With my interest and background in education, my teaching in China placed me in a unique position to do the firsthand observation of Chinese education at all levels, which was one of the primary purposes of my original sabbatical request and my subsequent trips there. My wife and I visited some elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as several community colleges. I also had the opportunity of teaching at all university grade levels. I came to find out that education has very different, much more deterministic consequences for Chinese education and students than it does for American students.
Look at it this way. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, China has one-fifth of the world's population: one in every five people on Earth is Chinese. Further complicating the problems of that massive populace is the distribution of the citizens.
China has roughly the same land mass as the United States. However, a good portion of that area is uninhabitable or sparsely populated, for example, the Gobi Desert and the Himalayan plateau regions have proven to be mostly useless. The eastern half of the nation is where the majority of the people are clustered with a chunk of the population concentrated in and around the large cities. Also, seventy-five to eighty percent of the people are still agrarian. Such disparate distribution and density of the population certainly make feeding, housing, caring for, and educating the citizens an ongoing challenge, with education being a key focus.
Every school day in China, over 300 million students study more than the entire population of America. Indeed, one of my Chinese colleagues once related to me an enlightening analogy: Education in China, he illustrated, can be compared to a wide, packed highway leading to a narrow bridge.
The farther along the road, one goes, the narrower it gets. Many students get forced out into endless side streets all along the way. And at the end of that crowded road lies a very narrow bridge called "post-secondary study." If one does not cross that bridge, full participation and success in the Chinese economy are extremely limited. And because very few people can ever cross that bridge successfully, entry into the post-secondary study is extremely competitive.
All Chinese citizens are guaranteed a basic ninth-grade education and increased literacy in the nation is one of the primary goals of the government. However, given the enormous number of students to be educated, those aims are difficult to achieve. Average class sizes range anywhere from forty to eighty, depending on the specialization of the school, and can number even more if the circumstances demand.
The better schools have smaller classes (no more than forty students) so the teacher can do a better job. However, fifty to sixty students are the norm. From kindergarten on, regimentation is the rule of the day. Students are required to listen and take notes. The teacher traditionally has supreme authority and asking questions or commenting on course content in the classroom is considered to be an affront to the teacher and is thus forbidden.
Teacher aides, tutors, or parental help are unheard of in the classroom. Rote memorization remains the dominant methodology and students learn early on that silence and copious note taking are the only keys to success. The students themselves spend most of their day in the classroom, usually from eight to ten hours and the remainder of their time is devoted to homework and any additional tutoring or other supplemental courses that the parents can afford. At all levels of schooling, test results determine the caliber and quality of school the students will be able to attend, so continual study for capstone examinations do much in determining the direction and quality of the students' lives. Some of the college students I talked to admitted that the rigorous demands placed on them by their teachers and parents left them with little or no childhood, a condition they vowed they would never impact on their children.
The Chinese post-secondary education system is vastly different from the American system. The semesters are twenty-one weeks long. Chinese college students often attend classes Monday through Friday as well as extra classes, tutoring, and study sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Entrance into Chinese colleges and universities is quite challenging and is determined by the infamous national Gaokao placement exam. Only about 10 to 20 percent of high school graduates go on to technical colleges or universities, and the exam results determine not only which universities they can attend, but also what majors they can study.
Once accepted by a university, the students move through their course of studies in cadres of thirty-five to forty. Each cohort takes the same classes, and the members share the same, gender separate dormitories, with eight people to a small, confined room. Often their shower and toilet facilities are in a separate building. One of the students from each cohort is appointed to be the class monitor, and they become tasked with assuring that all classroom and dormitory activities take place with as few problems as possible.
To be selected class monitor is indeed an honor. The students within each cohort and dorm room form close bonds and work together for the good of the whole. Interesting enough, most of the students I have talked with say there is little collaborative or interactive learning that goes on in the classroom.
The totality of the Chinese education system serves to severely restrict creativity and individuality in students. Just as with the public education system, the college classroom experience involves listening, memorization, and continuous preparation for entrance exams and placements tests. However, the tests college students take are cumulative and will determine the employment they will acquire after graduation, and thus their future quality of life. The competitive nature of the Chinese education system has produced students who, for the most part, are very earnest, obedient, and extremely hardworking, yet who severely lack initiative.
I taught Chinese college students from all grade levels and their abilities and eagerness to learn continually impressed me. Unlike in America, problems with attendance and preparedness never interfered with classroom instruction, which made my teaching experience most enjoyable. And nearly to a person, the students continually exuded a childlike air about them… a certain navet… a sense of innocence to the ways of the world… indeed, they lacked the hardness present in so many of the students I deal with in my American classroom.
The students who I worked with were highly motivated to do their best because they almost universally felt compelled to achieve success at any cost; doing so is their duty to not only society, but more importantly to their family. Parents often sacrifice a great deal in the education of their child, who comes to feel deeply obligated to repay them for the education they've received. Many of my students said the same thing: "I must get a good job and make much money so I can take care of my parents. They have worked so hard and spent so much money on my education." The Chinese still place great emphasis on family, the ancient Confucian notion of Parental Piety, and on subservience to the society as a whole. The collectivism so sharply contrary to the individualist worldview of Westerners.
The second insight came during the second month I was at Northeastern University. On a cold Sunday evening in February a sudden snow storm dropped several inches of snow on Shenyang. Very early the next morning, as I left our apartment building and began to make my way to my first class, I noticed students all over the campus industriously shoveling snow off of the sidewalks and streets and chipping away at the patches of ice that had formed near door stoops and on steps. They had apparently been at their tasks since daybreak. I could only look on, perplexed, not sure of what I was experiencing. When I met my first class, which coincidentally was a cross-cultural communications course, I took several minutes to explain my curiosity about their activities. They were more than happy to explain the mechanics and the purpose of the activity.
"It is our duty!" explained Albert proudly (Chinese students learning English usually assume an English name).
"Yes, no one should slip on the ice and become injured," chimed in Tiffany, whose muffler remained just below her lips in the cold classroom.
"How is the work determined?" I asked, still trying to keep the conversation going.
"Each class is given an assigned area. If the area is not done satisfactorily, the responsible class will be punished," answered Gerald.
"What happens if someone is lazy and doesn't want to go out into the cold and sleeps in?" I continued.
"That person will be scorned and even ridiculed by his classmates… will be considered as a person who is unreliable and can't be trusted," said Gail.
Perhaps with a little chagrin, I concluded the conversation with a joke about what my students would probably tell me to do with the shovel if I commanded them to go out and remove snow from our college's sidewalks… a joke no one really understood. But I had found a "teachable moment," or rather a "learnable moment," an instance in which the students and I were able to look beyond ourselves and jointly comment on the world around us. And not only had I found out more information about my environment, but I was also beginning to find those rare moments of teaching when I learned much more than I could ever impart.
I had two such other sudden leaps of understanding just this past year when I went to Shenyang. In my several trips there I had never had the occasion to go in the fall, so because we went during September and October on that visit I was able to observe two very remarkable occurrences. The first was on September 10th, which I did not realize was National Day of the Teacher, a nationwide holiday in which students around the country show their appreciation for their teachers by presenting them with gifts of cards and flowers.
We knew the day was a holiday for teachers, but we were incredibly surprised when two of our students appeared at our door with two large arrangements of flowers… a token they said of the gratitude all of our students had for us being their teachers. Traditionally, the relationship of the teacher to the student has almost mirrored that of the one between parent and child, a concept that comes from the time of Confucius (Kongfuzi).
This insight was followed up shortly thereafter with yet another, when I was visiting the Foreign Studies College at Northeastern University, just after the beginning of the semester in September. From several blocks away I heard a chorus of hundreds of voices singing a martial anthem. As I walked onto the large concrete square in front of the twelve-story Administration Building, I saw arrayed there at least two thousand students dressed in the drab green of military uniforms. Some were marching, some were standing in large cadres on the building steps, and other were engaged in military hand-to-hand combat tactics, all under the direction of regular Chinese Army instructors.
Later I came to find out that all college freshmen, at every college and university around the country, are required to receive a full three weeks of military training before they even begin their classes. Some of the teachers I talked to explained how that requirement was purposeful in helping the students prepare for the rigors of college life and studies; others said it had come out of the Tiananmen Square incident and had been implemented to prevent university students from engaging in anti-government organizing and activities. Again, the differences between the students of China and those of America are often stark.
But the restlessness and impatience of youth is universal. In China the imposition of Western influences, brought about by the rise of capitalism and the driving force of commercialism and advertising, movies and videos, the Internet and other glimpses of outside cultures, have generated a rising sense of not dissent, but perhaps discontent, maybe uneasiness with the status quo.
The Chinese youth of today are not the same as that of twenty or even ten years ago, and this groundswell is probably most noticeable in education. Though still hard-working and conscientious, contemporary students are progressively coming to expect more than just a passive exchange of information and knowledge during the course of their learning; they are, I think, gradually asking for a more participatory role in their education, which might, in the end, spill over into the broader social and political realms.
This need for change in educational methodology is exerting growing pressure on the teaching profession in China to change. The Chinese teachers and professors I worked with were equally industrious and eager to help and learn. And though the teacher remains the center of authority in the classroom, they are continually asked for much and given little in return; they, for the most part, are underpaid, making a fraction of their American counterparts, while doing more with less. And they sense the limitations of their traditional methods of teaching, those that have been ingrained into the culture since the time of Kongfuzi. With the new generation of students coming into their classrooms, the old methods prove to not be working so well.
The twenty-first century is requiring people who can do more than just memorize; instead, abstract thinkers are going to be needed, and the teachers and professors are looking to the West, strangely enough, to provide them with the teaching tools to accomplish this goal. And just as with their students, when exposed to new and different ways of teaching, such as collaborative learning and independent thought, Chinese teachers are slowly finding out that melding innovation with tradition brings success.
At the risk of over generalization, I can say that the students, and certainly the faculty members, are extremely different from those I have grown accustomed to in America. Because education is not a right, but rather a privilege in China, both groups for the most part take their studies, educational mission, and teaching responsibilities quite seriously. As a result, I submit that both the American and Chinese cultures and educational systems can learn a great deal from each other.
Found this article interesting? Share on social media.


Authentic hand made bag with a real African feel. Specific patterns may vary. If you have a particular look or request please state in purchase note.
Blank Card or Pre-Printed cart with witty and funny message inside.


Home Care Agencies in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers provides emergency response devices through home care agencies for seniors in Fairfield, California.
Senior Care Services in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers offers senior care services like medication safety management for seniors in Fairfield, California.
Home care for the elderly in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers Home Care for the elderly offers home monitoring systems for seniors in Fairfield, CA.
24 Hour Home Care in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers provides 24 hour home care and monitoring systems for seniors in Fairfield and surrounding areas of CA.
Elderly Home Care in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers offers a variety of elderly home care solutions for seniors in Fairfield and surrounding areas of CA.
Elderly Care In Home in Fairfield, CA: Comfort Keepers elderly care in home consultations can be scheduled today for seniors in Fairfield, California.
Request more information from Comfort Keepers in Fairfield, CA: Learn more about the products and services offered by Comfort Keepers in Fairfield, CA.
Comfort Keepers is a leading elderly care services provider in Fairfield, CA, and around the country. As such, we aim to constantly improve our services and offer our clients innovative care solutions that can further support their independence. In addition to providing high-quality care services that allow your senior loved one to continue living in the comfort of their own home for longer, we also offer various products that can increase your senior mom or dad's safety at home.
Includes window alarms, door alarms and smoke detectors that will alert the station of any abnormal activity or irregularities.
If a senior should fall or experiences a safety issue, all they must do is push the button on the device and it will notify the station, who will then alert the appropriate channels, including family members, caregivers or local authorities. Buttons can also be created in the form of a necklace or bracelet for added convenience.
Our experienced care staff can recommend devices that will best fit your senior mom or dad's specific needs. A professional elderly care provider can also show your loved one how to use the devices properly. Finally, each of our systems has an automatic backup, which ensures that the devices will continue to work despite power or phone line failures.
If you are interested in learning more about our SafetyChoice products, you can read more about each device on our website; we have brochures and other informative articles that explain how the devices work, what their features are, and how they can benefit seniors. If you would like to talk to us about our services or products, please give us a call today for more information at (707) 297-3012. We're happy to help!


text:
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Pour Millions into Brain Computer Interface Company
On Thursday, brain computer interface company Syncron announced it had received $75 million for its latest round of funding.
A large amount of that investment came from Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
This is Synchron's goal, as per Fortune:
Synchron is focused on restoring some helpful capabilities to paralyzed patients, who can use its Synchron Switch, a brain computer interface (BCI), to move a computer cursor on a screen with just their thoughts. With a minimally-invasive procedure, the BCI is implanted in the blood vessel on the surface of the motor cortex of the brain via the jugular vein. Other companies, including Neuralink, use more invasive techniques that involve going through the skull.
Although it appears Synchron's goal is to help those disabled, history tells us new technology is usually hijacked and used for nefarious means.
Another problem with brain-computer interfaces is the risk of being hacked.
Elon Musk, Bezos, and Gates have all invested heavily in AI technology.
Hacking The Brain: The Future Computer Chips In Your Head via @forbes https://t.co/UgwwkmHjIq
— Michelle Rodriguez (@MRodOfficial) June 30, 2019
RELATED: World Economic Forum: 'Solid, Rational' Reasons to Microchip Children
Here are some of the companies making waves with BCI developments: via Mass Device
An Elon Musk venture, Neuralink is developing an implant placed in the brain through a robot-assisted procedure.
Musk has said in the past that the less invasive Link device (compared to other deep brain stimulation systems that are implanted around the chest area) is implanted through the skull. The entrepreneur claims it could be implanted in less than one hour in an outpatient setting and without the use of general anesthesia, with options for removal or upgrades down the line.
In a 2020 webcast, Musk described Link as a small device with a rechargeable battery meant to last a full day, with wires embedded in the cortical surface of the brain for continuously recording 1,024 channels of neural signals at once. It has a six-axis inertial measurement unit for tracking head movement, more sensors for measurables like temperature, and a Bluetooth antenna to connect with a smartphone app.
While Musk and company officials said they planned to file for FDA approval for human trials in 2020, it has yet to receive any such approval. Earlier this year, Neuralink and the University of California, Davis, were accused of "egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act" by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), citing documents obtained through a public records lawsuit. The allegations claimed that Neuralink caused extreme suffering in monkeys.
Multiple reports have claimed that Musk expressed frustration with the slow progress at Neuralink, but he has touted a "show and tell" that will demonstrate where the Link device is set for Oct. 31, 2022.
Anesthesia, with options for removal or upgrades down the line.
TRENDING: ONE MASSIVE BOT TRAP: Why Elon Musk's Poll about 'Stepping Down' Is Not What It Seems
Officials at Synchron — developer of the catheter-delivered Stentrode brain-computer interface (BCI) implant — believe they're the only BCI company tapping into blood vessels to capture signals from the brain.
The Synchron brain-computer interface system relays signals from the brain to a device in the chest, then translates the signals into action on a computer.
Synchron believes that the endovascular delivery method could make brain-computer interface technology simpler, safer and more accessible than the alternative option of invasive open-brain surgery.
Last month, the company completed its brain-computer interface implant in the U.S. through the endovascular approach. The Stentrode device was implanted as part of Synchron's Command trial, operating under FDA investigational device exemption to assess a permanently implanted brain-computer interface.
Command will assess the safety and efficacy of the company's motor BCI technology in patients with severe paralysis, aiming to enable the patient to control digital devices hands-free. Study outcomes include the use of brain data to control digital devices and achieve improvements in functional independence.
Synchron's rise to rival BCI developers reportedly caught the eye of Musk, who was said to have inquired to the company about a potential investment. No details were provided on whether or not the deal would involve a merger, acquisition, collaboration or any other type of coming together of the compa345anies.
Blackrock Neurotech
While some companies have made recent waves with their BCI advancements, testing of Blackrock's technology has been ongoing in human patients for nearly 20 years. The Utah Array implant has been used in patients since 2004 through research studies, with zero FDA-reported serious adverse events since then.
In 2021, Blackrock Neurotech received FDA breakthrough device designation for its MoveAgain BCI system for providing immobile patients with the ability to control a range of devices by only thinking. The company said at the time of receiving the breakthrough nod that MoveAgain BCI could offer improved mobility and independence that leads to returning to work, participating in leisure activities and communicating more effectively and quickly.
MoveAgain BCI includes an array implanted in the brain, which then decodes movement from neuronal activity. Signals are then transmitted wirelessly to an external device, like a cursor or wheelchair, providing people control of their external environment.
Blackrock and the University of Pittsburgh's Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (Pitt RNEL) have collaborated on the first portable brain-computer interface (BCI) to allow patients to participate in research trials from home. A Blackrock representative said it's the final step as the company prepares to launch its first commercial product early next year.
Should the device be made commercially available, it would mark the first time humans are connected to computers outside of academic research studies.
ClearPoint Neuro
ClearPoint Neuro in July 2021 entered into an agreement with none other than Blackrock Neurotech to develop an automated surgical solution for implanting BCIs into patients with neurological disorders — including from paralysis, ALS, blindness and hearing loss.
Solana Beach, Calif.–based ClearPoint Neuro at the time that the partnership aims to leverage its platform and software with Blackrock Neurotech's Utah Array to deliver a clinical solution for surgeons that is more streamlined and effective than other BCI implantation surgeries performed to date.
Earlier this year, ClearPoint announced a collaboration with Durham, North Carolina–based Higgs Boson Health to bring to market a patient-facing digital application based on the ManageMySurgery platform. The application will specialize in drug delivery to the brain and spine, as well as BCI technology.
BrainGate
BrainGate's neurotechnology uses an array of micro-electrodes implanted in the brain to let humans operate external devices such as computers or robotic arms with just their thought. The investigational BrainGate system has allowed people with spinal cord injury, brainstem stroke, and ALS to control a computer cursor simply by thinking about the movement of their own paralyzed hand and arm.
The company has received FDA investigational device exemption for human trials with the brain-computer interface technology. In April 2021, BrainGate clinical trial participants with tetraplegia demonstrated the use of the intracortical wireless, high-bandwith BCI with an external wireless transmitter.
BrainGate said on its website that early clinical research demonstrated that the system had intuitive control over advanced prosthetic limbs. The company claimed the system provided people with paralysis with easy control over powerful assistive movement and communication devices.
Neurable
Neurable began as a developer of virtual reality (VR) applications, including a mind-controlled VR game that it unveiled in 2017.
However, after raising a $6 million Series A funding round in 2019, the company aimed to move toward the development of an everyday BCI offering in the form of headphones for consumers, a Forbes report said.
"We want to be the company that makes neurotechnology easily accessible to everyone, everywhere," the company's website reads.
Neurable CEO Dr. Ramses Alcaide told Forbes that using VR demonstrated concepts and proved the early value of BCI technology, allowing the company to create the headphone form factor that it aims to bring to market. Through this, Neurable aims to make computer interfaces more intuitive and go beyond the potential limitations of keyboards, touch screens, and voice interfaces.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Temperatures in the Arctic are predicted to rise nearly 50 degrees above normal from Thursday under the spell of a pre-Christmas heat wave. It means the frozen tundra is racing close to a melting point.
The surging warmth in the past two months has already left scientists jittery, as escalating temperatures are feared to hit ice formation or coverage next summer and bring it down to record low levels. More warming trends are hitting the region as a result of climate change effects.
Walt Meier, a NASA scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said the current warmth is an offshoot of fluctuations in the jet stream that is passing frigid air to North America and parts of the Arctic.
However, stark climate change indicators are setting off alarm bells. The record low polar sea ice is a big concern and the heat wave of November has led to the region losing 19,000 square miles of sea ice in less than a week, which was described as "almost unprecedented occurrence" by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
There is worry that despite the North Pole lying in darkness after the Sun left in late October, high temperatures are going to reign the Christmas season.
Concerns are up that the high warmth would lead to a delayed "freeze-up" of ice in the Arctic Ocean than usual.
Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic Research Program for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said ice coverage would fall to record levels in the spring and summer.
Warming is likely to go up as less ice would be left to reflect the Sun's rays and darkness would mean the ocean absorbing more heat.
"We're going to be watching the summer of 2017 very closely," Mathis said in an interview.
Meanwhile, a new study released by researchers linked the abnormal Arctic temperatures to climate change induced by human activities.
"A warm episode like the one we are currently observing is still a rare event in today's climate," said Friederike E.L. Otto, one of the researchers.
The senior scientist at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford said it would be an extremely unlikely event without the effects of climate change.
The reasons of Arctic heat wave were described variously including "powerhouse storm east of Greenland" pushing warm air to the Arctic.
With traditional temperature buffer of sea ice absent, the warm air is being pushed northward.
Warming trends analyzed by scientists related with the outlet "Climate Central" noted the low sea ice levels and unprecedented heat waves as "extremely unlikely ... in the absence of human-induced climate change."
They warned these events are going to become a common occurrence if urgent action is not taken to halt climate change and control greenhouse gas emissions.
"If nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 ºC (3.6 ºF), events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years," the scientists wrote.
In November, an Arctic Resilience Report projected major "tipping points" with catastrophic effects from the warming, including rapid polar melting. The World Meteorological Organization is expecting 2016 to surpass the hottest year title of 2015.


text:
Tag Archives: Kanafani
"The moon is closer to us now than are the fig trees of our departed village": Laughter and tragedy in Emile Habiby's "Saeed the Pessoptimist"
The big man sent his own men to surprise me at my stall one noon. They led me off to prison after charging me publicly with having disobeyed the compulsory stay order. My going to Shafa Amr to buy melons, they said, had threatened the integrity of the state. Whoever, as they put it, transported red melons in secret could also carry radishes secretly and there was, after all, only a difference in colour between red radishes and hand grenades! And red was not, under any circumstances, the same as blue and white. With a watermelon, moreover, one could blow up a whole regiment if grenades were hidden inside it. "Don't you see that, you mule?"
"But I cut the melons open with a knife so the buyer can see," the "mule" responded.
"Oh! Knives too, eh?" they exclaimed.
Emile Habiby's The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist brings Rabelais and Swift to Israel and Palestine. You cannot forbear to laugh, but the moment you pause to reflect, the laughter dissolves into the underlying darkness. Innocence hangs like a thin film of translucent dew upon the surface, barely masking a savage indictment of the human condition just beneath (think of Voltaire's Candide). The story follows the adventures of Saeed the Pessoptimist, a Palestinian who stays behind after the creation of the state of Israel, becomes an Israeli informer, and finds himself getting into one scrape after another with the authorities, while becoming more and more estranged from his sometime-countrymen. Filled with supernatural happenings, twisted chronologies and unbelievable denouements, the narrative tries to paint reality even while unmooring itself from reality; almost as though the only way to capture the bizarre actuality that is Israel/Palestine (labels are political) is by breaking with traditional narrative realism.
Saeed has been called an anti-hero by critics, but what truly strikes one about him is his passivity. Whether it is failing to kiss his lover goodbye as she is dragged away by the police for deportation, failing to stop his son from becoming a fedayeen, or failing to carve out any kind of independent existence for himself (a la Candide, before the end), Saeed never does anything. Things are done to him. In this way, he becomes a synecdoche for the larger Palestinian condition, as reflected in the works of so many other Palestinian writers. In Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun, Palestinian inaction is symbolized by the passivity of three men as they roast to death in a truck; in Saeed, it is symbolized by Saeed's overriding inability to act in any circumstance, especially when contrasted with the people in his life, lovers, sons and friends. Habiby makes a witty observation about this right at the beginning, before providing us an extended demonstration through Saeed's character:
"The Arabs, that miserable teacher of ours concluded, always did thing quicker then – they thought faster than the earth moved around the sun – whereas they have now surrendered their power of thought to others … for the Arabs, so said this accursed teacher, would first act and then dream, not as they do now – first dream and then continue to dream."
Ghassan Kanafani once compared the Palestinian condition to people waiting on the shore for a boat that would never come. Saeed is a story – albeit hilariously told – of missed chances, delays, incompleteness, unfulfillment and disappointment. Saeed as a person is, of course, the greatest disappointment of the story, but it is also individual events that perennially fail to come to resolution. Consider, for instance, how the theme of the return to the homeland – something crucial to Palestinian writing – is dealt with by Kanafani, and by Habiby. In Kanafani's Returning to Haifa, the return is accompanies by a confrontation, a tragedy (of sorts), and definite closure. In Habiby's account, however, what happens is that… nothing happens.
"What about our house?" I asked at last.
"They are occupying it."
"Do you know who they are?"
"You can see, my child, how dim my eyes are. And Europeans all look the same anyway. No one goes fishing anymore."
"Would they let me in if I visited our house?" I asked.
"How should I know, my son?"
She crossed herself. I said goodbye, feeling very uneasy that she had made that sign of the cross.
When I reached the front of our house and saw laundry hanging out, my courage deserted me and I pretended to be taking a stroll along the seashore. I kept passing back and forth in front of our house. Each time I almost knocked on the door my courage left me.
Eventually evening arrived. A woman emerged and began collecting the laundry. She stared at me and shouted something. I hurried away but saw a man of about her age come out of the house and help her collect the wash. I thought to myself: This must be a trick. Why else would a man bring in the family laundry? This was never done by my father, God have mercy on him, although my mother was always sickly and overworked.
Contra Kanafani, there will be no moment of epiphany, no discovery of meaning or truth, even though it is a tragic truth. And contra Khoury, even meaningful love is impossible for Saeed, because even that is defined by its interruptions and its incompleteness, at all times.
Yuaad shook hands with me and bade me farewell. Then she brought her face close to mine and asked, "Did you kiss my mother before she left?"
"No. They were standing between us."
"In that case you have missed the second kiss too."
Then she was gone.
But if Saeed, even in his delay, is not Prince Hamlet and is never meant to be, ironically enough, the people he is closest to – lover, wife, son, friends – are his mirror images. Where Saeed turns informer, they join the revolution; where Saeed vacillates, they are constant; where he delays, they are decisive. And the contrast between characters is reflected in the contrast of styles. Saeed's own experiences are portrayed with a savage, almost mocking (Swiftian?) humor, as he finds that being an informer is no guarantee of safety, ending up seeing the inside of a jail cell thrice, each time for absurd reasons. But it is when his supporting cast comes on stage, that the tone changes into something deadly serious. So, in one of the funniest scenes in the book, Saeed is arrested (for the first time) for following orders a bit too scrupulously, and putting up a white flag of surrender outside his Haifa home in the immediate aftermath of '67. This is taken as a declaration that Haifa is an occupied city, and consequently, an act of rebellion. In prison, Saeed makes the mistake of quoting Shakespeare, and is soundly beaten for his pains. All grotesquely funny so far; and then, in his cell, he meets a Palestinian revolutionary, who considers him – wrongly, but by default – to be a comrade.
"He healed my wounds by talking about his own. He kept widening that single tiny window in the wall until it became a broad horizon that I had never seen before. Its netted bars became bridges to the moon, and between his bed and mine were hanging gardens. I told him of myself, what I had always aspired to for myself. I did not want to lie, but I did not want to soil the majesty of the moment by speaking of personal details: these the jailers had stripped from me when they stripped off my clothes. Here we were, one naked man facing another. Would Adam ever have left Paradise of his own free will?"
The mask has dropped, and for all the time that it was on, the revelation hits home harder than it ever cold otherwise. The stylistic shifts – from Voltaire to Darwish, in an instant – are found again when his son Walaa is holed up inside an underground shelter, and speaks of speaking freely, longing, for once, "to be careless about what I say, because all my life you've told me to be careful", insisting that he cannot wait any longer, that it is his generation that must resolve the issue, because "it is my generation." The clarity and urgency of Walaa's words and thoughts – again – put Saeed's own dithering into sharper perspective than could otherwise be possible. Or again, consider this deliberate shift:
These settles, then, laughed good-naturedly when the following story about them spread. The elders of Zikhron Yaqub disagreed about the following problem: is it lawful for a man to sleep with his wife on the Sabbath or is the act a kind of work and therefore not lawful on that day? They went to the rabbi for a decision as to whether it was work or it was pleasure. The rabbi thought long and hard and then he ruled that it was pleasure. They asked him for his reasoning. He replied: "If I had ruled it to be work you would have give it to the Arabs of Fraydis to perform."
My, how we laughed at this story – Jacob because he hates the Ashkenazi Jews and I because he laughed.
And who would be so unfair as to blame the people of Fraydis for owing their preservation to vintage wine? Who, after all, erected the tall buildings of this country, cut and paved its broad streets, dug the trenches and fortified the shelters? Who planted, plucked, and ginned the cotton, then wove it into clothes for the lords of Raghdan and Basman, palaces in the Amman, to wear so proudly.
Like most other Palestinian writing, Saeed is a story of exile and about a lost homeland. Yet unlike the stories of Kanafani or Khoury, or the poetry of Darwish or Barghouti or Tawfiq Zayyad, there is one crucial difference: Saeed is an exile in his own home, and not on the outside looking in. The ambiguity, the doubt – the agony, even – is thus complex and often undefinable. As the book progresses, we see – we feel – Saeed's growing estrangement both with his Israeli employers (and masters) and with the nascent Palestinian revolutionary movement. He is of both worlds, and of neither; understanding and understood by neither, liminal and homeless. Once again, then, he is simply caught up in the events, responding to them as they happen with the simple aim of survival. We cannot pity him because he has little moral fibre; and yet, we cannot condemn because we see ourselves in him, or what we would be like we we to face a situation of the sort – because who would be bold enough to predict their own heroism in the face of adversity? Habiby has painted a complex, ambiguous character, neither hero nor really anti-hero, someone who resists judgment and classification, but seeks – actively – our empathy. And more than that, perhaps, we are in no position to give.
I'll end with an excerpt that once again reflects – fascinatingly – how very different Palestinian works are nonetheless – at bottom – concerned with very similar basic themes. The nakba, as we know, when it happened, was considered only temporary situation by those who fled their homes in Mandatory Palestine. Of course, that temporary situation became permanent. That, however, did not stop many of the refugees from dreaming of a -now impossible – return to status quo ante. This conflict – between a generation that wants to restore a destroyed past, and one that wants to build a new future on its ruins – is explored repeatedly in Palestinian literature. It is the (implicit) debate between Said and Khaldun in Returning to Haifa. It is Younes, in Gate of the Sun, throwing away the oranges brought from old Palestine and exclaiming furiously, "The homeland is not oranges – the homeland is us!" And it is explored here as well, in one of the most moving passages of the book, with which I'll close:
"How can your brother believe that things will return to where they began?"
"He got that idea from his elders; of his beginning an old man remembers only the prime of youth and so thinks fondly of it. Do you really know how the beginning was, uncle? The beginning was not merely sweet memories of pines over Mount Carmel, or orange groves, or the songs of Jaffa's sailors. And did they really sing anyway? Do you really want to return to the beginning, to mourn your brother torn to pieces by the crane as he carved his living from the rocks. You want to do it all again, from the beginning?"
"But your brother, Saeed, said they had learned from the mistakes of their predecessors and commit would not them again."
"If they had really learned, they wouldn't have spoken at all of returning to the beginning."
"You're so young for so much wisdom, Yaad; wherever did you acquire it?"
"From my long life that is still before me."
"Will you be leaving me?"
"Water cannot truly ever leave the sea, uncle. It evaporates, then returns in winter in the springs and rivers. It will always return."
This is widely regarded to be a classic of Arab literature, and deservedly so. Highly recommended.
Filed under Emile Habiby, Middle-Eastern Writing, Palestine
Tagged as Kanafani, khoury, magical realism, palestine
'We make it smaller so we can fill it with happiness': Kanafani, 'Palestine's Children'
Here is another collection of short stories by Ghassan Kanafani. As the name suggests, these stories are about Palestine (the lost homeland, the occupation, the struggle and all these things at once) as seen predominantly (but by no means exclusively) through the eyes of children; childen attempting to shape their world, and themselves being shaped – and sometimes destroyed, both physically and in other ways – by a conflict that has become a background fact of existence, seemingly as eternal and immutable as nature itself.
Palestine's Children sees Kanafani employ many of the themes – and techniques – that he normally uses to striking effect. The Slope, the opening story of the book, is similar in many ways to that profoundly disturbing novella, Men in the Sun. Here, the doomed journey across the desert is replaced by a child telling a story in class: a clearly made-up story about his father, a shoemaker, who is so engrossed in his task (attempting to earn enough money to send his children to school) that he allows himself to be suffocated to death under the fruit and nut peels thrown down upon him by the rich man's family that resides above his workplace. The simple story, absurd and unbelievable even as fantasy (and dismissed by the headmaster as such) is of course a savage commentary upon the refusal of the Palestinian people (until the first intifada) to resist the ocupation, and carry on with their lives as though nothing had happened. It is, in fact, the absurdity of the story that drives the message home. Who wouldn't notice fruit peels raining down upon his head? Precisely he, Kanafani seems to be saying, who wouldn't notice being roasted to death inside a truck (Men in the Sun) – or he who doesn't notice his country being taken from him beneath his very nose. Or he who tells a young boy, in another story, with that characteristic fatalism:
'… listen, Mansur. This generation is an accursed generation. You have to know that from the beginning.'
Or in another story where every paragraph accounting episodes in the struggle is punctuated by either 'but that is besides the point', or 'but that is also besides the point.'
Perhaps the most powerful series of stories in the collection track the lives of two brothers: Quassim and Mansur. Born to a Palestinian villager, the elder is educated, becomes a doctor in Haifa and is involved with a Jewish woman, while the younger joins the fidayeen. Incidenta run in parallel. Just as Mansur has left from home, without informing his father, to join an attack upon a British-held citadel, Quassim is breakfasting in Haifa:
'Doctor Quassim looked out at the houses of Haifa stacked at the foot of Mount Carmel and the stony field stretching off towards the port. All of it was exposed to the barrel of the gun set up on the roof of the house. He didn't quite recall the details of the story which he had read that morning about the two Arabs who had been killed by bullets from some far-off gun, or whether the incident had occurred near this very region.'
This is strongly reminiscent of Camus' 'Mother died today; or maybe yesterday. I don't know.' And indeed, Palestine, and all that it stands for, is a distant strangeness to Quassim, who appears to be more at home in an alien society. As the fighting intensifies around Acre:
When he [Quassim] raised his head, something appeared in front of him. Through the pale blue mist were the domes and rooftops of Acre. At the same time he remembered Majd al-Kurum [his home village]. It seemed distant to him, an ambiguous distance not unlike oblivion.
And in turn, to Palestinian eyes, Quassim has become a stranger. He's a stranger to his father, when he returns home to the village for a visit, and refuses to settle there as a doctor, preferring instead to continue to advance his career in Haifa, now Israeli territory. His father reacts naturally by thinking 'at least there's the other one [son]' – and yet, like most of Kanafani's characters, subtle, complex and multi-layered, we cannot simply dismiss Quassim as a fifth columnist or a traitor to his people. Because of his own awareness of a fractured being in a fractured land living in a fractured time, it is difficult not to sympathise with Quassim somewhat, not least because we can so easily see parts of ourselves in him. Speaking with Eva, the Jewish woman with whom he is living, Quassim is careful 'lest the conversation approach limits which were too uncertain for him.' But that of course requires an awareness of the uncertainty. And it also calls forth this profound insight:
'…there are a lot of things I didn't tell you, and a lot of things that you don't tell me. We make our world smaller with our hands in order to force outside its limits everything that has nothing to do with us. We make it smaller so we can fill it with happiness.'
So Quassim is aware of his own escapism, aware of what motivates it, struggling between forcing oblivion upon himself and the pull of his own intelligence the other way. Isn't that so very true of all of us as well, even though we are lucky enough not to be faced with alternatives as stark as he is, that put his moral and intellectual abdication into sharp relief?
And all this while, Mansur walks around with a gun that is far too big for him to handle, getting into all kinds of scrapes, close to death always, but somehow with that inexplicable aura of child-like indestructability (ironically enough, he reminded me of Little Gavroche. The contrast is vivid and brutal, and not simply between the quiet morning of Haifa and the hail of bullets around the citadel.
Kanafani uses a number of different techniques to convey a sense of the incommunicable: the singularity and particularity of the Palestinian experience under occupation. In The Child Goes To the Camp, for instance, we have this refrain:
'… it was war time. Not war really, but hostilities, to be precise… a continued struggle with the enemy.'
'I tell you it was a time of hostilities… you don't know how a fighter runs between shots all day long…'
'It was a time of hostilities. I tell you this because you don't know. The world at that time had turned upside down. No one expected any virtue. This would have seemed too ridiculous.'
The story itself involves a bizarre set of circumstances that involve finding a five pound note in a refugee camp, and its subsequent fate – bizarre enough to be surreal. But that is the point – this time of hostilities, as the narrator repeats, has simply overturned nomos – any kind of structure or order that we are accustomed to cut up our world with; and accordingly, the creatures that inhabit it have passed beyond our judgment of their actions. Ironically – again – I was reminded strongly of Primo Levi's account of the Lager in Auschwitz in If This Is A Man, and his repeated exhortations to the reader cautioning him against judging human action in an environment that was alien beyond comprehension. Because, as the narrator reminds us at the end, 'It was a time of hostilities. You won't understand.' Because we can try to imagine, but we cannot hope to understand.
I've blogged earlier about Mahmoud Darwish's poem about Gaza, and Kanafani's own story about Gaza, here. The story Guns in the Camp takes up this theme in more detail, bringing out through fiction what Frantz Fanon makes explicit in The Wretched of the Earth: that on occasion, political violence is the only method by which a subjugated, brutalised and humiliated people can regain their humanity and agency. Guns in the Camp is about the transformation of Abu Saad from a grumpy, ill-tempered man, quarelling 'with his own shadow', to a warm-hearted, generous neighbour. The reason for this transformation is described, with moving pathos, by his wife:
'What could Abu Saad do except lose his temper and take it out on the people and on me and on his own shadow. Abu Saad had been crushed. Crushed by the poor, crushed by the victors, crushed by the ration card, crushed under a tin roof, crushed under the domination of the country… what could he do? Saad's going [to the military struggle] restored his spirits and that day he was a little better. He saw the camp in another way. He lifted his head and began to look around. He looked at me and he looked at his children differently. Do you understand? If you could just see him now, strutting around like a rooster. He can't see a gun on a young man's shoulder without moving aside and caressing it, as if it were his own gun that had been stolen and he had just now found it again.'
And indeed, at the end of the story, Umm Saad expressly compares the situation to a blooming grapevine. Fanon, I think, would have nodded in appreciation at the accuracy of the metaphor.
Symbolism is a staple feature of Kanafani's work. I've written about it before, both in Returning to Haifa and Men in the Sun. Symbolism – poignant, powerful, synecdochic – little incidents and things that speak of so much more. Thus, when one of his young revolutionary fighters strays too close to an explosion, and loses his hearing, it isn't just an unfortunate tragedy of war. No, it is another attack upon the inculcated culture of defeat that Kanafani is so concerned to undermine, as he makes this story about something far beyond the misfortune of the individual soldier, even while remaining within the confines of his own life story, the story told by his comrade to his uncomprehending uncle:
'… for a long time he lay on his shabby bed and all that while he listened to the endless stories. Stories about old men and mothers and children. Fear and shame and lamentation. Helplessness and loss. Surrender. The uncles' stories, about wisdom and circumstances. For four years he listened. He listened a lot, a whole lot. Inv everything he listened to, there was one truth, and that was that his sister had run away from home. She was lost. I tell you, he listened a lot, a whole lot. Inv that place filled with shame and defeat and ruin, there was nothing but an ear to hear, to listen to the echoes of words and stories and lamentation which couldn't destroy even a single fly, couldn't even bury one truth. His sister was gone.
Now Hamid has decided to stop listening…'
And, in the midst of such expressly political fiction, Kanafani never loses his brilliance as a writer, especially, an imagist of great power. Not only are the images vivid, but they accentuate the impact of theme and content sharply. On going deaf, Hamid hears only 'mountains of steel collapsing' – fitting, for a revolutionary making his life among guns and tanks. Or, for memory and forgetting:
'The image of his mother fell out of his head and shattered and the pieces and splinters of it were strewn about.'
Or again:
'….the words dispersed around him in the same way as a drizzling rain disperses when it encounters a powerfully gushing torrent.'
As an immediate precursor to tragedy, this particular contrast between tranquil, pastoral evening scene and what is to come is almost unbearable:
'…he began to blow into it [the pipe] an air of injured rebuke, of an eternal lover. He might have lived in any one of the villages scattered like the still stars throughout the land.'
And perhaps the most fitting image for the land of Palestine:
'…the fields wandered off to the left, undulating with bloodstained green.'
Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated by a car bomb at the age of 34. By all accounts, the Palestinian national movement lost one of its great representatives and spokespersons. As a reader, I think the loss to world literature was equally irreparable.
Filed under Ghassan Kanafani, Middle-Eastern Writing, Palestine
Tagged as Kanafani
March 4, 2013 · 11:49 am
"And then – silence": Kanafani, Men in the Sun
In the last quartet of his poem about the Spanish Civil War, Auden writes:
"The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon."
Ghassan Kanafani's Men in the Sun, a collection containing one novella and six short stories, is about individuals struggling to shape their response to history's refusal to help or pardon. The theme of Men in the Sun is slightly different from that which characterises his brilliant novella, Returning to Haifa, which I wrote about a few days ago. While that deals expressly with the relationship between the settler and the displaced, these stories are about the fate of the displaced, adrift in the new world that they have been forcibly thrust into. Israel is present in the background, of course ("In the morning, when the Jews withdrew, threatening and fuming, a big lorry was standing at the door of our house.."), but only insofar as it has unrolled the canvas upon which these characters, these human beings, must paint their lives and their destinies anew.
Like in Returning to Haifa, much of Kanafani's writing emphasises the importance of symbols: how objects and places can become symbols and metaphors of loss, parting, exile or resistance. In The Land of Sad Oranges, for instance, the physical and mental disintegration of an individual unable to deal with the consequences of erosion is portrayed poignantly by the withering of an orange – because oranges were a central part of the life of the peasants in their homeland.
"You were huddled up there, as far from your childhood as you were from the land of oranges – the oranges that, according to a peasant who used to cultivate them until he left, would shrivel up if a change occurred, and they were watered by a strange hand."
Or in the last lines of The Falcon, an improbable story of friendship between a falcon, and the creature that it is meant to hunt, the gazelle:
"I wonder where the gazelle went."
In the pale light of the match I saw his face as it had always been: thin, harsh, cold. His lips moved:
"It went to die among its people. Gazelles like to die among their people. Falcons don't care where they die."
Or in the description of Umm Saad's response to learning that her son has joined the fedayeen, in Umm Saad:
"Her hands were folded in her lap, and I could see the palms, dry as blocks of wood, cracked like an old tree trunk. Through the furrows that years of hard work had traced in them, I could see her sorry journey with Saad, from the time when he was a child until he grew to maturity. Those firm hands had nourished him as the earth nourishes the stem of a tender plant, and now they had opened suddenly, and the bird that had nestled there for twenty years had flown away."
Memory and the past, as one would expect, our recurring themes in Kanafani's work. In Returning to Haifa, much of the tension in the story is centred upon two opposing visions of Palestine: one that seeks to raise it up out of memory, to recreate what was Palestine before the nakba, to – in the simplest possible terms – go back to the past. The other is a vision of the future, of Palestine as a homeland in which none of "this" (displacement, exile, suffering) can happen. In If You Were a Horse, Kanafani skillfully uses a distinctly personal about individual tragedy to explore how memory works and responds to shattering events:
"He knew his father through and through, and he knew that the past was for him, a solid wooden box locked with a thousand keys that had been cast into the depths of the ocean."
The refusal to engage with the past, while being continuously tormented by it, and having all your thoughts and actions intimately shaped by it, and the sheer unendurableness of the tension between the two, is described strikingly in this story. The political context is unmissable, even though it is, ostensibly, a story about a father, a mother and a son.
Men in the Sun, the novella that gives the collection its name, is quite simply one of the most powerful pieces of writing that I have ever read. So powerful, in fact, that a footnote in the preface to the collection tells us that when it was filmed under the name of Al-Makhducun ("The Deceived"), the plot had to be altered, since "a film similar to the novella in its denouement would have appeared glaringly incongruous at a time when the resistance movements were established." It is the story of three Palestinian refugees in Baghdad, and their clandestine, illegal journey in a lorry, across the burning desert to seek a better future in Kuwait. The past and the present, the personal and the political, the individual story and the social condition – all continually merge, come apart and merge again, in a style reminiscent of Kundera. With all the dangers that accompany such broad generalisations, I think that it is nevertheless safe to say that in each individual life-story, you can read something of the history of a people; and in the way that an individual attempts to respond to and shape his situation, one can see an entire community searching for a way, some way, to deal with the torment of exile. Any further attempt to summarise this profoundly disturbing story would be nothing more than an abject failure, so I'll replace that with two of the most striking quotes that, in a sense, sum up the human predicament that forms the basis of the story:
"On the other side of this Shatt, just the other side, were all the things he had been deprived of. Over there was Kuwait. What only lived in his mind as a dream and a fantasy existed there. It was certainly something real, of stones, earth, water, and sky, not as it slumbered in his troubled mind. There must be lanes and streets, men and women, and children running about between the trees."
"None of the four wanted to talk anymore, not only because they were exhausted by their efforts, but because each one was swallowed up in his own thoughts. The huge lorry was carrying them along the road, together with their dreams, their families, their hopes and ambitions, their misery and despair, their strength and weakness, their past and future, as if it were pushing against the immense door to a new, unknown destiny, and all eyes were fixed on the door's surface as though bound to it by invisible threads."
The last story, A Letter from Gaza, is the most overtly political story in the collection. It is a letter from one friend to another, both of whom have grown up in Gaza; one of them has chosen to emigrate and go to California, "liberating… myself from this last tie too… far from the reek of defeat that for seven years had filled my nostrils." The other has chosen to stay behind and work in Kuwait. And it is he who must explain to his friend why he hasn't followed him away from a Gaza in which "my own self… had suffered so long. I hated Gaza and its inhabitants. Everything in the amputated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in gray by a sick man." And yet, "What is this ill-defined tie we had with Gaza that blunted our enthusiasm for flight? Why didn't we analyze the matter in such a way as to give it a clear meaning? Why didn't we leave this defeat with its wounds behind us and move on to a brighter future that would give us deeper consolation! Why? We didn't exactly know."
It's the idea of the "homeland" again, the idea that Kanafani writes of so lyrically in Returning to Haifa, the homeland that it is inextricably bound up with memory and desire. "What," the letter-writer asks, despite the fact that Gaza is "closed like the introverted lining of a rusted snail-shell thrown up by the waves on the sticky, sandy shore by the slaughterhouse", despite the fact that "this Gaza was more cramped than the mind of a sleeper in the throes of a fearful nightmare, with its narrow streets that had their peculiar smell, the smell of defeat and poverty, its houses with their bulging balconies" – despite all this, what "are the obscure causes that draw a man to his family, his house, his memories, as a spring draws a small flock of mountain goats?" And he gives himself the only answer possible: "I don't know."
But then something happens that does make him know, suddenly, abruptly and shockingly, what binds him to Gaza. It is the sight of his niece, for whom he has bought a pair of red trousers from Kuwait, in a hospital bed, and:
"My friend… Never shall I forget Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the thigh. No! Nor shall I forget the grief which had moulded her face and merged into its traits forever. I went out of the hospital in Gaza that day, my hand clutched in silent derision on the two pounds I had brought with me to give Nadia. The blazing sun filled the streets with the colour of blood. And Gaza was brand new, Mustafa! You and I never saw it like this. The stone piled up at the beginning of the Shajiya quarter where we lived had a meaning, and they seemed to have been put there for no other reason but to explain it. This Gaza in which we had lived and with whose good people we had spent seven years of defeat was something new. It seemed to me just a beginning. I imagined that in the main street that I walked along on the way back home was only the beginning of a long, long road leading to Safad. Everything in this Gaza throbbed with a sadness, which was not confined to weeping. It was a challenge; more than that, it was something like reclamation of the amputated leg.
I went out into the streets of Gaza, streets filled with blinding sunlight. They told me that Nadia had lost her leg when she threw herself on top of her little brothers and sisters to protect them from the bombs and flames that had fastened their claws into the house. Nadia could have saved herself, she could have run away, rescued her leg. But she didn't.
No, my friend, I won't come to Sacramento, and I've no regrets. No, and nor will I finish what we began together in childhood. This obscure feeling that you had as you left Gaza, this small feeling must grow into a giant deep within you. It must expand, you must seek it in order to find yourself, here among the ugly debris of defeat.
I won't come to you. But you, return to us! Come back, to learn from Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life and what existence is worth.
Come back, my friend! We are all waiting for you."
In Returning to Haifa, one of the central questions is whether a man is defined, no, created by a cause. And if we are all creatures seeking meaning, that meaning can only be provided by a cause. From Returning to Haifa and A Letter from Gaza, we get a distinct sense that oftentimes, it is not even open to us to choose our cause, the thing that we decide will give our lives meaning; oftentimes, it is the circumstances that determine it for us. And since it cannot be evaded, it must be embraced. It is a highly disturbing view of the self, but in Kanafani's hands, it is utterly compelling.
Elsewhere, in a letter to his son, he puts it more eloquently than I ever can:
"I heard you in the other room asking your mother: "Mama, am I a Palestinian?" When she answered "Yes", a heavy silence fell on the whole house. It was as if something hanging over our heads had fallen, its noise exploding, and then – silence.
Afterwards… I heard you crying. I could not move. There was something bigger than my awareness being born in the other room through your bewildered sobbing. It was as if a blessed scalpel was cutting up your chest and putting there the heart that belongs to you… I was unable to move to see what was happening in the other room. I knew, however, that a distant homeland was being born again; hills, plains, olive groves, dead people, torn banners and folded ones, all cutting their way into a future of flesh and blood and being born in the heart of another child… Do not believe that man grows. No; he is born suddenly – a word, in a moment, penetrates his heard to a new throb. One scene can hurl him down from the ceiling of childhood on to the ruggedness of the road."
And I am reminded, in conclusion, of Mahmoud Darwish's poem, Silence for Gaza, which begins like this:
With dynamite she raps her waist
She explodes
It is neither death nor suicide
Its Gaza's style to announce her worthiness of life…
Filed under Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish
Tagged as Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish


DepartsYour hotel in the city of Thiruvananthapuram.
You will be picked up from your hotel in the morning for the 2-hour drive to the town of Thuckalay that is about 40 miles from Thiruvananthapuram. The Padmanabhapuram Palace is about 15 minutes drive from Thuckalay.Built in the traditional Kerala style of architecture with huge courtyards, corridors and gabled roofs, the palace complex has 14 well preserved buildings that were added over a period of time. The ceilings of the palace are made of intricately carved rosewood. Massive polished teak beams run across the rooms. Even today the black granite floors have a mirror-like finish. Lime mixed with egg white and other secret ingredients was used to polish the floors. The palace walls are covered with beautiful murals that date back to the 17th and 18th century.Visit the King's Council Chamber and the Queen Mother's palace with its painted ceiling, by far the two best halls of this large palace complex. You will also see a musical bow of mahogany, windows of colored mica, royal chairs with intricate carvings brought from the Far East and hanging brass lanterns. The palace has a stone bed that remains cool in the summer. Another wooden bed is made of 65 different kinds of herbs and is believed to have medicinal properties.There is also a museum on the grounds of the palace complex. The museum has pieces of furniture, wooden and stone statues, coins, weapons and utensils on display.At the end of the tour, enjoy lunch (own expense) at a local restaurant.After lunch you will be driven back to Thiruvananthapuram and dropped off at your hotel.


text:
Read our Greater Good online magazine
Greater Good Science Center
Greater Good Magazine
Online Courses & Tools
Workplace Leaders
Open Search Panel
Close Search Panel Search
Also in this section… >
Advisory & Science Boards
Digital #Gratmap Plots Gratitude Around the World
The Hawn Foundation's MindUP™ Gratitude Map—made possible through a partnership with The Greater Good Science Center—creates a prompt every Friday to encourage visitors to post their general expressions of gratitude or those on a specific topic.
Provocations have included: "Teachers change lives, tell us about a teacher that changed yours in six words?" or "What is your favorite sweet treat that you are grateful for this åHalloween?" or "Fall has fell, what are you grateful for in nature, this season?" The Gratitude Map allows visitors to post their own expression of gratitude, with or without a picture — or to just browse from those gratitudes that have been posted form around the world.
The Hawn Foundation Founder, Academy Award Winning Actress and Children's Advocate Goldie Hawn says, "Cultivating feelings of gratitude are an important part of MindUP.™ It is so important that it makes up an entire lesson in our 15-lesson framework. Research has shown that when you cultivate the practices of noticing and expressing feelings of being grateful, whether in a gratitude journal or through letters of thanks, the benefits can include reduced depression and an increased sense of well-being." Ms. Hawn added, "In fact, this past January Indiana University researchers led by Prathik Kini, used brain scanning technology to prove that these psychological and health benefits can be present even months after the gratitude activity is completed."
Major studies around the world are echoing this sentiment citing claims such as reduced anxiety, increased optimism, improvements in the cardio vascular system and even boosts to our immune system.
Laurie Coots, CEO of The Hawn Foundation added, "Gratitude is like a virtuous circle, the more you express gratitude, the more you become aware of how grateful you are — which is likely to make you kinder to others which in turn can cause them to be grateful. I am hoping that if people are having a bad day they can visit our Gratitude Map and 'rub digital elbows' with those that have posted on our site. Maybe reading expressions from others will contribute to one's own "noticing" of the gifts in life — gifts to be grateful for."
You can follow the progress of this experiment or post a gratitude yourself by visiting gratmap.mindup.org.
About MindUP™
MindUP™ is the signature program of The Hawn Foundation. MindUP™ is grounded in neuroscience, activated by mindful awareness, inspired by positive psychology and a catalyst of social and emotional learning. MindUP™ is an evidence based, CASEL approved, SEL program that is offered through schools and is brought to life by teachers in the classroom. Research has shown that SEL provided critical skills that help children achieve academically as well as build the personal resilience necessary for today's world. The Mission of MindUP™ is to help children thrive in learning and in life. https://www.mindup.org
"The Greater Good Science Center is a tremendous resource for educators seeking to learn about the latest research and to understand how to apply it in practical ways to their work in schools."
― Pamela Seigle, Executive Director, Leading Together
There are many ways to support our mission: become a Greater Good member, make a donation, volunteer for an event, or subscribe to our e-newsletters.
Subscribe to our free e-newsletters
The Greater Good Science Center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being, and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.
Berkeley - University of California
© 2019 The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley
Developed By Hop Studios Hop Studios


Favorite Chinese Potato Chips company PanPan brought their products in the country under an awesome red trade show display.
Philippine Confectionary, Biscuit & Snack Association (PCBSA), a respectable group of 19 snack manufacturers, exhibited their wide variants of snacks and sweets. They introduce their new line of snacks and also their best-selling favorites.
A one-of-a-kind canned Bangus sardines, Capitan Del Mar, is ready to take over the Filipino taste palate! Capitan Del Mar comes in different variants that are perfect for healthy eating! At their booth, they prepared free-to-taste spicy Sardine Dynamites.
At the Market Reach international resources booth, you'll find special Spiced Vinegar "Sawsawang Pinoy" by Marcelina's! It's a delicious combination of vinegar, bagoong, and pinakurat, which has three variants especially made for meat, fish, and dipping marinating.
A special homegrown brand of all-natural flavorful vinegar called Basimatsi, which comes in seven variants, is sure to fire up your appetite! Basimatsi variants are a combination vinegar with rich ingredients in the country i.e ginger, chilis. spiced in a natural process made for different occasions.
At the AT Korea Pavilion, we tasted this delicious Kiwi juice by Foodrella.
That's the wrap for this year's IFEX Philippines! See you again in May 2018!


Discussion in 'Defence Analysis' started by Levina, Apr 1, 2017.
At every turn, Pakistan empowers terrorists abroad while persecuting dissenters at home.
It is well known that Pakistan harbors the Afghan Taliban, and that it provides every kind of imaginable amenity to the organization, inclusive of political, military, diplomatic and financial support. It is also well known that Pakistan affords similar perquisites to other groups that the United States and the United Nations consider to be terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Haqqani network, among others. However, the degree to which Pakistan's civilian and/or military leaders actively sought to protect bin Laden remains a serious question.
Carlotta Gall, in her 2014 volume The Wrong Enemy, asserts that Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, had a desk dedicated to overseeing his protection. As is well known, bin Laden was "hiding" in plain sight a mere mile or so from the famed Pakistan Military Academy. His home was a Spartan but fortified compound with high walls, limited communications and a small electrical profile for the outsize compound. They even burned their trash in the compound itself. His security was surprisingly absent, suggesting that bin Laden felt reasonably secure. He fathered several children, two of whom were delivered in government hospitals in Karachi, where they received the bin Laden name. (It is likely that they also received birth certificates, although this cannot be confirmed).
Pakistan's position on bin Laden is difficult to parse. On the one hand, officials claim that there was no government effort to support him. On the other, when the United States initially offered Pakistan, in the words of one highly-placed official, "a ride on the victory bus," Pakistan had no interest. While early U.S. statements suggested that the United States could not have accomplished this without Pakistani cooperation; the Pakistani government soon made it clear that it had no part in the raid. Soon thereafter, civilian and military leaders alike vocally decried the U.S. raid that killed him as a breach of Pakistan's sovereignty. The civilian government convened the so-called Abbottabad Commission Report, which ostensibly aimed to discern how bin Laden entered the country and who protected him. The report fell considerably short of identifying any culprits who harbored him. The only person they have arrested is a lone physician, Dr. Shakil Afridi, who helped the U.S. effort. Afridi is being held under violations of the Frontier Crimes Regulations, a colonial-era legal regime that does not even apply to him.
However, Pakistan is keenly interested in pursuing the one man who did much to help the United States: Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States from 2008–11. A recent article by Haqqaniin the Washington Post on how diplomats build contacts with incoming administration officials was described in Pakistan variously as a "confession" or "admission" of secretly helping the Americans in finding bin Laden. Ignoring the question of why and how bin Laden lived for years in Pakistan, the country's politicians and media are busy condemning Haqqani for inadvertently helping conclude the hunt for the world's most wanted terrorist by granting visas to American operatives who, along with Pakistani nationals, located bin Laden.
Alas, Haqqani is not the only foe of terrorism that the state is hunting. In recent years, the Pakistani state has launched a tenacious crackdown upon a wide array of activists who oppose the perduring state project of jihad and a creeping, vulgar Islamism that has led to grievous sectarian and communal carnages throughout the country. These activists include secular bloggers and other social media activists, civil rights lawyers, journalists, musicians, and other dissidents, such as Baloch and Sindhi ethnic activists. These diverse activists generally oppose the army's instrumentalization of so-called jihadis as principal tools of foreign policy and the government's tacit alignment with Islamism. For these reasons, they are considered "enemies of the state" and have been relentlessly harassed and threatened with violence. Sometimes the thuggish arms of the state arrive at their home or place of business in caravans of black SUVs with government plates and disappear them. While some are returned after periods of internment and abuse, others are never seen again. Few of these persons have the resources to flee Pakistan or the skills to make new homes in safer countries. To further marginalize and endanger the foes of the state's twin projects of jihadism and Islamism, private citizens—no doubt at the state's behest—file blasphemy charges. Even if they are acquitted in court, it is not uncommon that vigilante hordes murder the accused, along with members of their family.
The relentless prosecution of reformers whose only real crime is wanting a saner, more peaceful and less querulous Pakistan stands in contrast to the leeway the state gives to the menagerie of terrorists the Pakistani state maintains to kill on its behalf in Afghanistan and India. These groups enjoy police protection at their residences, in their offices and when they travel. Pakistan's intelligence agencies keep a close protective eye on them, moving them into safe houses when needed. Pakistan's military forces train them and equip them. Pakistan's intelligence agencies plan their attacks.
The United States has done much to embolden the army and its intelligence agencies over the last fifteen years to hunt down reformers at home, because it believes the United States needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs the United States. Pakistanis frequently lament that while the United States never brought down a civilian regime, its historical support to the military ensures that a praetorian junta, unaccountable to any law, truly governs the state.
I agree. The United States needs to right this course. Washington needs to demand that Pakistan knock off its jihad habit while at the same time working to ensure this relentless liberal witch hunt ends. The United States has many tools at its disposal, ranging from sanctions, to declaring Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terror, to significant curbs on military assistance. Washington needs to muster the intestinal fortitude to employ these tools—now.
C. Christine Fair is an associate professor at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program. Most recently she is the author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War and co-editor of Pakistan's Enduring Challenges.
I like this woman for she has always been very vocal about America's Pakistan policy. But she always fails to answer why Pakistan gets so much sympathy from US despite experts like her repeatedly warning their government regarding the consequences of nursing a snake in America's bosom.
mirage, anant_s and vstol jockey like this.
sunny6611 and Levina like this.
Hence any 'isolation' effort will be useless..... Pakistan doesn't care about... Bangladesh ....Or Nepal....or Sri Lanka....They will be well and good with China alone.
Again, what has our policy of 'diplomatically isolating' Pakistan achieved !?
All the Extremists Based in Pakistani lands will have to be exterminated by us...No one is going to do it for us...As is clear...A single surgical strike won't deter them either....Perhaps 'major action' is required....But...Is there political will and guts for it !?


text:
Tag: Agadez
Rising Islamist militancy across Sahel belt threatens African Christianity
September 8, 2016 Agadez, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, Beatrice Stockly, Islamic extremism, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Muammar Gaddafi, Niger, Sahel, Timbuktu, Tuareg, West Africa
More than 70 churches, as well as Christian homes, schools and orphanages,were burned down by Islamists in Niger in January 2015.World Watch Monitor As the world focusses on potential military advances against the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it risks overlooking another vast region where militant Islam is . . . Read More
70+ churches destroyed as 'anti-Charlie' protests spread in Niger
January 20, 2015 Niger Agadez, Charlie Hebdo, Churches, Islamic extremism, Mahamadou Issoufou, Maradi, Niamey, Niger, Zinder
The Christian community in Niger says it is in shock in the wake of weekend violence that has claimed the lives of ten people and led to the destruction of dozens of places of worship and Christian homes. The protest, which started in the country's second city, Zinder, on Friday . . . Read More
Upsurge in attacks signals growing Islamist threat in Niger
June 14, 2013 Niger Agadez, Mahamadou Issoufou, Maradi, MUJAO, Niamey, West Africa, Zinder
The remains of the car used in the May 23 suicide attack in Agadez.World Watch Monitor Four attacks within the last three weeks in Niger have raised the spectre of a growing Islamist threat in the country. In the latest attack on Tuesday (June 11), unidentified armed men attacked . . . Read More


text:
Peter Capaldi is leaving Doctor Who – but when will his final episode be?
Caroline WestbrookTuesday 31 Jan 2017 6:55 am
Peter Capaldi will be sticking around the Tardis for a little longer (Picture: BBC)
So Peter Capaldi has announced his departure from Doctor Who – but when exactly will he be bowing out of the show?
Well, you'll be seeing him for a while yet, since the BBC has confirmed that as well as the next series – which kicks off in April – he'll make his final appearance in the 2017 Christmas special, when the Doctor will regenerate.
And with a whole new series of Capaldi-led adventures to come in April, you'll actually be seeing him for a while yet.
"It (the new series of Doctor Who) will be my last… I feel it's time to move on."
– Peter Capaldi
#DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/4gx9rTShPZ
— Doctor Who Official (@bbcdoctorwho) January 30, 2017
The actor broke the news of his departure on Jo Whiley's Radio 2 show on Monday night, saying it was 'time to move on'.
'One of the greatest privileges of being Doctor Who is to see the world at its best.
'From our brilliant crew and creative team working for the best broadcaster on the planet, to the viewers and fans whose endless creativity, generosity and inclusiveness points to a brighter future ahead.'
He added: 'I can't thank everyone enough. It's been cosmic.'
The next series of the show – which will also feature Pearl Mackie as the Doctor's new companion – kicks off on April 15.
MORE : When does Doctor Who series 10 start? Peter Capaldi has the answer
MORE : WATCH: Doctor Who companion Bill compares the Tardis to a kitchen in new series 10 trailer
Doctor WhoPeter Capaldi
Line of Duty's Vicky McClure rules herself out to replace Jodie Whittaker on Doctor Who
'Tardis, you mug': Danny Dyer now a contender for 14th Doctor Who
Olly Alexander denies Doctor Who rumours again: 'I'm definitely not doing it'
Ricky Gervais reveals his one condition for hosting the Oscars – but says it would 'never happen'


text:
Superior Collegiate and Vocational Institute (SCVI) is a high school in Thunder Bay, Ontario and is part of the Lakehead District School Board system. The school opened in September, 2009. It has approximately 600 students. It is also currently, as of September 2019, the only school in the Lakehead District School Board that offers the International Baccalaureate program, introduced in September 2018 after the shut down of Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate & Vocational Institute.

History

Superior Collegiate and Vocational Institute replaced Port Arthur Collegiate Institute and Hillcrest High School. Port Arthur Collegiate opened in 1909 and closed in 2007. Its students were then transferred to Hillcrest High School, which opened in 1928 as "Port Arthur Technical School". Hillcrest High School closed in 2009.

Construction of the school began in 2007. It was built on the former site of Balsam Street Public School, about a kilometre north of Hillcrest High School.

See also
List of high schools in Ontario
 Education in Thunder Bay, Ontario

References

External links
 School website

High schools in Thunder Bay
Educational institutions established in 2009
2009 establishments in Ontario

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


'Depressed by the world but better in ourselves'.
Tate divorced Isabella Gardiner in 1966 and married Helen Heinz, who survived him (he died in 1979); MacNeice died in 1963. So Tate's extensive experience of marriage and divorce in late 1961 derived from his relationship with the novelist Caroline Gordon. They married in May 1925, divorced in 1945, remarried the next year and finally divorced again in 1959.
 Letters of Louis MacNeice, edited by Jonathan Allison (London: Faber, 2010), 687.
 Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 457.
 'Caroline Gordon', in Sondra Stang, editor, The Presence of Ford Madox Ford (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 200; see also Brita Lindbergh-Seyersted, A Literary Friendship: Correspondence Between Caroline Gordon & Ford Madox Ford (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1999).
 Sally Wood, editor, The Southern Mandarins: Letters of Caroline Gordon to Sally Wood, 1924-1937 (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 51.
 Caroline Gordon, The Good Soldier: A Key to the Novels of Ford Madox Ford (Davis: University of California Library, 1963), 19.
 Iain Sinclair, The Last London: True Fictions from an Unreal City (London: Oneworld, 2017), 18.
 Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems, edited by Peter McDonald (London: Faber, 2007), 781.


text:
Newseum Undermines Itself With 'Fake News'
Aug 06, 2018 by Ilana Davis	in Opinions
Free speech and the debate over Fake News have intersected in the past week as the Newseum in Washington, DC made the decision to include T-Shirts from its gift shop which read 'You Are Very Fake News,' only to pull them less than a week later.
The Newseum originally defended its decision for selling the shirts, calling it 'satirical rebuke,' but released a press statement the next day calling for the removal of the controversial clothing line:
Via @kathrynw5: The @Newseum is reversing course and removing the "fake news" shirts from its stores. "We made a mistake and we apologize," the museum says. pic.twitter.com/UCWNoVnfcC
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 4, 2018
In selling the Fake News shirts, the museum was unironically undermining the era of Fake News we are in, and minimizing the power of the phrase as a whole. This subjects the ethics and integrity of journalism to question, which contradicts the museum's six floors of exhibits spent celebrating and recognizing the profession as a service to the people.
Using the power of the platforms they have been given, journalists like Jim Heath and Matt Viser express these ideas.
I know the @Newseum is broke & looking for some quick cash, but selling "fake news" items is disgusting.
Those dead journalists, honored on the wall at the Newseum, were not fake. They were heroes. And selling Trump "fake news" items disparages their memory.
— Jim Heath (@JimHeathTV) August 3, 2018
This t-shirt doesn't belong anywhere. It particularly doesn't belong at the @Newseum, a place that celebrates journalism and has the First Amendment etched in stone outside its building. https://t.co/7ecmjcGOyq pic.twitter.com/AhEgRVA7wE
— Matt Viser (@mviser) August 3, 2018
Your "fake news" t-shirts aren't funny, @Newseum
They make a mockery of the reporters, whose names you have inscribed on your walls, who died for their vocation.
— Leigh Giangreco (@LeighGiangreco) August 3, 2018
Just this past year, the Newseum installed an exhibit on Fake News. The purpose of the exhibit was to analyze the effects of Fake News in the 2016 election, and "show how individuals can be powerful instruments in both spreading and stopping fake news." So why go from criticism of the harmful phrase, to selling T-shirts with these controversial words on it?
A New York Times article explains the importance of merchandising for the Newseum. Because of the high rent and $22 entrance fee, the museum relies heavily on its merchandising to make money. The museum prides itself on its heavily political products and the economic aid it has provided in recent years.
The gift shop continues to sell controversial items such as MAGA products, books on 'How to Win A Fight Against Liberals/Conservatives' and a book on 'Crazy Sh*t Presidents have Said.' The Director of Public Relations for the museum, Sonya Gavankar explained that these products promote free speech. Gavankar gave the same reasoning for the shirts but retracted the statement the following day.
Not everyone opposed the clothing line, some interpreted it as the type of free speech the museum encourages. One twitter user defended the T-shirt, saying the First Amendment allows for Fake News to be printed and thus promotes the message of the museum. But this misinformation is dangerous and the Newseum fills its exhibits with journalists who spent their lives fighting to keep the public well informed through free press.
An opinion piece from Dan Gainor at Fox attacked the journalists who called the shirts wrong, writing "The cries of whiny journalists succeeded in banning speech that journalists didn't like from the Newseum. (Irony alert!)."
While there is a sense of hypocrisy generated from all of this, there are limits to free speech such as defamation or fighting words and the threat of Fake News within journalism can be viewed as such.
Gainor is critical of the Newseum's statement taking back the clothing line, turning it into an issue of partisanship: "Here's the official statement from the Newseum (note the obvious anti-Trump dig at the end.)"
Others on twitter lashed out at the liberal media for "being upset over a t-shirt:"
Liberal defenders of the press were angrier about a dumb t-shirt being sold at Newseum than a racist being hired by the nation's preeminent newspaper.
And we wonder why public trust in journalism is at an all time low.
— Pradheep J. Shanker, M.D., M.S. (@Neoavatara) August 4, 2018
Fox released an article the day the T-shirts were pulled celebrating the massive success in sales of other Trump related merchandise. Amy Lieu writes, "the popularity of items associated with President Trump has been irritating many members of the media."
Fake News is not a partisan issue and has only recently become synonymous with the right after Trump's constant use of the phrase. Fake News is, however, a threat towards the integrity and morality of the press and journalism alike, which is why the shirts do not belong in an establishment meant to preserve the ideals and history of the profession.
"As a nonpartisan organization, people with differing viewpoints feel comfortable visiting the Newseum, and one of our greatest strengths is that we're champions not only of a free press but also of free speech," Gavarath originally said in a press conference.
But there have been instances recently where news that someone doesn't agree with is subsequently called out as being "fake." Despite the correlation between Fake News and the right, this type of misinformation is harmful to all aspects of the political spectrum and therefore does not coincide with the Newseum's standing as a nonpartisan organization.
Reporter Karen Tumulty jokingly compared this incident to if the Air and Space Museum sold mugs that claimed the moon landing was faked. Likewise, promoting Fake News in an institution dedicated to the fight for the core freedoms of the First Amendment undermine the mission of the museum in the first place.
Tagged with: Fake News, Fake News T-shirts, Karen Tumulty, newseum
About the author Ilana Davis


Henry Blodget looks at the lack of income growth for the bottom half of Americans and explains the problems this causes for the economy.
That would be ZERO income growth for the bottom half of the US population, and very little for the next 40%, so 90% of the US population has seen little to no growth.
Why this is bad, is because the economy is driven by those that spend money and the bulk of the people who spend their money are the bottom 90%, yet they have little money to spend.
This means that the rich could be making even more money if income growth was spread out more. But the corporations are not allowing that to happen, probably driven by quarterly profit requirements, and the majority of the populations suffers as a result.


"Fantastic classes. i used the beginner dvd and found it amazing. i had sciatica for a year and this healed me. i am discovering a new body. Thanks so much. i have a 14 day free trial but i know i am going to be committed. it is a new way of life. Amit is so knowledgeable about the body - its challenges and potential. The explanations are so clear and interesting. thanks!"
" I have been following your site for nearly a year now and I am a fan. Especially after receiving my personalised program. Even though I used to take personal classes from a pilates teacher in Turkey, I now can say that I had better results and deeper knowlegde following your videos."
"I think yoopod.com is a very effective way of bringing Pilates to busy people who want to practise in their own homes without the time restraints of attending classes. I am a qualified Pilates foundation teacher and found the classes and presentation excellent."
"Your site is fantastic – I was referred by a friend and have suggested it to many friends myself since I discovered it. It's so great to have excellent quality Pilates classes available for anytime of day. Well done to you and your team... keep it up."
"Your care for your customers does you credit and is one of the two key reasons why I have recommended your website to several friends. The other reason, of course, is the quality of your lessons. Thank you again."
"Have looked at this website over the last year and have been extremely impressed with amits classes,totally addicted now that I have joined up!!.... Household tasks have gone by the wayside I'm afraid!!"
"I am really enjoying Amit's intro classes. I find them a gentle way to reset my body at beginning and end of day. I find it nice to follow along with someone leading me before/after I have to lead others. I enjoy yoopod because i find the site straight forward and goal oriented. I enjoy the way Amit breaks down his exercises into a gentle progression. I have hundreds of DVDs and Pilates resources and this is one of my favourites!"
"I just wanted to say how much I'm enjoying your classes. I live in Greece and don't have access to a live Pilates class, so I've been using the same DVD for the past four years. I was so pleased to discover your site and am now making really good use of the intermediate level classes. It's wonderful to have such a choice of classes, with clear instructions and without annoying background music! Thank you, thank you, thank you!"
"Well done - i look forward to spending hours poring over my computer. Thank goodness winter is coming. I was going to buy a TV but wont have time to watch with yoopod available online!!!"
"Your new site looks great, high quality filming and lighting plus your presentation is absolutely first class, you really are very natural and watchable- as you know I worked in TV for fifteen years so feel I can say that to you! I wanted to let you know how great it all looks, and I wish you every success with it".
"I've checked out and signed up for yoopod. I really think it's fabulous. I think it's clearly set out and easy to understand. I love the fact you can pick your workouts time, level and teacher".
"I think your site will be the perfect complement to my weekly classes , wish I'd found you sooner. It's my first week and am loving it. Have done pilates for a couple years now and I love my classes, but have become bored out of my mind with the DVDs. I was given an ipad for Christmas and it has opened up everything . I can follow you now in the warmer part of my house which when you live in an old house in Scotland is saying a lot! Thank you guys!"
"Just want to say a huge thank you for yoopod.com. I had a brilliant instructor in Edinburgh and had also been lucky enough to go on a few fantastic pilates holidays but since moving away with work I have tried a few classes locally but haven't found anything that comes close. A lot of the classes I have tried are called pilates but then the instructors barely mention the core or breathing and very few exercises resembled anything I recognise as pilates! I had become a bit demotivated and it was hard trying to do pilates on my own until I found your website and now I'm loving it again! The classes are perfectly paced, point out the things to watch for and I'm enjoying trying a new class every few days".


text:
package controllers;

import com.google.inject.Inject;
import event_handler.EventName;
import helpers.ApiAuth;
import play.libs.Json;
import play.mvc.Http;
import play.mvc.Result;
import services.IWebhookService;

import java.util.List;

/**
 * Created by mitesh on 22/01/17.
 */
public class WebhookEventController extends CoreController {

    @Inject
    IWebhookService webhookService;

    @ApiAuth
    public Result getAll(String projectId) {
        String userId = (String) Http.Context.current().args.get("userId");
        List<EventName> webhookEvents = webhookService.getAllEvents();
        return ok(Json.toJson(webhookEvents));
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub