of the Tea Party movement in the Republican Party, inside and outside Congress. The movement formed in reaction to the efforts by the administration of Barack Obama to bail out the U.S. financial sector in the midst of the economic crisis. Its members initially presented themselves as fiscal conservatives, calling for the kind of lower taxes and limited government spending espoused by Ronald Reagan. They quickly moved on to oppose the administration’s promotion of universal health care and other social policies, and soon morphed into an activist protest movement supporting new candidates for office with a mixture of conservative, libertarian, and right-wing populist credentials. Many of these Tea Party candidates would later support Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
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Fiona Hill (There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century)
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In the case of Lalita Kumari, it is mandated that the officer in charge/SHO of the Police Station is bound to register F.I.R. and initiate investigation when information regarding commission of cognizable offence is received.
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Abhilash Malhotra (Investigation To Trial : The Book for a Common Man: Criminal Law)
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Major Hankey, secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, was brought in by Bongie, and placed in front of him on the table the large red and blue leather-bound volume known as the War Book, he opened it sceptically. On the title page it said: ‘Co-ordination of Departmental Action on the Occurrence of Strained Relations and on the Outbreak of War’. Hankey, a spare, neat figure who reminded him of his old school gym instructor, had spent years of his life devising this bureaucratic masterpiece.
Remind me how it works.
The Foreign Secretary formally warns the Cabinet that he can “forsee the danger of this country being involved in war in the near future” and that sets the machine in motion. Eleven government departments will then send out the warning telegram across the Empire – ports, railways, post offices, army headquarters, police stations, town halls and so forth – initiating the precautionary phase. The recipients have already been issued with instructions, so they know what to do when they receive the warning telegram.
And what does this telegram say?
“In the circumstance that Great Britain is at war with …, act upon instructions.”
How many telegrams will be sent?
…thousands.
Pg93
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Robert Harris (Precipice)
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In this regard I saw a sudden surge of private outreach surrounding each family and each child in need. Waves of individuals began to form personal relationships, beginning with those who saw the family every day—merchants, teachers, police officers on the beat, ministers. This contact was then expanded by other volunteers working as “big brothers,” “big sisters,” and tutors—all guided by their inner intuitions to help, remembering their intention to make a difference with one family, one child. And all carrying the contagion of the Insights and the crucial message that no matter how tough the situation, or how entrenched the self-defeating habits, each of us can wake up to a memory of mission and purpose. As this contagion continued, incidents of violent crime began mysteriously to decrease across human culture; for, as we saw clearly, the roots of violence are always frustration and passion and fear scripts that dehumanize the victim, and a growing interaction with those carrying a higher awareness was now beginning to disrupt this mind-set. We saw a new consensus emerging toward crime that drew from both traditional and human-potential ideas. In the short run, there would be a need for new prisons and detention facilities, as the traditional truth was recognized that returning offenders to the community too soon, or leniently letting perpetrators go in order to give them another chance, reinforced the behavior. Yet, at the same time, we saw an integration of the Insights into the actual operation of these facilities, introducing a wave of private involvement with those incarcerated, shifting the crime culture and initiating the only rehabilitation that works: the contagion of remembering. Simultaneously, as increasingly more people awakened, I saw millions of individuals taking the time to intervene in conflict at every level of human culture—for we all were reaching a new understanding of what was at stake. In every situation where a husband or wife grew angry and lashed out at the other, or where addictive compulsions or a desperate need for approval led a youthful gang member to kill, or where people felt so restricted in their lives that they embezzled or defrauded or manipulated others for gain; in all these situations, there was someone perfectly placed to have prevented the violence but who had failed to act. Surrounding this potential hero were perhaps dozens of other friends and acquaintances who had likewise failed, because they didn’t convey the information and ideas that would have created the wider support system for the intervention to have taken place: In the past perhaps, this failure could have been rationalized, but no longer. Now the Tenth Insight was emerging and we knew that the people in our lives were probably souls with whom we had had long relationships over many lifetimes, and who were now counting on our help. So we are compelled to act, compelled to be courageous. None of us wants to have failure on our conscience, or have to bear a torturous Life Review in which we must watch the tragic consequences of our timidity.
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James Redfield (The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision (Celestine Prophecy #2))
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For Membership Requirements To Join Illuminati Call/whatsapp+27790324557 Illuminati Brotherhood Offices In Johannesburg To Conducts Secret Rituals For Member Initiation And Hierarchy Progression.
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Sande Biffi
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An NYPD officer since 2010, Amar Bhairam has a Bachelor’s in Criminal Justice from St. John’s University. He has successfully led crime prevention programs and community trust-building initiatives. Outside his service, Amar is a dedicated basketball enthusiast, cheering for the Knicks, traveling to Rio, and indulging in global culinary experiences to broaden his palate.
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Amar Bhairam
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In World War 1, he had survived thirty months at the front; he rescued the wounded-- it was his job-- under heavy bombardment. A witness remembered his "rough-hewn face that Greco had prefigured" and his "total lack of ecclesiasticism." One of the officers serving with him wrote, "Two features of his personality struck you immediately: "courage and humility"." His regiment's Tunisian sharpshooters, who were Muslims, used to say rather cryptically that a "spiritual structure" protected him when he plucked bodies from the ground in crossfire. In battle, he rejoiced in his anonymity and in the front's exhilaration. Precious few men left the Battle of Ypres with a beating heart, let alone a full stomach, let alone exhilaration:
"Nobody except those who were there will ever have the wonder-laden memory that a man can retain of the plain of Ypres in April 1915, when the air of Flanders stank of chlorine and the shells were tearing down the poplars along l'Yperle Canal-- or again, of the charred hillsides of Souville, in July 1916, when they held the odor of death... Those more than human hours impregnate life with a clinging, ineradicable flavor of exaltation and initiation, as though they had been transferred into the absolute." The "clinging, ineradicable flavor"* was perhaps mud-- the mud of Ypres in which two hundred thousand British and Commonwealth men died, ninety thousands of them lost in the actual mud.
Action he loved. His ever increasing belief that God calls people to build and divinize the world, to aid God in redemption, charged every living moment with meaning-- precisely why the battlefield gripped him. "The man at the front is... only secondarily his own self. First and foremost, he is part of a prow cleaving the waves." He dared title an essay "Nostalgia for the Front": "All the enchantments of the East, all the spiritual warmth of Paris, are not worth the mud of Douaumont... How heart-rending it is to find oneself so seldom with a task to be accomplished, one to which the soul feels that it can commit itself unreservedly!"
When he entered the war, he was already a priest. One dawn in 1918, camped in a forest in the Oise with his Zouave regiment, he had neither bread nor wine to offer at Mass. He had an idea, however, and he wrote it down.
Five years later, he sat on a camp stool inside a tent by the Ordos desert cliffs west of Peking. He reworked his old wartime idea on paper. What God's priests, if empty-handed, might consecrate at sunrise each day is that one day's development: all that the evolving world will gain and produce, and all it will lose in exhaustion and suffering. These the priest could raise and offer.
In China again, four years later, he rode a pony north in the Mongolian grasslands and traced Quaternary strata. Every day still he said to himself what he now called his Mass upon the altar of the world, "to divinize the new day": "Since once more, my Lord, not now in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia, I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I shall rise beyond symbols to the pure majesty of the real, and I shall offer you, I your priest, on the altar of the whole earth, the toil and sorrow of the world.
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Annie Dillard (For the Time Being)
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Compound question – A question type that is to be avoided because it contains more than one question, making behavioral analysis of the response difficult due to potential confusion over what part of the question is causing the deceptive behavior. Example: “How frequently do you go running, and where do you typically run?” Confirmation bias – A cognitive bias in which people search for or interpret information in a way that supports an initial belief or a desired outcome. Convincing statement – A true or irrefutable statement made in an effort to convince the accuser and to influence his perception, rather than to convey information that addresses the facts of the case. Denial behavior – A category of verbal deceptive behavior in which a person appears to have a problem with denying an allegation. This can take the form of failing to deny the allegation altogether; providing a nonspecific denial (Example: “I would never do something like that”); or providing an isolated delivery of the denial by burying it in a long-winded answer. Direct observation of concern (DOC) – A transition statement that lies at the low end of the confidence spectrum. Direct observation of guilt (DOG) – A transition statement that lies at the high end of the confidence spectrum.
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Philip Houston (Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All)
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Jole wasn’t sure of the advisability of introducing a keen young officer to Vorkosigan notions of initiative. Metaphors about fighting fire with gasoline rose to his mind.
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Lois McMaster Bujold (Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (Vorkosigan Saga (Publication) #16))
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The Renzettis live in a small house at 84 Chestnut Avenue. Frank Renzetti is forty-four and works as a bookkeeper for a moving company. Mary Renzetti is thirty-five and works part-time at a day care. They have one child, Tommy, who is five. Frank’s widowed mother, Camila, also lives with the family. My question: How likely is it that the Renzettis have a pet? To answer that, most people would zero in on the family’s details. “Renzetti is an Italian name,” someone might think. “So are ‘Frank’ and ‘Camila.’ That may mean Frank grew up with lots of brothers and sisters, but he’s only got one child. He probably wants to have a big family but he can’t afford it. So it would make sense that he compensated a little by getting a pet.” Someone else might think, “People get pets for kids and the Renzettis only have one child, and Tommy isn’t old enough to take care of a pet. So it seems unlikely.” This sort of storytelling can be very compelling, particularly when the available details are much richer than what I’ve provided here. But superforecasters wouldn’t bother with any of that, at least not at first. The first thing they would do is find out what percentage of American households own a pet. Statisticians call that the base rate—how common something is within a broader class. Daniel Kahneman has a much more evocative visual term for it. He calls it the “outside view”—in contrast to the “inside view,” which is the specifics of the particular case. A few minutes with Google tells me about 62% of American households own pets. That’s the outside view here. Starting with the outside view means I will start by estimating that there is a 62% chance the Renzettis have a pet. Then I will turn to the inside view—all those details about the Renzettis—and use them to adjust that initial 62% up or down. It’s natural to be drawn to the inside view. It’s usually concrete and filled with engaging detail we can use to craft a story about what’s going on. The outside view is typically abstract, bare, and doesn’t lend itself so readily to storytelling. So even smart, accomplished people routinely fail to consider the outside view. The Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan once predicted trouble for the Democrats because polls had found that George W. Bush’s approval rating, which had been rock-bottom at the end of his term, had rebounded to 47% four years after leaving office, equal to President Obama’s. Noonan found that astonishing—and deeply meaningful.9 But if she had considered the outside view she would have discovered that presidential approval always rises after a president leaves office. Even Richard Nixon’s number went up. So Bush’s improved standing wasn’t surprising in the least—which strongly suggests the meaning she drew from it was illusory. Superforecasters don’t make that mistake. If Bill Flack were asked whether, in the next twelve months, there would be an armed clash between China and Vietnam over some border dispute, he wouldn’t immediately delve into the particulars of that border dispute and the current state of China-Vietnam relations. He would instead look at how often there have been armed clashes in the past. “Say we get hostile conduct between China and Vietnam every five years,” Bill says. “I’ll use a five-year recurrence model to predict the future.” In any given year, then, the outside view would suggest to Bill there is a 20% chance of a clash. Having established that, Bill would look at the situation today and adjust that number up or down.
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Philip E. Tetlock (Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction)
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there was a rumour that the only bearded man safe in Gujarat was then Chief Minister Modi whose police officers were not seen anywhere in the initial days after the Godhra incident as the mayhem spread rapidly.
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Ullekh N.P. (War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology behind Narendra Modi's 2014 Win)
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So if every time a team member needs to do something they have to complete the conventional paper work and await approvals possibly from managers who have no idea when they are reporting to the office next, your project might be a disaster. So instead of boxing those members within the rules of the old system, you need to empower them in carrying out any initiatives they may deem fit for the success of the project.
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G. Harver (Lean Six Sigma For Beginners, A Quick-Start Beginner's Guide To Lean Six Sigma ! -)