Representing Your Country Quotes

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I'm kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I'm kidding. We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding. If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

If you're ever feeling a lack of middle-aged white men, just pop into the Capitol. Not so much the House of Representatives, which has a bit more color and texture, but the Senate -- jeez. Yes, let's have more testosterone running the country. Maximum Ride, School's Out--Forever

A flag is supposed to represent everything that a country does. It doesn't only represent the good things. If you burn the flag, you're burning the flag for what you perceive to be the bad things the country has done. it's only a symbol. It's only a piece of cloth.

Because, sometimes, being patriotic means calling out the problems rotting away your country. I'm not saying we don't want to work with you. But we represent millions of voices you're not hearing right now. If you want to preserve the spirit of what made Antarctica a world leader to begin with, you should take a look at your blind spots.

Remember you’re all representing your country, and you ought to behave as the Empire does.’ ‘So we can kill and loot at will, steal their goods and claim the planet as our own?’ Suruk said.

[I am] someone who represents a very complex country which insists on being simple-minded. And simplicity, it occurs to me, it has occurred to me more than once, in my somewhat stormy life, simplicity is taken to be a great American virtue, along with sincerity. And the result of this is, if you are simple-minded enough, you can become—I didn’t want to go that far [laughs]. And as long as you’re sincere in what you say, you haven’t got to know what you’re talking about. These are the American virtues—two of them anyway. One of the results of this is that immaturity is taken to be a virtue too.

The Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009, was 1,990 pages long. You could stand on it to paint the ceiling. The entire U.S. Constitution can be printed on eight pages. That's eight pages to run a whole country for 221 years versus four reams of government pig latin if you slam your thumb in a car door.

Saying you are a "Diverse" Corporation in your hiring practice and vendor relations program by only have 1 person of color represent your diversity department is and having 'Oprah' as your spokesperson, is not really 'Diverse'. It is having a 'token' person of color in that company. 1 person of 1 ethnic race does not mean she or he represents the other ethnic races who make up the population in America in that company. And an Asian person from one country versus another Asian country does not mean the same. - On Diversity by Kailin Gow

If you’re ever feeling a lack of middle-aged white men, just pop into the Capitol. Not so much the House of Representatives, which has a bit more color and texture, but the Senate—jeez. Yes, let’s have more testosterone running the country. In

Think what it implies when you say that a country needs leaders. In your day-to-day life, you interact with all sorts of other individuals. And that's all society is: the collective name for lots of INDIVIDUALS. But for some inexplicable reason, we're taught to believe that one huge, arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of one human livestock farm--I mean, "country") need some control freaks acting as intermediaries in order to interact with a different arbitrarily chosen assortment of individuals (the "citizens" of some other human livestock farm--I mean, "country"). Because gee, how could I and some random person in the middle of China possibly leave each other alone if we didn't each have a gang of narcissistic sociopaths claiming to "represent" us? Oh, wait a minute. That's exactly how and why pretty much ALL wars happen: because different gangs of power-happy psychos pit their pawns against each other in violent conflict, while claiming to "represent" subsets of humanity. One more example of how "government" is a problem posing as its own solution.

RIH, we love you, Rih we are proud of you- Many go away and forget their roots- But you are not one of them at all-Every Crop over, you return to the island to fete-And meet up with fans you haven't already met. You travel the world-representing your country-Putting 246 down in World History...

We need to use the power we have as women to shape a country that supports all of us. We need to vote for elected officials who understand all of our issues. We need to hold our representatives accountable once we've elected them.

I think this was a nice idea we had in this country and a nice landscape to experiment with. But I think there comes a time in almost any experimentation or idea, where you have to evaluate it, maybe our time has come. In the context of the real world, not just the American world but all around, we haven't done too well. We are not a very good advertisement for the idea we represented. If you lose one wheel of the car, you might be able to get to the side of the road, and some freaks can make it on two, but if you lose three, man, you're in serious trouble. I think we've lost three.

James and the other eight children of 'Superior Dosset,' of whom there are still five alive, may be said to have represented Victorian England, with its principles of trade and individualism at five per cent, and your money back - if you know what that means. At all events they've turned thirty thousand pounds into a cool million between them in the course of their long lives. (...) Their day is passing, and their type, not altogether for the advantage of the country. They were pedestrian, but they too were sound.

I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the Speaker of the United State House of Representatives. “We’re doing great. Turn on any news channel, they’ll tell you. Taxes are low, business is booming, crime is down, the Patriots win the Super Bowl every year, and we’re finally getting our country back. I’ll admit, it used to be a real nightmare around here.

If you go to a foreign country and disregard their culture, you will be a complete embarrassment to your native home country. You represent your country, so don’t ruin it for the rest of them.

A Sport Teaches Us Exciting Life Lessons, But If You Are Attached To A Particular Team Or Some Players Because They Represent Or Bring Glory To Your Country, An Emotional Roller Coaster Is Guaranteed”.

Nothing is as American as these big block monsters made of Detroit pig iron. In its day, this car represented everything that was right about this country. Damn near every piece of it was produced here, from the steel in the frame, to the switches behind the dash, to the scoop popping through the hood, to the real chrome on the fender. They’re pure America; arrogant, brash, and defiant as hell. You look at one and it pulls on you. Every drop of rebellion in your soul rises to the top.

On behalf of those you killed, imprisoned, tortured, you are not welcome, Erdogan! No, Erdogan, you’re not welcome in Algeria. We are a country which has already paid its price of blood and tears to those who wanted to impose their caliphate on us, those who put their ideas before our bodies, those who took our children hostage and who attempted to kill our hopes for a better future. The notorious family that claims to act in the name of the God and religion—you’re a member of it—you fund it, you support it, you desire to become its international leader. Islamism is your livelihood Islamism, which is your livelihood, is our misfortune. We will not forget about it, and you are a reminder of it today. You offer your shadow and your wings to those who work to make our country kneel down before your “Sublime Door.” You embody and represent what we loathe. You hate freedom, the free spirit. But you love parades. You use religion for business. You dream of a caliphate and hope to return to our lands. But you do it behind the closed doors, by supporting Islamist parties, by offering gifts through your companies, by infiltrating the life of the community, by controlling the mosques. These are the old methods of your “Muslim Brothers” in this country, who used to show us God’s Heaven with one hand while digging our graves with the other. No, Mr. Erdogan, you are not a man of help; you do not fight for freedom or principles; you do not defend the right of peoples to self-determination. You know only how to subject the Kurds to the fires of death; you know only how to subject your opponents to your dictatorship. You cry with the victims in the Middle East, yet sign contracts with their executioners. You do not dream of a dignified future for us, but of a caliphate for yourself. We are aware of your institutionalized persecution, your list of Turks to track down, your sinister prisons filled with the innocent, your dictatorial justice palaces, your insolence and boastful nature. You do not dream of a humanity that shares common values and principles, but are interested only in the remaking of the Ottoman Empire and its bloodthirsty warlords. Islam, for you, is a footstool; God is a business sign; modernity is an enemy; Palestine is a showcase; and local Islamists are your stunned courtesans. Humanity will not remember you with good deeds Humanity will remember you for your machinations, your secret coups d’état, and your manhunts. History will remember you for your bombings, your vengeful wars, and your inability to engage in constructive dialogue with others. The UN vote for Al-Quds is only an instrument in your service. Let us laugh at this with the Palestinians. We know that the Palestinian issue is your political capital, as it is for many others. You know well how to make a political fortune by exploiting others’ emotions. In Algeria, we suffered, and still suffer, from those who pretend to be God and act as takers and givers of life. They applaud your coming, but not us. You are the idol of Algerian Islamists and Populists, those who are unable to imagine a political structure beyond a caliphate for Muslim-majority societies. We aspire to become a country of freedom and dignity. This is not your ambition, nor your virtue. You are an illusion You have made beautiful Turkey an open prison and a bazaar for your business and loved ones. I hope that this beautiful nation rises above your ambitions. I hope that justice will be restored and flourish there once again, at least for those who have been imprisoned, tortured, bombed, and killed. You are an illusion, Erdogan—you know it and we know it. You play on the history of our humiliation, on our emotions, on our beliefs, and introduce yourself as a savior. However, you are a gravedigger, both for your own country and for your neighbors. Turkey is a political miracle, but it owes you nothing. The best thing you can do

On the whiteboard next to him, the Sheikh drew a line. Next to it, he sketched a circle. The line represented your space, the environment in which you find yourself. The space could be anywhere - a well, a prison cell, a state ruled by a despot, or a foreign country. Next he pointed to the circle. That symbolised the cycle of a Muslim's life, the steady bit of night and day, ticking away, for as long as God chose to keep you on this earth. The space you found yourself in was not in your control, said Akram. The cycle was. Your circumstances were given to you by Allah; using the cycle of your days to practice taqwa, or love and awe of God, was your job. Tend to this cycle of faith, said Akram, rather than worrying about your circumstances.

Pendennis, sir," he said, "your idleness is incorrigible and your stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to your school, and to your family, and I have no doubt will prove so in after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is described to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists have represented (and I have no doubt of the correctness of their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future crime and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed! Miserable trifler! A boy who construes de and, instead of de but, at sixteen years of age is guilty not merely of folly, and ignorance, and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly crime, of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheats the parent who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neighbour. A man who forges on his neighbour pays the penalty of his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity (for he will be deservedly cut off), but his maddened and heart-broken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by his crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonoured old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake that you make shall subject you to the punishment of the rod. Who's that laughing? What ill-conditioned boy is there that dares to laugh?" shouted the Doctor.

All this leaves me wondering what it means to be aligned with a political party at all. Do they do your thinking for you? Do they define your attitudes toward issues that confront the country? If so, then you are a pawn of those in power. But in a representative republic, those in power should be a pawn of you.

Cross-cultural studies suggest that larger people are not subject to the same diseases in countries where there is less stigma attached to weight.254 Also, in the United States, there is a stronger relationship between BMI and morbidity (disease) and mortality (early death) among groups more negatively affected by body image concerns (younger people, Caucasians, and women).278279280281 Even more telling, when researchers looked at a nationally representative group of more than 170,000 U.S. adults, they found the difference between actual weight and perceived ideal weight was a better indicator of mental and physical health than BMI.282 In other words, feeling fat has stronger health effects than being fat.

Be a woman of substance. That’s what you are and should always strive to be. You are neither a second rate citizen, nor a toy for the vultures. You are a representative of the whole human race. You have zero deficiency and should never waste your time trying to be equal, even, with men. There is a reason a country or continent is referred to as her and not him.

By what twisted sophistication of argument do you harry people with violence off your land and then think yourself entitled to make high-minded stipulations as to where they may go now you are rid of them and how they may provide for their future welfare? I am an Englishman who loves England, but do you suppose that it too is not a racist country? Do you know of any country whose recent history is not blackened by prejudice and hate against somebody? So what empowers racists in their own right to sniff out racism in others? Only from a world from which Jews believe they have nothing to fear will they consent to learn lessons in humanity. Until then, the Jewish state’s offer of safety to Jews the world over yes, Jews first – while it might not be equitable cannot sanely be constructed as racist. I can understand why a Palestinian might say it feels racist to him, though he too inherits a history of disdain for people of other persuasions to himself, but not you, madam, since you present yourself as a bleeding-heart, conscience-pricked representative of the very Gentile world from which Jews, through no fault of their own, have been fleeing for centuries...

Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it’s there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy?

In my job in my country, I had to make some calls to the U.S. for professional purposes. I remember the following conversation: “Hello, we are dealing with office materials. We are interested in representing your company.” “Where are you calling from?” asked the lady at the other end. “Mauritania.” “What state?” asked the lady, seeking more precise information. I was negatively surprised at how small her world was.

Hillary spoke of Dorothy Rodham, age eight, sitting on a train with her little sister on their way to live with family who didn’t want them. “I dream of going up to her and sitting next to her and taking her in my arms,” Hillary said, and telling her, “as hard as it might be to imagine, your daughter will grow up to be a United States Senator, represent our country as Secretary of State and win more than 62 million votes for president of the United States.

To be ridiculously sweeping: baby boomers and their offspring have shifted emphasis from the communal to the individual, from the future to the present, from virtue to personal satisfaction. Increasingly secular, we pledge allegiance to lowercase gods of our private devising. We are concerned with leading less a good life than the good life. In contrast to our predecessors, we seldom ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask ourselves if we are happy. We shun self-sacrifice and duty as the soft spots of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and we’re not especially bothered by what happens once we’re dead. As we age—oh, so reluctantly!—we are apt to look back on our pasts and question not did I serve family, God and country, but did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat? We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun. If that package sounds like one big moral step backward, the Be Here Now mentality that has converted from sixties catchphrase to entrenched gestalt has its upsides. There has to be some value in living for today, since at any given time today is all you’ve got. We justly cherish characters capable of living “in the moment.”…We admire go-getters determined to pack their lives with as much various experience as time and money provide, who never stop learning, engaging, and savoring what every day offers—in contrast to the dour killjoys who are bitter and begrudging in the ceaseless fulfillment of obligation. For the role of humble server, helpmate, and facilitator no longer to constitute the sole model of womanhood surely represents progress for which I am personally grateful. Furthermore, prosperity may naturally lead any well-off citizenry to the final frontier: the self, whose borders are as narrow or infinite as we make them. Yet the biggest social casualty of Be Here Now is children, who have converted from requirement to option, like heated seats for your car. In deciding what in times past never used to be a choice, we don’t consider the importance of raising another generation of our own people, however we might choose to define them. The question is whether kids will make us happy.

Then you don't think there will be any more permanent world heroes?" "Yes—in history—not in life. Carlyle would have difficulty getting material for a new chapter on 'The Hero as a Big Man.'" "Go on. I'm a good listener to-day." "People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over." "Then you blame it on the press?" "Absolutely. Look at you; you're on The New Democracy, considered the most brilliant weekly in the country, read by the men who do things and all that. What's your business? Why, to be as clever, as interesting, and as brilliantly cynical as possible about every man, doctrine, book, or policy that is assigned you to deal with. The more strong lights, the more spiritual scandal you can throw on the matter, the more money they pay you, the more the people buy the issue. You, Tom d'Invilliers, a blighted Shelley, changing, shifting, clever, unscrupulous, represent the critical consciousness of the race—Oh,

What Ethereum Is Good For Ethereum is suited to building economic systems in pure software. In other words, it’s software for business logic, wherein people (users) can move money (data representing value) around with the speed and scale that we normally get with data.12 Not the three- to seven-day floating period you get with the commercial banking system. Or the fees associated with vendors such as Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal. With a simple Ethereum application, for example, it is fairly trivial to pay hundreds of thousands of people, in hundreds of countries, small amounts every few minutes, whereas in the legacy banking system you would need an entire payroll department working overtime to constantly rebalance your account ledgers and deal with the cross-border issues.

It gives the whole game away that college football is so popular in the SEC, where the legacy of Jim Crow and segregation is so powerful, and now they worship Black football players who make no money and are out there providing entertainment. The university people and the networks intentionally create this fake feel—they use the football field to miseducate people with a fictional portrayal of life off the field. The fiction is that because all these white student fans are cheering majority-Black teams, the dynamic is somehow postracial. It creates an illusion for both the fan and the player—the student and the student-athlete—so they don’t have to face how messed-up this country is. You’re not Black on the field. You’re a representative of your school. There’s no New Jim Crow when you’re on the field. There’s no Donald Trump. There’s no Trayvon Martin.

I remember that a Korak once brought to me an old tattered fashion-plate from "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper," containing three or four full-length figures of imaginary ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that time prescribed. The poor Korak said he had often wondered what those curious objects could be; and now, as I was an American, perhaps I could tell him. He evidently had not the most remote suspicion that they were intended to represent human beings. I told him that those curious objects, as he called them, were American women. He burst out into a "tyee-e-e-e" of amazement, and asked with a wondering look, "Are all the women in your country as big as that at the bottom?" It was a severe reflection upon our ladies' dress, and I did not venture to tell him that the bigness was artificial, but merely replied sadly that they were.

Poet's Note: Kindly do not use my poem without giving me due credit. Do not use bits and pieces to suit your agenda of Kashmir whatever it may be. I, Srividya Srinivasan as the creator of this poem own the right to what I have chosen to feel about the issue and have represented all sides to a complex problem that involves people. I do not believe in war or violence of any kind and this is my compassionate side speaking from all angles to human beings thinking they own only their side to the story. THIS POEM IS THE ORIGINAL WORK OF SRIVIDYA SRINIVASAN and any misuse by you shall be considered as a violation of my copyrights and legally actionable. This poem is dedicated to all those who have suffered in Kashmir and through Kashmir and to not be sliced and interpreted to each one's convenience. ---------------------------- Weep softly O mother, the walls have ears you know... The streets are awash o mother! I cannot go searching for him anymore. The streets are awash o mother with blood and tears, pellets and screams. that silently remain locked in the air, while they seal our soulless dreams. The guns are out, O mother, while our boys go armed with stones, I cannot go looking for him O mother, I have no courage to face what I will find. For, I need to tend to this little one beside, with bound eyes that see no more. ----- Weep for the home we lost O mother, Weep for the valley we left behind, the hills that once bore our names, where shoulder to shoulder, we walked the vales, proud of our heritage. Hunted out of our very homes, flying like thieves in the night, abandoning it all, fearful for the lives of our men, fearful of our being raped, our children killed, Kafirs they called us O mother, they marked our homes to kill. We now haunt the streets of other cities, refugees in a country we call our own, belonging nowhere, feeling homeless without the land we once called home. ------------- Weep loudly O mother, for the nation hears our pain. As the fresh flag moulds his cold body, I know his sacrifice was not in vain. We need to put our chins up, O mother and face this moment with pride. For blood is blood, and pain is pain, and death is final, The false story we must tell ourselves is that we are always the right side, and forget the pain we inflict on the other side. Until it all stops, it must go on, the dry tears on either side, Every war and battle is within and without, and must claim its wounds and leave its scars, And, if we need to go on O mother, it matters we feel we are on the right side. We need to tell ourselves we are always the right sight... We need to repeat it a million times, We are always the right side... For god forbid, what if we were not? --- Request you to read the full poem on my website.

Members of this body, with the full authority of my government, I hereby declare the withdrawal of the United States of America from this organization. My nation will no longer be a member of the United Nations. Furthermore, please consider this official notice that all non-American citizens have 10 days to leave our country. This very building will be occupied by the New York City Police Department after that time, and anyone remaining will be arrested and deported. My nation has had enough of the parasitic governments represented by this body. In addition, I would like to take this opportunity to announce our withdrawal from NATO. All American military units will be recalled immediately. Our naval carrier battle groups and all associated support operations are being ordered home as well. All air wings of the United States Air Force are being recalled from foreign lands. God help all of you – you are on your own.

I begin this chapter with President Ronald Reagan’s Farewell Speech on January 11, 1989. President Reagan encouraged the rising generation to “let ’em know and nail ’em on it”—that is, to push back against teachers, professors, journalists, politicians, and others in the governing generation who manipulate and deceive them: An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn’t get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties. But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It’s fragile; it needs [protection]. So, we’ve got to teach history based not on what’s in fashion but what’s important—why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who’d fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.” Well, let’s help her keep her word. If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are. I’m warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit. Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual. And let me offer lesson number one about America: All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven’t been teaching you what it means to be an American, let ’em know and nail ’em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.1

At the reception given by Jinnah on 14 August 1947 when Asghar Khan and Lt Col (later Maj. Gen.) Akbar Khan met Jinnah, Khan told Jinnah that they were disappointed that the higher posts in the armed forces had been given to British officers who still controlled their destiny. According to Asghar Khan, ‘the Quaid who had been listening patiently raised his finger and said, “Never forget that you are the servants of the state. You do not make policy. It is we, the people’s representatives, who decide how the country is to be run. Your job is only to obey the decision of your civilian masters.”’4 Could any politician have the temerity to say this to the army chief today? The answer has to be a resounding no. Hence, democratic governance in Pakistan instead of being a tripod of the executive, legislature and judiciary looks more like a garden umbrella in which the army is the central pole around which the other organs of the state revolve. Consequently, civilian governments in Pakistan have neither defined national security objectives nor developed strategies to implement them.

The wounding legacy of segregation and growing up knowing adults who had worked for civil rights and equal opportunities for African Americans was part of what made me understand that many kids in my community and around the world were still treated differently because of the color of their skin.  My mothers work on behalf of girls and women, first in Arkansas and later around the world, helped me understand how being born a girl is often seen as a reason to deny someone the right to go to school or make her own decisions, or even about who or when to marry.  One of the unique things about SEWA [Self-Employed Women's Association] is that it brings together Muslim and Hindu women in a part of the world where fighting between people from different religious backgrounds has cost countless lives, both between countries and within India.  Women from all different backgrounds told us how they'd learned how much more they had in common than they'd first thought because of their different religions. Their support for each other gave them the confidence to stand up to bullying and harassment, and the relationships they'd built helped prevent violence between Hindus and Muslims, because they saw each other as friends and real people, not only as representatives of different religions.

Sometimes I speak to various regional banks, the ones that are not afraid of bitcoin. They tell me things like 80 percent of our population is a hundred miles from the nearest bank branch and we can’t serve them. In one case, they said a hundred miles by canoe. I’ll let you guess which country that was. Yet, even in the remotest places on Earth, now there is a cell-phone tower. Even in the poorest places on Earth, we often see a little solar panel on a little hut that feeds a Nokia 1000 phone, the most produced device in the history of manufacturing, billions of them have shipped. We can turn every one of those into, not a bank account, but a bank. Two weeks ago, President Obama at South by Southwest did a presentation and he talked about our privacy. He said, ”If we can’t unlock the phones, that means that everyone has a Swiss bank account in their pocket." That is not entirely accurate. I don’t have a Swiss bank account in my pocket. I have a Swiss bank, with the ability to generate 2 billion addresses off a single seed and use a different address for every transaction. That bank is completely encrypted, so even if you do unlock the phone, I still have access to my bank. That represents the cognitive dissonance between the powers of centralized secrecy and the power of privacy as a human right that we now have within our grasp. If you think this is going to be easy or that it’s going to be without struggle, you’re very mistaken.

Islam has nothing to do with the acts, actions, and ethics of human beings. We must not blend the actions of Muslims with Islam. Those people misunderstood or misinterpret Islamic religion, or they are subjected to abnormal circumstances in their countries and cultures. So they stigmatize Islam with things that are not relevant or even exist in the religion. Your upbringing and manners represent you, NOT your religion. You are the sum of what you have learned from your parents. For example, sexual jihad or marriage jihad is a phenomenon was created by Syrian culture where they allowed the soldiers in Syria to have sex under the banner of marriage. But this type of marriage doesn’t exist in Islam. Those individuals represent themselves, not their religion. For example, in Catholicism When religious people abused their power and molested young boys, what is important is not the police investigations, but what damage has been done to the young children at the church when catholic priests molested them and then their actions were covered up by the Catholic Church. We should not accuse Catholicism for these crimes, it is the people who committed these actions who are at fault. The police could not prosecute them because of religious protection. So the church allowed them to move to a smaller town where they would not be noticed. Leaving those criminals free, allowed them to molest more boys and to commit more crimes against children.

Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue. On the other hand, when the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maintain their vigour, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed. . . . [H]e is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy to God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country. Do not suppose, my brethren, that I mean to recommend a furious and angry zeal for the circumstantials of religion, or the contentions of one sect with another about their peculiar distinctions. I do not wish you to oppose any body’s religion, but every body’s wickedness. Perhaps there are few surer marks of the reality of religion, than when a man feels himself more joined in spirit to a true holy person of a different denomination, than to an irregular liver of his own. It is therefore your duty in this important and critical season to exert yourselves, every one in his proper sphere, to stem the tide of prevailing vice, to promote the knowledge of God, the reverence of his name and worship, and obedience to his laws. . . . Many from a real or pretended fear of the imputation of hypocrisy, banish from their conversation and carriage every appearance of respect and submission to the living God. What a weakness and meanness of spirit does it discover, for a man to be ashamed in the presence of his fellow sinners, to profess that reverence to almighty God which he inwardly feels: The truth is, he makes himself truly liable to the accusation which he means to avoid. It is as genuine and perhaps a more culpable hypocrisy to appear to have less religion than you really have, than to appear to have more. . . . There is a scripture precept delivered in very singular terms, to which I beg your attention; “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart, but shalt in any wise rebuke him, and not suffer sin upon him.” How prone are many to represent reproof as flowing from ill nature and surliness of temper? The spirit of God, on the contrary, considers it as the effect of inward hatred, or want of genuine love, to forbear reproof, when it is necessary or may be useful. I am sensible there may in some cases be a restraint from prudence, agreeably to that caution of our Saviour, “Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rent you.” Of this every man must judge as well as he can for himself; but certainly, either by open reproof, or expressive silence, or speedy departure from such society, we ought to guard against being partakers of other men’s sins.

We will always be black, you and I, even if it means different things in different places. France is built on its own dream, on its collection of bodies, and recall that your very name is drawn from a man who opposed France and its national project of theft by colonization. It is true that our color was not our distinguishing feature there, so much as the Americanness represented in our poor handle on French. And it is true that there is something particular about how the Americans who think they are white regard us—something sexual and obscene. We were not enslaved in France. We are not their particular “problem,” nor their national guilt. We are not their niggers. If there is any comfort in this, it is not the kind that I would encourage you to indulge. Remember your name. Remember that you and I are brothers, are the children of trans-Atlantic rape. Remember the broader consciousness that comes with that. Remember that this consciousness can never ultimately be racial; it must be cosmic. Remember the Roma you saw begging with their children in the street, and the venom with which they were addressed. Remember the Algerian cab driver, speaking openly of his hatred of Paris, then looking at your mother and me and insisting that we were all united under Africa. Remember the rumbling we all felt under the beauty of Paris, as though the city had been built in abeyance of Pompeii. Remember the feeling that the great public gardens, the long lunches, might all be undone by a physics, cousin to our rules and the reckoning of our own country, that we do not fully comprehend.

Bitcoin is not a currency. Bitcoin is the internet of money. As a technology, it can bring economic inclusion and empowerment to billions of people in the world. I’ll give you one example of a specific application that is going to fundamentally change the lives of more than a billion people in the next five to ten years. ​ Every day, an immigrant somewhere cashes their paycheck and stands in line to wire 50 percent of that paycheck back to their home country to feed their extended family. Here in the US, 60 million people have no bank accounts, yet they cash their paychecks and send them abroad. Overall in the world, $550 billion is transmitted every year as remittances from first-world countries. Much of that money is sent to five major destinations: Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China. In some of these places, remittances represent up to 40 percent of the local economy. Sitting on top of that flow of $550 billion are companies like Western Union, and they take, on average, a cut of 9 percent of every single one of these transactions out of the pockets of the poorest people of the world. Imagine what happens when one day one of these immigrants figures out they can do the same thing with bitcoin — not for 15 percent, not 10 percent, not 5 percent, but for 5 cents. Not a percentage; a flat fee. What happens when they can do that? They can, right now. There is a startup company that is handling remittances between the US and the Philippines. They’re doing a few million dollars right now, but they’re going to start growing. There’s $500 billion sitting behind that dam. When you’re an immigrant and you can change your financial future by not paying 9 percent to send money home, imagine what happens if every month, instead of sending 91 dollars home, you send 100 dollars home. That makes a difference. There are a billion people, right now, with access to the internet and feature phones who could use bitcoin as an international wire-transfer service.

The most alarming rhetoric comes out of the dispute between liberals and conservatives, and it’s a dangerous waste of time because they’re both right. The perennial conservative concern about high taxes supporting a nonworking “underclass” has entirely legitimate roots in our evolutionary past and shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. Early hominids lived a precarious existence where freeloaders were a direct threat to survival, and so they developed an exceedingly acute sense of whether they were being taken advantage of by members of their own group. But by the same token, one of the hallmarks of early human society was the emergence of a culture of compassion that cared for the ill, the elderly, the wounded, and the unlucky. In today’s terms, that is a common liberal concern that also has to be taken into account. Those two driving forces have coexisted for hundreds of thousands of years in human society and have been duly codified in this country as a two-party political system. The eternal argument over so-called entitlement programs—and, more broadly, over liberal and conservative thought—will never be resolved because each side represents an ancient and absolutely essential component of our evolutionary past. So how do you unify a secure, wealthy country that has sunk into a zero-sum political game with itself? How do you make veterans feel that they are returning to a cohesive society that was worth fighting for in the first place? I put that question to Rachel Yehuda of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Yehuda has seen, up close, the effect of such antisocial divisions on traumatized vets. “If you want to make a society work, then you don’t keep underscoring the places where you’re different—you underscore your shared humanity,” she told me. “I’m appalled by how much people focus on differences. Why are you focusing on how different you are from one another, and not on the things that unite us?” The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself, which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave the country alone. That way, America’s ugliest partisan tendencies could emerge unimpeded by the unifying effects of war. The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn’t acting competitively—that should be encouraged—but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group. That is exactly what politicians of both parties try to do when they spew venomous rhetoric about their rivals. That is exactly what media figures do when they go beyond criticism of their fellow citizens and openly revile them. Reviling people you share a combat outpost with is an incredibly stupid thing to do, and public figures who imagine their nation isn’t, potentially, one huge combat outpost are deluding themselves.

At the end of this Sabbath encounter with the religious leaders Mark records a remarkable sentence that sums up one of the main themes of the New Testament, “Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” The Herodians were the supporters of Herod, the nastiest of the corrupt kings who ruled Israel, representing the Roman occupying power and its political system. In any country that the Romans conquered, they set up rulers. And wherever the Romans went, they brought along the culture of Greece—Greek philosophy, the Greek approach to sex and the body, the Greek approach to truth. Conquered societies like Israel felt assaulted by these immoral, cosmopolitan, pagan values. In these countries there were cultural resistance movements; and in Israel that was the Pharisees. They put all their emphasis on living by the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures and putting up big hedges around themselves to prevent contamination by the pagans. See what was going on? The Herodians were moving with the times, while the Pharisees upheld traditional virtues. The Pharisees believed their society was being overwhelmed with pluralism and paganism, and they were calling for a return to traditional moral values. These two groups had been longtime enemies of each other—but now they agree: They have to get rid of Jesus. These two groups were not used to cooperating, but now they do. In fact, the Pharisees, the religious people, take the lead in doing so. That’s why I say this sentence hints at one of the main themes of the New Testament. The gospel of Jesus Christ is an offense to both religion and irreligion. It can’t be co-opted by either moralism or relativism. The “traditional values” approach to life is moral conformity—the approach taken by the Pharisees. It is that you must lead a very, very good life. The progressive approach, embodied in the Herodians, is self-discovery—you have to decide what is right or wrong for you. And according to the Bible, both of these are ways of being your own savior and lord. Both are hostile to the message of Jesus. And not only that, both lead to self-righteousness. The moralist says, “The good people are in and the bad people are out—and of course we’re the good ones.” The self-discovery person says, “Oh, no, the progressive, open-minded people are in and the judgmental bigots are out—and of course we’re the open-minded ones.” In Western cosmopolitan culture there’s an enormous amount of self-righteousness about self-righteousness. We progressive urbanites are so much better than people who think they’re better than other people. We disdain those religious, moralistic types who look down on others. Do you see the irony, how the way of self-discovery leads to as much superiority and self-righteousness as religion does? The gospel does not say, “the good are in and the bad are out,” nor “the open-minded are in and the judgmental are out.” The gospel says the humble are in and the proud are out. The gospel says the people who know they’re not better, not more open-minded, not more moral than anyone else, are in, and the people who think they’re on the right side of the divide are most in danger.

All your decisions discount the Persians themselves, and that is the mistake of your ignorance and your plotting. To you the Persian is a stupid peasant who can't decide his own affairs; an uncultured wretch who will take all manner of deceit and oppression and diplomatic twisting. If you do see any signs, any glimmer of revolt, you blame the Russians and take it to the Security Council. But it isn't the Russians. It's the peasant himself who is revolting. If any of you understood Iran you would know that. Dirty and wretched they may be, opium-ridden and backward and dull, but they are really the people you should fear, not the Russians. It may take time and there may be set-backs, but sooner or later the Persians are going to throw us out and throw out all our corrupt and friendly governments. They don't need any complicated political excuse to revolt, however much you cry Communism. There isn't a simple man, woman or child in Iran who isn't landlord-ridden,m who isn't a slave by the way in which he works, who isn't preyed upon by corrupt officials, who isn't beaten and insulted and robbed by the police and the army. The peasants are impoverished by the tithes they must pay the Khans, and the mechanics are underpaid and underfed and overworked. There isn't an adult in Iran who isn't ridden with some chronic disease, there isn't a child who survives all the ravages of poverty and dirt and sickness. The whole government structure is rotten with bribery and extortion and petty cruelties, and there isn't a modicum of justice in the land. There are no real courts, no political rights, no representative government, no wage laws, no right to organize, no means of adjusting the bad conditions of life except by revolting as the Azerbaijanians and the Kurds are revolting. Thank heavens the Russians have given them a chance to revolt; and damn us for preventing it wherever we can. We will fail anyway, whatever the Security Council decides in New York. You can get the Russians out of Azerbaijan and you can give it back to your merchants and wazirs of Teheran, but after a little while it will all begin again because you cannot stop the Persian from deciding his own affairs. He is not ignorant and stupid to his political situation. He is not so wretched and afraid of revolt. He is not even uncultured: in the language he speaks and the use he makes of it there is more natural culture among the peasants of Iran than you can find among the world's diplomats a the Savoy Hotel. He is backward and poor and dirty, but that is largely due to the influence we have had on Iran for a hundred years or more. Now it is too late for us. These people have reached the breaking point and they don't care about the wise men of the House of Commons and the clever men of the Security Council. These people are desperate, and for our reckless methods of holding our power and our oil it ought to be a warning. It will all go. The oil, the power, and the last drop of influence. Rather than let us have any of it the Persian will wreck Abadan and the wells and every other sign of our presence and our strength there. They are beginning to hate us and that is beginning a battle which we can't stop, which you can't stop in the Security Council. Unless we are determined to kill every man in the country we will lose. We cannot help but lose.

Starting in 1930 and continuing through 1933, almost 9,100 commercial banks failed with deposits of $6.8 billion. The deposits of these failed banks represented 13.3 percent of total commercial bank deposits as of 1929. Net losses to depositors of these failed banks were about $1.3 billion, or approximately 19 percent of the deposits of failed commercial banks. Sounds bad, right? But do the math. If 19 percent of deposits were lost at those 9,100 banks, and those 9,100 banks held 13.3 percent of all deposits, then the total loss of deposits at failed banks in those years was 19 percent of 13.3 percent—or 2.5 percent. So, in the worst period of bank failures our country has ever experienced (by far), 2.5 percent of all bank deposits were lost because of bank failures. I’m not saying that’s nothing, but most years that much value is erased in Americans’ checking accounts by inflation alone.

The Olympics is about representing your country, and if you get an opportunity to play you give it all you have,” he told me. “At the end of the day, we won. I got a gold medal. I don’t care how I got it.

Jewel Hyun, a Korean American woman, became engaged in global ministry later in life. She enjoyed meeting with me as she prepared for ministry trips, during which she would speak in other countries at conferences. On one occasion she was preparing for a trip to East Africa, where she would be speaking to women who had suffered displacement as refugees as the result of an ethnic genocide. She was concerned about how she could "connect" with these women who lived in such a different world. If you just met jewel, who looks very distinguished, you would never know that her childhood years included fleeing from North Korea and living with her family as refugees. I knew her story, so I responded, "Tell them your own story." "Why would they want to hear my story?" she replied. "Because when these women look at you, they will think to themselves, `This is a nice lady with beautiful clothes and manicured fingernails. She's nice, but she has no idea of the life we've lived.' When you tell them your story, you will be a living representative of hope for them." Jewel told me later that her story connected her deeply to the women, as they realized that she too had shared in the fellowship of suffering.

Growing up I had been ambivalent about being Chinese, occasionally taking pride in my ancestry but more often ignoring it because I disliked the way that Caucasians reacted to my Chineseness. It bothered me that my almond-shaped eyes and straight black hair struck people as “cute” when I was a toddler and that as I grew older I was always being asked, even by strangers, “What is your nationality?”—as if only Caucasians or immigrants from Europe could be Americans. So I would put them in their place by telling them that I was born in the United States and therefore my nationality is U.S. Then I would add, “If you want to know my ethnicity, my parents immigrated from southern China.” Whereupon they would exclaim, “But you speak English so well!” knowing full well that I had lived in the United States and had gone to American schools all my life. I hated being viewed as “exotic.” When I was a kid, it meant being identified with Fu Manchu, the sinister movie character created by Sax Rohmer who in the popular imagination represented the “yellow peril” threatening Western culture. When I was in college, I wanted to scream when people came up to me and said I reminded them of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, a Wellesley College graduate from a wealthy Chinese family, who was constantly touring the country seeking support for her dictator husband in the Kuomintang’s struggles against the Japanese and the Chinese Communists. Even though I was too ignorant and politically unaware to take sides in the civil war in China, I knew enough to recognize that I was being stereotyped. When I was asked to wear Chinese dress and speak about China at a meeting or a social function, I would decline because of my ignorance of things Chinese and also because the only Chinese outfit I owned was the one my mother wore on her arrival in this country.

RETURN BAD FRUIT Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Matthew 7:20 This Scripture applies to politicians as well as anyone. What really amazes me, though, is how little this wisdom ever gets applied. Liberal policies in this country can be linked directly to an almost unbelievable breakdown of the traditional family, to a corruption of our culture to the point that it’s often unwise to leave a child at home with the television remote control (that wasn’t a problem when I was a kid), to a national debt of astronomical proportions that will burden Americans for generations to come, to a heightening of racial division and racial politics, to rising crime and attacks on police, to welfare dependency, to bureaucrats who snip away at our freedom, to attempts to weaken our military . . . really, the list of evils that can legitimately be linked to liberal policies is endless. And yet liberals keep pushing the same snake oil of big government, high taxes, foreign policy weakness, an apparently endless sexual revolution, and cowardly political correctness, and all too often they get elected. Part of that is because too many people like us don’t pay enough attention. We don’t look at the fruits of feel-good, sound-good policies. And a lot of the time we don’t even vote. The Left wants to fundamentally transform America—that means to take us away from our Christian and constitutional principles. I don’t know about you, but I like the fruits of our Founding Fathers’ ideals that are based on time-tested truths and have proved to be infinitely better than the fruits of modern liberalism. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Today, resolve to vote elected representatives bearing bad fruit out of office. That’s your right!

Over the next three decades I conducted similar studies in a dozen countries, on all five major continents, in societies representing most of the world’s major religions. The overwhelming theme in every study was the same. The worldwide attitude, even though seldom voiced in the absence of an obviously sincere study, I now ascertain, expressed the conscious value that substantially controls all human relations, controls the existence of crime or tranquillity in domestic relations, and controls the probabilities of peace or war in international affairs. The answer was: Respect us as Equals. Did you anticipate this response? No one seemed to at that time. Currently, some school teachers guess it correctly in my seminars. Frankly, at that time, I was amazed. Most overseas Americans had been warning me that the local nationals hated us just as most overseas Americans held the foreigners in low esteem. Yet, obviously, this response, respect us, is basically pro-American (Isn’t it?). The most frequent responses making up that general category were these: Show us more respect View us as equals Treat us as equal human beings Respect our human equality Respect our women Respect our culture Don’t look down on us Don’t consider us (stuff) in the grass Don’t act like our bosses when you are not Don’t call us names Respect our lives Don’t consider our lives of less importance than your own

Harriet Thomas, a leader of the Women’s Peace Party, startled the committee [debating the Espionage Act] when she told them, ‘It seems to me that under this act I would be liable to imprisonment for life, or a more drastic penalty, perhaps, if I should say that I would rather my sons be shot for refusing to go out and kill and bear arms against a supposed enemy of this country.’ A congressman interrupted her to ask, ‘Then you do not honor your citizenship in this country?’ Thomas stood her ground. ‘I feel I have the right to interpret my loyalty to my own country in my own terms of citizenship, and according to my own conscience, and I do not need any bill to tell me what my of country shall represent.

Your countries have benefitted from my money and my advice. I also cut the head off the United States, disabled its military, and disposed of citizens who would most certainly object to a one-world government. My representative and I have demonstrated a capacity for leadership and ruthlessness that should make it obvious that one man should lead the world into a bright, new future. Even though my compatriot and I don’t really need the United Nations, I’m sure most of you would prefer to be part of this new world order, instead of being left out.

This rip-off relied on a series of blatant lies. “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan.” “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” “The average family will save more than $2,400 per year.” “Health care costs will decline.” “Health care premiums will go down.” “Everyone in this country will now have health insurance.” Even though Obama kept saying these things, none of them was true. These statements were simply part of the con man’s “pitch.” For progressives, Obamacare was a prize. The prize was control of the huge American health care system, representing virtually one-sixth of the whole economy. Obamacare put progressives in charge of more than 10 million doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, and technicians and support staff. Obamacare gave progressives control of more than five thousand hospitals and almost a million hospital beds. The system included hospitals and also drug companies, insurance companies, and the producers of hospital equipment, not to mention research and educational institutions. Obamacare was a heist with a very big payoff.

5 Thumb Rules to Follow for Outsourcing 3D Character. Outsourcing has become one of the basic requirements of the digital industry. Be it software, websites, architecture rendering or 3D character modelling, companies look forward to outsource these tasks to reliable names. Reason is simple. When it comes to value for money, 3D Art Outsourcing Service stands to be the most viable option as setting up in-house production often isn’t considered a wise ROI choice. But, this necessity has also given rise to possible frauds. There are countless companies waiting to gulp your money in the blink of an eye. There are many more who are ready to lure you with lucrative offers when it comes to 3D character modelling concept. Since not everyone is familiar with the technicalities of this field, companies can easily get trapped with fake promises of giving top notch services well within their reach, only to find out that the whole thing was neither worth their time nor money. However, all the sham can be avoided if companies follow the six thumb rules while Game outsourcing character modelling tasks to animation studios as these will lead them to the right names. 1) Take a Tour of the Website Although you will find expert comments on not to judge a company by its cover, there is no denying the fact that website plays a decisive role in company’s credibility, especially when it comes to art and animation studios. A studio that claims to offer you state-of-art results must first focus on its own. A clean, crisp website with appropriate content can actually say a lot about the studio’s work. A poor design and inappropriate content often indicate the following things: - Outdated and poorly maintained - Negligence towards its virtual presentation - Unprofessionalism - Poor marketing A sincere design and animation studio will indeed feature a vibrant website with all its details properly included. 2) Location Matters Location has a huge impact on hiring charges as it largely decides the price range one can expect. If you are looking forward to countries like India, you expect the range to be well within your budget chiefly because such countries have immense talent, but because of the increasing demand and competition in the field of outsourcing, hiring charges are relatively cheaper than countries like UK or USA. This means that once can get desired expertise without spending a fortune. 3) Know Your Team Inside Out Since you will be spending your hard earned money, you have every right to know the ins and outs of your team. Getting to know the team can assist you in your decision. Do your part of homework and be ready with your queries. Starting from their names to their works, check everything you can, and if need be, go for one-to-one conversation. This will not only help you to know them better, but will also give you an idea of their communication, their knowledge about their work and their sincerity. A dedicated one will always answer you up to the point while a confused one with fidget with words or beat around the bush. 4) Don’t Miss Out on the Portfolio While the website of a studio is its virtual representative, it’s the portfolio which speaks about its execution. Reputed names of 3D modelling and design companies house excellent projects ranging from simple to complex ones. A solid portfolio indicates: - commitment of the studio towards its projects - competency of its team - execution and precision - status of its expertise Apart from the portfolio, some animation studios even feature case studies and white papers in their websites which indicate their level of transparency. Make sure to go through all of them.

How could any citizen or Representative or Senator even have had the guts to propose such a thing for passage into law in this country? Fortunately, it was removed by amendment; however in some cases a trial isn't automatic, you must request a hearing. (Sec. 6480) Do I have your attention yet? $10,000 is the maximum fine for knowingly possessing any amount of a drug of any kind (even the kind that an enemy might plant in your car or home) (Sec. 6480).

Deep State”—the Invisible Government The terms “invisible government,” “shadow government,” and more recently “Deep State” have been used to describe the secretive, occult, and international banking and business families that control financial institutions, both political parties, and cabals within various intelligence agencies in Britain and America. Edward L. Bernays, a pioneer in the field of propaganda, spoke of the “invisible government” as the “true ruling power of our country.” He said, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”40 “The political process of the United States of America [is] under attack by intelligence agencies and individuals in those agencies,” U.S. representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) said. “You have politicization of agencies that is resulting in leaks from anonymous, unknown people, and the intention is to take down a president. Now, this is very dangerous to America. It’s a threat to our republic; it constitutes a clear and present danger to our way of life.”41 Emotional Contagion One of the reasons why the Deep State has been able to hide in plain sight is because it controls the mainstream media in the United States. Despite the growing evidence of its existence, the media largely denies this reality. David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, wrote an article titled, “There Is No Deep State: The Problem in Washington Is Not a Conspiracy Against the President; It’s the President Himself.” Like the “thought police” in George Orwell’s 1984—a classic book about a dystopian future where critical thought is suppressed by a totalitarian regime—the Deep State uses the media to program the population according to the dictates of Big Brother and tell people in effect that “WAR IS PEACE,” “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY,” and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”42 Many of the largest social media platforms are used by the Deep State for surveillance and to influence the masses. Many people think social media is just for personal fun and networking with friends, family, and business associates. However, this innocent activity enables powerful computer networks to create detailed profiles of people’s political and moral beliefs and buying habits, as well as a deep analysis of their psychological conflicts, emotional problems, and pretty much anything Big Brother wants to know. Most people don’t understand the true extent of surveillance now occurring. For at least a decade, digital flat-screen televisions, cell phones and smartphones, laptop computers, and most devices with a camera and microphone could be used to spy on you without your knowledge. Even if the power on one of these devices was off, you could still be recorded by supercomputers collecting “mega-data” for potential use later. These technologies are also used to transform

I remember, when I was a kid, staring at road maps, the kind you bought at gas stations and carried in the glove box, and that were, for me at least, impossible to properly refold. I remember looking at all those intersecting lines representing roads laid over and carved through the earth, dirt tracks and superhighways, the insolent grids of the cities. I wanted to follow them all to the end. I remember thinking that if you could get hold of all the maps for the entire country, or even the hemisphere, and spread them out side by side, it would be obvious that every road leads to every other road, that everything is connected. The dull suburban lane on which I lived would carry me eventually to rocky paths in Patagonia and the rutted logging roads that cross Alaska. There were dead ends, of course, lots of them, but assuming you were free to backtrack, it was impossible, really, to get lost. You could follow any road in any direction and eventually, by however circuitous a path, get where you needed to go. Oceans notwithstanding. I don’t remember talking to anyone about this. As a child you learn to guard your thoughts, to hold close to ideas that seemed simple and self-evident and that you knew adults would scoff at. What counted as education seemed to mainly involve learning to walk in single file and otherwise keep quiet. School meant grown-ups telling you that things had to be done in a certain way, and in no other, that however many obvious and inviting paths might lead from one point to another, only one of them was right. The rest might as well not exist at all. To do well, to earn praise, you had to learn not to see them anymore.

ARISTOTLE: All humans are mortal. POPULIST: That is a totalitarian statement. ARISTOTLE: Do you not think that all humans are mortal? POPULIST: Are you interrogating me? Just because we are not citizens like you, but people, we are ignorant, is that it? Maybe we are, but we know about real life. ARISTOTLE: That is irrelevant. POPULIST: Of course it’s irrelevant to you. For years you and your kind have ruled this place, saying the people are irrelevant. ARISTOTLE: Please, answer my question. POPULIST: The real people of this country think otherwise. Our response is something that cannot be found on any elite papyrus. ARISTOTLE: (Silence) POPULIST: Prove it. Prove to me that all humans are mortal. ARISTOTLE: (Nervous smile) POPULIST: See? You can’t prove it. (Confident grin, a signature trait that will be exercised constantly to annoy Aristotle.) That’s all right. What we understand from democracy is that all ideas can be represented in the public space, and they are respected equally. The gods say¦ ARISTOTLE: This is not an idea, it’s a fact. And we are talking about mortal humans. POPULIST: If it were left up to you, you’d kill everybody to prove that all humans are mortal, just like your predecessors did. ARISTOTLE: This is not going anywhere. POPULIST: Please finish explaining your thinking, because I have important things to say. ARISTOTLE: (Sigh) All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human … POPULIST: I have to interrupt you there. ARISTOTLE: Excuse me? POPULIST: Well, I have to. These days, thanks to our leader, it is perfectly clear who Socrates is. We know very well who Socrates is! You cannot deceive us any more about that evil guy. ARISTOTLE: Are you joking? POPULIST: This is no joke to us, Mr Aristotle, as it may be to you. Socrates is a fascist. My people have finally realised the truth, the real truth. The worm has turned. You cannot deceive the people any more. You were going to say, “Therefore Socrates is mortal” right? We’re fed up with your lies. ARISTOTLE: You are rejecting the basics of logic. POPULIST: I respect your beliefs. ARISTOTLE: This is not a belief; this is logic. POPULIST: I respect your logic, but you don’t respect mine. That’s the main problem in Greece today.

But let’s be clear: the madness of everyday life was its own issue. It didn’t have any relationship to whether or not Christianity was bullshit. Obviously, Christianity was total bullshit. It was the most insane bullshit! But it was impossible to make an argument against superstition and magical nonsense, and have it stick, when that argument was delivered from a society where every citizen was a magician. And yes, reader, that includes you. You too are a magician. Your life is dominated by one of the oldest and most perverse forms of magic, one with less interior cohesion than the Christian faith, and you invest its empty symbolism with a level of belief that far outpaces that of any Christian. Here are some strips of paper and bits of metal! Watch as I transform these strips of paper and bits of metal into: (a) sex (b) food (c) clothing (d) shelter (e) transportation that allows me to acquire strips of paper and bits of money (f) intoxicants that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (g) leisure items that distract me from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (h) pointless vacations to exotic locales where I will replicate the brutish behavior that I display in my point of origin as a brief respite from my endless pursuit of strips of paper and bits of metal (i) unfair social advantages that allow my rotten children to undertake their own moronic pursuits of strips of paper and bits of metal. Humiliate yourself for strips of paper. Murder for the strips of paper. Humiliate others for the strips of paper. Worship the people who’ve accumulated such vast quantities of strips of paper that their strips of paper no longer have any physical existence and are now represented by binary notation. Treat the vast accumulators like gods. Free blowies for the moldering corpse of Steve Jobs! Fawning profile pieces for Jay-Z! The Presidency for billionaire socialite and real-estate developer Donald J. Trump! Kill! Kill! Kill! Work! Work! Work! Die! Die! Die! Go on. Pretend this is not the most magical thing that has ever happened. Historical arguments against Christianity tended to be delivered in tones of pearl-clutching horror, usually by subpar British intellectuals pimping their accent in America, a country where sounding like an Oxbridge twat conferred an unearned credibility. Yes, the Crusades were horrible. Yes, the Inquisition was awful. Yes, they shouldn’t have burned witches in Salem. Yes, there is an unfathomable amount of sexually abused walking wounded. Yes, every Christian country has oriented itself around the rich and done nothing but abuse the fuck out of its poor. But it’s not like the secular conversion of the industrialized world has alleviated any of the horror. Read the news. Murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape, murder, rape...Despair. All secularism has done, really, is remove a yoke from the rich. They’d always been horrible, but at least when they still paid lip service to Christian virtues, they could be shamed into philanthropy. Now they use market forces to slide the whole thing into feudalism. New York University built a campus [in Abu Dhabi] with slave labor! In the Twenty-First Century AD! And has suffered no rebuke! Applications are at an all-time high! The historical arguments against Christianity are as facile as reviews on Goodreads.com, and come down to this: Why do you organize around bad people who tell you that a Skyman wants you to be good? To which the rejoinder is: yes, the clergy sucks, but who cares how normal people are delivered into goodness?

One thing more makes these men and women from the age of wigs, swords, and stagecoaches seem surprisingly contemporary. This small group of people not only helped to end one of the worst of human injustices in the most powerful empire of its time; they also forged virtually every important tool used by citizens’ movements in democratic countries today. Think of what you’re likely to find in your mailbox—or electronic mailbox—over a month or two. An invitation to join the local chapter of a national environmental group. If you say yes, a logo to put on your car bumper. A flier asking you to boycott California grapes or Guatemalan coffee. A poster to put in your window promoting this campaign. A notice that a prominent social activist will be reading from her new book at your local bookstore. A plea that you write your representative in Congress or Parliament, to vote for that Guatemalan coffee boycott bill. A “report card” on how your legislators have voted on these and similar issues. A newsletter from the group organizing support for the grape pickers or the coffee workers. Each of these tools, from the poster to the political book tour, from the consumer boycott to investigative reporting designed to stir people to action, is part of what we take for granted in a democracy. Two and a half centuries ago, few people assumed this. When we wield any of these tools today, we are using techniques devised or perfected by the campaign that held its first meeting at 2 George Yard in 1787. From their successful crusade we still have much to learn. If, early that year, you had stood on a London street corner and insisted that slavery was morally wrong and should be stopped, nine out of ten listeners would have laughed you off as a crackpot. The tenth might have agreed with you in principle, but assured you that ending slavery was wildly impractical: the British Empire’s economy would collapse. The parliamentarian Edmund Burke, for example, opposed slavery but thought that the prospect of ending even just the Atlantic slave trade was “chimerical.” Within a few short years, however, the issue of slavery had moved to center stage in British political life. There was an abolition committee in every major city or town in touch with a central committee in London. More than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat slave-grown sugar. Parliament was flooded with far more signatures on abolition petitions than it had ever received on any other subject. And in 1792, the House of Commons passed the first law banning the slave trade. For reasons we will see, a ban did not take effect for some years to come, and British slaves were not finally freed until long after that. But there was no mistaking something crucial: in an astonishingly short period of time, public opinion in Europe’s most powerful nation had undergone a sea change. From this unexpected transformation there would be no going back.

My problem is that if I engage in political activism, then the ultimate conclusion is always revolution. I'm a big Guy Fawkes fan, what can I say. I see the "democratic" system here as obsolete and wide open to corruption. I do have a solution, and it qualifies as a response to the degree of connection that has developed since the creation of parliament. Back then, people were obliged to have a representative (albeit a corrupt one) at the seat of power to ensure their best interests were being looked after. We don't suffer from distance like we used to, and the ubiquity of the internet means that people, close to the entire population are connected in communicative union that lends itself to a sort of hive government. As a citizen of a country your duty would be to engage in a nominal percentage of votes a year, with anyone with the support of a given number of voters able to table bills, which everyone then votes on. The next step would be an AI administrator to this networked hub....no, wait, a quantum AI administrator, call it Mother, a dynamic of algorithms that bears no consideration to a ten million pounds backhander, or the ethnicity of the citizen, but only serves self governance and the welfare of the populace. It sounds like a crazy sci-fi plotline, but it's absolutely doable.

You served your country. That was an honorable thing.” “I wish it were that simple,” he said. “I risked my life and had no idea what I was fighting for—a corrupt dictatorship that represented almost everything we’re fighting against?

BELINDA’S PETITION (Boston, February 1782) To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives of this Country, new born: I am Belinda, an African, since the age of twelve a Slave. I will not take too much of your Time, but to plead and place my pitiable Life unto the Fathers of this Nation. Lately your Countrymen have severed the Binds of Tyranny. I would hope you would consider the Same for me, pure Air being the sole Advantage of which I can boast in my present Condition.

Thanks to your Disposal Service Representative friend at DRAMS, we have no trouble getting all the Defense Department’s Form 1348s and other required certification documentation we need to claim the equipment as demilitarized and move it out of DOD’s Out-of-Country Distribution Depot in Bahrain, still as deadly-effective as the day it rolled out of the arsenal factory.” “You’ve

What did your daily work consist of in the Cor unum council? My mission was to be able to express as well as possible the compassion and the spiritual and material closeness of the Church for people who are suffering from all the most difficult trials in this world. As I traveled to the most afflicted countries in our time, I very quickly understood that the greatest misery is not necessarily material poverty. The most profound misery is the lack of God. He can be absent because people are too much imprisoned in their materialism and profoundly desperate; they have abandoned him or reject him. Often there is a hunger for bread, but also a hunger for God. Cor unum, as a representative of the charity of the successor of Peter, was systematically present at all the sites of war, natural catastrophes, famines, and epidemics. Often, behind these immeasurable tragedies, there is an abandonment of God by men. And so Cor unum always tried to bring emergency material aid, without forgetting divine consolation. Charity is service to man, but it is not possible to serve mankind without telling people about God. In this respect, the Church will never be able to conduct work comparable to some humanitarian organizations that are often guided and dominated by ideologies.

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In the anti-gun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man – in the back – to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.” Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is also that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.” As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify the use of deadly force to protect what the courts have called “mere property.” In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by plaintiff’s counsel in closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property, and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property!

At first glance the Bible appeared to be a collection of unrelated books of history, poetry, rituals, philosophy, biography, and prophecy held together only by a binder’s stitch and glue. But I only had to read Genesis 11 and 12 to realize that seemingly unrelated and different books of the Bible had a clear plot, a thread that tied together all the books, as well as the Old and the New Testaments. Sin had brought a curse upon all the nations of the earth. God called Abraham to follow him because he wanted to bless all the nations of the earth through Abraham’s descendants.6 It didn’t take long to realize that God’s desire to bless human beings begins in the very first chapter of Genesis and culminates in the last chapter of the last book with a grand vision of healing for all nations.7 The implication was obvious: The Bible was claiming that I should read it because it was written to bless my nation and me. The revelation that God wanted to bless my nation of India amazed me. I realized it was a prediction I could test. It would confirm or deny the Bible’s reliability. If the Bible is God’s word, then had he kept this word? Had he blessed “all the nations of the earth”? Had my country been blessed by the children of Abraham? If so, that would be a good reason for me, an Indian, to check out this book. My investigation of whether God had truly blessed India through the Bible yielded incredible discoveries: the university where I was studying, the municipality and democracy I lived in, the High Court behind my house and the legal system it represented, the modern Hindi that I spoke as my mother tongue, the secular newspaper for which I had begun to write, the army cantonment west of the road I lived on, the botanical garden to the east, the public library near our garden, the railway lines that intersected in my city, the medical system I depended on, the Agricultural Institute across town—all of these came to my city because some people took the Bible seriously.

What had happened to him and the others who faced a judged and said: "You can't make me go in the army because I'm not American, or you wouldn't have plucked me and mine from a life that was good and real and meaningful and fenced me in the desert like they do the Jews in Germany and it is a puzzle why you haven't started to liquidate us though you might as well since everything else has been destroyed." And some said: "You, Mr. Judge, who supposedly represent justice, was it just a thing to ruin a hundred thousand lives and homes and farms and businesses and dreams and hopes because the hundred thousand were a hundred thousand Japanese when Japan is the country you're fighting and, if so, how about the Germans and Italians that must be just as questionable as the Japanese or we wouldn't be fighting Germany and Italy? Round them up. Take away their homes and cars and beer and spaguetti and throw them in a camp, and what do you think they'll say when you try to draft them into your army of the country that is for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

As per Dias’s narration of the event, Trump said: “I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it. Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country,” he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.” If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger. “Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”15 There is no better illustration of Trump weaponizing a Counter-Enlightenment strain of thinking as a calculated political tool to garner support than this statement. For the evangelical community, this dynamic evidently outstrips the negative effect of his predatory sexual behavior toward women. Later in the same article, Dias writes: Evangelicals do not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They support him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction, and Mr. Trump offers to restore them to [their powerful position at the top of the American hierarchy].16

Part 1 - The reason behind my unstoppable anger has very and highly complicated reasons. 1) There are certain people that takes life as easiest way - for example Norway, Iceland and Scandinavian people, but they also have problems in life yet they prefer to be happy whatever happens and their life style and law made in order to keep them happy. 2) There are people with high diplomacy and prestige - UK people - They are not good but they are very intelligent enough to keep their traditions protected. 3) There are people that are good by heart but bad by attitude - Hitler, even Putin too, 4) There are people that do not even have proper static law but only dynamic law only intention of protecting their own country alone - USA, 5) There are people that were affected by geopolitics and turned against it because of lack of education and morality - Whomever does terrorism 6) There are people that are deeply hurt because of ignorance and untouchability in ancient times ( They adopted unique food and life style - because of evolutionary, pandemic and many other ecological and spiritual reasons) 0 - Asiatic 7) There are people that were only been slaves for heavy work, slaves for sex, slaves for all dirty and isolated works (African black people and all remaining indigenous people) 8) And finally Bharat (India) with lots of hopes, lots of colors, lots of history, lots of memory, India is a land of discrimination yes - But if you have good qualities - even if you are poor, you will be respected here, so even if you are so called Dalit or Scheduled groups you need not worry much about it, you have all your rights to live in your way but if you choose good path, you will be respected else not and even you can be punished easily. All religions are given equal importance here but due to this is the time to strengthen indias cultural values, it is important to protect the factors that represents India.

At Berkshire, we will continue to look for business-savvy directors who are owner-oriented and arrive with a strong specific interest in our company. Thought and principles, not robot-like “process,” will guide their actions. In representing your interests, they will, of course, seek managers whose goals include delighting their customers, cherishing their associates and acting as good citizens of both their communities and our country. Those objectives are not new. They were the goals of able CEOs sixty years ago and remain so. Who would have it otherwise?

United Airlines Contact Number-+1-855-653-0624 United Airlines Contact Number Before calling United Airlines customer service, make sure that you are calling the correct number for addressing your concern. United has different phone numbers for its departments, including reservations, accessibility, and Mileage Plus. In addition, United has separate phone lines for different countries. Travelers should be aware of the United phone number for the country that they are currently in. Most United Airlines customer service phone lines are open all the time, but some have more restricted hours. For example, there are dedicated phone lines for non-English speakers, and their business hours are limited. Ensure that you are calling at the right time, adjusting for time zone differences, to avoid frustration. As one might expect, there is a range of reports about United's phone-based customer service. Some people claim that they are able to receive quick and courteous resolutions to their issues while others feel that United Airlines representatives are non-receptive to legitimate customer concerns. There are several media reports of individuals having to involve third parties, such as consumer advocates and journalists, before their case is resolved. There have been some mentions of United customer service in the news media, though it should be noted that the more egregious cases have involved unusual situations, such as a glitch in United's boarding system that resulted in a passenger being labeled a "no-show," resulting in a canceled return ticket. In that case, third-party advocates had to get involved as it appeared that United's customer service representatives were not equipped to handle such a situation. Another unusual case involved code sharing between United and another airline, resulting in gaps in travel plans that were not easily remedied.

First, reframe the purpose of taxes to help build social consensus for the kind of higher-tax, higher-returns public sector that has been a proven success in many Scandinavian countries. And remember, the verbal framing expert George Lakoff advises to choose your words wisely: don’t oppose tax relief—talk about tax justice. Likewise, the notion of public spending is often used by those who oppose it to evoke a never-ending outlay. Public investment, on the other hand, focuses on the public goods—such as high-quality schools and effective public transport—that underpin collective well-being.57 Second, end the extraordinary injustice of tax loopholes, offshore havens, profit shifting and special exemptions that allow many of the world’s richest people and largest corporations—from Amazon to Zara—to pay negligible tax in the countries in which they live and do business. At least $18.5 trillion is hidden by wealthy individuals in tax havens worldwide, representing an annual loss of more than $156 billion in tax revenue, a sum that could end extreme income poverty twice over.58 At the same time, transnational corporations shift around $660 billion of their profits each year to near-zero tax jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Bermuda and Luxembourg.59 The Global Alliance for Tax Justice is among those focused on tackling this, campaigning worldwide for greater corporate transparency and accountability, fair international tax rules, and progressive national tax systems.60 Third, shifting both personal and corporate taxation away from taxing income streams and towards taxing accumulated wealth—such as real estate and financial assets—will diminish the role played by a growing GDP in ensuring sufficient tax revenue. Of course progressive tax reforms such as these can quickly encounter pushback from the corporate lobby, along with claims of state incompetence and corruption. This only reinforces the importance of strong civic engagement in promoting and defending political democracies that can hold the state to account.

Women represented 21 per cent of India’s workforce despite being half of college graduates in the country, placing India in the bottom ten countries in the world in terms of women workforce participation. In contrast, similar economies such as China and Brazil had 61 per cent and 48 per cent of women in the workforce, respectively.

thinned out. I will reduce your numbers from more than eight billion, to five or six million. Five or six million of you who will be modeled after the winning team in every way possible, representing their country, culture, philosophy, level of ruthlessness, and so on.

and the Real point... I am trying to make here. besides I HATE THIS SHITHOLE AND I WANT TO GO BACK TO RUSSIA is.... I was influenced. I was influenced by some real, true, pieces of shit. their names include Gregg Hartsuff (piece of shit coach), Greg Yezersky (uncle), my little piece of shit daddy, Jim Smith (Labor department), and Dick M. (anonymous piece of shit sponsor.) there. that's about right. So start to work on yourselves. Your Moral Stature. I think that's what they call it. I want you to talk about how you feel. how does it FEEL? to represent USA. A shithole country. your idiot, pussy bitch military is chasing Arabs somewhere. while drunk Russians keep fucking your women in the ass. just for fun. how does that feel, you silly (n word)? I use the word N. to refer to white people I dislike and disrespect, a lot. see, I worked a lot. a whole lot. because my idiot parents dragged me to this shithole. SHITHOLE. but I don't want to be in this shithole. can you do something, please, to maybe send me back to Russia? Russia is a nice place. Samara is a beautiful city. come on, Gregg. I remember. You were fucking with me because my GPA was like a 3.1. not a 3.2. right. RIGHT? let's be real precise about shit. let's be REAL thorough and precise. well we won a LOTTERY apparently. To come here. WHERE IS MY FUCKING MONEY? You stupid piece of shit.

Within Animal Farm’s allegory of Soviet Communism, Foxwood represents the United Kingdom, and Mr. Pilkington represents the British ruling class. Animal Farm therefore suggests that Britain is an old-fashioned country, badly run by self-serving aristocrats. This criticism of Britain’s rulers deepens when Mr. Pilkington eats dinner with the pigs in the novella’s final chapter. Mr. Pilkington congratulates Napoleon on his cruel efficiency. He jokes: “If you have your lower animals to contend with […] we have our lower classes!” (Chapter 10). This moment crystallizes the novella’s argument that Soviet totalitarianism and British capitalism are essentially the same: cruel and exploitative.

Space Exploration Ethics 101 If we can colonize Mars, we can heal the Earth. But that's not the point here. The point is, we gotta explore space just like we gotta explore anything unknown - but we must do so as humble scientists, not as steroid-pumped, illegitimate offspring of musky retards like Columbus. We gotta explore space just like we explore the Arctic. Humankind has several outposts in the Arctic, dedicated solely to research - our endeavors into other planets oughta be exactly like that. Otherwise, what starts out as space exploration will soon turn into space imperialism, and will do to other planets what white terrorists have been doing to the indegenous people on earth for ages. Therefore, focus on space exploration, not on space colonization. Let me put this into perspective. NASA, ISRO, CNSA, ESA, KARI, JAXA (and more) - these represent the real democratic aspirations of humankind's endeavors of curiosity into space, whereas SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic these are the new-age posterboys of space imperialism. All I say is this, O Brave Explorers of Space - your mission is to explore the universe to facilitate human welfare, not to be some retarded billionaire's backboneless underwear. Beware, I repeat - space exploration doesn't turn into space imperialism!

In two years of research the best example of self-disruption I can find is Netflix. Netflix’s transition to streaming from DVD rental by mail was not nearly as smooth as many would like to remember it, but in hindsight it appears genius. Netflix was founded in 1997 as a DVD mail service and pretty rapidly rose to take huge market share from local video stores who could not compete with its vast range of titles. People soon appreciated the appeal of no late fees, the ability to have several movies out at the same time, as well as its unlimited consumption tariff. Always keen to keep abreast of the latest technology, in 2007 Netflix spent about $40 million to build data centres and to cover the cost of licensing for the initial streaming titles (Rodriguez, 2017). When internet speeds allowed, it introduced streaming as an additional service for its existing subscribers. Monthly fees remained the same, but those with more expensive tariffs were given access to more hours of streamed content. While it added something for free, it also helped give people a reason to upgrade to more expensive plans. Growth was impressive, the video libraries of streamed content rose, the share price rose impressively from $3 in 2007 to over $42 in 2011, and life was good. In September 2011 Netflix made a very bold move. It created two tariffs, and moved all its US subscribers onto two separate plans: the original DVD-by-mail service was to be called Qwikster; the other was a streaming service for a lower monthly fee. The market was shocked, and by December the stock price was below $10 and the company was in pieces. The company rapidly lost higher revenue DVD subscribers and within nine months profits were down by 50 per cent (Steel, 2015). And yet slowly things changed. First, the lower prices suddenly appealed to a much wider market, bringing in far more paying customers, allowing Netflix to buy more content and to slowly raise prices. Then Netflix started making its own original content, clearing out global streaming rights, and then at a flick of a switch it was able to expand globally. If Netflix had not disrupted itself it would be a very different company. It would rely on a massive physical distortion system, with very high costs. It would probably have lost out massively to YouTube and would have withered away as a mail-order DVD supplier. Instead, Netflix’s share price is now nearly $200, five times more than it was when it bravely self-disrupted, it operates in 190 countries, makes nearly $9 billion in revenue from over 110 million customers (Feldman, 2017). Today DVDs represent only 4 per cent of Netflix’s users. It seems that in 2011, when Wall Street was demanding the resignation of Reed Hastings for reinventing the business, they were wrong. From this you can see the pressure this approach places on leaderships, the confidence you need to have, the degree to which this antagonizes the market and everyone around you. This move takes balls. The confidence, conviction, and aggression, to change before you have to create your own future, is remarkable.

Our national anthem is the symbols of our country. it represents the tradition, history, and beliefs of our nation and its people. We South Sudanese do not need President Kiir's presence to sing it. Oh God we Praise and Glorify you For your grace on South Sudan Land of great abundance Uphold us United in Peace and Harmony Whenever we are singing our national anthem with our chest up and our eyes in the sky, we feel the unity, love, peace and togetherness among us as Citizens of South Sudan. Oh! Motherland Arise, raise your flag with the guiding star And sing-song of freedom with joy For justice, Liberty and prosperity shall forever reign, The national anthem reminds Us of Our nation’s glory, beauty, rich heritage, and most importantly it is about us, and our martyrs who sacrificed their lives for our beautiful country South Sudan but not for only you Mr President. Oh! great patriots Let us stand up in silence and respect saluting our martyrs whose blood Cemented our national foundation, we protect our nation oh God blessed South Sudan The national anthem helps evoke feelings of patriotism among us South Sudanese It also helps us South Sudan united in peace and harmony by singing it. The questions are: Who is President Kiir to deny us this feeling of Patriotism? Does president Kiir's presence anywhere install that feeling in our heart? Does Sudan Sudan mean President Kiir? Was the national anthem composed for Mr President or for our nation, its heroes, heroines, martyrs and its people who you forbid from singing it today? Therefore, we all feel the enthusiasm when we sing.. and we don't need your permission, Mr President. Despite the tribal and ethnic differences, we rise in Unison and Listen or Sing the national anthem with great enthusiasm. Your Government took away our basic rights and gave us tribalism and hatred. Now Mr. president you want to take away the only things that united us. Therefore, we all feel the enthusiasm when we sing our national anthem and we don't need your permission, Mr President. Note: People of South Sudan. Kiir and his government want to rewrite our history into Kiir story! Don't let them. we vow to protect our nation not Kiir and now is the time for us Citizens of South Sudan to stand up for our country.

Please don't be scared of us. We are more terrified of your reactions. We are broken people who are haunted by our past, our future and our dreams. We narrowly escaped death, the war, the rapes, the murders and the killers - we have family who didn't - please don't think those monsters represent us. We swam through our country's blood and corpses barely keeping our heads afloat to breathe, to survive and to live another day. We left our homes, we left our history. We left our loved ones without the time to mourn them. We brought our hearts, but they have been shattered into tiny pieces. We didn't come here to harm you, we've come to heal.

him about the proposed change in name. He thought it sounded like nonsense then and hadn’t changed his mind yet. ‘To answer your question though, I think it will depend on how many other crimes they are able to sew up with this discovery. All the different piles of goods in there might each represent a separate reported theft. They could clear a list of crimes and, if they are finding fingerprints or other physical evidence, they might be able to catch multiple criminals. They’ll be trying to find Karl Tarkovsky, but I doubt he’s in the country. I reckon he took the van full of Stilton and fled, getting across the channel before anyone even had a chance to report the van stolen, let alone the cheese.’ ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Dave agreed. ‘It’s a shame for the festival. And for the dairy, but they’ll recover sure enough. The insurance will pay for it and it’s not like suppliers can go elsewhere to get it. Stilton isn’t Stilton if it’s made by anyone else,’ the security guard said knowingly. He lapsed into silence and neither man spoke for a moment. It became an awkward silence after about ten seconds, at which point Dave said, ‘Well, must be off. Goodnight.’ ‘Goodnight,’ Albert called after the man as he vanished into the dark again. It was good of him to check on Oxford, especially given the day he’d had. Albert watched the police working in the lockup for a few seconds as he continued to chew over the misalignment of clues in his head. The counterfeit note didn’t fit. In fact, the only way he could make it fit, was to assume it appeared in Karl’s room out of pure coincidence, and he didn’t like that at all. Unable to shift the feeling that he was blind to the truth, he turned around and started back towards the pub. Perhaps a gin and tonic to help him sleep was in order. The imagined taste hastened his steps, but he might have walked faster yet had he known what waited for him in the bar.

And of course, [Boris Johnson will] never get questioned like this over at the BBC while the political editor remains a fully paid-up member of the Boris Johnson Admiration Society. So how does he get away with it? Andrew points out that factory resets obviously weren't covered in the technology lessons that Boris Johnson received from Jennifer Arcuri. Again, it's a funny joke. It's a good line, but he was the Prime Minister, and everyone knew he was a liar. Is it all about that guy that rang in when Donald Trump was here. That I always remember saying ‘but you must know he's lying’. Donald Trump was giving a speech in London about the size of the crowds outside the building he was in. And we had a camera outside the building he was in. We were looking at no crowds. And that simple juxtaposition of rhetorical claim by a politician with observable reality was chilling. It was spine tingling. I can claim that there are huge crowds, huge crowds, the biggest crowds, the greatest crowds outside this building. And I said, ‘how does it work? How does that happen?’ And someone rang me and said, ‘I know he's a liar, but it really upsets people like you and Sadiq Khan.’ And at the time I laughed but maybe that's all there is. Maybe your life - and sorry this is going to sound quite rude - but maybe your life is so weird, and your personality is so twisted that you find the frustration of people who care about the truth the closest you ever get to feeling joy. Is that it? Nadine Dorries watches Boris Johnson lie and claims that he's the most trustworthy person on the planet. What is wrong with her? It's not really a question about what's wrong with him; what's wrong with her? Whatever transpires at this inquiry or whatever emerges during these hours of evidence, I can tell you this: there will be a significant number of people who think that Boris Johnson has done nothing wrong or that he is somehow the victim of another witch hunt. You remember? It was a witch hunt when he was caught banged to rights by a parliamentary committee containing a majority of conservatives after even Chris Bryant had stepped down to avoid any accusations or allegations - false allegations – really, of impartiality. And they still called it a witch hunt. It would have been a witch on unless the committee consisted entirely of 14 Nadine Dorries clones. That's the only circumstances in which those people would have claimed that he could receive a fair trial. Where do you even begin today? Do you begin with the 5,000 WhatsApp messages that a man who was in charge of the nuclear code somehow doesn't understand and can't find? I don't know. So, what is your theory now because I don't think I've got one any more. I watch him now, and I feel something very new, very different to what I thought when he was in power because when he was in power there is an urgency to the situation. There is a desperate need to share with the population the awfulness that they apparently can't see. Just now that he's not in power any more, it's almost as if I've allowed the full horror of what he represents to bubble to the surface. It’s now that he can't actually break anything, it's a retrospective reflection upon the abject awfulness of him. I mean the unbelievable awfulness of this man, the things that he's done. You can begin with Brexit. The lies that he's told, the damage that he's done. The contempt in which he holds all the things we're raised to believe are important: rules, obligations, standards, behaviours, fidelity, honesty, kindness, friendship, loyalty, all of these things we teach our children matter. And Boris Johnson teaches us that you can become the most powerful person in the country by treating all of those things with absolute contempt.

Dr. Ferris leaned toward Dr. Stadler—through the staccato hoof-beats of the announcer’s voice galloping across the continent with a description of the new invention—and said in the tone of a casual remark, “It is vitally important that there be no criticism of the Project in the country at this precarious time,” then added semi-accidentally, as a semi-joke, “that there be no criticism of anything at any time.” “—and the nation’s political, cultural, intellectual and moral leaders,” the announcer was yelling into the microphone, “who have witnessed this great event, as your representatives and in your name, will now tell you their views of it in person!

WE ARE THE ILLUMINATI, REGISTER AS A NEW MEMBER IN THE ILLUMINATI CLUB BY WHATSAPP NO+27790324557 IN JOHANNESBURG (SOUTH AFRICA), LESOTHO, ESWATINI, BOTSWANA, NAMIBIA, ZAMBIA, ANGOLAL, ZIMBABWE. ou are in SOUTH AFRICA or anywhere in the world, you are a businessman or woman, politician, musician or student and you want to be rich, famous and powerful in life, you are a businessman or artist , politician or pastor and want to become a great, powerful and famous in the world, join us to become one of our official members today. You are given an ideal opportunity to visit the Illuminati and their representatives upon completion of registration, no sacrifices of human lives are required, the Illuminati Brotherhood brings wealth and glory to life, you now have full access to eradicate poverty from your life . Only a member who has been initiated into the Illuminati Brotherhood has the authority to induct a member into the Church. Join us today from anywhere in the world and make your dreams come true. Once you become a member you will be rich and famous for the rest of your life. The Illuminati were a secret society founded in Bavaria (now part of modern-day Germany) that existed from 1776 to 1785 - its members initially proclaimed themselves perfectibilists. Inspired by Enlightenment ideals, the group was founded by Adam Weishaupt, Professor of Canon Law. He wanted to promote reasoning and philanthropy and counteract superstition and religious influence in society. Weishaupt sought to change the way states were run in Europe, removing the influence of religion from government and giving people a new source of "enlightenment". It is believed that the first meeting of the Bavarian Illuminati took place on May 1, 1776 in a forest near Ingolstadt. Here five men laid down the rules that would govern the secret order. Eventually, the group's goals centered on influencing political decisions and disrupting institutions such as the monarchy and the Church. Some members of the Illuminati joined the Illuminati to recruit new members. A bird known as the "Owl of Minerva" (Minerva is the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom) eventually became her main symbol. How are the Illuminati connected to the Illuminati? The Illuminati are a fraternal order that developed from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. In some countries, notably the US, there has historically been much paranoia about the Illuminati - in fact, a single-issue political movement was formed in 1828 known as the Anti-Masonic Party. Due to the original Illuminati recruitment of Illuminati, the two groups have often been confused with one another. How did you join the Illuminati? To join the Illuminati, one had to have the full approval of the other members, possess wealth, and be of good standing in a suitable family. There was also a hierarchical system of Illuminati membership. After entering as a 'Novice' you progressed into a 'Minerval' and then an 'Enlightened Minerval', although this structure later became more complicated as 13 degrees of initiation are required to become a member. Did the Illuminati use rituals? They used rituals - most of which remain unknown - and pseudonyms were used to keep members' identities secret. However, the rituals we know (found in confiscated, secret papers) explain how novices could rise to a higher level within the Illuminati hierarchy: they had to make a report of all the books they owned, write a list of their weaknesses , and reveal the names of all the enemies they had. The novice would then promise to sacrifice personal interests for the good of society. What is the all seeing eye? The "Eye of Providence" - a symbol resembling an eye in a triangle - appears on churches around the world, as well as on Masonic buildings and the US one dollar bill. It has been associated not only with the Illuminati

THIS IS THE ILLUMINATI JOINING POINT TO BECOME ON OF US IN ONE DAY WHATSAPP ME ON +27790324557 TO GET RICH & CONTROL EVERYTHING FROM AFRICA, USA, UK EUROPE & ASIA Anywhere in the world, you are a businessman or woman, politician, musician or student and you want to be rich, famous and powerful in life, you are a businessman or artist , politician or pastor and want to become a great, powerful and famous in the world, join us to become one of our official members today. You are given an ideal opportunity to visit the Illuminati and their representatives upon completion of registration, no sacrifices of human lives are required, the Illuminati Brotherhood brings wealth and glory to life, you now have full access to eradicate poverty from your life . Only a member who has been initiated into the Illuminati Brotherhood has the authority to induct a member into the Church. Join us today from anywhere in the world and make your dreams come true. Once you become a member you will be rich and famous for the rest of your life The Illuminati were a secret society founded in Bavaria (now part of modern-day Germany) that existed from 1776 to 1785 - its members initially proclaimed themselves perfectibilists. Inspired by Enlightenment ideals, the group was founded by Adam Weishaupt, Professor of Canon Law. He wanted to promote reasoning and philanthropy and counteract superstition and religious influence in society. Weishaupt sought to change the way states were run in Europe, removing the influence of religion from government and giving people a new source of "enlightenment". It is believed that the first meeting of the Bavarian Illuminati took place on May 1, 1776 in a forest near Ingolstadt. Here five men laid down the rules that would govern the secret order. Eventually, the group's goals centered on influencing political decisions and disrupting institutions such as the monarchy and the Church. Some members of the Illuminati joined the Illuminati to recruit new members. A bird known as the "Owl of Minerva" (Minerva is the ancient Roman goddess of wisdom) eventually became her main symbol. How are the Illuminati connected to the Illuminati? The Illuminati are a fraternal order that developed from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. In some countries, notably the US, there has historically been much paranoia about the Illuminati - in fact, a single-issue political movement was formed in 1828 known as the Anti-Masonic Party. Due to the original Illuminati recruitment of Illuminati, the two groups have often been confused with one another. How did you join the Illuminati? To join the Illuminati, one had to have the full approval of the other members, possess wealth, and be of good standing in a suitable family. There was also a hierarchical system of Illuminati membership. After entering as a 'Novice' you progressed into a 'Minerval' and then an 'Enlightened Minerval', although this structure later became more complicated as 13 degrees of initiation are required to become a member. Did the Illuminati use rituals? They used rituals - most of which remain unknown - and pseudonyms were used to keep members' identities secret. However, the rituals we know (found in confiscated, secret papers) explain how novices could rise to a higher level within the Illuminati hierarchy: they had to make a report of all the books they owned, write a list of their weaknesses , and reveal the names of all the enemies they had. The novice would then promise to sacrifice personal interests for the good of society. What is the all seeing eye? The "Eye of Providence" - a symbol resembling an eye in a triangle - appears on churches around the world, as well as on Masonic buildings and the US one dollar bill. It has been associated not only with the Illuminati, but also with the Illuminati as a symbol of the group's control and surveillance of the world.

Heavenly Father we cry unto you as the nation of South Africa with a humble and repented heart. We repent for everything that is not representing you. We admit that we have failed you along the way. Please forgive us. We are also repenting on behalf of those who caused all the barbaric actions and ruined our beautiful country. We repent on behalf of those caused bloodshed in this beautiful land of South Africa. Uproot the spirit of corruption and the spirit of poverty in our beloved country. We ask you Lord Jesus to forgive us, cleanse our land with your gracious blood and protect us from every harm. Help us to stand in one mindset, one voice and one heart. And give us the strength and courage to rebuild our nation in peace. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our saviour. Amen. SOUTH AFRICA BELONGS TO GOD

Kushner considered one of Trump’s greatest skills “figuring out how to trigger the other side by picking fights with them where he makes them take stupid positions.” He recalled Trump’s July 27, 2019, tweets about the district represented by the late Black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, which included Baltimore. “Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump had tweeted. “No human being would want to live there.” Kushner saw this as baiting the Democrats. “When he did the tweet on Elijah Cummings, the president was saying, this is great, let them defend Baltimore,” Kushner told an associate. “The Democrats are getting so crazy, they’re basically defending Baltimore. When you get to the next election, he’s tied them to all these stupid positions because they’d rather attack him than actually be rational.” Cummings’s former district is in the top half of congressional districts in median household income, home prices and education levels. It has the second-highest income of any majority-Black congressional district in the country. Chris Wallace had Mick Mulvaney, then the acting White House chief of staff, on his Sunday show the next day. “This seems, Mick,” Wallace said, “to be the worst kind of racial stereotype—” Mulvaney tried to interrupt. “Let me finish,” Wallace said, “Racial stereotyping. Black congressman, majority-Black district—I mean, ‘No human being would want to live there’? Is he saying people that live in Baltimore are not human beings?” “I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines,” Mulvaney said. “I’m not reading between the lines,” Wallace replied. “I’m reading the lines.

No, you aren’t sorry. You are a representative of your country. And countries do not feel sorrow.

Do not allow yourself to belong to any institution at the expense of your humanity. Do not put your country above the needs of the planet. Do not put the company you work for above your need to do what you feel is right. Do not place your religion above God, nor your political party above the nation it is supposed to represent.

Let’s look at your average American Muslim, someone like Siraj Wahaj, the recipient of the American Muslim community’s highest honors. Mr. Wahaj had the privilege in June of 1991 of becoming the first Muslim to deliver a daily prayer before the U.S. House of Representatives. In his prayer he recited from the Koran and appealed to almighty God to guide America’s leaders ‘and grant them righteousness and wisdom.’ The same Wahaj spoke to a Muslim audience a year later in New Jersey. This time Wahaj was singing a different tune to a different audience, and his words were far from his moderate ones in front of the U.S. House of Representatives. ‘If only Muslims were more clever politically,’ he told his New Jersey listeners, ‘they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him. . . . [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us." If Wahaj is the example of the American Muslim community and the receiver of its highest honors, who needs enemies? If this is whom our government calls a ‘moderate’ and invites to deliver a prayer before the House of Representatives, we have ignorant elected officials sitting in our capital running our country. Do you feel safer now knowing that not all Muslims are plane-flying, bomb-wearing, or car-driving terrorists? Talking about overthrowing our government and replacing it with an Islamic caliphate is terrorism of a different kind, but it is still terrorism. This is the more dangerous kind, the kind that circles you slowly, so that by the time you realize you are about to be killed, it’s already too late to do anything about it. Where is the outrage? Have we lost our sense of patriotism and loyalty to America? Do you consider this ‘moderation’? A highly respected, award-winning Muslim from the Islamic American community calling to overthrow the United States government?

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.

As for Congress, one imaginative polling firm found that brussels sprouts, head lice, cockroaches, colonoscopies, and gonorrhea were more popular than our elected representatives. Apparently, the American people realized that when you take it up the ass from a proctologist, at least it's for your own well-being. From Congress, not so much

What’s an exchange rate? An exchange rate (also known as the nominal exchange rate) represents the relative price of two currencies. For example, the dollar–euro exchange rate implies the relative price of the euro in terms of dollars. If the dollar–euro exchange rate is $0.95, it means that you need $0.95 to buy €1. Therefore, the exchange rate simply states how many units of one currency you need to buy one unit of another currency. Throughout the book, you see the term consumption basket. Basically, think about the content of your shopping cart when you go grocery shopping, such as milk, bread, eggs, and so on. The consumption basket of a country includes goods and services that are bought or consumed by the average person in this country.

He spoke through an interpreter, but the discussion flowed easily. He acknowledged concerns I raised about the situation in Tripoli. He smiled but offered no assurances when I said I hoped he would make the transition from rebel commander to politician. Libya would need more talented politicians than soldiers, I argued, in what would surely be a difficult transition from a family-run kleptocracy to a nascent democracy. His commitment and the commitment of other devout Muslims to peaceful political change would be essential to building a functioning and lasting democratic polity. “We might have disagreements between us,” I acknowledged, “about political issues and the future of the region. But as long as you’re committed to the democratic process, we can have a good relationship.” At the end of the meeting, in a quieter voice, I mentioned I had recently learned that Americans had detained and interrogated him using tactics that should not have been allowed and were not allowed any longer. I knew about his rendition to Libya, and the years of torture he had suffered in prison. I assumed someone had briefed him on my military background and service in Vietnam, and I tried to relate to him as a former military officer who had entered politics and as one torture victim to another. I told him it had always been important to me that my country act honorably in war and peace, even when our enemies did not. “Some of us in the delegation have worked to outlaw mistreatment of our prisoners because it doesn’t befit a great nation.” He looked me in the eyes the entire time I was speaking, but I don’t remember him nodding his head or in any other way acknowledging my words. But when I added that I knew his wife had been mistreated, his eyes welled with tears. “I’m sorry,” I told him, “and as an elected representative of my country, I apologize for what happened, for the way you and especially your wife were treated, and for all you suffered because of it.” He leaned toward me and expressed through the interpreter his appreciation for the apology. “We regret all that happened,” he said, “but we don’t think of revenge. We will behave responsibly in Libya. Our actions will be governed by law and we will live up to universal standards.” I thanked him for that assurance, and the meeting ended. I never saw him again after our meeting. He did, in fact, become a leading Islamist politician in Libya, and, I’ve heard, quite a wealthy man. I don’t for a moment assume his views and career decisions were influenced by my brief conversation with him. He’ll have had his own reasons, political, religious, and personal, for the course he has chosen to follow. I do believe, though, that he genuinely appreciated the apology I offered him.

Your committee is satisfied from the proofs submitted ... that there is an established and well defined identity and community of interest between a few leaders of finance ... which has resulted in great and rapidly growing concentration of the control of money and credit in the hands of these few men.... Under our system of issuing and distributing corporate securities the investing public does not buy directly from the corporation. The securities travel from the issuing house through middlemen to the investor. It is only the great banks or bankers with access to the mainsprings of the concentrated resources made up of other people's money, in the banks, trust companies, and life insurance companies, and with control of the machinery for creating markets and distributing securities, who have had the power to underwrite or guarantee the sale of large-scale security issues. The men who through their control over the funds of our railroad and industrial companies are able to direct where such funds shall be kept, and thus to create these great reservoirs of the people's money are the ones who are in a position to tap those reservoirs for the ventures in which they are interested and to prevent their being tapped for purposes which they do not approve.... When we consider, also, in this connection that into these reservoirs of money and credit there flow a large part of the reserves of the banks of the country, that they are also the agents and correspondents of the out-of-town banks in the loaning of their surplus funds in the only public money market of the country, and that a small group of men and their partners and associates have now further strengthened their hold upon the resources of these institutions by acquiring large stock holdings therein, by representation on their boards and through valuable patronage, we begin to realize something of the extent to which this practical and effective domination and control over our greatest financial, railroad and industrial corporations has developed, largely within the past five years, and that it is fraught with peril to the welfare of the country.3 Such was the nature of the wealth and power represented by those six men who gathered in secret that night and travelled in the luxury of Senator Aldrich's private car.

Costs In Maintaining The Primary Amenity, The Golf Course – Fred Layman Fred Layman, aka “The Club Doctor” is a veteran golf course and clubs in transition operations director/consultant. In a series of blogs, he will be speaking about “Keeping your club successful by Giving the Full 360 Degree Experience.” Costs in Maintaining the Primary Amenity, The Golf Course As a multi-sports and golf club consultant, I am often asked, “How much a club should budget to maintain its golf course?”This seems like a never-ending Board of Directors/Owners concern, and that’s understandable. The golf course will consume a significant portion of the cash required to run a club and it is also one of the most visible and member-impacting amenities, so a high level of focus in allowed. Since I began working in the club industry in 1994, I have had the opportunity to interact with leaders of clubs across the country. Typically, the discussions I hear about course maintenance budgets involve benchmarks such as cost per hole or cost per member and a variety of specific characteristics ranging from type of grass to geographic location. To understand the way in which these factors might be used determine how much money a club spends on course maintenance, you can undertake extensive analysis of club industry data. That data reveals that while traditional benchmarks (cost per hole, cost per acre, cost per member, type of grass or geographic location) may represent the actual spending of an individual club, the simple fact that the club up the road is spending more on their course than you are is not enough to justify a decision to beef up the budget. So, how much should you be spending? Contrary to conventional wisdom, industry leaders and myresearch clearly shows that the answer is ultimately not determined by some combination of physical characteristics. The reality is the clubs spend what they can afford. Before you dismiss this idea as random or arbitrary, consider this: The amount a club can afford to spend is eminently quantifiable and can be easily and accurately benchmarked. The proportionality of spending in clubs is highly consistent and represents the foundation of the common club business model. The business model of clubs, defines these proportions as the benchmark. So roughly one-third of a club’s gross profit (don’t think net) is the affordability at the average club. Bottomline: Next time you’re in one of these discussions, remember that your club, like all clubs, is subject to the common industry business model and your budget is driven by your gross profit.