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Interview: Beirut blast exposed a global system
Rima Majed
Rima Majed spoke to Nick Evans about the blast that devastated Beirut in the context of an existing political and economic crisis. Rima Majed is assistant professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut.
Damage caused by 4 August explosion, Beirut port. Photo: Mehr News Agency (CC BY 4.0)
rs21: Can you set the scene in Lebanon before the blast?
Rima Majed: Things were already changing very quickly in Lebanon in the past year. We have experienced a financial collapse, a revolution quickly met by repression and counter-revolution, and a global pandemic that came to impose its weight on the already depleted healthcare sector and precipitate the financial free fall. And now this blast that has physically affected more than half of the city of Beirut, but with social, political and economic repercussions that go way beyond the capital.
However, the roots of the present crisis go way back. Lebanon's political economy, since its inception a century ago, is based on a liberal economy and an unfettered capitalist system that mainly relies on the financial sector. The banking sector, dotted with highly attractive regulations such as banking secrecy and freedom of capital movement, has served as a haven for the oligarchy of the Arab region and has attracted huge capital throughout the various phases of the history of the region. The post-Civil War [1975-90] era in Lebanon was marked by the adoption of neoliberal policies, not necessarily in terms of rolling back the state, but rather in using the state for the benefit of a certain class and the reinforcement of the private sector. State employment was actually on the rise as sectarian leaders used the spoils of the state to entrench their leadership through clientelism, but government expenditure on infrastructure and on productive sectors decreased, while Social Security, which had already been limited before the Civil War, remained at a low level.
The neoliberalisation of the 1990s is best seen through the reconstruction projects led under the auspice of then Prime Minister Rafic Hariri (assassinated in 2005), and the efforts to privatise some of the most vital sectors of the state. Added to this was the lack of investment in the already few productive sectors in the country, whether agriculture or industry; and the systematic destruction and cooptation of labour unions. The Lebanese Lira (or Lebanese Pound) became pegged to the US dollar in 1997 at the fixed rate of 1507.5 to one dollar. This dollarised economy and the heavy reliance on imports, which account for more than 80% of the country's consumption, including basic needs such as fuel, wheat and medication, meant that the economy depended heavily on its dollar reserves. Around 13% of GDP came from remittances from the Lebanese diaspora, given that Lebanon's main export to the world is human beings. Almost every Lebanese is born to be exported.
However, the current financial collapse can be traced back more directly to the year 2016, when the central bank (the Banque du Liban) – under the leadership of its much celebrated governor Riad Salemeh (in post since 1993) – introduced financial engineering by offering unbelievably high interest rates in order to attract deposits. This was a failed attempt to address the drying up of the bank's US dollars reserve, a trend with many causes, including the drop in oil prices, the sanctions on some Lebanese banks, and the drop in remittances. Instead of starting to plan serious structural changes in the system, they were only digging deeper. Depositors' money was used to maintain the dollar peg, provide loans to the state, and pay the huge dividends to the local bankers who form the main creditors to the state. The money that people have put in the banks has thus evaporated; or rather, it has been stolen by the oligarchs that form today's mafia regime. Lebanon has a huge debt, $100 billion, but most of this is held internally, by Lebanese banks. At a time when depositors are unable to access their funds in the bank and to withdraw any of their US dollars money, a handful of bankers and politicians managed to smuggle more than 6 billion USD outside the country between October 2019 and December 2019; a clear operation of theft. It is in this context – financial crisis, widespread social tension that exploded during the October revolution, and the global pandemic – that the 4 August blast happened.
The October 2019 uprising was a social explosion, resulting from increased austerity and social pauperisation. This was qualitatively very different from previous mobilisations, and we've seen many waves since 2005. That was specifically because of the class composition of the mobilisation, at least at the very beginning, and its scope across the various regions in the country. The revolution started with the initial mobilisation of the poorer sections of society in Beirut following the government's decision to impose a tax on WhatsApp calls. They started by blocking the main roads in the capital by burning tyres. This quickly spread to other regions, culminating in the evening with the complete shutting-down of the country. This was the start of a revolutionary movement that quickly gained traction and attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets. Although the uprising clearly started because of the difficult economic conditions and the financial collapse that had started to be felt since summer 2019, the banking sector used the road blockades and mobilisations as an excuse to close its doors. For the first time in the history of the banking sector in Lebanon, the banks were closed for ten days. This had not happened during the Civil War, this did not happen during the July war with Israel in 2006. Even in the worst security conditions, banks have always opened. The closure precipitated the collapse, and was used as a turning point to impose illegal capital controls.
Then things started to free-fall from there. The currency peg was no longer in place, and the currency started to devalue very quickly; people have lost almost 80% of their purchasing power. The social implications of that are huge. It means salaries are now almost worthless since most people are paid in Lebanese pounds, but it also means that with a lack of dollar reserves, importing our basic needs has become a major issue. We soon feared shortages of fuel, wheat, and medical supplies. People were laid off en masse. Lebanon was already a country with a high rate of unemployment and it became even worse. World Bank estimates suggest that more than 50% of the Lebanese population already lives under the poverty line and that was back in January, so now we expect this to be higher. This is a society where the majority of people have no jobs and no income and rely on aid or charity, or remittances from a family member that lives abroad.
It's in this context that the Covid-19 pandemic started. By this time, the counter-revolution was already at a high point. The counter-revolution was there from the very beginning, but it intensified with the formation of the technocratic government in January 2020. The aspects of the police state were becoming clearer. With the beginning of the pandemic, they immediately declared a lockdown and one of the first things they did was to evacuate all the squares where the protests were taking place, and to take down the tents which was where the protests had been taking place for months. So they removed the physical presence of the revolution.
Then the currency devaluation deepened, more and more people were losing jobs, people had no access to basic needs. On top of that, we had longer hours of electricity outage and no access to clean water. In Beirut, we sometimes had around three hours of electricity a day, and people had no money to pay for generators. Everyday life became very difficult. Again, it is not like we had 24 hours of electricity before, but it just became so much worse, and people who had been able to afford a generator were no longer able to. So we thought we had already seen it all. Bailout talks with the IMF failed. The IMF was a horrible option, but the IMF talks failed not because the Lebanese politicians and negotiators were against neoliberalism, but because they did not want any kind of supervision or accountability. With the failure of the IMF talks and the unwillingness of the ruling mafia to seriously deal with the crisis, the prospects of a way out were becoming dimmer.
So the whole world had left Lebanon and its residents to face this double catastrophe on their own: the financial collapse, and the ruling mafia that caused it. Here we're not just talking about the Lebanese but also the refugee population. This is a country with 1.5 million Syrian refugees, half a million Palestinian refugees, and a quarter of a million domestic workers from South Asian countries and African countries. All of these countries have been very, very deeply affected as a consequence. We know about the horrible kafala system, but these people were paid in dollars, and were working for a minimum salary that they could send back home, and now they don't have dollars any more, and in many cases they're not being paid at all. So the social implications of such an economic crisis are huge at so many different levels.
And then came the explosion. People were already expecting the only way out of the economic crisis would be a security crisis. There was already talk about the possibility of civil war or an Israeli strike: in the two months before the explosion, Israeli drones were heard every night in Beirut, in the south and in the mountains. But I don't think anyone expected something on the scale of this explosion.
rs21: Can you tell us about the immediate impact of the explosion and what it exposed?
RM: When the explosion that killed Hariri happened in 2005, I was around the same area where I was this time, in the Hamra district. The assassination took place in a street not too far from the port where the explosion happened this time. I remember that it felt so huge back then, and that glass fell from some buildings around us. But that was nothing compared to what we experienced on 4 August 2020. I thought that I had already experienced a huge explosion in 2005, but the scale of this was really like a nuclear bomb. The earth literally shook under our feet and within a split second, glass was shattered from every building, people were covered in blood instantly, and rubble had blocked most streets. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. Hospitals were heavily damaged too and most of them were already at capacity within minutes after the explosion.
The scenes on that day were really horrific, and it exposed the weakness of the system. There was no kind of security or protection. There was no guidance, we didn't know what to do, we didn't understand what had happened and everyone initially thought it was an explosion concentrated in their area, given the immensity of the damage. But then we realised that the whole city was destroyed, and part of our lives was destroyed with it. It was just insulting that the first news we got, the first official news, was that it was fireworks that had exploded. The amount of blood and the number of people we'd seen seriously injured: we knew it could not be fireworks. The immediate damage the explosion left on the city and its inhabitants is of an unprecedented scale. More than 200 people killed, around 50 still missing, more than 7,000 injured, and more than 300,000 displaced. If anything, the explosion not only exposed a system that is incapable of protecting people, residents, or citizens; but also a system that is murderous and directly responsible for what happened. Everyone felt that we were really left to each other.
The immediate response of people in the aftermath of the explosion was to take things into their own hands. This is something that is recurrent in Lebanon. The expectation is that 'the state is absent' – even though it becomes very present when it needs to repress protesters or arrest activists. Many individuals feel the need to fill this gap through volunteering and not waiting for the state to step in. But this so-called 'resilience' is also one of the problems: 'resilience' is also about agreeing to move on without justice, and it's about accepting that you don't have a state to hold accountable even though you still pay taxes, you still are subjected to state laws, and you still are repressed by the state's security apparatus. So much anger was channelled into this rhetoric of resilience, people took to the streets with their brooms and shovels, and felt that this was their 'revolutionary' contribution.
Personally, this just made me more angry. I could not understand why we needed to very quickly make things look good to the outside world. Why did we need to clean the streets when the government has used our tax money to pay a private company to clean the streets of Beirut? Why did we have to invade people's houses without their consent, thinking that we were helping them? And on top of it all, why did we have to put our lives at risk again, when we still did not know which buildings were structurally damaged and at risk of falling down? I mean, just leave it, this is what we lived through. Solidarity was already loud and clear in all the acts of help that friends and family have offered, and it was important not to leave anyone behind and residents of the most badly hit neighbourhood already knew each other and were helping each other. But we didn't need the cameras and the boasting about aid and humanitarian relief. We needed space for silence and recollection after we had been deafened by the detonation of that explosion. We needed to mourn, to safely collect our pieces, our houses, our lives, and our memories. Solidarity and support were surely a priority, but there was no need to embellish the disgustingly ugly truth of what had happened to us.
The first thing that the state did after the explosion was to announce a state of emergency, first in Beirut and then nationally. In practice, this meant giving power to the army. The first mobilisations that happened after the explosion were repressed with unbelievable violence: live ammunition, rubber bullets, and tear gas. Where did they get all this tear gas from? What is interesting is that the tear gas is actually from France. So just a few days after Macron visited and told us how concerned he was for the Lebanese people, we were being attacked by the state with the very tools of repression that the French sold them. The injuries on that day were very serious. A committee of doctors held a press conference saying that the injuries that they had seen after the protests were unacceptable under international law.
Although Lebanon is often presented as a democracy (albeit a 'consociational' one), this is clearly quickly unravelling, with the regime's authoritarian aspects that are becoming more and more entrenched by the day. We have seen the effect of this in that mobilisations in the streets have almost disappeared, and people are scared, and rightly so. It is scary. In the shock of the explosion, the first things we heard from people like [Secretary General of Hezbollah] Hassan Nasrallah or the president of the republic were on the dangers of cursing or insulting politicians. After bombing us with 2,700 tonnes of chemicals, their priority is that we don't curse them. And the discourse threatening the return of the civil war is also on the rise, which indicates that these parties are getting ready for it if needed, since a civil war is not simply the result of social or political strife, but rather a decision that requires armament and funding: only those who can mobilise that can take us into a civil war. There is no such thing as 'sliding' into a war; it is a decision.
The explosion also exposed the question of housing. A lot of neighbourhoods around the city have been destroyed. A lot of talk started very early on about reconstruction. It's the same lingo that was used after the Civil War. We've seen what 'reconstruction' has done to the city with Solidere. [Société libanaise pour le développement et la reconstruction de Beyrouth, a private real estate company that carried out the neoliberal reconstruction of Downtown Beirut after the Civil War.] I don't think that what we need to do now is reconstruction. Of course, some buildings will need to be rebuilt and demolished, but in most cases it's about rehabitation: it's about renovating buildings to make them liveable. And it is about giving priority to the most vulnerable populations and the poorer neighbourhoods. The focus so far has been especially centred on the neighbourhoods that were already gentrified and where prices were increasing. The neighbourhoods that are poor or that have migrant or refugee populations were overlooked in the first few days. Aid did not arrive there initially, and it was the social solidarity of inhabitants of these neighbourhoods that helped with the first response after the explosion.
Politics of aid
Then you have the politics of aid. We see how political parties have already started to meddle with that process: they've divided the neighbourhoods, and it's the usual clientelism, the networks of who gets aid and who doesn't. There's also the danger of the rising xenophobic discourse against Syrian refugees and Palestinian refugees or migrant workers. 'Progressive' urban planners are starting to talk about the importance of listening to what people want in reconstructing their neighbourhoods, but there's also a danger here. People are complaining about why the aid is going to the Syrians and not to them, and why the domestic workers are taking the food boxes. So it's also dangerous just to say we want to listen to what people want without starting off from the standpoint that the more vulnerable populations are to be protected first.
Of course, for Syrian refugees it's a double explosion – these are people who moved a few years ago and tried to settle in a context that was already very tough. Now everybody wants to leave, everybody who can of course. So there will be the question of who is able to leave, who has another passport, who can find a job abroad, who is able to apply for asylum, and those who will stay are those who are unable to leave. We seem to be witnessing what I would call an 'exodus' already. Most of the youth are applying to leave, mostly to Canada. Again, this will also have huge social implications.
Of course, the explosion has also exposed the corruption of the regime. But it's not just corruption, it's also what this global system is. Of course, there is a huge problem with corruption and negligence: these explosives were stored in the port for six years. But it's not an insignificant detail that when the judges were contacted about that, they were trying to do a business deal, and the explosives stayed put because they couldn't agree on that deal. So it's also the horrific outcome of what capitalism can do. It is profit over human lives, it exposed how disposable we can all be in the face of capital accumulation. And then all of these crises are left for individuals to deal with alone: there are no unemployment benefits, there is no universal healthcare, incomes have lost their purchasing powers, so how do you survive?
rs21: You mentioned the hypocrisy of Macron presenting himself as the saviour of Lebanon, while France sells the state tear gas to repress its people. Can you speak more about the role played by France and the rest of the 'international community'?
RM: It's unfortunate that Macron was received by a considerable section of Lebanese society as a saviour. In the first hours people really needed to feel that someone was in charge, someone was going to take care of things, and it was absent. So when Macron appeared, he appeared as the only one who cares. But of course it was also very naïve: there were some people even calling for the French mandate to be back, and signing a petition for that! [Syria and Lebanon were under French imperial control – 'The Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon' – from 1922-43.] Of course, Macron was here not because he loves us: it's clear that this is part of a bigger geopolitical struggle in the region.
The whole approach of Macron's visit to Lebanon was very colonial. He went to the official residence of the French ambassador, known as Residence des Pins, and but called on the Lebanese politicians (or criminals) to come meet with him there. He gave them a deadline: on 1 September he's returning to Lebanon. Despite the performative solidarity with the people, it was clear that Macron was trying to save the Lebanese ruling class, and he was just here to 'discipline' them. It's clear that the imperialist powers don't want to remove this class, they just want this class to behave better. Macron called for a few reforms: he was very keen on electricity, and it's important to know that electricity was in the hands of the French before it became the Électricité́ du Liban. And they said if you do the reforms we are asking for, we will give you the money of the Cedre conference [the gathering of investors in Paris in 2018 which raised $11 billion for investment in Lebanon, conditional upon economic reforms and supervision by institutions like the World Bank and EU].
The international involvement in Lebanon quickly escalated from France to everyone in the world. Trump was quickly also involved and the FBI is now going to be part of the investigation. The British navy is on the Lebanese shore, the French and the Americans are here. The Iranians are also positioning themselves in this disaster. The Russians are playing a big role that is not covered enough in the media. Ignoring the role of Russia in the region doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Lebanon has two borders: Syria, that is controlled now by Russia (and Iran), and Israel. Everyone jumped on the international conference for Lebanon, and then we saw a few days later the peace agreement between Israel and the UAE. Expectations are that other Arab countries will also follow in signing peace agreements with Israel. It's clear that there are huge geopolitical shifts happening in the region. We don't know exactly yet what's happening on those negotiation tables but it's clear that something big is being cooked.
The movement in Lebanon
Compared with the hopes of October and the belief in the power of collective agency, it now feels that the scale of what we are faced with is so huge. How do you deal with the navy on your shore? With the soldiers from around the world in Beirut? What do you do with all of this military presence? It has become very, very difficult to deal with all of these different layers. In October, we all became economic experts, we investigated the financial system, and we felt we understood the system and we could start to dismantle it. And then there was the pandemic, and we all became medical doctors, and had to decide how to deal with it: is it safe to mobilise? How does the virus travel? What are the risks? Who are the most vulnerable? etc. And now we have become experts in explosives and have to confront this whole geopolitical scene…
So it's a very complex situation. The makeup of the opposition in Lebanon is also complex and is also very divided, especially among the left. I'm not calling for unity between reactionary movements and radical revolutionary movements, but even within the left, it is very divided. We need the tools to analyse the moment, and this is what we lack. I'm not talking about Realpolitik, but about revolutionary tactics. What is the priority now, how do you move, how do you organise? For many, there is still a rejection of organisation. It's the typical new social movements paradigm – and there was also initially a rejection of politics, a notion that what we are mobilising against is corruption, and it stops there. This is also the result of 30 years of neoliberalism, 30 years of political stagnation, and 30 years of doing things in a certain way.
There are some groups that are trying to come up with an alternative government, but I don't think this is what we need. We need to acknowledge that the reality is that most power lies outside state institutions in Lebanon. This is why electoral politics, the calls for early elections, can be very dangerous. Early elections will probably just reproduce the same class. But let's say that we win all the seats and we take the parliament. We still won't be able to do anything because this is a mafia system, where armies and militias from the Civil War are outside the realm of the state. Clientelism is not just about giving you a job or paying your tuition, it's also about security. These militias follow us to our houses, they threaten us in our neighbourhoods. This is why I say it's not a democracy. So no, early elections are not a good option for us. We need power that comes from below and for that we need to organise.
New tactics
But it's not like we can't do anything. We should be pushing for doing things radically differently. For example, after the explosion, we have a housing crisis. 300,000 people have lost their houses. Instead of talking about reconstruction and donations to pay for rent, and for people to be relocated to other neighbourhoods, why don't we just start a squatters' movement? There are so many empty housing units around Beirut that are owned by the bankers and the politicians. They keep them empty on purpose. Why don't we just break in and take them? Maybe there is this little window while these leaders are so busy with the geopolitical scene.
So it's about changing the tools completely, it's about occupying the spaces we want. Instead of saying there's no state, so we will go and remove the rubble and clean the street, I'd be going and getting our public housing as a right. I don't see that we're there yet, but I think that these are options and these are ways that might become the only options forward because it's becoming very, very difficult to survive.
We also need to think about uneven development. The whole country relies on the port of Beirut. Virtually all exports and imports are through the Beirut port. Now they're trying to operate in the port at maybe 10% of operations, and they're trying to operate through the Tripoli port. But why don't we have these other ports in other places? Why don't we have public transportation? For example, if you develop the port in Tripoli and you put in place a good public transportation scheme it can solve a big problem for many people.
So we need to start thinking about those alternatives. People say we don't want to make the same mistake as Solidere, so we will reconstruct, with those developers, but we will ask them to be a bit more careful. No: we don't want that. We need to ask those big questions of 'reconstruction for whom', and 'at the expense of whom'? As long as we don't ask those questions, we're not getting anywhere, we're just reproducing the same thing.
Class transformations
There's also something that I think is important for a leftist audience. In the past year, there have been huge class transformations – very, very fast. A new class of people are paid in 'fresh dollars', and this is mainly NGOs or international organisations. The people who have dollars are the new rich, and people who are paid in Lebanese pounds have become the new poor given the huge deterioration in the currency's purchasing power. And there are the people with their money stuck in the bank. Locally we call these deposits 'lollars', because they are dollars that are no longer US dollars but some version of Lebanese dollars stuck in Lebanese banks. I'm not talking about the top bankers who have already got their money out of the country, but the rest of society.
There is this huge transformation and this is where we see that those who are paid in dollars are now jumping to buy property in the areas that were hit by the explosion, or in other areas, because real estate has become more affordable for them. This is also shifting a lot of things. I think it's very important to keep an eye on what is happening in terms of the emergence of a new class in the city.
rs21: In the autumn, you talked about learning the lessons from the revolution in Sudan, and talked about tentative beginnings of new forms of labour organisation. Has anything come of this, and how is this affected by the class transformations you are describing?
RM: There is organising happening but it's very, very difficult. For example, as university professors, we are organising. The American University of Beirut, for example, is the biggest employer in the country. They laid off 800 employees in one go. It's difficult to organise – I don't have to tell you that university professors are not the most revolutionary class. But we are trying and we have already managed to pressure, it is still limited but we hope it will grow. It also exposed how weak our organisational structures were and how the idea of 'striking' has become so alien to most workers and employees.
A labour movement needs people to believe in organising collectively. This coming year I think we will see more of those efforts materialising but the economic crisis is also a double-edged sword. It would make sense that people need to organise because that is the only way to protect themselves, but also there is this logic that even if they pay me half a salary, at least I still get a salary. Employers use the same old tactics of harassment, threats and intimidation. This is why I think that labour organisation is very important because this is what the system is.
So these are crucial fights. It's difficult to organise but we need to keep trying. I think organising labour in this country is also about organising the unemployed because they are the majority now. This is why we use every platform that we are given to talk about how important it is to organise, and how important it is not to buy this discourse that we don't have a state, so we carry on alone. I know that the state is a problematic entity in itself, but with the scale of the disasters we are going through, we can't deal with them individually or in small groups.
rs21: What kinds of international solidarity are most useful? And how do we make it sustained?
RM: We've been seeing a lot of solidarity, and it's been really heart-warming. The first response is always aid and donations. This is needed – but it's also complicated in terms of who gets this aid, and where it goes.
But beyond this humanitarian response, there is a political role to be played. What is happening in Lebanon, what is happening in Belarus, what is happening around the world is not disconnected. I think that a political movement in Britain can benefit us more than the donations. In that sense, it's about pressuring your government into not doing what they're actually doing now, which is coming here to save the oligarchs and the ruling class of this country. All this comes at a time when there is a revolution that had really cornered them a few months ago: they saved them back then, and now they're saving them again. You also need to challenge this lingo about how Lebanon needs a consociational 'democracy', because sects need to be managed this way. They actually never listen to us, because we've been saying this is not what we need for a very long time.
You can also ask them to freeze the accounts of Lebanese bankers and oligarchs who have actually stolen the money, and smuggled it out, after the revolution, illegally. It is sitting in bank accounts in Europe and the US. There are properties as well. Marwan Kheireddine, who is one of the biggest bankers in Lebanon, has just bought a flat in New York worth $10m at a time when we can't get $50 out of our bank accounts – so where did he get that money from?
I know that these are little tactics here and there, but it can help those of us who are fighting here. This will also feed into a broader struggle against capitalism, and how capital accumulation happens on this planet, because it's all related. It is related, what the bankers in Lebanon have done, to what is happening elsewhere and it's about drawing the links between our struggles. At this point, it's about creating conditions where our struggle against capitalism can become what we want it to be.
When Macron and the others arrived, all of our local politicians became puppets, they all had meetings in embassies and they were given guidance by the imperial (regional or global) powers. At the same time they're giving cover to the ruling class, not to the people. As progressives, we need to stand in solidarity with each other, the same way as they are standing in solidarity with each other. They all came together and sat together and had supper, and are now cooking something (probably poisonous) for us. So this is what we need: we need political solidarity.
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Stationary Mixers are a powerful and economic unit driven by three-phase electric motors. They required additional equipment for distributing feed. They range in size from 200kg to 3 tonne mixers.
The method both mixers use is that the two augers pull product from the sides into the centre at the same time. It augers up to the top of the mixer. Once it reaches the top it folds back and runs all the way back to the bottom where the process starts.


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Oromia Speaks
Article from Oromia Speaks Vol. 10 Issue 1
The Oromo People's National Struggle for Freedom is Not Against the Rights of Any Other People
Like the Oromo people, several other peoples in the empire state of Ethiopia have been under the yoke of Abyssinian colonialism since the creation of that empire in its present form. With ideological and material support of its allies, the Abyssinian regime conquered the southern peoples one after another, targeting one nation at a time. This sequential conquer helped them to re-enforce their colonial army with the resources and manpower of the already conquered people in their subsequent attacks on the remaining southern nations. This shows that the defeat of one people have facilitated the defeat of the rest of the southern people. In this regard, with its vast human and natural wealth, the occupation of Oromia had created a perfect opportunity for colonial army and opened a door for the occupation of the remaining southern nations. Such type of divide and attack strategy was a standard tactic used by all colonial powers, and as such, was not a unique Abyssinian tactic
After southerners were all conquered in such a way, our fate has been one and the same. The magnitude and type of colonial segregation the Oromos have experienced are very similar with the ones used on Somalis, Afars, Gedi'os, Gambelas and Bani-shanguls. We are all equally looted, brutally massacred, denied our human and democratic rights and all together are reduced to a secondary citizen. All these facts demonstrate that we southerners are linked by history and fate. Our common misfortune calls for our joint action to reverse it. We are colonized together and therefore we must be liberated together. This is the firm belief of the OLF and the Oromo people.
The truth being this, successive Abyssinian colonial regimes have been trying everything in their capacities to bury this fact. They did everything they could to apply the old colonial game of divide and rule and sow the seed of permanent animosity between the colonized peoples in the south. They designed several tactics that induce conflicts between colonized peoples. In places where they were successful, they have inflicted countless bloodsheds between neighbouring peoples. They did so between Oromos and Somalis, Oromos and Afars, Oromos and Isas, Oromos and Gedi'os etc. Their fear is obvious, if the oppressed nations unite, their joint action will crash their colonial regime in no time. More than the oppressed, the oppressors know the might of the united oppressed people. To eliminate that potential the oppressors have left no stone unturned.
As a apart of this general picture, the wayane have recently embarked on another wave of campaign of blackmailing the Oromo national movement. The effort is to turn other peoples, residing in Oromia, against the just cause of Oromos. They are disseminating a baseless fabricated cheap propaganda campaign telling the people that: if Oromos get to power they will swallow you, will expel you from Oromia etc. The fact that the current Tigray regime and the old Amara regime have both used the same propaganda shows that they are all the same when it comes to the Oromo question. They all know what they did to the Oromo people and so that they all fear from the Oromo people and its just cause. They want to depict its struggle as a monster to deny it any sympathy and support.
However, the aim of the Oromo struggle is very far from what they think. The aim of the Oromo struggle led by the OLF is only to gain back our country that was taken away from us by force. It is not, in any way, against the rights of any other people. The OLF believes that the Oromo people win the right to self-determination and open up a venue for other peoples to achieve the same rights. After winning the right to self-determination, the Oromo people will live side by side with its neighbours in peace, equality and respect. The OLF believes that peace and security in the region is possible only when oppressions of any sort are eliminated and peoples live together through mutual understanding, equality and respect for each other's rights. The fact of the matter being this, we believe that baseless propaganda blown by the Wayane regime to divide us should not get the ears of the oppressed peoples. We are colonized together and thus we must be liberated together. Therefore, to defeat their cheap disinformation we must act together.
OLF USA Office
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Michael Pospishil
Surveying (Colonial)
By Arthur Murphy on May 18, 2016, 6:29pm in Boundaries, Colonial Philadelphia, Economic Development, Essays, Geography, Greater Philadelphia, Michael Pospishil, Northeast Philadelphia, Philadelphia and the World
[caption id="attachment_21635" align="aligncenter" width="575"] Produced by Pennsylvania's first surveyor-general, Thomas Holme, A Map of ye Improved Part of Pensilvania in America is one of the first two maps created of Pennsylvania. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)[/caption]
Land was the most valuable commodity in the Delaware Valley during the colonial period, and it had to be surveyed before it could be granted or transferred. In Pennsylvania, William Penn (1644–1718) relied upon surveyors to measure and map his new lands. Colonial surveyors established tract, manor, township, and county boundaries, laid out city streets and lots, determined borders between Pennsylvania and neighboring provinces, located the likeliest routes for roads connecting the hinterland, and established inland navigation routes and mill sites. West Jersey's proprietors similarly relied on surveyors. Employing techniques and instruments developed in England, Ireland, and Scotland during the great enclosure movement, colonial surveyors imposed European notions of order on the Delaware Valley.
In both Pennsylvania and West Jersey, the authority to produce official surveys rested with the appointed surveyor-general, a prestigious and influential post that included a seat on the Provincial Council. Thomas Holme (1624–95), Pennsylvania's first surveyor-general, arrived from England in 1682 as part of a commission of four who sited and surveyed Philadelphia ahead of William Penn's arrival. Holme produced the first two maps in Pennsylvania, A Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia in the Province of Pennsylvania in America (1682) and A Map of the Improved Part of the Province of Pennsilvania in America (1687). Pennsylvania's modern boundaries were not officially fully surveyed until 1792. The extent of the work performed in the interim can be gauged by comparing Holme's maps with that of Reading Howell (1743–1827), A Map of the State of Pennsylvania (1792), which represented the culmination of eleven decades of painstaking surveys performed by hundreds of men, occasionally under adverse physical and social conditions.
[caption id="attachment_21637" align="alignright" width="300"] The Reading Howell Map of Pennsylvania, created in 1792, was the culmination of over a century of surveying. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)[/caption]
Every land patent in the greater Delaware Valley was contingent on an official survey return. When the provincial land-granting apparatus issued a parcel of land to a developer it also issued a concomitant "warrant to survey," which directed the surveyor-general to survey and lay out the tract. The surveyor-general then deputized one of an estimated one hundred and fifty surveyors active throughout the Delaware Valley during the colonial period to perform the work. Beginning in 1700 and mirroring bureaucratic trends throughout the mid-Atlantic colonies, deputies working in Pennsylvania were required to post a bond and take an oath of office as a guarantee of their skill and honesty. With the survey return in hand, the surveyor-general checked the work for accuracy and attempted to ensure the new patent did not conflict with existing property claims. In theory, Delaware Valley surveyors were a tightly controlled cohort, but the practice of performing unofficial surveys on behalf of unpatented property holders by undeputized surveyors became increasingly common by the last years of the colonial period.
Surveying was a respected skill in colonial society, and surveyors served as vital links between local communities and the provincial government. Surveying was a seasonal task and a skill that contributed to the livelihood of men who were also farmers, millers, craftsmen, or petty regional bureaucrats. Delaware Valley surveyors drew on English methods and learned as apprentices under fathers or uncles or were taught by private instructors. After 1755, the College of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) also taught surveying theory. Many surveyors were self-taught, despite the range of skills required. Two of the most trusted manuals used by local surveyors were Geodaesia: or the Art of Surveying and Measuring of Land Made Easie (twelve editions; 1688–1793) by John Love and The Practical Surveyor, or the Art of Land Measuring Made Easy (five editions through 1764) by Samuel Wyld.
Surveying required knowledge of basic geometry, and surveyors learned to see land as a linear jigsaw puzzle. When preparing a survey return, they constructed perpendiculars, proportionally divided lines, and reduced irregular polygons into triangles. These skills, coupled with basic arithmetic, allowed them to adjust field measurements to account for the curvature of the earth, calculate the area of irregular shapes and ovals, discover elevation, divide a piece of land several ways, and scale surveys to fit a map. Elite surveyors such as Andrew Ellicott (1754–1820), who worked on Pennsylvania's boundary surveys, paired these skills with observations of the stars to find a meridian line, calculate latitude, and find the altitude and zenith of any star in the sky.
[caption id="attachment_21636" align="alignright" width="300"] Surveyors used a device called a theodolite (such as in this nineteenth century photograph) to measure horizontal and vertical angles by measuring the angle between magnetic north (or another bearing of the surveyor's choosing) and a fixed point in the landscape. (Library of Congress)[/caption]
Before 1750, there were few local instrument makers, and surveyors relied on English manufacturers for their tools, which included the magnetic compass, circumferentor, theodolite, Gunter's chain, level, and plane table. A competent surveyor maintained and repaired his instruments as needed, however, inaccurate compasses and damaged or stretched chains remained a common source of error throughout the colonial period. The most important drafting instruments were the protractor, plain and diagonal scales, and the trigonometric table. The surveyor-general checked all his deputies' work for accuracy and took half the surveying fee. With the remainder, the deputy paid himself and his crew, which could be as large as a half-dozen men on extensive surveys. Surveyors did not get rich surveying; over the course of a summer season a busy surveyor made about one-tenth the annual income of a successful lawyer. However, they did command invaluable intelligence about frontier landscapes, an asset that several prominent deputies were able to parlay into social status.
Despite their important role in colonial society, Delaware Valley surveyors were routinely unable or unwilling to meet the exacting or unethical expectations of their patrons. Colonists demonstrated a willingness to forge survey warrants, bribe chain carriers and surveyors, and issue death threats in order to acquire, protect, or enlarge their claims to patented land. When in the field, surveyors also faced unpredictable weather, hostile Natives, recalcitrant squatters, and technical difficulties as routine challenges in the production of accurate survey returns.
While the Delaware Valley did not witness unrest on the scale of the land riots in New York or East Jersey, conflict was common in the Susquehanna Valley and many boundaries between adjacent tracts and provinces were left unresolved. Conflicting land titles issued from competing sovereigns were a recurring source of social unrest throughout the mid-Atlantic during the colonial period. In the lower Susquehanna, Cresap's War broke out in the 1730s along Pennsylvania and Maryland's disputed border. The inability of colonial surveyors to accurately survey long meridian lines led Thomas Penn (1702–75) and Lord Baltimore (1731–71) to turn to the London Board of Trade to settle the contested boundary between their colonies. The board turned to the Royal Philosophical Society, which appointed leading English surveyors Charles Mason (1728–86) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733–79), who successfully surveyed what became known as the Mason-Dixon Line. Elsewhere, along the North Branch of the Susquehanna, Yankees claiming title under Connecticut's charter organized as the Susquehanna Company in the 1760s and violently competed with Pennsylvania settlers for choice bottomlands.
[caption id="attachment_21609" align="alignright" width="222"] David Rittenhouse, depicted here in a portrait by Charles Willson Peale, was an astronomer, inventor, surveyor, and government official. As a surveyor he helped to definitively establish the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland by completing the survey of the Mason-Dixon Line in 1784. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)[/caption]
In terms of technique, the magnetic variation from true north posed the greatest challenge to colonial surveyors. Compass needles pointed to magnetic north, a target that moved substantially during the colonial period and at times and places differed from true north by as much as eight degrees. New Jersey surveyor-general James Alexander (1691–1756) identified the problem and its potential to lead to disputes and social unrest as early as the 1740s. During the late colonial period, surveyors practiced several unreliable or difficult schemes to find true north. Under the leadership of David Rittenhouse (1732–96), the American Philosophical Society led the effort to devise a practical method of discovery, which led to the development of the Vernier compass in the early 1780s. Andrew Ellicott worked closely with Rittenhouse on several surveys, including of the commonwealth's northern and western boundaries, and his experience made him a national authority on finding true north. He shared his expertise by publishing Several Methods by which Meridional Lines may be found with Ease and Accuracy (1796).
Many of the social and technical challenges that perturbed the Delaware Valley's colonial surveyors were removed by 1800. The Native American frontier moved into central and western Pennsylvania, where enormous tracts were laid out using the new grid system pioneered by the federal land survey. New techniques and the larger scale of surveys marked the early national period as a new era in the history of surveying. But these new methods built upon the work of the Delaware Valley's colonial surveyors, who, working in the midst of a deeply contested landscape and without a reliable method of determining a standard reference point, inscribed a European sense of order into the land.
Michael Pospishil is a Ph.D. candidate in the Hagley Program of Capitalism, Technology, and Culture at the University of Delaware. His dissertation explores the role of mid-Atlantic surveyors in cultivating a sense of order during and after the American Revolution.


An international, multicentre, double-blind clinical trial with 672 participants, demonstrated the accuracy of the same algorithm in the smartphone camera application Preventicus Heartbeats.
The AF detection algorithm available in the smartphone camera application ("Preventicus Heartbeats"= has been tested in the DETECT AF PRO trial (ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02949180); a prospective, double-blinded, international multicenter study with 672 participants. Total accuracy of the smartphone camera application to detect AF was 96.5% with a positive predictive value of 99.3% compared to the ECG based diagnosis of two cardiologists by mutual agreement.


text:
Gongju (hangul: 공주시; hanja: 公州市) är en stad i provinsen Södra Chungcheong i Sydkorea. Invånarantalet var  i slutet av 2020, varav  bodde i själva centralorten.

Administrativ indelning
Centralorten är indelad i sex stadsdelar (dong):
Geumhak-dong,
Junghak-dong,
Ongnyong-dong,
Singwan-dong,
Ungjin-dong och
Wolsong-dong.

Resten av kommunen består av en köping (eup) och nio socknar (myeon):
Banpo-myeon,
Gyeryong-myeon,
Iin-myeon,
Jeongan-myeon,
Sagok-myeon,
Sinpung-myeon,
Tancheon-myeon,
Uidang-myeon,
Useong-myeon och
Yugu-eup.

Sejong
År 2004 avsattes ett område på 73 kvadratkilometer i staden Gongju och den angränsande kommunen Yeongi för att flytta dit landets huvudstad från Seoul. Planerna mötte motstånd vilket gjort att man delvis fick överge eller omarbeta det ursprungliga förslaget. År 2007 beslutade man att skapa en administrativ stad med namnet Sejong, på ungefär samma plats där man tidigare beslutat att bygga denna alternativa huvudstad. År 2012 blev Sejong en "speciell självstyrande stad" på samma administrativa nivå som landets provinser och Gongju minskade till såväl yta som folkmängd.

Källor

Orter i Södra Chungcheong
WP:Projekt Korea

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The concern: Some banks don't want to report the high rates they're paying for short-term loans because they don't want to tip off the market that they're desperate for cash.
In recent weeks, Lehman moved $2.8 billion in loans, including some risky leveraged-buyout debt that has been difficult to sell, into a newly created investment vehicle it named "Freedom," which in turn issued debt securities backed by the loans.
Yesterday, the speculation reached a crescendo with shares in HBOS falling 19 per cent in early trading on rumours it was struggling to fund its day-to-day business. A slew of e-mails crossed the City revealing that an emergency meeting at the Bank of England had been called to help. More than £1.5bn was wiped off HBOS's market value in the first hour of trading before the bank had time to respond.


Here we have the Nile river, It originates in Burundi which is SOUTH of the Equator, yet the nile flows NORTH up 👆 a Globe ???
Not a lot to say about that one, Right ?
Im sure the Trolls will say I am stupid for possibly mispelling or a word, Or maybe I have a stupid looking Dog so this info must be wrong. Dont listen to me just keep eating POTATO chips and watching Netflix.
If you want to discuss this with me then feel free to come with an experiment of you showing loads of water moving up a hill. If you can not show me proof by recreating this scenario I will not take you seriously.
Science is about testing the environment so that we all can understand our world in truth. When you fight me with your foolish ad hominem attacks you suppress truth and hurt everyone. Be a real man and use your brain !!
I know thats a real challenge but let's see who can do it !! Check your motive at the door and take life seriously. I welcome any legitamate arguments.
Foolishness will be ignored !!!!! You can say he won't answer me and cry all day BUT If its not about the nile going uphill you can miss me with it.
This is yet another demonstration of why I am not a flat earther. They can't even comprehend that the Nile river flows North because the water is moving from high elevation to sea level.


text:
Gentleman's Line
Escape Tools
We've got a very serious problem, and we need your help immediately.
Brian and Jason explain our plight, while making way too many poop jokes:
TL;DR: We found out that the Modern Rogue World Headquarters, our brand new 7-acre property has no septic system whatsoever, and we have to come up with $30,000 to install one.
So we're doing an extremely limited, 72-hour sale of 21 varieties of Modern Rogue T-shirts. These are rare and special, and we can't guarantee you'll ever see them again.
There's 7 originals, 7 alternate color schemes, and 7 women's styles available. All of them look awesome and 100% of all profits go to making the MRHQ safe for our team and for you (when you come visit us.)
All shirts have 2 prices: $35 to the public, and $25 for patrons (any level).
If you become a patron on Patreon at any pledge level, you'll immediately receive a special discount code that you can use at checkout to get the $25 price, and you can buy as many shirts as you want.
Yes: if you become a $5/month supporter, you can buy 10 men's shirts and save $100 (which we're hoping you'll spend on supporting us at $5/month for two years).
Oh, and get this: shipping is FREE on US orders over $200! (Intl. orders get $25 refunded).
We're in some serious sh*t because we can't sh*t. If you like our sh*t, buy a shirt, become a patron, or save money now by doing both:
Go to: Originals & Patreon Exclusives
Go to: New T-Shirt Variations
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Donate directly to our campaign (a.k.a. "throw your money in our sh*tter")
All orders are pre-orders, and the printing process will begin after the promotion ends. Some variants are available only to Patreon Patrons at the $30 level. These shirts have "Patreon Exclusive" in their title. If you purchase one of these shirts (or a bundle containing one of these shirts) and are not a $30 patron on Patreon, we'll need to get you signed up at that level or swap out the shirt for the non-exclusive variant of that style.
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The 6-4, 245-pound Connecticut native earned his undergraduate degree from Notre Dame and will be eligible to play immediately for Cincinnati, where he will join former ND teammate Gunner Kiel. Kiel, though, will have to sit out the 2013 season due to NCAA transfer rules.
The arrival of Golic really addresses a need for head coach Tommy Tuberville and the Bearcats because they lost first-team All-Big East selection Travis Kelce to the NFL Draft recently. Senior Blake Annen, who had just one reception for two yards in 2012, was the team's top returning tight end.
Golic played in two games for the Fighting Irish in 2012 and did not record a catch, although he played on special teams. He was stuck behind prolific Irish tight ends Kyle Rudolph and Tyler Eifert throughout his career in South Bend.
Brother Mike Golic, Jr. recently signed with the Pittsburgh Steelers as an undrafted free agent.


text:
De Bruyne's 'superhuman' talents lauded by Man City boss Guardiola
Written By Timothy Abraham
Getty Images https://images.daznservices.com/di/library/GOAL/17/f2/kevin-de-bruyne-manchester-city-2019-20_janjqebf3g0p1atx34jc5lvmv.jpg?t=-338597778&w=500&quality=80
Arsenal v Manchester City
P. Foden
K. De Bruyne
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola claims midfield superstar Kevin De Bruyne plays the type of passes other footballers are simply incapable of.
The Belgium midfielder produced a dominant display to inspire City to a comfortable 3-0 away win over Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday.
De Bruyne scored two fine goals either side of an assist for Raheem Sterling, leaving defending champions City 14 points behind leaders Liverpool.
The two-goal star played in a more advanced role and, while lauding his passing, Guardiola acknowledged the benefits of De Bruyne being shorn of defensive responsibility.
"Kevin made an incredible two goals and an assist," Guardiola said in his post-match news conference.
"He is an extraordinary player so we don't discourage his quality. He sees passes and action that normal humans can't see, having a special vision and assists.
"Always we speak to him, 'You have to score more goals', and today he scored two incredible goals and got an assist for Raheem Sterling.
"Kevin can play in different positions, but, of course, when they can think more in attack and less in defence, it is much better."
If our team was a Christmas dinner @DeBruyneKev would be the gravy. Every day of the week. Smooth as you like. pic.twitter.com/NbLu7BZ8A2
— Phil Foden (@PhilFoden) December 15, 2019
Guardiola was satisfied with the performance of Phil Foden, who made his first Premier League start of the season against Arsenal.
City frequently looked to hit the hapless Gunners on the break, though, which Guardiola suggested did not suit the 19-year-old's game.
"Phil always plays good," the manager said. "He doesn't always touch the ball but he played well defensively.
"We make the actions for the counter-attack but not as much ball possession, so that's why he did not touch the ball too much.
"Always when he has the ball, he does another extraordinary thing. He is a great player.
"He did what he should do and helped us to win the game, especially in the first half. He's so clever with his passes and so on."


text:
May 17, 2013 | Opinion
The New Goodluck Jonathan
By Adekoya Boladale
'Those insurgents and terrorists who take delight in killing our security operatives, whoever they may be, wherever they may go, we will hunt them down, we will fish them out, and we will bring them to justice … we will do more, we will gun them down'
Who could have believed the above statement was made by President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, I mean the same man from Otuoke village in Bayelsa state, the one many Nigerians have come to believe lost his tongue and will from birth. But believe it or not this is real; it is not one of those Nollywood movies having Jide Kosoko or Justus Esiri play the role of the president.
The Nigerian president was raging fire and brimstone against terrorists and insurgents who for a while now have taking over the presiding affair of most Northern states. Dressed in the usual Niger Delta attire but this time with a round black suede cap to match it up, the lecturer-turned-president started the speech on a pitch-dragging note, a voice introduction used only by people who fight to gain confidence and will. Along the line he was fully blended into the speech but still found it hard to make eye contact with the camera. The tone of seriousness and anger however took over the last five paragraphs and he ended on a very good note.
Some critics and analysts believe this sudden confidence can only be informed by a generous consumption of hot 'Apeteshi'. Some believe it was a result of the reoccurring outburst by the international community over his action-less threats and counter threats against various attacks. To others it was simply one out of the numerous gifts of the president hiding within but programmed only to unveil at the extreme end of situations, in other word something similar to a 'last source'.
Above all, whatever might have gingered this hidden side of President Jonathan is worth praising, even if it is the local 'paraga' I will advice the president include its intake in every meal, infact it would be more effective if it takes the place of water.
The president has taken a bold long- awaited step towards curbing terrorism in the country and restoring law and order, but he shouldn't stop there. The security sector is not the only area of our nationhood that requires state of emergency. In 2007, the late President Musa Yar'adua who Jonathan shared a joint ticket with then gave to all Nigerians in the full glare of the world his words to declare a state of emergency in the power sector. I want to believe as President Jonathan said in his remembrance speech for the late president, that the then 7 point agenda was a blueprint for the transformation agenda. It's been six years after that promise was made and not even a partial emergency rule has been declared in the power sector, a sector which has continuously brought ridicule and shame upon our national image both home and abroad.
The economy sector too deserves an urgent emergency rule. There have been talks and campaigns on macro and micro economy system been used, the minister for finance Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala alongside her counterpart the governor of the central bank Sanusi Lamido Sanusi have been on various platforms to explain the growth of our economy and forecast robust future output but to an average Nigerian these are mere 'wall street' statements if it doesn't translate to massive employment, reduction in the price of vegetable and onions in the market. If the prices of rice and beans continue to soar higher than wages and salaries, then it is all hoaxes.
Nigerians deserve results after long years of grammatical bombardment and intellectual masturbation; the citizens have been too patient and don't deserve to be taken through another season of 'in-house' employment system which has graciously opened doors to job scams and fraud.
Our sovereignty is being threatened by terrorists and insurgents but also the future and continuous existence of the country is under siege by corruption. The so much glorified anti-graft agencies have suddenly embarked on sound sleep. Political office holders no longer have the fear of being caught in the act rather they see looting of public funds as part of their job description. The confidence of the public must be restored not just in politicians alone but core war against misappropriation in every area of our nation's life. We require emergency rule, not one led by soldiers and men in 'Khaki' but one chaired by men and women of unquestionable character rather than political affiliates who now chair our anti-graft agencies.
The president has set the ball of war against terrorism rolling; the next few days will truly prove if Dr. Jonathan has it in him, the confidence to rule Nigeria. Would he have the will to see the fight to the very end or would he chicken out in the heat of the raging war? These are questions even Reuben Abati and Doyin Okupe don't have answers to.
While the new war for peace begins up North let our new president ensure the safety of innocent men and women who may come in the line of fire.
Another episode of Baga would only make mockery of this declaration.
Adekoya Boladale is a political scientist and wrote via [email protected]
Twitter: @adekoyabee
Disclaimer: "The views/contents expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of pointblanknews.com and do not necessarily reflect those of The Nigerian Voice. The Nigerian Voice will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article."


text:
Q: On Rational function fields of varieties
*

*It is given that $Q=V(x^3-yz^2)$ is a variety in $\mathbb P^2$ (i.e. projective space of dimension      two).Then what is the rational function field K(Q) of Q?

2.Consider the hypersurface $x^2+y^2+z^2+w^2=0$ in $\mathbb P^3$.Then what is the field of rational functions for this hypersurface?
I am getting hard to determine the rational function fields and also dont know the exact answer.Any help is appreciated.

A: For 1., we can look at an affine chart of $Q$. In the chart $z=1$, the variety is given by $x^3=y$, which is smooth of dimension one.
Now $K(Q)=K(U)$ for any dense open set of $Q$, so...
For 2, again set $x=1$. Then $y=i\sqrt{1+z^2+w^2}$.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Andromeda was established in 2017 by a distinguished group of academics and scientists from the United Kingdom, United States, and Egypt. We offer publishing and academic services of different kinds through our network extending from the United state, United Kingdom, Egypt and India.
Andromeda's growing team is passionate about cooperating with the international academic community to sponsor and deliver open scholarly research to the widest possible audience.
Besides publishing, Andromeda's role is extended to offering academic services of several categories throughout its launching network in USA, UK, Egypt and India. One of which is to provide academic accreditation of courses offered by different training organizations.
We have also inaugurated the conference proceedings publications through Andromeda Conference Proceedings.


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CINCINNATI, April 17, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Protech Home Medical Corp. ("Protech" or the "Company") (TSXV:PTQ), a healthcare services company with operations in the United States, is pleased to announce that it has executed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) to acquire a private company in the Northeastern United States. reporting unaudited trailing 12 month annual revenues of approximately C$4 million and positive EBITDA.
The acquisition is expected to increase Protech's annual revenues by approximately C$4 million. When combined with existing operations, Protech expects its annualized run-rate revenue to exceed C$90 million before any expected additional revenue generated from organic growth, cross selling and corporate synergies.
"This type of company is an example of the strategic acquisitions we're going to continue to pursue," said Greg Crawford, Chairman and CEO of Protech. "The acquisition is immediately accretive, increasing revenue and EBITDA as we use our regional expertise and infrastructure to achieve profit growth through our integration platform. These types of acquisitions are an effective way to increase market penetration in our existing markets and will continue to be one of the core strategies to augment our growth. We are particularly delighted by the target's product mix, largely focused on the respiratory market, which we have a particular affinity towards given its extremely positive market fundamentals."
As previously announced, the Company is focused on the implementation of a corporate strategy that incorporates technology, organic growth and strategic acquisitions to continue to improve upon its recent financial results. Post acquisition, the Company will have more than C$5 million in cash to continue to pursue additional acquisitions. The potential acquisitions will strategically focus on geographic locations driven by product mix, distribution volumes as well as the ability to consolidate distribution channels to drive operating efficiencies and maximize earnings accretion.
"We continue to build our pipeline of qualified acquisition targets," said Hardik Mehta, CFO of Protech. "In addition to this LOI, we are also in the final stages of signing an LOI with a company generating significant revenue. While the deal terms have been agreed upon, we are awaiting final approvals on the seller side. Additionally, we have a pipeline of several companies with which we are in active negotiations, and we continue to execute NDAs with new potential targets. These targets have combined revenue of more than C$40 million. With many excellent acquisition targets to choose from, we will continue to be extremely disciplined about the acquisitions we pursue and focus on those where we can achieve favorable pricing and optimal accretion."
The primary business objective of the Company is to create shareholder value by offering a broader range of services to patients in need of in-home monitoring and chronic disease management. The Company's organic growth strategy is to increase annual revenue per patient by offering multiple services to the same patient, consolidating the patient's services and making life easier for the patient.
C ertain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking information" as such term is defined in applicable Canadian securities legislation. The words "may", "would", "could", "should", "potential", "will", "seek", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions as they relate to the Company, including: Protech expecting to close the acquisition with a mix of cash and stock; closing of the acquisition within the next 30 days; the acquisition expected to increase Protech's annual revenues by approximately US$4 million; Protech expecting its annualized run-rate revenue to exceed $90 million; and potential additional acquisitions; are intended to identify forward-looking information. All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Such statements reflect the Company's current views and intentions with respect to future events, and current information available to the Company, and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including, without limitation: the terms of the acquisition remaining the same; receipt of all necessary approvals for the acquisition; negotiation and execution of a definitive agreement and all closing conditions being waived or satisfied in a timely manner; the Company's ability to maintain/slightly increase its collections ratios; the Company maintaining its gross margins and maintaining its revenue growth; and the Company maintaining its selling, general and administrative expenses. Many factors could cause the actual results, performance or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking information to vary from those described herein should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize. Examples of such risk factors include, without limitation: credit; market (including equity, commodity, foreign exchange and interest rate); liquidity; operational (including technology and infrastructure); reputational; insurance; strategic; regulatory; legal; environmental; capital adequacy; the general business and economic conditions in the regions in which the Company operates; the ability of the Company to execute on key priorities, including the successful completion of acquisitions, business retention, and strategic plans and to attract, develop and retain key executives; difficulty integrating newly acquired businesses; the ability to implement business strategies and pursue business opportunities; low profit market segments; disruptions in or attacks (including cyber-attacks) on the Company's information technology, internet, network access or other voice or data communications systems or services; the evolution of various types of fraud or other criminal behavior to which the Company is exposed; the failure of third parties to comply with their obligations to the Company or its affiliates; the impact of new and changes to, or application of, current laws and regulations; decline of reimbursement rates; dependence on few payors; possible new drug discoveries; a novel business model; dependence on key suppliers; granting of permits and licenses in a highly regulated business; the overall difficult litigation environment, including in the U.S.; increased competition; changes in foreign currency rates; increased funding costs and market volatility due to market illiquidity and competition for funding; the availability of funds and resources to pursue operations; critical accounting estimates and changes to accounting standards, policies, and methods used by the Company; and the occurrence of natural and unnatural catastrophic events and claims resulting from such events; as well as those risk factors discussed or referred to in the Company's disclosure documents filed with the securities regulatory authorities in certain provinces of Canada and available at www.sedar.com. Should any factor affect the Company in an unexpected manner, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking information prove incorrect, the actual r esults or events may differ materially from the results or events predicted. Any such forward-looking information is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement. Moreover, the Company does not assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such forward-looking information. The forward-looking information included in this press release is made as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, other than as required by applicable law.
Source: Protech Home Medical Corp.


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Thesis: Social and Political Differences Among the American Colonies
Pages: 8 (2507 words) · Style: Chicago · Bibliography Sources: 7 · Level: College Senior · Topic: Mythology - Religion · Buy This Paper
¶ … Social and Political Differences Among the Pre-Revolutionary American Colonies
The United States of America has a name that might be historically misleading. Though this year marks the two-hundred-and-twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the current government of the country, the term "united" is still in some ways more of an ideal than a reality. The differentiation between "red" and "blue" states that pundits and politicians alike refer to in every national election is only the most obvious and prevalent example of how political operations in the many states of this union vary. Differences in social practices and norms based on region and even state identity are arguably even greater than the political differences; Texas culture and cooking could hardly be considered normative in the liberal swathes of Oregonian forest, to list just one extreme example. Though largely united now, the United States of America still retains much of the division that has characterized the country from its birth.
There are many examples throughout this nation's history that attest to an even greater divisiveness between the states than exists in the modern era. Most notable, of course, is the Civil War, when the differences and disparities grew to the point of actual secession and the formation, however short lived, of a separate country. But the problems did not start their either, but rather the Civil War in many ways reflected the large differences that existed in the various colonies at the time they declared their independence from England and the monarchy. The Articles of Confederation that established the first federal government on this continent attempted to maintain a union with loose central powers to accommodate the pre-Revolutionary differences among the New England, middle, and southern colonies. The most important factors in the colonies were social rather than political in nature, but were still enough to threaten the union and the Revolution.
Much of the division, especially in the years immediately before the Revolution, was caused by the same issues -- or at least similar ones -- to those that existed in the lead up to the Civil War.
Kirsten E. Wood notes that Georgian society, typical of southern slaveholding societies, grew increasingly restrictive as time wore, on particularly in regards to women.
This was one aspect of Southern society that was noticeably different from the New England and even the Middle colonies. Though strictly defined gender roles certainly existed in the North as they did almost everywhere else on Earth at that time, the Southern colonies' general society was more hierarchical and rigidly defined than the other colonies in many regards, not the least of which was gender. Slavery was another obvious societal division that existed in the South but not in most of the New England and Middle colonies. This social institution had a profound effect on Southern society that is difficult to overstate, making Southern society markedly different.
The parallels between slavery and the gender differentiation in the South have been noted before by Kathleen M. Brown, but her assertion is that existing gender hierarchies paved the way for an easy establishment of racial hierarchies. Ben Marsh, on the other hand, convincingly asserts that "the framework was slavery and the shifting code was that of gender," which if true has much deeper implications for other aspects of Southern society as well. Regardless of whether the gender hierarchy led to a racial hierarchy or vice versa, both certainly existed in the Southern colonies to a much greater extent than in the other colonies, and both indicate a much more rigid and unyielding culture, which did not bode well for increased unity.
This rigidity was sometimes beneficial, however, as the hospitality in many parts of the South was an oft-lauded aspect of Southern culture at the time. Virginian gentlemen in particular were known for their generosity towards guests. At first glance, this might seem incongruous with the idea of the strict Southern society, but in fact this was another extension of it. Rules of courtesy in social situations were considered as important as rules of conduct in other situations, even military affairs, and often perceived slights and discourtesies would be resolved by violence -- in honorable duels with strictly adhered-to rules, of course. In fact, this was not the only area of Southern social society that had military implications, and in fact such rigidity in rules of conduct and courtesy shaped the Southern political landscape for generations to come.
Land was the mark of success and wealth and the means to power in the South far more than in the other colonies. Though farming existed in the colonies situated further north, trade and mercantilism, followed by industry, were the keystones of their economy, whereas the plantation farming made possible and profitable by slavery was the primary means of subsistence and economic growth in the Southern colonies. Land ownership affected appointments to political and military positions, and Kierner maintains that the rules of conduct and courtesy that dictated much of Southern society's practices "strengthened the reciprocal networks of patronage and dependence that fostered elite authority and popular deference."
This created a different worldview and system of promotion than existed in the other colonies, and set the stage for conflict before, during, and after the Revolutionary struggle.
Another effect of rigid Southern mores was the increasing number f conflicts that occurred as immigrants from many different places in Europe began to flood the New World. This create some problems in the North as well, but in an area where land is key, issues of crowding seem worse even when the population is less dense. Nationalistic disputes between English and German settlers in Georgia forced the German Lutherans to take land without any access to water, which severely limited their trade and travel potential. Similar problems led to increasing conflicts within the Southern colonies themselves, which in turn only exacerbated differences of opinion with the North when the time for unity and collective action came.
The nature of the various waves of immigration to the Southern colonies in particular led to a fierce independence that is in many ways still observable today. The main constituents of the Carolinas were English-speaking Dissenters, as in the North, but they were also joined by the already mentioned German Lutherans -- dissidents in their own country -- and French Huguenots, who themselves had left France after suffering religious persecution. These groups all had their own reasons for distrusting centralized power structures, and their compression into one geographical locale -- combined with emerging rules of courtesy that were often unknowingly trampled by newcomers -- allowed for quick violence to emerge out of the typical Southern genteelness.
Religious differences, though an impetus for movement to the New World, did not appear to create too many noteworthy conflicts in the South during the pre-Revolutionary era. In some colonies, however, it played an important role in the rationales both for declaring independence and entering the Revolutionary War and for remaining with Great Britain, who at the time of the Revolution was the sole European power holding sway over the thirteen colonies. It has even been suggested that the rhetoric and reasoning used both publicly and privately by the policy debaters on both sides of the issue "was shaped by legal and sociopolitical concepts rooted primarily in religion." Perhaps nowhere was this felt more potently than in the Middle colonies, who with their more mixed economy and variegated religious beliefs found yet one more thing to divide them. It is true that the decision to declare independence from England was by no means given a public mandate in any of the colonies, but the independence issue caused some especially contentious conflicts in the Middle colonies.
Religion was incredibly ingrained in many of the people inhabiting the Middle colonies, and though the religion was overwhelmingly Christian, it was not the same type of Christianity, and so these ingrained differences invariably led to misunderstanding and conflicts. It has been suggested, in fact, that religion played such a large role in the political affairs of the Middle colonies precisely because it remained just under the surface; "generally the bonding of religious to civil polity fell in the realm of 'implicit knowledge,' as the anthropologists call it: 'shared, unspoken assumptions' or self-evident truths."
Religion also played a direct and overt role in the negotiation between the colonies in the build-up to the Revolution. When Virginia found itself home to a large population of Highland Scots who remained loyal to Great Britain, a delegation was sought from and sent by the Presbyterian church of Philadelphia to appeal to their religious brothers to join in the Revolutionary cause. This was just one instance of many acts by the Presbyterians in all of the colonies where their presence was significant to convince others in the more reluctant Southern states to join them in the Revolution. Most of their pleas, though made in the name of religious fraternity, fell upon deaf ears, providing further evidence that the differences between… [END OF PREVIEW]
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At the being of October, Oliver starts his week 2, HBOT at home this is the 2nd session he had so far with his home HBOT chamber, he does this with daddy as he never keeps still, plus need someone there if he has a seizure.
We started looking into Fundraising T shirts for Bring Back Oliver Smile and Opportunely for Oliver. A company called Tee funder dose this, this way we get donations for Oliver.
Izzy and Oliver have been playing a lot together, now that Oliver can sit up for longer it is easier for Izzy to sit up with her brother and play.
Oliver is starting to get into the crawl position, we have notice this a few times now.
We took Oliver and his sister Izzy to the Circus, Oliver seemed to be less interested this time I think. But Izzy really enjoyed it, it was nice to get out. Oliver had his flu vaccine the day before, maybe that why he wasn't so happy today. It was a special Circus for autistic and disabled, they even had a mobile disabled changing van, which was good.
Halloween is building up and Oliver is doing some arts and crafts at home and at school.
Oliver getting better with his walking, Daddy dose standing and walking every day and it's really paying off, not only can Oliver sit up for a longer time now, but he is getting good with his standing and walking, you can for a few seconds let go and he will hold his position. Also, Oliver is becoming quite the talking, not saying words fully, but you can hear every now and then a word or two like Daddy, Nana, Grandad and even squirrel. Oliver is also becoming very active with his hitting so be careful he does not hit you on the head.
A few hospitals appointments this month for Oliver has been done, to see the ENT Doctor and Doctor Martin Smith his Neuro Consultant.
And to finish this update of with some really great news Bring back Oliver smile raised 516.05 doing Tesco Bag packing in Swindon and a online auction that Totalled up to £480!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Two events raised £995 for Oliver therapies.


Wiki » Economics » What is a bank run?
A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) occurs when a large number of customers look to withdraw their deposits in unison due to concerns about a bank's solvency (the ability of an institution to meet its long term financial obligations) leading to a capital flight.
A capital flight (or flight of capital) takes place when customers transfer funds from their account to a separate institution or demand to withdraw their assets in cash. In a fractional-reserve banking system where banks only keep a small proportion of their assets as cash, banks must liquidate loans in order to meet the demand for withdrawal. As these withdrawals increase, it tends to create a snowball effect and the probability of the bank defaulting increases as a general feeling of consternation rises. These situations can destabilise the bank such that they can run out of cash and ultimately face bankruptcy, the event at which a bank can no longer repay their outstanding debts.
As a result, banks may limit the amount of cash that can be withdrawn by a customer, suspend withdrawals altogether or acquire more cash from other banks and/or the central bank to help prevent a bank run.
A run on American Union Bank, New York City. April 26, 1932.
During the Great Depression banking panics set in as numerous bank runs hit a myriad of financial institutions. Beginning in the Upper-South in November 1930, corresponding networks began to fall apart as a string of banks in Tennessee and Kentucky collapsed a year after the stock market crash. These bank runs then grew to envelope almost all of the United States creating a systemic banking crisis leading to a 50% plunge in international trade and a rise in unemployment by 25%.
Northern Rock (United Kingdom) – The global banking crisis which began in 2007 meant that Northern Rock was unable to produce income as expected from its loans and was at risk of being unable to repay the amounts it had borrowed. The news that the bank had approached the government for support led, within 24 hours, to a public lack of confidence and concern that savings were at risk. The bank failed following a bank run as people rushed to withdraw their savings. It was the first British bank in 150 years to fail due to a bank run.
Countrywide Financial (United States) – After notifying the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that the secondary mortgage markets could hurt the bank financially, people began to speculate Countrywide was a potential bankruptcy risk. On August 10th 2007, a run on the bank began as the secondary mortgage market shut down, curtailing new mortgage funding.


I learned it in the third grade. At the time I considered it a scary thought, but fun to practice. "If you ever catch on fire," the big fireman wearing the shiny red hat told us, "stop what you're doing, drop to the floor and roll. O.K., let's all try it." That's when the action began. Our gymnasium was instantly transformed into an imaginary burning inferno. The boys screamed and fell over like they were being shot and the girls delicately got on their knees, then to the floor, and we all began to roll. The idea was this: If we ever found ourselves in a position where our clothes caught on fire, our response must be instinctive and immediate. There was no time to think. We must prepare today for a possible trial tomorrow.
Practicing my response was a valuable lesson. Though I didn't completely understand it, stop, drop and roll would prove to be an important response to cultivate. I learned it in the third grade; I got the chance to use it 25 years later.
The fire around me was hot. The more I tried to battle the flames, the more intense they seemed to grow. At times I wondered if I would survive the ordeal, but God's word to me was clear. "Think it not strange this fiery trial you are in, as though something strange were happening to you … but rejoice" (see 1 Peter 4:12, 13). I was in spiritual combat, a conflict like I had never experienced before and it felt like the fire of affliction was going to consume me. I wasn't physically on fire, but I was in the proverbial "fire of suffering" and it was painful. Everything in me wanted to run from this trial, but jumping out of the furnace into the flames did not sound like a good idea either. How could I be refined if I did not endure the test? On the other hand, how could I rejoice when it hurt so much?
That's when I remembered my childhood lesson stop, drop and roll. Though my fire may have been one only in a spiritual sense, the response necessary to survive was the same. You see, our instinctive reactions to difficulties may not be the ones God wants us to have. They may in fact only increase our chances of being burned. Instead of relying on our carnal tendencies to persevere under trial, our mind-sets and attitude toward suffering must be a cultivated and practiced defense.
Let's look more closely at the principles of stop, drop and roll.
Stop — The last thing we should do when we're caught on fire is run. Unfortunately, unless otherwise practiced, this is most people's first reaction. Our innate "fight or flight" mechanism is a powerful and natural response. However, running only makes things worse. The fire will spread faster with running because it feeds the flame with oxygen, exactly what the fire needs to exist. As a result, running increases the damage and inflicts greater wounds. Instead, the first thing to do is stop.
The same is true in a spiritual fire. Our natural response may be to run from our problems, to escape the pain by running in the fast lane of busyness and avoidance. But that reaction of fear and denial will work against us. If we keep operating in the flesh, struggling in the strength of our own might, we will only fuel the flames around us, perpetuating the fire and inflicting deeper wounds. On the contrary, we should stop running. Stop striving. Stop trying to control the heat of our circumstances … and drop.
Drop — Assuming a position on our knees is the next best thing to do. When we find ourselves in the midst of the fiery furnace because of difficult circumstances, it's time to talk real to Jesus. Since He already knows what we are thinking and feeling, why not tell Him everything in prayer? We may even hear ourselves saying something that we did not realize was in the depth of our hearts. Talking to God in prayer is one of the greatest privileges we have as His children. That's where we receive wisdom and courage to go on. It is in the place of prayer that we find peace for our troubled souls and rest for our battered minds.
When we drop to our knees, we are not accepting defeat or surrendering to the flames to be destroyed. Instead we are accepting His love and strength to overcome.
Roll — Finally, once you have spent time with the Lord in prayer, roll that burden off your shoulders and over on to His. Then refuse to take it back. God invites us to give Him our burdens, our cares, our fears and our confusion because He alone knows how to carry it. When we roll it over to Him, we will find out what it means to rejoice. The Lord's joy comes when we find His grace in suffering.
Have you been in the fire? Do you know what it is to feel the flames of affliction licking at your faith? Then maybe it's time to stop running from the refiner's fire and let it purge you. How? By practicing this simple response: stop, drop and roll.
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Welcome to The 5443, a wedding an artists collective. Our vision for this space is interactive. We are open to housing onetime or ongoing workshops, classes, pop up events and art galleries. We have 600 square feet of completely convertible space. We are centrally located on W Pico Blvd, the second busiest surface street in Los Angeles with convenient access to major freeways. Do you have a creative idea for the space and interested in renting? We would love to hear from you!