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Articles | Category name:
Interfaith Harmony
Monday 6, Feb 2017 15:10
Dr. Robert P. Sellers
A More Peaceful, Just and Sustainable World (Full Text of 2017 World Interfaith Harmony Week PWR Webinar Speech)
"A more peaceful, just, and sustainable world" —this worthy goal climaxes the mission statement of the Parliament of the World's Religions. People around the globe desire these good and noble ends. Regardless of their differences, millions of people have realized that we are interconnected in the Human Family and that our collective future depends upon achieving this goal.
Many of these people are sincere followers of the world's religions, both ancient and relatively new. It is true, therefore, that in thousands of locations and all kinds of venues around the globe vastly different people of multiple faiths are coming together to discuss common problems and work cooperatively toward reasonable solutions.
Stephen A. Fuqua, a Baha'i interfaith activist from Minnesota, writes about this growing international phenomenon:
Since 1893, a movement has grown up around the idea that religious people can find common ground through dialogue; and while they may not agree on who the mouthpiece of God is—or even what to call that Supreme Deity—they are beginning to learn that their shared values can be put to use for the betterment of the world [originally published in The Fertile Field, a Baha'i youth website; accessed January 31, 2017].
Of course, Fuqua's allusion to 1893 refers to The World Congress of Religions at the Chicago Exposition, the international event that would later become the Parliament of the World's Religions. That historic meeting "marked the first formal gathering of representatives of eastern and western spiritual traditions . . . [and today] . . . is recognized as the birth of formal interreligious dialogue worldwide" ["Our History", accessed January 31, 2017].
As the chair of the Parliament, I believe that this organization exemplifies the very essence and purpose of the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, for we encourage tolerance, respect, and solidarity, as well as oppose misunderstanding and mistrust [see "World Interfaith Harmony Week, 1-7 February 2017," accessed January 31, 2017]. The Parliament carries on a number of important ongoing programs and projects, yet we have a unique and very special niche. We are the one interfaith organization in the world with the ability to convene thousands of persons from dozens of countries and religions for multiple days of inspiration, education, relationship-building, networking, and action.
These meetings are designed to create and enhance harmony among followers of different faiths. A broad range of ideas are expressed by numerous voices at a Parliament event, and while we do not expect unity on every issue, we believe the opportunity to get to know people who are different fosters interreligious harmony. A principle guiding these international gatherings is speaking honestly and listening respectfully, techniques for effective dialogue that reflect the moral parameters of the Global Ethic, a famous document ratified by leaders from many faiths at the first modern Parliament in Chicago in 1993. Our most recent international event was in Salt Lake City in October 2015, where almost 11,000 people from some 75 nations and 50 religions gathered. Building on the momentum from Salt Lake, the trustees and staff of the Parliament are busy preparing for our next huge international gathering, the date and place soon to be announced.
As I have represented the Parliament in various places around the world, the breadth and vitality of the interfaith movement has become very clear. At a Conference on the Rights of Religious Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Lands convened in Marrakesh, Morocco, I joined Muslim leaders from a hundred nations sitting down with Christians, Jews, Hindus, and representatives of other religions to hammer out the language of a Declaration of human rights for non-Muslims living in countries where Islam is the dominant religion.
I was hosted at the King Abdullah International Centre for Interreligious and Intercultural Dialogue in Vienna, Austria, where I discovered the remarkable initiatives of this organization co-sponsored by Austria, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the Holy See.
In Guadalajara, Mexico, leaders of Fundacion Carpe Diem Interfé—a vibrant, local multifaith body—explained to me how they had conducted highly productive regional conferences that introduced interreligious dialogue to hundreds of participants from Central America and beyond.
At meetings in Jakarta, Indonesia—both at the headquarters of Muhammadiyah, the largest national Islamic organization in the most populous Muslim nation in the world, and at Paramadina, a moderate Muslim university whose name—according to the academic dean, means "going beyond the mere tolerance of the Charter of Medina"—I met leaders, scholars, and students who shared stories of working cooperatively with non-Muslims to benefit their nation and promote its national motto of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, "Unity in Diversity." And, more recently, champions of the interfaith movement in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Toronto, Canada, have introduced me to the important work of many spiritual and secular leaders in their culturally diverse cities.
At the more grassroots level—from Boston to Seattle, from Atlanta to Fresno, from Abilene to Philadelphia—I have seen how face to face encounter with the Religious Other enables all kinds of persons to overcome their fear of the unknown and build friendships that value one another's differences and that do not let stereotypical misinformation trump compassion and kindness.
In all of these places, I have been inspired by the lives of interfaith peacemakers—the true Superheroes of our day. Captain America and Wonder Woman may be the superheroes of the comics and movies, but the real heroes are the women and men who stand up to tyranny, promote peace, and defend the rights of all people and the earth.
My friend and activist-writer, Daniel Buttry, introduces some of these figures in his book Blessed are the Peacemakers.
One such hero is Masahisa Goi, a Japanese visionary who studied spiritual teachings as varied as the Chinese philosophy of Lao Tsu and the Semitic ethics of the Bible, then founded Byakko Shinko Kai, a new thought organization dedicated to peacemaking. Believing that the five-word prayer, "May peace prevail on earth," was given him during intense periods of meditation, Goi determined to introduce that prayer globally through planting "Peace Poles." Over the years, about 200,000 Peace Poles have been erected all over the world, the simple prayer inscribed in hundreds of languages. Many religious leaders have planted Peace Poles, including Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama. This hero's simple prayer has become an inspiration to millions of people who have never heard his name but have shared his passion and hope—namely, "May peace prevail on earth" [Daniel L. Buttry, Blessed are the Peacemakers (Canton, MI: Read the Spirit Books, 2011), 21].
Another hero is Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian Muslim, born into a family of legal professionals. Ebadi, herself, studied law at the University of Tehran and in 1975 became the first woman judge to preside over a court in Iran. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 forever changed her fate, however. Ruling imams declared that women couldn't serve as judges, so Ebadi became a clerical worker in the very court over which she had once presided. Later, when she was even prevented from practicing law, she retired and established, with four other lawyers, the Defenders of Human Rights Center. Despite constant death threats and at least one unsuccessful attempt on her life, Shirin Ebadi continues to work for justice and freedom for all—including Afghan refugees and followers of minority religions in Iran—a commitment that makes her a target of extremists and for which she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 [Ibid., 115-116].
The Women in Black are a group of Jewish females who courageously protest the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In 1988, the Jerusalem branch of Dai LaKubush, an organization supporting a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, gathered on Paris Square. The women, everyone dressed in black, stood silently around the square holding signs in Hebrew and English that said, "Stop the Occupation." Sadly, some passing drivers yelled sexual insults and profanities at them and passengers in buses spat on them. They were called "whores" and "Arafat lovers." Occasionally, [rotten] tomatoes, oranges and eggs were thrown at them. . . [After deep discussion [the Women in Black] committed themselves to the practice of nonviolence . . . . They determined to be disciplined and dignified, maintaining their vigils in silence [Ibid., 282].
As Buttry explains:
The movement spread throughout the country, . . . [and soon] they were joined by Palestinian women who were Israeli citizens. [Their campaign] spread further as women in other countries began vigils against the Israeli occupation in solidarity with the Women in Black. . . . What began as a few women in one country has spread to over 10,000 women in [numerous] countries, addressing many conflicts besides the Israeli occupation. Through dignity, symbolism and faithful persistence, Women in Black in Israel and around the world have given increased power and clarity to women's voices against militarism and violence [Ibid., 284-285].
Finally, Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi—"the Mahatma," or Great One—continues the peacemaking work of his grandfather as he travels throughout the world speaking in churches, mosques, temples, and gurdwaras, on college campuses and in elementary and secondary schools, at large conferences in capital cities or under a tree in tiny Third World villages. A former trustee of the Parliament and personal friend, Arun Gandhi embodies the nobility of his famous name as he carries on the life-affirming work of his grandfather.
The inspiration of these and hundreds of other well-known and unknown superheroes, and the work of thousands of grassroots and global organizations that promote peace, justice, and sustainability for all persons and for the earth—these are helping us to make progress toward achieving our goals. Our work is not done, and while we may grow weary, we will not quit. Even though we will occasionally become discouraged, we will hold on tenaciously to hope, for our cause is righteous and the company of fellow-believers with whom we walk gives us strength.
P. Sellers
Board Chair, Dr. Robert P. Sellers, is Professor of Theology at Hardin-Simmons University in Texas. His classes emphasize cross-cultural living, global Christianity, Two-Thirds World and liberation theologies, world...[More]
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Uromastyx | Zoo Med Laboratories, Inc.
Uromastyx is a genus of lizard found in parts of Africa and the Middle East. There are several species regularly offered in pet stores, and care requirements for common species are very similar. Uromastyx lizards come from very hot places and need high temperatures to do well as pets. In the wild these lizards live in burrows and will do best if offered underground retreats. This lizard is best suited for intermediate to experienced keepers and is not recommended for beginners.
Juvenile Uromastyx need a minimum 20 gallon terrarium. Juveniles can be housed together in a 30 gallon terrarium.
Adult Uromastyx need a minimum 40+ gallon terrarium.
Provide plenty of hiding and basking places.
Rocks, thick branches or Mopani Wood make excellent choices for decorating your lizard's habitat.
Daytime Terrarium Temperature: 85-90° F.
A nighttime drop in temperature is natural and can be accomplished by turning off all overhead heating devices, and leaving a ReptiTherm® UTH on 24 hours per day.
Zoo Med's Basking Spot Lamp, PowerSun®, Repti Halogen™ and Ceramic Heat Emitters, are good choices for heating Uromastyx enclosures.
Provide a large rock directly under the basking area to help retain heat.
UVB Lighting is essential for Uromastyx to process calcium in captivity.
Without UVB lighting and a proper diet, Uromastyx will develop serious health problems such as Metabolic Bone Disease (MBD).
Zoo Med's ReptiSun® Linear and Compact Fluorescent Lamps are a great choice for providing Uromastyx with UVB. The PowerSun® is an excellent way to provide both UVB and Heat all in one lamp!
Uromastyx live in arid, sandy places in the wild and will do well on a variety of sand-type substrates in captivity. They prefer a mixture of sand and soil that will allow them to burrow.
Hatchling Uromastyx will do best on Cage Carpet such as Zoo Med's Eco Carpet or Vita-Sand®.
Excavator® Burrowing Clay Substrate will allow you to create a naturalistic terrarium complete with burrows and tunnels for your animals. Uromastyx live in burrows and will require underground retreats to provide security.
A mixture of Eco Earth® & ReptiSand® or ReptiFresh® are excellent choices of substrates for Uromastyx species.
Uromastyx are mostly herbivorous with the occasional insect as a treat. Although they will eat many different types of food, plant matter like leafy greens and vegetables should make up the bulk of their diet.
Hatchlings and juveniles can occasionally have a cricket or a mealworm; this should be kept to once or twice a week and only one or two at a feeding.
Collard or Dandelion greens, Mustard greens, Hibiscus flowers, Rose flowers, bokchoy, Romaine lettuce, green leaf or red leaf lettuces and veggies like squash, pumpkin, zucchini, sweet potatoes and carrots should be offered 2-3 times per week.
Zoo Med recommends feeding our Natural Grassland Tortoise pellets or the Gourmet Tortoise pellets supplemented with a mixture of greens and vegetables to create a complete and balanced diet.
Repticalcium without Vitamin D and Reptivite with D3 should be added to both live and plant food as directed.


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The Wetsuitman
Refugee Crisis: A European Mystery
Last winter two bodies were found in Norway and the Netherlands. They were wearing identical wetsuits. The police in three countries were involved in the case, but never managed to identify them. This is the story of who they were.
Anders Fjellberg beeld Tomm W. Christiansen
20 april 2016 – verschenen in uit nr. European Press Prize 2016
A gale was blowing from the south-west as the elderly architect put on his jacket and rubber boots and went to face the elements. Down in the bay, four metre high waves crashed against the cliffs and sent sea spray hundreds of metres across the grazing land at Norway's southernmost tip.
The first thing the architect noticed when he approached the sea was a wetsuit. It lay stretched out on the small patch of grass between the cliffs, right outside the reach of the waves. 'That might be useful,' the architect thought. It was rare for him or anyone else in the village to take a walk down there. The wetsuit could have been here for a long time.
He could smell seaweed and the sea and a faint, sickly scent of something else.
The brand of the wetsuit was Triboard. The architect thought it looked cheap. It was partially inside out. Stuck inside the legs of the suit, was a pair of blue flippers. Two white bones were sticking out of each one.
Sherriff Kåre Unnhammer from Farsund police station is an authoritative figure with large serious eyes, a big moustache and gold teeth that gleam when he speaks. It is a pleasant day of April this year. In the waiting room, there is a warning against boat thieves and a poster stating that the legal size for cod caught south of 60 degrees latitude is 40 cm. In the middle ages, they burnt witches right outside this spot, but things are more relaxed now.
'This is a peaceful place,' says Unnhammer.
He turns to his computer and reads from the log. 'At 3:02 pm, January 2, 2015, a diving suit with human remains was found at Lista.'
Forensic experts from Kristiansand went to take pictures and examine the body, but it had been in the sea for so long that there was not a lot left to examine. There was no sign of damage from propellers, stabbing or gunshot wounds. Unnhammer reckoned it was somebody who had gone missing in the North Sea and that the person would be identified quickly.
They checked the body against a missing report from the Stavanger area, where a man in a wetsuit had gone missing a couple of years ago. Neither that body nor anybody else who had been reported missing matched the body found at Lista. Some bones found in the same area were sent for analysis, but proved to be from an animal skeleton.
'From time to time, we get bodies floating in here, but we haven't had one that we haven't managed to identify before,' says Unnhammer.
There is a sea chart of the Lista area on the office wall. The currents in the sea are very unpredictable and ever changing. Not even professional fishermen can tell how the ocean will behave the next day. It is impossible to say where a corpse that floats ashore here has come from.
In this case, there was not a lot Unnhammer could do.
'When we have so little to go on, we have to turn to dna profiling to find the answer. And we can't get that kind of thing done here,' he says.
Police Superintendent Per Angel has been identifying dead bodies since the end of the 80s. He is head of the Kripos national ID group. They are called in cases of simultaneous multiple deaths or when an unidentified body is found. Angel talks about Norway being a country made for accidents. We have a lot of storms, rugged landscape, and thousands of workplaces offshore and in the Polar region. We have had train accidents, plane crashes, shipwrecks and terrorism.
'We have become skilled in ID work,' says Angel.
The list of missing people in Norway since 1947 amounts to 1,443 people at the time of writing. The list of dead people found in the same time period, but who the police have not managed to identify, is considerably shorter. Just 16 bodies, including several findings of bones which most likely originate in pre-modern times.
'The man in the wetsuit could be number 17. This is a special case,' says Angel.
When Kripos receives an unidentified body, forensic experts, pathologists, dentists and forensic geneticists collect so called post-mortem information. They create a dna profile, take fingerprints and register information about teeth, any jewellery, previous bone fractures, tattoos and any other characteristics that may help in the identification of a body. They also try to establish the cause of death.
Post-mortem information is compared with information from missing reports, where family or friends have provided details about people they are looking for. The main requirements for identification are information on teeth, fingerprints and dna. One requirement is not enough to establish identity and has to be supported by one or several additional required pieces of information. There may be findings on the body, medical information or tactical information connecting the body to a missing person.
No missing reports in Norway match the body found at Lista. In the wetsuit case, only dna has been found. If Kripos is to be able to identify the body, he must for some reason have a registered dna profile somewhere in the world or a family member must have reported him missing and provided a dna test.
On February 5, Kripos sent out a so called 'Black Notice' through Interpol. It contains a dna profile and a detailed description of the finding of the body on Lista. They received an answer the next day.
The Lista body is not the only one that drifted ashore in a grey and black Triboard wetsuit.
'We call him the wetsuitman,' says John Welzenbagh, investigator at the Netherlands special police unit for persons missing in the North Sea.
Welzenbagh is a 52 years old former navy diver, he is fit and wears a dark windbreaker jacket and sports sunglasses. He is the kind of investigator who lies awake at night, pondering unsolved cases.
On the ferry across from Den Helder to the island of Texel a couple of hours north of Amsterdam, Welzenbagh points to a sand bank and explains that he is still looking into the identity of a man who was found on a sailboat there in 1995.
Just a few weeks ago, he had a breakthrough in another case and is close to identifying an older, probably French, woman who floated ashore here 15 years ago.
The wetsuitman was found on Texel early in the morning on October 27 last year. He was wearing a black and grey wetsuit, identical to the wetsuit found with human remains inside at Lista 67 days later. The body was found along the water's edge on the broad beach below the dunes and cafes in the small village of De Koog. It is a beach that is popular among windsurfers and tourists from all over the Netherlands come here in the summer.
Every year Welzenbagh and the Dutch North Sea group get in between 20 and 30 bodies or remains for identification. Most turn out to have gone missing from the local area. Most of the cases are solved quickly.
'This case is different,' says Welzenbagh.
How long had the wetsuitman been lying in the water? Three days? Three weeks? The rate of decay is difficult to assess when a person is in a wetsuit in cold water. Where did he come from? It was also impossible to say. Welzenbagh has found dead people from the entire North Sea and the Channel area: England, Scotland, France, Germany, Belgium and of course the Netherlands. There were not many physical characteristics to go on. The only thing Welzenbagh noticed was that the body had very dark hair.
'I thought he might be from Spain. There are not many other places in Europe where you see that hair colour, in any case, not amongst ethnic Europeans,' he says.
When the wetsuitman was found, four windsurfers were reported missing in England. The main theory in the first days was that one of them had floated ashore. The windsurfers had however already been found. The same went for a French diver who went missing outside Normandy. Still, Dutch media reported that the body found on Texel was a diver from France.
'This was of course wrong, but even at our meetings he was known as the diver. I didn't like that,' says Welzenbagh.
'We had no way of knowing what kind of water sports he had been doing. If we called him the diver, I was afraid we would overlook clues that could help us. I said 'from now on, we will call him the wetsuitman'.'
The police were back at square one. Fingerprints were impossible to reproduce. There were no papers or other characteristics and the dna profile and missing report they sent out through Interpol met with no response.
The wetsuit was the only strong clue Welzenbagh had to work with. A 5 millimetre thick neoprene wetsuit with a hood, made for diving and snorkelling in temperatures between 16 and 24 degrees. In the North Sea and The English Channel, water temperatures rarely rise above 15. At the end of October when the body was found, the normal temperature is an icy 10 degrees.
'If we called him the diver, I was afraid we would overlook clues that could help us. I said we call him the wetsuitman'
'Something that wasn't quite right,' says Welzenbagh.
rfid stands for 'Radio-Frequency Identification' and are tiny data chips that are used for everything from registering passengers in toll stations to identifying pets. They are also used in all sorts of goods, as a modern barcode system that stores information about where goods are moving from the time they are produced until they are scanned at a cash register and disappear into a shopping bag.
John Welzenbagh knew this. When he discovered the little rfid-symbol on the tightly sewn tag with the wetsuit's serial number and goods declaration, he knew he could find out where and when the suit was sold. And – if there was a credit card number on the receipt – who bought it. Here's what he found out:
At 20.03 pm, Tuesday, October 7, 2014, a customer stood in front of the cash register of the Decathlon sports shop in the French port city of Calais by The English Channel. The customer bought a Triboard Subsea 5mm wetsuit, medium size, for 79 Euros. The customer also bought hand paddles – plates swimmers use on their
hands to provide more resistance when they train, a snorkel and a diving mask, flippers, water socks – usually used for gymnastics in water and a waterproof A4 plastic folder.
But there was more: There was two of everything on the receipt. Welzenbagh knew full well where one of the wetsuits was – in the evidence store in the Netherlands.
When the serial number on the wetsuit was sent to Norway, it became clear where the other one had ended up. It was found by an architect during a winter storm in Lista, 850 kilometres from Calais, 87 days after it was purchased.
The total for the goods was 256 euros. The customer paid cash. There is no surveillance footage from the shop.
Neither the dna profile from the body in the Netherlands or Norway produced any hits internationally through Interpol. All leads in the case trail off in front of the cash register in Decathlon in Calais, barely an hour after sunset on October 7 last year.
The Boy who could see England
In a strange land, thousands of kilometers from home, a boy stood and looked out to sea. He had been travelling for 142 days. Autumn had come. As usual the weather was bitter along the coast of Northwest France.
The place the boy once called home, Damascus in Syria, was no longer home. His family, mother, father and four sisters had fled to Jordan. He hadn't seen them since he left five months ago. Now it was the afternoon of October 7, 2014. He had only been in Calais for a couple of hours.
He took his telephone, opened the messaging app WhatsApp and texted his uncle who lives in Bradford, a small city between Leeds and Manchester.
'I can see England', the boy wrote.
He also wrote that he thought it was possible to get out to a boat, or swim across the channel.
The uncle wrote that it was like the Sea of Marmara in Turkey: You can see land on the other side, but it is much further than you think.
'You must not try to swim. That wouldn't work. Hide in a lorry,' the uncle wrote back.
'I will try today,' wrote the boy. He didn't say how.
The same evening, an hour and 43 minutes before two wetsuits were sold in the Decathlon sports shop right outside the centre of Calais, the boy sent a message to his sister and family in Jordan:
'I miss you'.
Since then nobody has heard a word from the 22-year-old Mouaz Al Balkhi from Syria.
Badi is 38 years old. He has slicked back hair, a checked shirt and a warm smile that appears when he is looking for the right English word. He is Mouaz's uncle and came to England himself as a refugee. He hid in a trailer at Dunkerque, just north of Calais, and came through the tunnel under the channel.
Badi has got asylum in England for five years and lives with his wife and two small daughters in a typical English redbrick house in an immigrant area of Bradford, an hour's drive from Manchester.
That was where Mouaz wanted to go when he was standing on the beach in Calais and said that he would try to get to England.
His uncle tried to ring Mouaz on October 8. The telephone was switched off. Over the next days, they tried several times a day, but it always went direct to message – an Arab song they have heard countless time over the last eight months.
After a couple of days they realised something must have happened to Mouaz. They knew he had 300 euro in cash and feared that he had been robbed and killed. The Jungle is a lawless place.
After a week, two relatives went from Scotland to Calais and contacted the police there. The most obvious thing, they thought, was that Mouaz had been arrested and did not have the opportunity to contact the family.
'The police said that they couldn't help us,' says the uncle.
A month later, they were back at the police station in Calais. The police still had no information. They brought a picture of Mouaz and went around the refugees in The Jungle. They went to the hospital and the morgue, but nobody had seen him or heard anything.
In March, they contacted the police in England. According to Badi, they were told that it wasn't really a matter for England as Mouaz went missing from France, but they promised to do a search through Interpol. According to the family, the only message they received from the police in England was Mouaz was not in prison in Bradford. They were in contact with a lawyer, the Red Cross and the immigration office in England.
'Mouaz's mother calls me every day to ask if there is anything new. It is absolutely terrible to live with uncertainty and nobody is able to help us. When you called, it was the first time we heard something concrete about what might have happened.'
Badi wants to hear all the details about the bodies found in Norway and the Netherlands. He asks if we think it could be the nephew. A lot of what the uncle explains – date, place, how much money Mouaz had, that he mentioned swimming – fits in with the details in the case with the wetsuits. On the other hand, he was travelling on his own, according to his family. Would somebody have decided to swim to England with somebody they didn't know?
We explain to Badi that the only thing that can provide an answer is a dna test. We give him a pair of plastic gloves and a little cotton bud of the kind you remove make-up with and ask him to scrape it against the inside of his cheek. The cells in the mouth attach itself to the bud and we place it in a small plastic bag. He also draws a small family tree showing the relationship he has with Mouaz.
Back in Norway, we give the test to the ID group in Kripos who start trying to extract a dna profile and check it against the findings in Lista. Kripos also sends an enquiry through Interpol and gets a dna profile sent from the body in the Netherlands.
Rahaf is Mouaz's younger sister. She is 19 years old and lives in the Jordanian capital, Amman, with the rest of the family: three sisters, mother and father. We talk to them through Skype. Rahaf translates while the mother tells us about the son they haven't seen in over a year.
Mouaz and her sisters grew up in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Their father was in prison for eleven years for supporting the opposition and was released in the beginning of 2011. They lived in a multicultural neighbourhood. Shias, Sunnis, Christians, Jews, Alawites. Mouaz was friends with everyone. He never fought with anyone, his mother says:
'If somebody was fighting, he always tried to make peace.'
He liked to watch movies and he liked to swim. Every week before the civil war broke out, Mouaz went to a swimming pool in Damascus and swam. The family was one of the many millions who fled the war in Syria. They came to Jordan in 2013, but Mouaz stayed behind in Damascus to finish his electrical engineering studies. He was constantly stopped on the street by forces in the Assad regime. It made no difference if you were a rioter or a university student. Sometimes he was taken down to the police station and detained until they confirmed his ID. Mouaz held out for six months before fleeing to Jordan too.
'We think he is in jail in France or England and we are trying to get an answer from the police. They are the ones responsible'
It doesn't seem as if Mouaz had to leave Jordan, but his sister said that he didn't get a place at the university in Amman. The father also struggled to find work. Mouaz felt responsible for the rest of the family. The plan was to travel to Turkey and study at the university, and the family would follow. Mouaz didn't get into the university there either and according to the sister, he couldn't return to Jordan as a refugee as he had already left the country. He decided on England.
'They have good laws for refugees, he could study and our uncle lives there,' says Rahaf.
On the basis of what the family tells us, it seems as if Mouaz had travelled relatively safely up to this point, but now he entered risky territory. On August 17, 2014, he took a flight from Turkey to Algeria in North Africa. From there he spent two days going through the dessert and crossed the border to lawless and dangerous Libya.
He did not tell them a great deal about Libya. The family only know that he was there for 10 days before he got a spot on one of the refugee boats over the Mediterranean and on to Italy. He was picked up by the Italian marine and brought to shore safely, but the family dont know what happened. Mouaz was ill and slept most of the three days by sea from Libya to Italy.
On September 5, he came to Dunkerque just north of Calais. In the next two next weeks, he made 10 failed attempts to hide in a truck and get to England. He often sent messages to his family. They asked how things were with him, whether he was keeping warm and whether he had something to eat. He always answered that they shouldn't worry.
So he went back to Italy, after having heard it was possible for him to take a plane to England. This proved to be wrong and once again he got on a train to Dunkerque, where he made two new failed attempts to hide in a truck. He could not afford to pay people smugglers and tried on his own. On the morning of October 7, he went from Dunkerque to Calais. His family do not know if he went along with someone or alone, but says that the refugees he knew from before had moved on.
His sister was the last one to speak to him. He said he would try to go to England from Calais, but he didn't say anything about how. He had mentioned that the thought it would be easy to swim out to a boat or ferry near the coast and climb on board, but he never spoke about swimming across the entire channel.
She got the last message just before 6:30 pm on the evening of October 7. He wrote that he missed them. Rahaf didn't manage to answer.
'Mouaz would have told us if he had thought of doing anything dangerous, so we are certain that he didn't try to swim. We think he is in jail in France or England and we are trying to get an answer from the police. They are the ones responsible,' she says.
The dna tests Magasinet took from the uncle in Bradford show, according to Kripos, that there is not a family relationship between the uncle of Mouaz and the body that was found on Lista. For the body in the Netherlands, the dna material from the uncle was not sufficient to say whether or not it was a match. >
We construct several scenarios about what may have happened with Mouaz. None of them seem particularly likely. It is very rare that somebody disappears without trace from Calais. We contact the aid organizations in Calais and Dunkerque once more but don't get any new clues. Nobody has heard about people going missing in October.
The details in the history of Mouaz – the date he disappeared, that he talked about swimming, that he had enough money for a wetsuit, but not enough to get the help of smugglers, leads us to contact the family and suggest getting a new dna test. To avoid leaving any theoretical doubt, we send the sampling equipment to a contact in Jordan. He brings Mouaz's mother, father and one of his sisters to a clinic in Amman where two sets of tests are taken. One set is sent to Kripos, the other to police in the Netherlands.
Kripos is the first to call. None of the new dna material gives a match with the person who was found on Lista. We get the answer from the Netherlands a few days later.
What do you hope for, when a son, a brother, a nephew goes missing for eight months and the only alternative to a constant nagging uncertainty are the depths of grief? There is always a hint of hope in uncertainty. Notification of a death is an answer, but it is final. The telephone call you are waiting on, with the voice you have missed, saying 'Mum, I am alive' will never come. 22 years is not a life. It is barely a beginning.
We don't know how far he got. We don't know what his plan was. We don't know exactly where he took the first steps into the ice-cold water or who was alongside him. We don't know if he was afraid.
But we do know what his name was. We know that he wanted to complete his engineering studies in England and help his family in Jordan. We know that he missed them. That was the last sign of life he gave.
In a graveyard on the island of Texel, between Anneke Molenar van den Brink and Anna Cornelia Alida Boer, there is a grave without a name. Under the budding daisies, grass and dandelions rests the boy who could see England.
He is called Mouaz Al Balkhi, was born on November 6, 1991 in Damascus and dreamed of a better life.
He lived to be 22 years old.
The Diver from Damascus
JUNI 2015, KL. 18.23 'Hi Anders, I have some news (…) We may have found the second person. His cousin has seen the post in some page and he said that his cousin is missed in the same month and he mentioned something about buying a wetsuit. Now he wants to contact you. Can I give him your Skype account?'
– Rahaf Al Balkhi, Mouaz's sister
In his Facebook profile picture, he is floating over a coral reef in crystal clear water off the coast of Libya. He is looking straight into the camera from behind his diving mask. It is hard to say because of the scuba gear, but it looks like he's smiling. His eyes are radiant, those of a young man who's exactly where he wants to be, floating weightless in the blue surrounded by fish, coral, and shimmering light. He's been missing since October 7th of last year.
Ziad Qataf (32) opens the door to the apartment building and leads the way to a run-down studio apartment on the second floor. It contains everything he owns: a few minimal furnishings, a cell phone, a computer, a couple changes of clothes, and a small collection of stuffed animals in a basket behind the bed.
Ziad is the cousin of the man in the picture, 28-year-old Shadi Omar Kataf from Damascus, Syria. Ziad is the last person to have talked to Shadi before he disappeared. We're in the Belgian city of Leuven, a half-hour outside of Brussels. Ziad is a stateless Palestinian, who has been living here on his own for five years waiting to be able to apply for Belgian citizenship.
Late in the afternoon on October 7th of last year, the phone rang and Ziad heard his cousin's voice on the other end.
'It's Shadi. I'm in Calais in France. You have to come pick up my laptop and backpack. I don't have enough money to use the people smugglers so I'm going to buy a wetsuit and swim to England.'
'I told him, 'Don't be a complete idiot! You can't swim to England. It's way too far, and there are huge waves.' I told him that instead he could bring his things and come here. Then his phone ran out of power.'
Ziad tried to call him back, over and over, also in the days that followed. His cousin's phone was never turned on again. Shadi was gone.
Wedding singer Omar Kataf and his wife Samira had their first child on July 2, 1986. They called him Shadi, Arabic for 'singer'. Shadi, and eventually two younger sisters, Racha and Nagham, grew up in Damascus's Al Qadam neighborhood. They lived in a four-story building with their extended family.
Shadi liked to draw and take pictures and was interested in sports, especially soccer and swimming. He grew up and began working in a tire shop. He also liked riding motorcycles. Eventually he started his own garage, Kataf, which is still listed in the Damascus phone book.
Then came 2011. First the protests, then the uprising, fighting in the streets, bombing, and finally one of the most bloody and brutal civil wars in the modern era.
The home of the extended Kataf family was bombed to rubble by the Assad regime in 2012, and they moved to a part of Damascus known as Yarmouk Camp, a two-square-kilometer district founded 60 years ago to house Palestinian refugees. Since the civil war began, Yarmouk has also been bombed to pieces.
Various armed groups have battled in the streets to control the area, and the regime has bombed from the air. In the last few years, the people in Yarmouk have been besieged by Syrian government forces. They have had minimal food, electricity, water, and medical supplies. A picture from January 2014 published by Al-Jazeera shows a baby who died of 'hunger-related illness'. Children and adults have reportedly eaten grass and cats to survive.
More than 150,000 people used to live in Yarmouk. Many have fled. Many have died. There are fewer than 20,000 left. Shadi's parents are among them.
'We're not getting out. We have nothing.' says Omar Kataf.
We have received a telephone number and a message that Shadis's father Omar Kataf have found a relatively safe place with a phone line.
Omar tells us what we already know, but somehow there are no suitable adjectives to describe it.
'Things are just awful here for us.'
'He was a good guy. There's nothing I can do. It is God's will. I just have to accept the tragedy. My son is dead'
In April Yarmouk was stormed by the terrorist group ISIS. There was fighting in the streets, there were routine reports of people being murdered, and the regime responded to the offensive with shelling and aerial bombardment. All emergency aid ground to a halt and the UN considered the situation 'beyond inhumane'. The Guardian newspaper described Yarmouk as 'the worst place on earth'. ISIS is said to be out now, but the Syrian army is still besieging Yarmouk.
Shadi lived in Yarmouk until he left Syria in 2012.
'I was the one who asked him to leave,' his father said. 'There are no jobs here, so when he left it was because I said he had to go somewhere he could find a job.'
Shadi went to Libya just like one of his sisters, Racha. Racha became a hairdresser in the capital, Tripoli, but disappeared one day in 2013 on her way to work. No one has ever found out what happened, but the family believes she was kidnapped. She was 26 and had two young children.
Shadi got a job at a print shop in Benghazi, and apparently his boss there taught him to scuba dive. Shadi took several classes, received his diving certificate, and fell in love with life underwater. When he boarded a boat in Tripoli on August 25, 2014, he dreamt of using his diving certification to get a job as an instructor or professional diver once he reached Italy.
'I've been worried about Shadi from the day he left us in Syria. When I heard he was taking a boat from Tripoli to Italy, I was scared. I had this feeling that something might happen to him, that he might die,' his father said.
Nagham Kataf (27) is Shadi's youngest sister. She meets us in the courtyard outside her apartment in the town of Osmaniye. We're in Turkey, an hour's drive from the Syrian border. Nagham wears a colorful shawl over her hijab and has her brother's face. She's the only one left now. Their sister Racha is dead or kidnapped. Shadi is gone. Their parents are under siege in Yarmouk.
'I think about them all the time. Of course I'm worried,' she says.
Nagham lives in a small apartment with her husband Besam and their five young children. They came to Turkey this January.
Besam got a job in a carwash, but they struggle to make ends meet. The baby of the family, Omar, is a little older than one, was born in Lebanon, and has been a refugee since the day he came into this world. He sits completely still in his mother's arms and his wide little eyes follow along as she talks about Shadi.
She last saw her brother in the summer of 2014. Shadi had come to visit in Lebanon during Ramadan before returning to Libya and setting out for Europe. She also spoke with him on October 7, the day both Shadi and Mouaz Al Balkhi disappeared.
We use the testing kit we received from Kripos and take a dna sample from the inside of her cheek. She says they've worried for a long time that Shadi is dead and cries when we say we won't be able to give her a definitive answer for a week.
Just as they had done when Shadi's sister Racha disappeared without a trace in Libya, the family has searched and searched for information about Shadi without any answers.
The national ID group at Kripos analyzed Nagham's sample. The dna analysis confirms that she is the sister of the man whose remains were found in a wetsuit in Lista on January 2 of this year.
'He was such an incredibly good guy. He was beloved by his friends, obedient to his father, and a sincere believer. There's nothing I can do. It is God's will. I just have to accept the tragedy. My son is dead,' his father says by phone.
The family only knows fragments of the story of what Shadi did in Europe and where he was. He left Libya by boat on August 25, and reached Italy three days later. No one knows how long he was in Italy or how he got to France. In late September or early October he called his father and said that life was tough. He was living on the street in France and couldn't afford to pay the people smugglers for assistance to make it any farther.
His father and some other relatives in Syria collected a small amount of money. The transfer went through October 7, 2014.
'That was the last time I talked to him. He was going to buy a wetsuit and swim somewhere. It was too hard in France,' his father said.
In the days that followed, no one was able to contact Shadi. His father realized that something had gone wrong, but he was in Yarmouk and couldn't do anything. He called relatives in Europe and talked to Nagham, but no one had heard from Shadi.
Shadi had told both his father and his sister that he was having problems in France, and that he was going to buy a wetsuit to proceed. According to his sister, he said that he was going back to Italy. His father didn't know where Shadi was on October 7.
'He just said he was in France. That he was where the Eiffel Tower is.'
Shadi was in Calais on October 7. So was Mouaz Al Balkhi. We don't know where they met each other. They crossed the Mediterranean by boat a few days apart and may have met in Libya or Italy. They could also have met among the Syrian refugees who live on the street outside the church in downtown Calais.
We return to Calais, and meet several people who have heard of Mouaz.
'Mouaz Al Balkhi? All of Calais knows about him. We read about him online. He's the one who tried to swim. He lived here on the stairs of the church,' said a 20-year-old Syrian man, who had just returned from the highway after a long day of unsuccessful attempts to hide in a truck trailer and make it to England.
None of the Syrians outside the church have been here for more than a couple of months. Nor do they remember who told them that Mouaz had lived here when he was in Calais. No one has heard of Shadi Kataf.
According to Mouaz's sister he stayed in a hotel in the town of Dunkirk 25 miles north of Calais the last night before he disappeared. At the Hôtel de Bretagne right next to the train station in Dunkirk we find the name Al Balkhi in the guestbook.
Mouaz probably registered under his father's name, Youssef, which is also included in his passport.
He rented a double room for 37 euro and 44 cents the night of October 7. He checked in alone, but the guests at Bretagne come and go as they please. Madam Frere, who runs the hotel, has no way to check if multiple people spent the night in the room.
Nor does she remember the guest who spent one night here more than ten months ago.
Just before eight p.m. on October 7, two young men walked into the Decathlon sports shop just outside downtown Calais.
They each bought a cheap wetsuit, a pair of blue swim fins, water socks, hand paddles, and waterproof A4-size plastic map. Together they paid a total of 256 euros in cash to the young woman behind the cash register. She thought the two boys looked like they were in their twenties and thought maybe they were refugees from Afghanistan.
She is the last person we know of to see them. She didn't ask what they were going to do with the equipment.
By the time the two young men walked out of the shop darkness had settled over the French port town, where you can see all the way across to England when the weather is nice.
It's hard to tell because of the snorkel and diving mask, but in Shadi's profile picture on Facebook, where he's floating weightlessly in the crystal clear water over a coral reef in Libya, it looks like he's smiling.
He uploaded the picture on January 11, 2014. A friend of his named Bassem commented on the picture the next day.
'Truly, Shadi, you gave up living here on land with the rest of us. I thought you were joking, brother. Come back.'
That is the next to last comment. Shadi wrote the last one himself, ten months before he disappeared from Calais.
'There is no coming back. I've made my decision. I want to live here in the sea. I'm waiting for you.'
This article was translated into English and shortened to fit in the 36 pages of De Groene Amsterdammer special European Press Prize 2016 edition.
The original story was published in Dagbladet.
Images: (1) Nagham Kataf (27) is living in Osmaniye, Turkey with her husband and ve kids. Her parents are trapped in Damascus, her sister vanished without a trace and her brother Shadi is now confirmed to be the deceased person who oated ashore in Lista, Norway in January 2015; (2) The Wetsuitman. The body that was found on the island of Texel in the Netherlands on October 27, 2014 has been an enigma for investigators (Handout, Dutch Police); (3) Shadi Omar Kataf, o the coast of Libya in his Facebook profile picture (Norwegian Police); (4) Shadi Omar Kataf, 28; (5) The family of Mouaz Al Balkhi. Rahaf, his younger sister, standing between their parents; (6) Unidentified: January 2, 2015, on the exposed coast at Lista in the south of Norway, an old man found a wetsuit with human remains (Norwegian Police)
European Press Prize 2016, 2016
www.groene.nl/2016/european-press-prize-2016

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"Secrets from the woman they call the TODDLER WHISPERER."
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Cloud computing has made considerable progress since its commencement. At display, there is not really any enterprise which isn't taking the joy of issue free cloud storage of its data stack and other significant data.
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MSN Mobile Launches Advertising and Premium Content
REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 10, 2007 — Mobile display advertising is now available on MSN Mobile for the first time, Microsoft Corp. announced today. Starting today, MSN Mobile customers in the U.S. will begin to see banner and text ad placements that conform to the U.S. mobile advertising guidelines provided by the Mobile Marketing Association to deliver a more consistent and engaging experience for consumers. Paramount Pictures and Jaguar Cars North America are among the first companies to launch an MSN Mobile campaign in the U.S.
"Microsoft is continuing to make significant investments in the MSN Mobile portal, adding new services and content that enhance the mobile experience and make it one of the best in the industry," said Joanne Bradford, corporate vice president and chief media officer of MSN. "By incorporating advertising on MSN Mobile, we are allowing advertisers to extend their existing campaigns from PCs to games and now to mobile phones, further delivering on our vision to extend advertising across multiple platforms and devices."
Through technology created by Microsoft's Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group and by the acquisition of ScreenTonic SA, a leader in mobile advertising in Europe, MSN Mobile is now able to provide ad placements that optimize the customer experience and provide advertisers with a new way to reach out to the ever-growing number of mobile consumers. This announcement builds on Microsoft's initial mobile display advertising offerings that are currently available in Belgium, France, Japan, Spain and the U.K.
"Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot are both innovation leaders in their own right, so when we partnered on the upcoming film 'Cloverfield,' we wanted to find cutting-edge ways to market the film," said Amy Powell, senior vice president of Interactive Marketing at Paramount Pictures. "We released an exclusive film clip along with a contest whereby the person with the most clip views will be the first one to see the movie before its release on Jan. 18. We're very excited to partner with MSN Mobile on this promotion because it extends our reach and connects us with our audience on an additional digital touch point."
Microsoft continues to enhance its mobile platform in ways that reach beyond the availability of MSN Mobile display advertising. Building on the success of the FOX Sports channel on MSN Mobile, Microsoft now offers additional content to U.S. customers through the option of purchasing movie tickets, ring tones, wallpaper, games and video clips from mobile phone browsers:
Movie tickets through MSN Mobile. Through a continued alliance with MovieTickets.com, Microsoft has extended the movie experience to MSN Mobile. U.S. customers not only can view movie reviews, theaters and show times, they can also purchase tickets directly from the phone via MovieTickets.com.
Ring tones, wallpaper, games and video clips on MSN Mobile. In an exclusive collaboration with Thumbplay Inc., customers in the U.S. will now be able to purchase ring tones, wallpaper, games, video clips and more within the MSN Mobile offering.
New astrology channel. MSN Mobile also now offers an astrology channel providing daily horoscopes to customers in the U.S. for free.*
With the additions of advertising and premium content to MSN Mobile, Microsoft is able to enhance the experience for its audience while continuing to provide a free mobile site. The premium content adds to the already rich MSN Mobile experience, providing customers with one-stop access to e-mail, news, sports, entertainment, local movie listings, maps and directions, as well as Windows Live services such as Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Spaces and Live Search. MSN Mobile is available for almost all mobile phones with Internet browsing capabilities.
Customers interested in using MSN Mobile can visit http://mobile.msn.com on their mobile phone Web browser or their PC for more information.
About MSN
MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
* Mobile providers may charge a fee for placing calls.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft's corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.


Secondary research draws on information which already exists. Examples include reports by market research firms or sales data within a company.
Sources of secondary data include British Council country reports and government reports. Some of the best secondary data is expensive to purchase. This is because it has been collected for commercial purposes by specialist market research companies. Some research is gathered by industry sources. It is available to businesses in return for an annual fee. This is termed 'syndicated research'.
Secondary research is quicker and easier to collect. Its weakness, however, is that it may not have been collected for the specific purposes required. In this case, the secondary research was not directly related to how Zurich could differentiate itself from its competitors.
In researching the insurance market, Zurich was able to make use of some secondary data about the industry. For example, it used a study produced by the market research company Nielsen. The data showed that 61% of internet users rely on online communities to recommend products and services.
This suggested that Zurich's website needed to change to become a communication vehicle for HelpPoint. Secondary research therefore provided valuable data to enhance Zurich's own primary research.


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Surveillance and Citizen
May 14, 2020 May 14, 2020 ~ Melbourne Art Class Hub
"The subject of surveillance is currently hot with the raging pandemic but it has been around for quite a while…" (Credit: Pixabay)
COVID-19 has generated an important debate around the role of surveillance technologies in our lives. Several articles have stood out to me: some noting its advantages, others cautioning us against its risks. On March 20, The Conversation published a piece titled "Coronavirus: South Korea's success in controlling disease is due to its acceptance of surveillance" (https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-south-koreas-success-in-controlling-disease-is-due-to-its-acceptance-of-surveillance-134068) by Jung Won Sonn, Associate Professor in Urban Economic Development at University College London.
On April 3, Amnesty published "COVID-19, surveillance and the threat to your rights" (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/04/covid-19-surveillance-threat-to-your-rights/). The usual arguments highlight the hard choice between information exposure and movement restriction, the difficult balance between safety and liberty. Also, opinions are shared on how tracking measures could be useful for the emergencies of the moment but might pose serious threats to privacy if they were to become "normal" or are taken for granted in the long run.
The subject of surveillance is currently hot with the raging pandemic but it has been around for quite a while—roughly, I suppose, since Edward Snowden's NSA whistleblowing incident in 2013. How have artists been responding to the issue? I would like to discuss two that I have ended up discovering: David Spriggs (UK, Canada) and Marcus Mårtenson (Sweden). The first examines the phenomenon as executed by the state while the second unpacks it as employed by non-state actors (eg, tech companies). Both bring to the fore the psychology behind the surveillance mechanisms and the emotions and dispositions they are designed to engender— fear and addiction, respectively—to accomplish their objectives.
Logic of Control by David Spriggs
In Logic of Control, Vancouver-based British-Canadian artist David Spriggs creates a representation of the "Panopticon" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon), an ultra-efficient prison designed by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The artist uses transparent material as it is taken as an allusion to the values of openness and democracy in the field of state architecture. Within the Panopticon, a guard could keep an eye on every inmate from a central observation tower. The inmates could not see the guard or each other.
Spriggs explains on his website: "In many ways, this is the beginning of mass surveillance apparatuses and the idea that people will govern themselves strictly on the notion that their actions are being watched. Closed-circuit television (CCTV) and other contemporary surveillance cameras operate on the same principle as the Panopticon, the theory of imposed self-governance."
The second artist chosen, Marcus Mårtenson, concentrates on surveillance by tech corporations and social media platforms—Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, etc. He is inspired by the research conducted by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2018).
Mårtenson's painting Hot Trigger looks into the ways in which non-state giants with unimaginable magnitudes of power deliberately target our mental weaknesses (there are courses at Stanford, Mårtenson asserts, that teach this in strict detail), trap us into spending more and more time online so that we may input more and more data about ourselves (which could finally be sold to advertisers and presented back to us to manipulate our behaviour). The platforms numb us and make us slaves to likes and comments on the photos we post or the statuses we share. The refresh or replay button is purposefully rendered ever-accessible. One new thumbs-up or email, and the chemicals in our brains register it as a reward, and then, seek more rewards.
Hot Trigger exhibits other aspects of online initiatives—constant interruption and tracking, polarised opinions and simplistic views, the curated and only partially real self, too many options regarding potential mates—and Mårtenson arranges all of them as icons on a phone screen.
Hot Trigger by Marcus Mårtenson
Spriggs and Mårtenson invite us to ponder on various techniques of surveillance in practice today. They make clear the processes and philosophies and then, incite to us complete the narrative. In each case, we are made to ask: What are the consequences? What is the worst that could come out of this? What changes could be made to the mechanisms to make them more humane?
Both artists leave us with certain features to look out for, which can help us identify red flags, recognise the point where technology has been taken too far. For Spriggs it is "centralisation" and "transparency". For Mårtenson, it is "design" and "behavioural modification".
The questions that we might raise under each pointer (with respect to both state and non-state actors) are as follows:
Centralisation: Who has decision-making power? To what extent it is distributed or concentrated? Are separate companies being bought off by one giant conglomerate? Are local administration units increasingly losing identity before some inaccessible national locus of scrutiny / are individual countries being subsumed into some elusive supranational entity?
Transparency: How much information about ourselves can we hide – are allowed to hide? Is it necessary to share every single location we're at or every single interest? If a certain search engine stores our data, what are the alternatives available?
Design: Why are apps structured the way they are? If they exploit us, how can we outwit them and minimise their negative impact without abandoning them completely?
Behavioural modification: What kind of effects are platforms like Facebook or Instagram having on our thoughts, feelings and actions? How much time do we end up spending on them on an average when we open them? And how many times do we open them and for what exactly?
Surveillance has its merits. As Spriggs points out, the Panopticon philosophy is used in CCTVs—and we can all agree, they can help reduce crime or identify criminals. Location tracking, as displayed by Mårtenson, can be used to ensure safety and security, rescuing someone who has been lost or abducted or in the middle of a calamity. But the steps mentioned above, executed regularly, may enable us to resist the dangers of surveillance, if someday some technology behemoth ends up in the wrong hands.
Written by Tulika Bahadur.
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Professor X and Harry Potter will be getting to some seriously screwed up stuff this fall. A pair of Victor Frankenstein first look images reveal the not-so-good doctor (played by James McAvoy) and his sidekick Igor (played by Daniel Radcliffe), whose terrible creation threatens to destroy them both. See the first Victor Frankenstein images after the jump.
Empire unveiled the Victor Frankenstein first look. In case the clapperboards, wires, and crew members in modern jeans and hoodies didn't tip you off, these aren't stills but behind-the-scenes snaps.
Although Igor is a key element of the Frankenstein mythos, he never appears in Mary Shelley's original novel. Rather, he is an invention of the movie adaptations that came out in the 1930s. Or, within this particular narrative, of Dr. Frankenstein himself. "As much as the monster is his creation, Igor is his creation as well," McAvoy told Empire. "That was quite exciting. It's funny, the script, but also really dark, in a cool way.
But it's Igor who gets to tell his story in this rendition. The script by Max Landis (Chronicle) promises to delve into the faithful assistant's origins and his relationship with med student Victor Von Frankenstein. This Igor certainly doesn't look like the servile, hunchbacked Igors we've seen in films past, but it's probably safe to assume there are some bad times ahead for this troubled young man.
Victor Frankenstein has been in the works for a few years already. Originally Fox had it slated for fall 2014, then early 2015, and now it's set for October 2, 2015. Paul McGuigan (Sherlock) directs, and Jessica Brown Findlay, Andrew Scott, and Mark Gatiss also star.


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Elon Musk refused to break out his dad dancing after the Crew Dragon's successful safety test, but promised to bring it back after the spacecraft's launch
Funds buy into copper as trade war uncertainty lifts: Andy Home
Home » Personal Finance » The right way and wrong way to give your kids allowance
The right way and wrong way to give your kids allowance
Learning how to manage money is an important skill, and it's one that is best learned earlier rather than later. Giving your child an allowance is one way to start teaching them about budgeting and saving, but it's something that should be done with intention. Understanding the rationale behind giving a child an allowance and being purposeful with the process can help get your child's relationship with money started in a positive direction.
While many financial experts have different opinions on the particulars of giving your child an allowance, most do agree that it's a good idea. Receiving an allowance lets your children start to understand how money works and gives them a chance to learn and practice financial strategies for the future.
Neale Godfrey, a personal finance expert and author of more than two dozen financial books and lessons for kids, says that "kids need to learn the natural consequences of money and that the only way you get money is to earn it."
ALSO SEE: Parents giving up legal rights to their children to get more financial aid exposes deep flaws in U.S. college system
Tying an allowance to chores lets your children start to see how money is earned, and being there to coach them through the what to spend and what to save process gets them started on basic budgeting and money management.
Children don't necessarily deserve an allowance from their parents, but tying it to chores in some way lets you start teaching them about finances while avoiding a sense of entitlement. And studies have shown that using an allowance as a way to open the conversation about finances with your children can be helpful to them as teens and adults.
Dr. Lewis Mandell, a dean emeritus and professor of finance and managerial economics at State University in New York at Buffalo, notes that the 2001 National Jump$tart Survey of U.S. High School Seniors showed that children who were given money after completing chores growing up scored higher on a financial literacy exam than those who were given an allowance they didn't have to work for.
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However, Mandell notes that children who talked about money with their parents scored an average of 10% higher on the exam than those who never discussed finances with the parents. This could indicate that it's the conversations around the allowance and not so much the allowance itself that is most important.
Paying your children an allowance for household chores can be a way to let them start earning and dealing with money before they can go get jobs. However, it's important to set up a system where your child understands that money can be earned but doesn't expect to be paid for every single thing they do.
Godfrey advises parents to "set up two types of chores in your house: citizen-of-the-household chores and work-for-pay chores. Kids don't get paid for citizen-of-the-household chores. These are just meant to teach your kids to be good citizens of the house, and hopefully later of their communities…But you are the CEO of your household, so you decide what are citizen-of-the-household chores and what are work-for-pay chores."
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So in your house, you may decide that making beds, doing laundry and cleaning up after dinner are citizen-of-the-household chores while mowing the lawn, dusting and walking the dog are work-for-pay chores.
You can start giving your child an allowance as soon as they are able to understand the concept of exchanging money for goods. Even children as young as 4 or 5 can do age-appropriate chores to earn an allowance and be taught to divide earned money up according to saving and spending.
How you handle allowances can differ depending on the age of the children. Young children do well with visuals and can divide money (coins often give a better visual effect) into envelopes or clear jars so they can see it start to add up. Older children may be able to open a bank account with a parent to start gaining additional experience in balancing a checkbook, tracking spending and savings goals and learning how banks and other financial institutions work.
Godfrey suggests having children divide their money as follows:
So if you have a teenager getting an allowance of $10 a week, this would break down to $4 to charity and then $12 each to medium savings, long-term savings and fun money per month. It's also a good idea to have your children break money down like this when it comes to any non-allowance funds such as birthday checks from grandma or money from a summer job.
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No matter what work your children do for allowances or how you have them track and budget their money, getting this first look at personal finance when parents are still around to talk about issues and model good money behavior is important.
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Christmas is right around the corner, and if you're anything like us you're excited about the imminent excuse to eat, drink, be merry, and drink again. But in amongst the fun it's worth remembering that this can be kind of a wasteful time of year – when we consume more, we usually create more mess, too.
That's why we've put together this list of ways for you to have a more eco-friendly, sustainable Christmas this year. While still keeping all the fun parts. You'll find listings of all the brands mentioned at the bottom of the article.
Rather than spending time and resources on festive trinkets that will spend the rest of the year gathering dust, turn something you already have into Christmas decorations. Boozy leftovers work pretty well, whether it's empty bottles redecorated and turned into candle holders or old corks built into Christmas-themed ornaments. Check out the image above for some of our own handy-work.
If you want to give a more normal gift but with an eco-friendly twist, a zero-waste present is a great option. If the receiver likes cocktails – and who doesn't? – maybe try some stainless-steel straws. Other actively eco-friendly gift ideas are tote bags for shopping or natural shampoos and bathroom products. You can also go for the "experience" gift, like tickets to concerts or other performances and massage gift cards – Dragonfly is one of our favorites and has convenient locations throughout town. Those are a sure-fire way to somebody something special while doing zero harm to the environment.
You can also think about being eco-friendlier in the paper your gift comes in too. Seek out Baluchon, a Shanghai business that crafts handmade zero waste alternatives to plastic and paper wrapping. They deliver it to your door, too.
Upcycling is like recycling, but even cooler. It basically means turning old into something funky and new, giving it extra use and adding even more meaning to a potential gift. If you're creative, you can try your hand at making your own. If you're a little less ambitious, there are a number of great upcycling initiatives in Shanghai, whether they are second-hand retail stores like Pawnstar, or the UseDem project which turns used denim items into stylish backpacks.
Finding gifts for your loved ones that are produced locally rather than imported is a great way to lessen your Christmas carbon footprint. Lucky for you, Shanghai has a great deal of locally-made goodies to enjoy. A few right there on the BottlesXO app are sets of Chinese craft beer and local rockstar spirit makers Peddlers Gin.
If you're going for something a little less boozy, there are plenty of homegrown food and craft brands to dig into. One of our favorites is BERDNIK, crafters of handmade, one-of-a-kind, beautiful knitwear – it looks great, it's made right here, and it'll keep you warm! Alternatively, if it's for one of the men in your life, try Straight Up Razors, a Shanghai company making sustainable, handmade shave wear.
Turn off your Christmas lights! Seriously, we get that you're excited about Christmas, but they don't need to be on night and day.
All the indulgence and gift gifting around this time of year can lead to a lot of waste. Fortunately, there are few ways that you can cut down on your use of disposables over Christmas.
Here's one example. If you're hosting a Christmas potluck, don't revert to buying plastic cups and plates – ask diners to bring their own along. It's a small amount of effort for each individual person, but you'll save a whole lot of plastic and paper. For a little help, look up ESTILO, a sustainable event styling service that offers everything from wall settings to general set-up using nothing but reusable, recyclable, and eco-friendly materials.
Search 'Baluchon' on WeChat for their official account.
Search 'BERDNIK' on WeChat for their official account, where you can get more info and shop.
Visit www.dragonfly.net.cn to find your nearest location.
Find them on Facebook at @estiloshanghai or call 13816877130 for enquiries.
Available for delivery on the BottlesXO app. Visit www.peddlersgin.com for extra info.
Visit www.straightup-razors.com for more info.
Visit http://usedem.com/ for more info.
If you're in need of a boozy Christmas gift or just need some drinks delivered to your door this weekend, BottlesXO is the app for you. Click here to download and start ordering!
Did you know that you can invite your friends to BottlesXO with an RMB 50 voucher and get XO Points for yourself?
Simply invite them from the 'MY ACCOUNT' section of the BottlesXO app to get 1 XO Point for every invite and 3 XO Points every time somebody places an order.


Many insurers and reinsurers are facing some earnings volatility in 2018 due to a change in accounting requirements for equity securities, Fitch Ratings said in new market commentary.
According to Fitch, companies with significant equity investments are particularly affected in terms of reporting their net earnings.
Here's what created the volatility: A new requirement beginning Jan. 1, 2018 that companies recognize changes in the fair value of equity investments through their income statement. Before, companies could reflect the changes directly onto the balance sheet through accumulated other comprehensive income. As Fitch noted, gains and losses on equity investments were previously only recognized through the income statement when they were realized through a sale or impairment.


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Source: HGTV
Finally, an Explanation for Why Every Home Design on HGTV Is "Open Concept"
By Mustafa Gatollari
Jan. 8 2020, Updated 10:45 a.m. ET
You know you've finally transitioned towards the lame period of adulthood when you find yourself binge-watching HGTV. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I don't understand the appeal of watching a bunch of strangers with a budget of forty seven dollars try to get themselves a million-dollar home less than a mile from the ocean. Because I've seen enough HGTV shows to know about the finer details of the network. Like that they have a weird affinity towards open-concept homes.
It's a design choice I personally love, but only because my ideal living situation would be in a warehouse. And while different home renovation trends come and go throughout the years, the open concept has persisted on the network for years to the exclusion of all others. But why?
Male viewers, apparently.
Ronda Kaysen, a New York Times contributor stated in an interview with NPR that HGTV executives ran the numbers and apparently all of their research shows that male viewers are absolutely in love with open floor plans: "I spoke with HGTV executives. And the reason that they are so big on open concept is because it gets the male viewers. Like, guys like to watch sledgehammers and, like, taking out walls."
A post shared by Alistair Yeats (@allstar41) on Jan 7, 2020 at 9:00am PST
"It's for TV. It's not for, like, what's the best interests of the house, necessarily," Ronda added.
Yes, it has less to do with architectural tastes and more to do with "big man, big hammer, swing it," according to Ronda's interactions with HGTV executives: "Dudes will only watch HGTV if there's sledgehammers. This is how you get your boyfriend to sit with you on the couch and watch it if you get to watch Jonathan Scott, like, knock down a wall."
Understandably, a ton of people didn't believe it could be so simple, that there must be more to HGTV's decision to focus so much on open-concept homes, and a lot of their counterpoints made more sense than just, you know, guys like seeing walls knocked down with hammers.
Another possible reason: it's way easier for production crews to shoot in wide spaces. Finding a line of sight in an open-concept home is easier than one with a ton of dividing walls.
Then the debate stopped being over why HGTV loves open concept and more about whether open concepts are the best.
Taylor Lorenz, writer for NY Times, called open concepts a "scourge," which brought both cheers and jeers from Twitter users everywhere.
Other dudes weren't really buying the whole "manly things" angle, either. If that was the reason for the bias toward open floor plans, why not just have shows dedicated to the manliest of manly home renovation activities? And play metal music during those sections while people grill raw meat in the background and one guy praises another man's lawnmower and extols the literary prowess of Tom Clancy?
What do you think? Is HGTV's "male enlistment" strategy working? Or do you think there's a more practical reason as to why open concept homes seem to be all the rage?
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The Rookie season 3 episode 13 promo: Will Lucy Chen survive?
The Rookie May 9, 2021
What is it about The Rookie and almost-constantly throwing Lucy Chen in danger? We've seen this character kidnapped before and tonight, it feels like we're moments away from her being set on fire.
This upcoming episode (entitled "Triple Duty") looks to be one of the most action-packed ones we've seen all season. We know that Chen has been looking to get more and more into undercover work, but odds are that THIS is not exactly what she was expecting.
Now, we just need to cross our fingers that either 1) she finds a way to save herself or 2) someone else comes to help her. Could that someone be Bradford? We've been rooting for good things to come for these two for a little while now, but we're not 100% sure that it will be this season. Doesn't it seem like there are some other priorities right now? It absolutely feels that way.
What we do know about Bradford's story within this episode is that he's going to be doing just about everything in his power in order to deescalate a drug war with John Nolan's help. Judging from the promo below, trying to do this is not going to be easy. One of the larger stories of the season is going to play out before our eyes and honestly, we'd be shocked if everything is fully resolved by the time we get around to the end of tonight. "Triple Duty" is the last one before the finale, and that's where we think that just about EVERYTHING is going to hit the fan. We'd be shocked honestly if there isn't some sort of cliffhanger at the end of the season, since it only makes since that the writers would want to set the stage for a possible season 4.
Related – Be sure to get some more news on The Rookie right away, including other insight all about where the story goes from here
What do you most want to see when it comes to The Rookie season 3 episode 13?
Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! Once you do just that, remember to also come back around for some other news on the show.
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Paper lanterns are functional and decorative items made in several East Asian countries, including China, Japan and Korea. They are intended to serve as individual lamps, but it is possible to combine multiple lanterns to form garlands or chandeliers.
I love this lamp! I'm totally going to make it this weekend. And Bernie, I don't think this would be a fire hazard, since you're using a paper lantern as the base.


A good teaching aid, identifies all of the zones in the ear. Some specific points are indicated, however, most of the zones (Heart, Stomach, Shen Men, etc.) do not have the related red coloured points shown on the model. Includes point name and description book. Size 17cm.