The MED Foundation of Mercer Health has been selected as a State Farm Neighborhood Assist Top 200 Finalist – Mercer Health

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The MED Foundation of Mercer Health recently applied for a $25,000 grant from State Farm to bring COPE into each Mercer County school and was chosen as one of 200 finalists out of more than 2,000 submissions. The final recipients are chosen via online voting from the community and the top 40 receive $25,000 in funding.

Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment (COPE) is an evidence-based cognitive behavioral skills building program offered through Mercer Healths Center for Healthy Weight and Wellness that helps children, teens and young adults develop skills to stop negative thoughts and to think and act in more positive ways. Limited access to mental health care, cost, insurance coverage, transportation and the time commitment related to taking children out of school to see a professional create barriers that can often prevent the youth in our community from receiving support that they need. Receiving the grand funding to bring COPE into local schools would remove many of these barriers for the children who actively need this support while providing preventative coping skills in order to help them become healthy, positive, productive teens and adults.

By bringing COPE into the schools, we remove the access to care barriers so many students face, Jennifer Bills, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner and certified COPE provider, said. By proactively teaching kids how to interrupt negative thoughts and focus on healthy coping mechanisms, we can positively impact the overall health and wellbeing of students in our community.

The MED Foundation is seeking the communitys help by voting for this program to receive one of the forty $25,000 Neighborhood Assist grants from State Farm. Starting today, August 18, U.S. residents who are 18 and older with a valid email address can vote for the cause at neighborhoodassist.com.

About State Farm Neighborhood Assist

State Farm Neighborhood Assist is a crowd-sourced philanthropic initiative that empowers communities to identify issues in their neighborhoods. The State Farm Review Committee selected the top 200 finalists from 2,000 submissions.

About the MED Foundation

The MED Foundation of Mercer Health was established in December of 1988 by a group of community leaders and hospital administration to provide enhancements and educational support for the future of health care services within our community. Our mission is to cultivate philanthropic relationships that enhance Mercer Healths ability to fulfill its mission and vision. The MED Foundation is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization.

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The MED Foundation of Mercer Health has been selected as a State Farm Neighborhood Assist Top 200 Finalist - Mercer Health

Despite predictions of doom and gloom, Judaism is thriving – The Jerusalem Post

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Menachem Forester is a student at the Chabad Yeshiva nestled in the ancient Venice Ghetto, established in 1516. The Ghetto, no longer designed to lock up Jews, is the vibrant center of Jewish life in the ancient Italian city. Every night, Forester makes the twenty-minute walk from the Jewish Ghetto to the pillars in the central town square, Piazza San Marco. Imported from Turkey in the 12th Century, the pillars rise high as a symbol of the political power of a trading center that linked the east and west.

But Forester sits at the pillars of another part of their symbolism. In 1533, it was the site of the mass burning of the Talmud. Venice was an early center of Jewish printing, home of the Bomberg Talmud, whose iconic layout became the standard to this day. Besides copies of the Talmud, other priceless manuscripts and Jewish books were burned on a quest to destroy Jewish knowledge, sparked by the hatred of the Spanish Inquisition.

When Forester arrives at the square, he opens his Talmud and spends an hour in Torah study. This is my way of responding to the tragedy of almost 500 years ago, he says. What better way than to study Torah and our Jewish tradition in the very place which our enemies sought to destroy it.

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Forester represents the remarkable era that we live in as Jews. Beyond the doom and gloom that Jews love to focus on and there are serious challenges we live in a remarkable time. As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks would say: almost all Jews live in free countries where they can openly practice. We have a country where Jews have sovereignty. We are equipped with modern weaponry just over a month ago, while on a rabbinical solidarity mission in the wake of the most recent Gaza conflict, I got a glimpse of Israels newest weapon: the state of the art F-35 combat aircraft. Today Jews can defend themselves against our enemies and are free to study Torah where its books were burned some five centuries ago.

Lying at the core of what drives us as Jews is a sense of personal empowerment, the guts to stand up for ourselves, the guts to learn Torah in the very place that symbolizes its destruction.

Some years ago, I visited the British Museum. I wandered through the exhibits of ancient peoples like the Hittite and Babylonians. I saw the massive stone reliefs of Sennacherib exiling the Ten Tribes, the statues of the Greeks, Romans, Persians and others. Each empire rose and fell, and today their cultures exist in museums and archaeological sites. I stood there as a Jew, not very different from the ancient Jews who challenged these empires with the ideas of monotheism, justice, compassion and the mission to infuse the world with Divine purpose.

These superpowers had might that dominated the world for a few centuries, but each had its sunset. Yet the ideas that stand at the center of Judaism have the staying power because they transcend the limitation of time. Given by God at Sinai, they have meaning and are relevant every time and every place.

The lesson is clear. The ideas of the Torah are the core of our identity. If we care about a Jewish future, we dont need to change Judaism to fit a popular agenda of political-social action, even though Judaism does teach compassion. Nor is the answer to a Jewish tomorrow a secular nationalism devoid of the spiritual bond to the Jewish homeland. What we need is to teach the next generation authentic Torah. We need to instill in them wonder for Jewish knowledge, so they can find modern relevance to the ideas of this era. If they deeply appreciate it, they will pass it on to the next generation.

If youre looking for a place to start studying, drop by the Piazza San Marco at 10:00 PM every night. Menachem would be delighted to have a study partner.

Rabbi David Eliezrie is president of the Rabbinical Council of Orange County California. His email is rabbi@ocjewish.com

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Despite predictions of doom and gloom, Judaism is thriving - The Jerusalem Post

Amazon’s Represent the Future Summit is Back Black Girl Nerds – Black Girl Nerds

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At Black Girl Nerds, we are focus on the empowerment and uplift of OUR Black communities. We are constantly looking for ways to bring positive assets and opportunities to all of you. So, when Amazon announced that they were bringing back the upcoming Represent the Future Summit, we knew we wanted to partner in getting the word out and connecting our audience to this great opportunity. We spoke to Erin Dowell, who is Amazons Global Leader, Diversity Conferences, about the Summit, how it did last year, and their continuing commitment to the Black community.

Hello Erin. Were excited to talk to you today. Can you start by telling us a little about yourself and your role at Amazon?

Thank you for having me. Ive been the leader of Global Events in the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion organization at Amazon after (virtually) attending Represent the Future in 2020. oversee the strategic vision and execution of our external events, and Im responsible for ensuring these experiences are authentic and inclusive for diverse customers, which ultimately strengthens Amazons brand trust and standing as an employer of choice in diverse communities worldwide.

Amazing. Tell me, was last years Summit a success?

My personal story is a great testimony to the power of this program. This time last year, I was attending Represent the Future as a prospective candidate and today, Im here talking to you.

WOW! What an empowering. story. What I love is that you are doing more than just talking the talk, you are really is walking the walk. Can you talk a little about the Summit? What it is and why it is important?

We are very excited about the return of this event. Amazon is hosting its second Represent the Future summit on August 24-25, 2021. Represent the Future is a free, virtual career enrichment experience, designed to uplift Black, Latinx, and Native American/Indigenous professionals. The Summit will offer two days of speakers and sessions highlighting Amazons global business ecosystem, customer-obsessed culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion and the role innovation, invention, and intrapreneurship play in building the future. Its going to amazing.

As a Black woman, you must recognize how decimating these last years have been to our community. What position does Amazon take during what some might call, Uncomfortable Conversations?

Simple. The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black and African Americans is unacceptable. Black lives matter. We stand in solidarity with our Black employees, customers, and partners, and are committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear.

Erin, this has been great. How can our audience participate?

Thank YOU! Visit https://www.amazonrepresents.com to register. You DO NOT want to miss this incredible experience.

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Amazon's Represent the Future Summit is Back Black Girl Nerds - Black Girl Nerds

Remembering Trailblazing African-American Artist Peter Williams, Who Painted Every Personal And Collective Experience With Passion For Social Justice…

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Peter Williams "The Arrest of George Floyd" (2020) oil on canvas, 48 in. x 60 in.

Peter Williams, a pioneering painter who transcended genres and created vibrant, fervent boldly-colored figurative and abstract paintings that burst with emotion and socio-political passion, died Thursday at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.He was 69.

Every charged brushstroke underscored Williams self-described liberal, progressive African-American point of view.

Fellow artists and his students in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Delaware expressed an outpouring of grief and gratitude for the prolific painter who invested as much into mentoring fellow artists as he did into composing every large-scale canvas.

Peter Williams is one of the forefathers of Afro-surrealism visual art, and his work should and always be celebrated for its beauty, message, and creativity, said Williams friend and fellow Afro-surrealist artist Alim Smith.

Photographic artist Lisa Nebenzahl said Williams was her first friend when she moved to Minneapolis in 1976.

Im heartbroken to hear of Peters death. Peter was so incredibly talented and prodigious then and very much so to the end of his amazing life, Nebenzahl said. I will miss the support he's shown me recently as I re-entered my art practice, describing us in a note last month as the messengers.

Williams most recent work featured an explosive and visceral depiction of racial strife, black power, and police brutality. The white gaze magnified by brazen images of white police officers as pigs, blue eyes leering, and white hands grabbing, Williams detailed work incorporates symbols of unfair wealth distribution, greed, and religion, underpinning the rampant racism that permeates this nations systems of power and authority.

Peter Williams "The Death of George Floyd" (2020) oil on canvas, 48 in. x 60 in.

My work has always had a political ethos, it comes out of my self-awareness as a black American. This work is a compendium of modernist form and the politics of right now. I had been working, shifting the work toward a more abstract base. I had always been a figurative narrative painter, Williams told me in an interview last June. The composition of stripes represent the hegemony of corporate thinking and the symbols of linear thinking that comes from formalism. I am trying to combine the organic quality of violence/race, justice and what was broadly avoided in modernist art, content.

Despite the intensity and moral gravity of his work, Williams approached life and teaching with levity and dark humor that accompanied a smile as wide as his world view.

His humor, while not for everyone, was perfect for me: good sarcasm, honest and often self-effacing, especially as he faced so many health issues in the last few years, said Nebenzahl.

Born March 18, 1952, in Nyack, New York, Williams, who earned a B.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and a M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art, was an artist for more than four decades, creating a multitude of stunning new works even as his health deteriorated. His tireless work ethic and pervasive spirit could never be vanquished. Williams spoke with eloquence and conviction, and sought to impart his skill, knowledge, and enthusiasm onto future generations of artists.

Peter Williams (1952-2021) in front of his painting.

Williams credited his high school art teacher Joe McDowell as a primary influence, and always recognized the support of his mother and family.

Williams, who cross-referenced subjects and styles, described his process as experimental with regard to content and traditional form. His complex paintings explored color, structure, and form as genuinely as his later works scrutinized social and racial injustice amid a pervasive collapse of humanity.

My career has been full of a variety of directions that proved to be of interest. The most cohesive part of this journey has been work about the life of African-American as subject, Williams wrote. I made images of Black cowboys while living in New Mexico. Now I find the subject of my Negrotude reasserting itself and is still a powerful device to try to express and expose to an audience.

Williams broke into the art world at age 17 with his first solo show at the Pat Merenstein Gallery in Nyack, quickly leading to more exhibitions, including at the Woodstock Music Festival. He won the Artists' Legacy Foundation's 2020 Artist Award, a $25,000 prize granted annually to a painter or sculptor who has made significant contributions to their field and whose work shows evidence of the hand.

Williams never let pain and struggle compromise his ability to create. An amputee after surviving a car accident in Mexico while he was a college student, Williams said this experience has always influenced my interest in the figure and the use of narrative space in my story telling. There is an immediacy I am constantly thinking about, through the use of color.

Thinking of Peter now, I can't help but see him as our Shaman of Intersectional-Trauma, said American artist Michael Kalmbach (University of Delaware, MFA 2008). I remember him telling me about how losing his leg in that car accident in Mexico probably saved him from a worse fate in Vietnam. How the hum of a highway near one of his homes helped him understand the power of meditative states, and then there was the daily transformative power of his artistic practice. Peter showed us how to transform pain, and how to give a shit.

Kalmbach, founder and director of The Creative Vision Factory, which provides individuals on the behavioral health spectrum opportunities for self-expression, empowerment, and recovery through the arts, described Williams as a painter's painter to the very end.

I'm grateful for all the studio visits, all the conversations at openings, and the one time I joined him and other members of our faculty for dinner with (American artist) Trenton Doyle Hancock, but most of all I'm going to remember his humanity and humor in the face of tremendous pain, Kalmbach added. Like other great mentors and teachers, he led by example, making it clear that it's our job to stir up the color and to sublimate all this anguish, love, and grief into our tradition.

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Remembering Trailblazing African-American Artist Peter Williams, Who Painted Every Personal And Collective Experience With Passion For Social Justice...

Moving Forward After a Pandemic Year: Student Success Experts Discuss the Future of Higher Education – Yahoo Finance

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Bakhtiyor Isoev released two new episodes of his Education & Empowerment Podcast - Powered by Mission Matters

Bakhtiyor Isoev released two new episodes of his Education & Empowerment Podcast - Powered by Mission Matters

Beverly Hills, California, Aug. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Higher education expert Bakhtiyor Isoev released two new episodes of the Education & Empowerment Podcast. The episodes feature interviews with Andrea Kemp-Ford, Chief Operating Officer for The University of the Potomac in Washington, D.C., and Anna Esaki Smith, a Global education expert who advises higher education institutions, private companies and education organizations on international strategies and thought leadership. In the just-released episodes, Kemp-Ford and Smith discuss the post-pandemic future of higher education and how universities can adapt their academic and operational strategies to support students' long-term success in and out of the classroom.

Customer Service is Key to Student Success During Challenging Times

"We are obligated to help one another", says Andrea Kemp-Ford, the Chief Operating Officer for The University of the Potomac based in Washington, D.C. Ford believes that customer service is one of the factors that contributes to the university's 96% retention rate, along with dedicated faculty and relevant degree programs. When the Global pandemic hit in 2020, the University of the Potomac was well-suited to support students throughout an unprecedented time because of its already-robust online and hybrid course offerings.

But it was still a challenging year for faculty and students alike. The university worked to meet that challenge by paying attention to individual students. "If a student reaches out and says, I don't have food, we're going to give them food," Ford says. This kind of personal touch extends to all aspects of the university's operations--from course design to technology use to degree offerings to student housing. For example, the university continues to offer online and hybrid course options to accommodate students who still don't feel comfortable attending in person. And perhaps most important, Ford says, the company is actively working to keep online instruction engaging and innovative.

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"The industry has changed," Ford says. The higher education industry must adapt in order to support students. Ford recommends preparing faculty to deliver courses online in order to ensure that students get the same experience they would get in person, supporting students and staff who may be struggling with mental health, and partnering with third-party companies when possible to help grow the institution. She emphasizes choosing relevant degree programs to address gaps in our country's infrastructure made plain by the pandemic, such as early childhood education and medical assistance.

The bottom line, though, is human connection. "I have two sons," Ford says. "If they ran into difficulty while they were at school, I would want someone at that university to help them if they could."

Listen to the full interview of Andrea Kemp-Ford with Bakhtiyor Isoev on 4stay.

Weathering a Pandemic: The Future of Higher Education

"With challenges come opportunities," says Anna Esaki Smith, a Global education expert. Because of her vast experience advising higher education institutions and organizations, Smith understands the challenges both students and institutions face during what she calls "enormous disruption."

However, Smith believes that both domestic and international students can capitalize on an opportunity to ensure their own success by articulating what they want out of an education. On the institutional side, colleges and universities have a chance to hone their messaging and outreach strategies, develop online programming, and manage funds more efficiently.

Smith calls the question of how to define students success a "deeply profound one"--indeed, it's a question that individual students may answer differently. The first step is supporting students as they "articulate" what it is they want in a college experience. Smith then helps institutions tailor their messages more specifically to students based on what students want. For example, in an increasingly competitive market, universities must think about recruitment of international students more strategically.

Though students are more empowered than ever, Smith acknowledges the toll the pandemic has taken on young people's mental health. The stressful life of a university student becomes even more stressful when students are worried about the physical and/or financial health of their communities. One way institutions can help combat anxiety and depression is by bolstering online course offerings. Along with regaining sources of revenue and finding ways to manage funds more effectively, investing in online learning is the most important thing to consider when planning for an uncertain future, Smith says. "Universities who do will thrive."

Listen to the full interview of Anna Esaki Smith with Bakhtiyor Isoev on 4stay.

About: The Education & Empowerment Podcast explores success and advancement through education by interviewing today's top leaders in the fields of education, business and technology. This show is brought to you by 4stay, a SaaS-enabled Online Booking marketplace for student and intern housing. Learn more at: https://4stay.com/

Want to partner with 4stay? Explore our Turnkey All-in-One Solutions at offcampus.4stay.com or landlords.4stay.com.

Email us at ibr@4stay.com or learn more at 4stay.com

More episodes may be found here:https://podcast.4stay.com/

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Billie Eilish’s ‘Happier Than Ever’ is both powerful and vulnerable – The Stanford Daily

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19-year-old singer-songwriter Billie Eilish sends powerful messages of female empowerment and perseverance in her new album Happier Than Ever.

The album consists of 16 honest and personal tracks that Eilish wrote and produced with her older brother, Finneas. Eilish explores themes of female empowerment and finding personal strength a departure from her previous album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? which features a dark, less hopeful tone touching on heavier themes like mental health and drugs.

I cant even process it. This was the most fulfilling, most satisfying and profound experience Ive ever had with my music, Eilish wrote in an Instagram post marking the release of her sophomore album.

Eilish begins the album with vulnerability, singing in a soft, calm voice about the struggles she has faced in her career and personal life, in the song Getting Older. Starting with a note of gratitude despite her struggles, she slowly opens her heart to her listeners, saying that she crave[s] pity and would lie for attention, only to get rejected in return. In the chorus, her smooth voice gets higher as she reflects on her life as a singer. The song progresses, and she shares that she has grown as a person while cleverly nodding to the title of her album: Im gettin better at admitting when I was wrong / Im happier than ever, at least, thats my endeavor / To keep myself together and prioritize my pleasure.

Getting Older ends with a note of reassurance: Eilish concludes that she will find happiness despite the hardships that accompany spending most of her teenage years in the public eye. I love the honesty, hope and beauty in this song. Although she doesnt sing loudly against a dynamic, electronic beat like in other parts of her discography, Getting Older holds even more power with its soft, stripped-down instrumentals.

The albums ensuing tracks explore the end of a relationship and the start of a new one. Then comes track four, My Future, which was originally released as a single exactly one year before the albums release; this song chronicles Eilish leaving a relationship and finding herself. She sings of her newfound independence and hope: Im in love / With my future / Cant wait to meet her Im in love / But not with anybody else / Just wanna get to know myself.

I adore the inspiring and refreshing nature of the lyrics in My Future. Eilish sings in what almost sounds like a lullaby, her voice layered soothingly in the background. Then, the beat changes to a faster rhythm, and drums join the accompaniment, signifying a sense of empowerment in a song sure to resonate with fans.

Eilish continues to explore the theme of female empowerment in the ninth track of her album, Not My Responsibility. But the songs style sharply diverges from the albums other tracks. Rather than singing over an electronic sound or soft beat in the background, she speaks over a static synth tone. Speaking rather than singing helps her emphasize her message and distinguish Not My Responsibility from the rest of her tracks. Denouncing how she is often judged by her physical appearance, she stresses that women should not be reduced to their bodies and clothing.

In the music video for the track, Eilish also departs from her omnipresent baggy clothing (which she wears to avoid sexualization of her body), and takes off her outer garments in a powerful statement. In reference to body-shaming she has faced for wearing oversized clothing, she sings, Some people hate what I wear / Some people praise it / Some people use it to shame others / Some people use it to shame me / But I feel you watching / Always / And nothing I do goes unseen.

Later, she speaks softly yet captivatingly as she poses rhetorical questions about her body to the audience: Do my shoulders provoke you? Does my chest? / Am I my stomach? My hips? / The body I was born with / Is it not what you wanted? As a young woman, I feel intimately impacted by Eilishs message in Not My Responsibility. She leverages her musical talent to speak truth: women should never be judged by their physical appearance.

Eilish sends another powerful message in Your Power, which was released as a single in April. In the song, she reflects on an abusive relationship, singing, I thought that I was special / You made me feel / Like it was my fault, you were the devil. She sings hauntingly and beautifully with the sound of soft strumming in the background. Throughout this track, she tells her ex-boyfriend, Try not to abuse your power. On Spotify, under the Storyline, Eilish wrote, I hope that all young women who have been taken advantage of feel heard. I am awed by her ability to share her story so intimately she once again sends a powerful message in reflecting on her personal experiences.

Happier than Ever is my favorite Billie Eilish album yet. Though each song is unique, she incorporates themes of female empowerment throughout. I would strongly recommend this album not only because of Eilishs beautiful vocals and heartfelt songwriting, but, perhaps most importantly, because of her sheer vulnerability.

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Billie Eilish's 'Happier Than Ever' is both powerful and vulnerable - The Stanford Daily

Stewart talks gratitude, mindfulness, awareness, gratefulness, anger, medals ahead of Paralympics – Kamloops This Week

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Greg Stewart talks about heightened awareness and mindfulness.

Gratefulness is tip of tongue, anger is no longer jet fuel, gratitude is propellant and medals will not define him.

The Tournament Capitals 7-foot-2, 350-pound friendly giant seems to be in a zen-like head space, now only days away from accomplishing a goal 20 years in the making, with mens F46 shot put action at the postponed 2020 Paralympic Summer Games in Tokyo slated to begin at 6:33 p.m. (Kamloops time) on Tuesday, Aug. 31.

Relief washed over Stewart last month, when he was one of 16 athletes named to the Canadian squad.

It was gratitude, gratefulness, he said. But I still have mixed feeling on a part of it. Its like, making these Paralympic Games still doesnt define me, but it does, in a way. Its something Ive been training for, something Ive been wanting to attend for 20 years. At the same time, thats not what defines me. Gregs just a Paralympic athlete? Thats all people will know me for? No. I think people know me for a lot of different things.

Relief subsided a few days after his inclusion to Team Canada and focus switched to preparation.

Im either eating, sleeping or training thats it, Stewart said.

Training includes working on mental health.

Stewart hops on Zoom calls with the counsellor/empowerment coach he has seen for the past eight years. Mental performance consultant Penny Werthner will also be available to Canadas Paralympians.

Personally, Im healthy, I have loving people in my family, I have a loving relationship ... everything feels good right now and that is a great head space heading into these Paralympics, Stewart said.

His efforts to reach the Paralympics began in 2001, with stints on the national standing and seated disabled volleyball teams yielding gold medals at world championships and world cups, but never a berth in the Games.

The COVID-19 pandemic put these Games in jeopardy.

Stewart rode the wave.

One thing Ive learned through my life is stuff happens, said Stewart, who was born with nothing below his left elbow. Its like, this is a bummer, man. I was really looking forward to it. All of a sudden, Team Canada is not going and its like, Oh, shoot. I didnt say shoot, though.

But I dont know if I got super low. Youve got to make do with what youve got. Ive got to take ownership.

Stewart has the third-longest throw in the world this year in his discipline, a 15.81m heave on June 12 in Burnaby that is recognized in the World Para Athletics Official World Rankings.

Abrahan Jesus Ortega Abello of Venezuela, who threw 16.30m in March, and Kerwin Noemdo of South Africa, who posted 16.07m, are ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively.

Stewart told KTW his unofficial personal best this year is 16.07m. He launched his official personal best at the 2019 world championships, a 16.30m Canadian-record throw that was good for silver.

Those numbers make him a medal favourite.

So, how does the big man grapple with expectations and pressure to reach the podium?

That all-in mentality can be devastating to somebody if they dont achieve that goal, Stewart said. If we dont meet our expectations, how often do we fall down that wormhole? With the mental health Im constantly practising and my awareness, I dont want to go down that.

At the same time, it would be super cool to get one, Stewart continued.

When there are times when its like, oh, I dont feel very good or worthless, I could look over and be like, oh yeah, that happened.

Ultimately, with this whole journey, I dont get to take anything with me when I leave. When Im done on this earth Im done on this earth. My medal is not going to define me.

Stewart said he summoned anger to establish the Canadian record two years ago at worlds in Dubai on a throw that was accompanied by a hair-raising shriek.

Anger is like jet fuel, he told KTW in 2019.

The implements means of transportation into orbit have changed since then.

Its more so jet fuel of gratitude, Stewart said.

Stewart wants Kamloopsians to join him in Tokyo.

He is asking the public to email gregintokyo21@gmail.com jokes, stories or words of encouragement that he will read between throws during his event.

Using that for more fuel to go and throw a bomb thats what being in the moment is for me, Stewart said.

This is an opportunity for not only myself to have an experience in Tokyo, but an opportunity for the community be a part of it, too.

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Stewart talks gratitude, mindfulness, awareness, gratefulness, anger, medals ahead of Paralympics - Kamloops This Week

Charlize Theron to headline PH Digicon 2021 – Manila Bulletin

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The Philippine Digital Convention (PH Digicon) 2021 will feature Oscar-winning actress, producer, and entrepreneur Charlize Theron. As the celebrity headline speaker, Ms. Theron will speak about her personal experiences in different facets of life, including relevant issues in the business industry such as womens empowerment.

This October, PLDTthrough its B2B arm PLDT Enterprisewill hold the most prestigious thought leadership event in the country. With the theme REVOLUTION, the event seeks to encourage businesses to embrace revolutionary change and explore possibilities to stay ahead in the dynamic business landscape.

In its seventh iteration, the annual convention will feature Ms. Theron, her thoughts on empowering women entrepreneurs and executives in male-dominated industries, and fostering gender equality and economic empowerment, among others.

The award-winning actress founded Denver and Delilah Productions in 2003, a film/tv production company that co-produced films including The Addams Family, Atomic Blonde, and Monster; and hit Netflix crime drama Mindhunter and reality television series Hyperdrive.

Likewise, she is known as one of the most celebrated actresses of her generation, captivating audiences with her portrayal of a range of characters. She has been recognized by various award-giving bodies, receiving several awards and nominations for her exemplary performances.

Theron received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Critics Choice Award, and an Independent Spirit Award for her role as real-life serial killer Eileen Wuornos in the critically acclaimed movie Monster.

Moreover, she portrayed Megyn Kelly in Lionsgates Bombshell, for which she received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Film Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Critics Choice Award, among others, for her remarkable performance.

The actress-producer also appeared in numerous films including North Country, The Devils Advocate, The Cider House Rules, Hancock, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, Snow White and the Huntsman, and A Million Ways to Die in the West.

In 2020, Theron was seen in the Netflix adaptation of the comic book series The Old Guard, by Greg Rucka and illustrator Leandro Fernndez, which was also produced by Denver and Delilah Productions.

Most recently, the actress reprised her role as Cipher in the 9th installment of the Fast and Furious franchise that hit theaters this year.

In addition to Therons acting success and principal involvement with her production company, she also serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace and founder of the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP).

CTAOPs mission is to invest in African youth and their ability to keep themselves and their peers safe from HIV/AIDS through its support of community-based, African organizations that use community-specific programming to effectively engage young people and provide critical tools that support adolescents and address their unique challenges.

In 2020, Theron and CTAOP launched Together for Her, a campaign to help fight gender-based violence during COVID-19, together with CARE and Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF).

The Philippine Digital Convention: REVOLUTION is set to be a fully virtual event, wherein global industry mavens, thought leaders, and pioneers in technology and business will come together to help drive technological enablement among local and global enterprises especially in this ever-changing landscape.

PH Digicon 2021 will happen on October 6 to 8. Join the revolution and register now for free at: phdigicon2021.com

For more information, visit pldtenterprise.com/phdigicon2021

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Nike unveils the Serena Williams Design Crew collection – FashionUnited UK

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Working with ten upcoming designers, Serena Williams and Nike are set to launch a new collection of performance apparel, shoes and accessories to round out the first edition of the Serena Williams Design Crew apprenticeship program.

The collection is set to feature jumpsuits, shorts, t-shirts, a collection of shoes and more, all designed for the purpose of tennis performance. Designs are adorned with bold graphic prints, with the occasional burst of colour, each aimed to capture Serena Williams personal style and legacy. One jumpsuit features a bold pattern inspired by the African Kente cloth, an element that is carried throughout parts of the collection.

A description of one of the bodysuits reads: The Serena Williams Design Crew Bodysuit immortalised every year shes won a grand slam on the smooth tape down each side. An asymmetrical turtleneck overlay and artfully incorporated breathability exemplify the craft and creativity that characterise the ten designers behind the Serena Williams Design Crew.

On the players role in the program, Nike vice president and global creative director, Jonathan Johnsongriffin, said in an interview on the brands site: Serena has been so committed to the program. She wants to meet each apprentice. She wants to see their portfolios. She wants to be a part of the briefing of the product. She wants to be a part of the design reviews.

The design crew initiative was set up by Nike and Williams in 2019. Its aim was to bring together a select group of upcoming designers to take part in an apprenticeship program that promoted diversity in design. Following a six month design curriculum, the group designed the performance and lifestyle clothing and accessories inspired by Williams and her career.

Sports are a conduit to attributes that make the world better, said John Hoke, Nikes chief design officer. Sports fuels self-empowerment, confidence, kindness and connection. That means every program we create, whether Selena Williams Design Crew or Women in Nike, and every product we create are all connected in their nature of empathy. Thats a way we can open the aperture up and have an even deeper impact when it comes to designing for all athletes.

Nike has already announced the second edition of the apprenticeship project, this time working alongside eleven Chicago based apprentices.

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Nike unveils the Serena Williams Design Crew collection - FashionUnited UK

The inspiring women to champion this Emirati Women’s Day Emirates Woman – Emirates Woman

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With Emirati women taking the lead in the region through socio-economic initiatives, we spoke to two inspiring women who are part of The Reach Campaign.

While playing an important role in shaping the strategy for the Crown Princes Court, these women have made a mark globally and Emirates Woman sat down with them to learn more about their contributions to society.

I am proud of the fact that I am from a country that puts womens empowerment and equity at the forefront of its development priorities. I am privileged to have the opportunity to play an integral role in driving the UAEs agenda, development and prosperity forward.

The Reach Campaign is a campaign that aims to raise funds to address two neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), namely, river blindness and lymphatic filariasis. Over 200 million people worldwide are in need of treatment for river blindness whilst over 850 million people are at risk of lymphatic filariasis, with many in Asia, Africa, the Western Pacific and parts of the Caribbean and South America. Through The Reach Campaign, we engage with partners who can help us through financial commitments, but also play a critical role in raising awareness about the importance of addressing these diseases through global partnerships and action. One of the main impacts of NTDs is on the families of those that become ill, the burden is felt more acutely on women as they tend to take on the caretaker role. Eradicating NTDs would result in an increase of women able to return to education and the workforce so that they can reinvest in their communities and families.

I look forward to a future where my daughter can dream big, aspire to be in whichever field she desires, knowing that the UAE will guarantee her equal pay in whatever she decides to do. The UAE has paved the way for women to contribute significantly to the fields of science, the arts and public policy, among many others, and for my daughter to know that there is a world of possibilities for her to conquer because other brilliant and trailblazing Emirati women who have paved the way is something I am excited for her to live through.

Since it was founded in 1971, the UAE has put the agenda of womens empowerment at the forefront of its national priorities. The UAE now leads on many gender indicators globally, including the number of women specializing in STEM fields, as well as the percentage of women represented in parliament. Growing up, I was inspired by Her Excellency Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, the first Emirati woman to hold a Ministerial position. Today, we have many women who hold this title because of the UAEs vision in ensuring women are part of the decision-making and nation-building process. To be able to contribute, albeit in a humble way, to this has been one of the significant milestones of my career.

When it comes to NTDs we try to address them through the global health work at The Reach Campaign and its affiliated projects, we aim to address disease elimination through a gender lens. In many diseases that we are trying to eliminate globally, women and girls bear the brunt of these diseases because they historically carry the majority of childcare responsibility, and when their family members are debilitated by some of these diseases, these women are pulled out of their daily lives to care for them. This leads to an increased chance of compromising their schooling and missing out on economic opportunities. Bringing a gender lens to addressing NTDs is crucial as it can both accelerate positive healthcare outcomes, and also address the hidden gendered educational, leadership and economic costs of these diseases, unlocking new community assets and resources.

Seeking female mentors that I admire and look up to has always provided me with great insight and opportunities that I may have not known about. Ive been privileged to learn from and work alongside many intelligent and pioneering Emirati leaders who continue to remain humble in their pursuit of excellence and positive change. As much as I can, I also try to offer my time to share my experiences with other women on similar career journeys, because the success of one woman is a success for all.

I am proud of the fact that I come from a country that not only champions and empowers women, but also believes that women can play a leading role in building the nation. As a whole, the UAE is setting an example to the world that women have active roles at all levels of society.

The role women have been playing in the UAE over the last 50 years has been a vision of our late founding father, His Highness Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Our role as women continues to progress thanks to the support of our Mother of the Nation, Her Highness Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak. With the support of our forward-thinking leadership, we will continue to ensure that Emirati women fulfill the UAEs values and traditions by being leaders and changemakers.

There are numerous opportunities I am grateful for. The UAE continues to lead impressive efforts in empowering women and this has resulted in the country being ranked first regionally in the 2020 UN Gender Inequality Index. Throughout the years, we have witnessed incredible advancements across several sectors of society, allowing us to make a greater impact in our country.

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) threaten more than 1.7 billion people living in the poorest and most marginalized communities worldwide. As part of my work for The Reach Campaign, a fundraising campaign aimed at raising money in order to eradicate NTDs, namely river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, I source new partners and manage stakeholder relationships. I am positive that with the support of our partners we will be able to ensure a brighter future for the millions of people affected by NTDs.

Speaking from my personal experience, as women, we should be grateful for the mothers in our lives. I have received unconditional love and support from my mother which will always motivate me to pursue my dreams and work harder towards achieving my goals.

As women, we should live by values that empower and support other women as we collectively have an impact. I am truly grateful for all the support I have been receiving from women throughout my life.

For more information visit reachtheend.org

Feature image: Unsplash @sajshafique

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The inspiring women to champion this Emirati Women's Day Emirates Woman - Emirates Woman

Building a Healthy Credit Culture Through Tech – Entrepreneur

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August23, 20214 min read

You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.

It is highly essential for a country's growth that its citizens have access to responsible credit, says Madhusudan Ekambaram. However, credit in the time of need eludes the majority of Indians not because of the dearth of capital but due to lack of access to it.

The main reason for the credit gap is the traditional lending models inability to effectively assess them, and this is accentuated by the tedious processes consuming a lot of time and documentation. To promote financial inclusion, a lending firm should possess the ability and agility to utilize alternate data points, enabled by technology, says Ekambaram.

Through KreditBee, Ekambaram along with his two co-founders Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy and Wan Hong is doing exactly that.

Launched in 2016, Kreditbee is a digital lending platform that provides instant personal loans to salaried individuals and the self-employed. The company follows a tech-based credit evaluation approach to process loan approvals. From checking the eligibility fit to application to disbursement and repayment of the loan, the entire loan process is online.

It helps our customers acquire our credit solutions from their smartphones directly into their bank account without any requirement of paperwork or physical branch visits, says co-founder and CEO Ekambaram, who is also co-founder of FACE (Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment), a not-for-profit representative body of consumer lending fintech companies.

Enabling Financial Inclusion Through Tech

KreditBee extensively utilizes artificial intelligence, machine learning and profound data sources to underwrite customers. This approach enables the company to serve first time loan seekers as well as gig workers who do not have a regular income.Leveraging alternate lending data points apart from salary and bureau score, we are able to disburse to young professionals who are new to credit, and to those who are non-salaried like the gig workers. including part-timers, freelancers and self-employed.

Not just loan disbursals, the companys collections practices too are heavily tech-enabled. It uses robotics, automation, and many other techniques in addition to calling agents that vastly improves the reach of the customers and provides numerous options to use for collections.

On being asked how the companys tech solutions can change the future, Ekambaram says technological integrations such as KreditBees have the potential to contribute towards building a healthy credit culture in the country. This will in turn promote a high degree of financial inclusion, a process which has already begun and is only expected to pace up going further.

Explaining further, Ekambaram pointed out that the impact of their service offerings have been multifold. With a completely online customer journey, the company has been able to eliminate extensive paperwork or branch visits involved in a loan process. We help people to get loans from their smartphones directly into their bank account at any given point, he said. Further, the companys alternate lending model has enabled them to extend credit solutions to young professionals who are new to credit, and to those who are non-salaried. These customers are greatly underserved when it comes to credit.

Kreditbee claims to have disbursed loans to over 5 million customers as of today. The company plans to diversify its product offerings to include digitally-enabled secured loans, home loans and credit-linebacked cardswith services like Buy-Now-Pay-Later and insurance.

Staying Ahead in a Changing Marketplace

As part of the fintech revolution, several digital loan platforms have mushroomed lately. Additionally, tech keeps evolving by the day. So, ask Ekambaram how KreditBee plans to stay relevant in this constantly changing marketplace and he has one simple answer - by constantly adapting.

Technology has taken the role of an enabler so that organizations can operate in the changing circumstances. Hence, we need to ensure that the organizations technology upgrades are in line with our basic goal of solving our customers credit gap, he said. It is now more than ever essential to emphasize on product customization and personalization.

Further, theres been a massive data outburst with digitization and while leveraging the same, its important that organisations strengthen its security, said Ekambaram. Key fundamentals to consider while devising data security architecture are regular backups of their data, encryption of personally identifiable information and other sensitive data points to stop data loss incidents, implementation of multi-factor authentication and use of VPN service.

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Building a Healthy Credit Culture Through Tech - Entrepreneur

Limerick captain Declan Hannon has banished the demons of ’13 and stinging personal criticism to be spoken about like Ring – Independent.ie

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BY Sunday evening, he was being spoken about in the same context as Christy Ring, hurlings ultimate immortal. A man he now shares the distinction with of lifting the Liam MacCarthy on three occasions as an All-Ireland-winning captain.

ater, on RT, John Kiely displayed no visible awkwardness as he praised the sheer honesty of the guy sitting beside him.

Back in The Sunday Game studio, Shane Dowling amusingly described his former team-mates helpful tendency in the boom/bust world of elite sport of always gravitating towards equilibrium.

You wouldnt know, Dowling explained, if you were at a party or a funeral with him.

And yet, it was only after hed hoisted Liam MacCarthy for the first time in 2018 that Declan Hannon felt real atonement. And it was a month after that before he felt comfortable enough to speak publicly about the toxic fallout from the 2013 All-Ireland semi-final and the caustic reaction he (then 20) endured and the demons it empowered in his head.

There were messages off random people and letters, he explained in October 18. Anonymous venting penned, presumably, to make the young hurler feel worse. I thought from listening to it that I was after costing Limerick an All-Ireland, and it was my fault, like. It was hard.

Its all a far cry now because in the middle of all this Limerick glory resides Hannon. And at the core of him is a personal story that makes his success all the more admirable with the applied context.

So here it is. In 13, Limerick infused with the shamanic energies of John Allen won Munster for the first time in 17 years. Hannon was 20, but he was no unknown.

In 2009, he scored 1-16 for Adare against Newtownshandrum in a Munster club semi-final played 10 days before his 17th birthday. Hed been on the Limerick squad since 11. In 13, Allens empowerment of that group revealed their potential.

At the Gaelic Grounds, after they beat Cork by nine points in the Munster final, the delirium seemed to be rooted as much in what was to come as what had just happened.

And why not? The hurling world had turned more quickly that summer than in the previous 20 years.

After seven years of Kilkenny and Tipp grudgingly passing Liam MacCarthy back and forth across their border, the All-Ireland semi-final line-up that year was: Limerick, Clare, Cork, Dublin. The revolutionaries descended on Croke Park.

And yet, five weeks after the Cork victory, Limerick arrived at GAA HQ and made the horrific discovery that they had forgotten to bring their game with them. Almost every semblance of it. Their touch, their striking, their ability to win aerial duels and individual battles.

The goal they conceded to Darach Honan was nothing shy of calamitous. And then, cruellest of all, there was Hannon. A forward and Limericks free-taker that year.

In the opening 31 minutes, before Shane Dowling came on to relieve him of the burden, Hannon scored two of six placed balls. He misfired four frees and a 65, each within range. By the 50th minute, he had been subbed off.

I do frees with guys every night before training. Declan Hannons striking was superb, Allen explained afterwards. The best all year, 10 out of 10, every time. Now Shanes striking was very good as well. But over the course of the nights, Declan was ahead of Shane, most nights.

Now, obviously, he missed a number of frees and wasnt in great form today. We were just hoping that hed turn the corner.

Limericks expectation had been bloated, both by the length of their famine and the margin of their Munster final win.

And so Hannon became a rod for the anger of an outraged fan base. I just let it affect me way too much, he explained in an interview that, coincidentally, took place on World Mental Health Day: October 10, 2018.

I didnt talk to anybody about it, didnt want to see anyone, didnt even want to go down to the club training because I thought they were talking about it, he recalled.

I remember we had club championship two weeks after it, and I didnt want to go out onto the field at all. I was embarrassed going out here after what happened two weeks previous, letting people down and stuff like that. I didnt want to go anywhere. That is no way to live.

He also admitted feeling guilt at the likely feedback his parents had encountered, albeit they kept it from him. But even five years and an All-Ireland later, Hannon couldnt comprehend that mindset. Of someone who would sit down to write a letter of condemnation anonymously and then send it to a 20-year-old athlete, as though their anger demanded and deserved validation. He or she was obviously a bit angry and wanted Limerick to win, he pointed out, but I wanted Limerick to win as well. I didnt go out there to upset people.

Clearly, he parked it. Hannon has praised the influence of Caroline Currid, the sports psychologist now working with Limerick. Initially, she helped Hannon put the experience behind him but, more importantly, equipped him with the ability to defuse criticism.

But not before Hannon toiled through a couple of seasons wondering whether his legacy would forever be his worst experience in a Limerick jersey.

I suppose that was the killing thing: thatyou didnt want to play 10 years for Limerick, and that be the memory that everyone has of you.

But his legacy, that as one of hurlings great captains, was already secure before people started mentioning him in the same breath as Ring last Sunday.

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Limerick captain Declan Hannon has banished the demons of '13 and stinging personal criticism to be spoken about like Ring - Independent.ie

Writer Rafia Zakaria Takes on Sexual Liberation, Capitalism, and White Feminism – Jezebel

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The feminism of academia is a far cry from the feminism of the real world, as writer Rafia Zakaria points out in her new book Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption. In one chapter, titled Sexual Liberation Is Womens Empowerment, Zakaria writes, The question of how and when sexual liberation had become not simply the centerpiece but the entire sum of liberation for a graduate seminar on feminist theory never came up, nor did any discussion of sexual identity or radial politics. She describes what feels like a universal experience for an entire generation of people who studied a white-washed feminist theory, capturing lightning in a bottle and wielding it in every sentence. Against White Feminism is a book animated by the slow simmering rage of feminists of color who have been meticulously erased from the hallowed halls of academia.

Zakarias book belongs on every persons bookshelf. But it also belongs on a syllabus and to be seared into the minds of students learning about the historic implications and monumental failings of westernized white-washed feminism. The book isnt just an educational tomeZakaria deftly weaves in personal stories to make Against White Feminism extremely readable and at times heart-wrenching.

We spoke to Zakaria spoke about her new work and broke down why this book is so vital and why she hopes white feminists will give it a chance. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

JEZEBEL: How would you describe this book to people who havent read it yet?

RAFIA ZAKARIA: I would describe this book as presenting a new frame to view the world and particularly at gender and race relations so that they can see how the inequalities caused in particular by gender and race have seeped into every aspect of our society. I wanted people to be able to give this book to my white friends and to my BIPOC friends, for different purposes. For white women, in particular, I wanted them to understand how besieged BIPOC women feel from all sides in terms of all these different cultural forces, political forces, etc., pushing up against them. And I wanted BIPOC women who have had their own experiences but dont necessarily put them together or collate them in this way to be able to see that their experience of white supremacy is often repeated in the same pattern and often by the same perpetrators in [places like] Afghanistan and Iraq, in Pakistan and many other neocolonial endeavors.

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Lets get into some of the themes you touch on in the book. In chapter five, titled Sexual Liberation Is Womens Empowerment, you talk about your first experience in a feminist theory class and as I was reading I almost had a sort of epiphany that was like, Wow, this is exactly the kind of class I was sitting in when I was in school where women of color just dont get included in the syllabus or in the discussion.

As you can see in the book, I had a lot of sort of front lines, or say experiences. I was a single mother. I had to stay in a shelter. I had to really kind of put together an existence. But then when I went to graduate school, my naive assumption was that this is a place where Ill get to understand what has happened to me and how it connects with the larger world. I wanted to have conversations about gender equality, gender discrimination, and neocolonialism.

There was a war going on in Afghanistan [at the time I was taking this class] that was allegedly meant to liberate Afghan women and I expected that sort of thing to be talked about in this particular seminar. So it was a moment of kind of deep disappointment when I experienced the narrowness of that conversation and the inability to really connect the feminist struggle to women who have fought frontline battles against sexism, against abuse, andI expected at least a little bit of those things. I expected that there wouldnt be this kind of rote acceptance atmosphere where we just talk about kink and everything was about Sex and the City. Not that those things should not be discussed in feminist theory courses, but its just that they shouldnt be the only things that are discussed. I felt that this idea of sexual liberation being the sum total of empowerment was never questioned.

This was something you brought up in that chapter that really resonated with me as a person who converted to Islam in college. You mentioned that you were expected to perform a certain degree of sexual liberation as a Muslim woman in a way that was more palatable to Western ideals. Do you think those expectations still exist for Muslim women in America?

One hundred percent. All the time. Because I dont wear hijab its assumed that I score higher on the sexual liberation spectrum but if I do wear it, obviously I score lower. My feminist leanings were questionable to other people because of whether or not Im choosing to wear the hijab and these were definitely the sort of significant and deep influences that went into writing this book. I was fed up with having to perform all the time and fed up with the very intrusive questions that were directed at me and Id just have to be like, yeah we Muslims date all the time.

I dont personally have a position on whether Muslims should or should not date. I think that those are individual concerns. But the point being is that in order to belong [in certain feminist spaces] youre supposed to perform sexual liberation. And if you dont, then you are sort of almost instantly excluded from the conversation. Its either that or the reverse where the hijab is fetishized in a way so that, you know, youre not considered really Muslim if youre not wearing it.

There are all these ways in which whiteness understands and sort of constrains Muslim women in engagement with the world. And it got to the point where I was not considered credible as someone who could critique the idea that sexual liberation is the sum total of empowerment because I was Muslim. I was inherently suspect on that issue and it drove me crazy.

You also at some point get into the idea of sexy feminism and the rise of Cosmopolitan and the ubiquitous Cosmo Girl. How large of a role did the magazine play in changing the trajectory of American feminism?

It has and continues to play such an incredibly large role. And a powerful role too. In the book I talk about, for instance, this moment where it almost seemed like there was a bifurcation of the serious feminist, [which included lesbians] and then you had women like Helen Gurley Brown, who set about putting Cosmo together. She was a scrappy woman who definitely was a self-made woman but she looked at [feminism] as, you know, the liberated girl who was sext and flirty. And of course, the sexy, flirty, liberated girl was much more capitalism friendly than the political lesbian who believed that every interaction with men was inflected by the inherent inequality of gender politics. Eventually, the brand of feminism that won out, in the end, was that of Brown. Does that make sense?

It does and you know the more I think about it as were talking its really incredible how that messaging is so in our faces every day but its also incredibly subtle in what its trying to sell.

You know, the subtlety is the basis on which it wins. Because its subtle, the sort of brute power behind it, which is the power of capitalism [is disguised]. Theyre selling this idea that if you get a job, earn your own money, and have sex with whoever you want thats how you truly become liberated. Part of the package of liberation is economic empowerment and sexual liberation but what youve left out of that recipe is a political struggle and the fact that feminist choices are political choices. Any attempt to safeguard any advances that women make is meaningless unless there is a political structure that allows the maintenance of those advances.

How do you imagine this book will be received by white feminists?

In the book, Im very, very careful to underscore that white feminism is not just a white woman who is a feminist. White feminism is a woman who is white and who is feminist but who is uninterested in exploring her own complicity or the role whiteness has played in centering her as the ultimate feminist and woman. Its that refusal to investigate ones own role in racial oppression.

And I realize that thats a very uncomfortable thing to ask of people. But at the same time, I dont think that even white feminists are necessarily motivated by malicious intent. For instance, however misguided the Clean Stoves Program might be, I dont think that any white feminist who supported it necessarily wanted to go waste all this money. So I feel like because there are good intentions involved, a lot of good can be done if we have this conversation between white feminists and BIPOC feminists and address the elephant in the room which is race.

This is something nobody has really talked about because the fear is that the mere mention of race is going to dissolve the feminist movement altogether. But the real truth is that the refusal to talk about race is what is dissolving the feminist movement. So I do think that women who recognize that and women who are authentic in their desire to be allies, will, I hope find the book engaging and concrete in showing them both how this happens and also what they can do to ensure that it doesnt happen anymore.

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Writer Rafia Zakaria Takes on Sexual Liberation, Capitalism, and White Feminism - Jezebel

‘Against White Feminism’ Is An Urgent Call To Action For Solidarity And Justice – NPR

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Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, Rafia Zakaria W. W. Norton & Company hide caption

Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, Rafia Zakaria

Author Rafia Zakaria states her agenda for Against White Feminism in a book trailer released by Al Jazeera's AJPlus brand: "putting the fangs back in feminism is a very urgent project."

She then reminds us that mainstream Western feminism is, and always has been, for white women and girls and that this how it's been embedded in popular and news media, our consumerist economy, wars, political discourses, and more.

The first few lines of her book clarify exactly who she's calling out as a white feminist: ". . . someone who refuses to consider the role that whiteness and the racial privilege attached to it have played and continue to play in universalizing white feminist concerns, agendas, and beliefs as being those of all feminism and all feminists." This is about a set of entrenched assumptions and behaviors rather than racial identity. Although, of course, this kind of feminism is advanced mostly by white women.

As Zakaria, the civil rights attorney, sets up her case in Against White Feminism: Notes On Disruption, we see that she is not on some earnest mission to educate the misinformed or enlighten the uninformed. This, as Tressie McMillan Cottom would say, ain't her row to hoe. Instead, Zakaria presents, calmly and methodically, plenty of well-researched evidence for why white feminism is messed up and why it must be dismantled. Like the feminists of color she cites Audre Lorde, Kimberl Crenshaw, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Lila Abu-Lughod, and more Zakaria's thesis is that we are dealing with systemic racism built over centuries into our cultures, institutions, socio-political movements, and everyday interactions and behaviors. And, like Cathy Park Hong in Minor Feelings, Zakaria is not making any allowances for the myth of white innocence.

Through historical and contemporary examples from across the world, the book's eight essays examine how imperialism, settler-colonialism, capitalism, neo-colonialism, and late capitalism have allowed for a white-centric feminism to evolve such that it speaks for all women everywhere. Regardless of their relative disadvantages, cultural differences, and lived experiences, women of color especially in non-western countries are only included in this feminist movement when they conform to its particular values. Zakaria illustrates how these values are in service of white supremacy and capitalism, leaving no room for any Black, Brown, or Asian feminisms.

There's the extensive damage done by white women who traveled to colonized countries to civilize and save native women from their terrible conditions and, particularly, from native men. And the centering of whiteness by women who traveled to war-ravaged countries to bring attention to the difficulties of the local women. Instead, those local women were often othered, objectified, or exoticized and coerced to follow the Western feminism model, Zakaria writes. When Western neoliberalism and capitalism became the engines driving large-scale foreign aid and development projects, women's "empowerment" (a term originally introduced by Indian feminists in a more holistic context) became a "fuzzword that could be pinned to numerous motives," Zakaria says. All of this is not news to those who've been keeping score. But Zakaria goes further to quantify how many such white savior initiatives failed precisely because of their harmful, oppressive approaches.

This fuzzy kind of empowerment is also part of the securofeminism that emerged during the war on terror. Discussing the hypocrisies and ironies that not only caused initiatives and programs in those countries to run aground, Zakaria reveals the appalling cruelties they inflicted on local women in the name of freedom.

Similarly, Zakaria says, sex-positive feminism has become a stand-in for total liberation and empowerment and led to the commodification of sexual identities. She relates a particularly moving incident from her law school days. As a Brown Muslim immigrant, a divorced, single mother, and a survivor of domestic abuse, she felt forced to perform her sexuality or be reduced to the usual stereotypes associated with her cultural identity. The ending of this chapter speaks to so many women like her (and me):

"I had broken every gender norm I had been raised with, had chosen education and independence and all the struggles that came with it with little support. The seminar's preoccupation with sexual pleasure instead of sexual politics seemed so disconnected from the feminism I was trying so hard to model for my daughter. If only I could have known I was not alone, had been able to hear the voices of Muslim and other feminists of color like myself waging frontline struggles against terror, against religious obscurantism, and against patriarchal domination, but yet excluded from white feminist discourse."

Although such personal anecdotes are included throughout, Zakaria's aim is not to explore her own pain but to retrace the history of how white feminism has caused unending trauma through the centuries to many like her. What she wants is nothing less than transformational change that blows past tokenistic affirmative actions. The last chapter outlines four ways that white feminists need to change their mindset for this transformation to occur. These are not new suggestions but, given the state of things, they bear repeating.

More critically, let us all internalize these three ideas that Zakaria threads throughout the book. First, she reminds us of Kimberl Crenshaw's "war for narrative", which asks feminists of color to reshape the story and course of the movement, make the role of whiteness visible, and recalibrate our experiences and politics into feminism. We must develop and honor our own genealogies by including the resilient women in our lives and histories who have not been considered feminist per the traditional Western model. Second, she cites Nancy Fraser's philosophy of gender justice, which involves redistribution in the economic sphere beyond class hierarchies, recognition in the socio-cultural sphere beyond tokenism, and representation in the political sphere beyond identity politics. Third, she invokes Audre Lorde's call for solidarity, where community does not mean compromise or competition but a space that accommodates and values different kinds of knowledge and expertise, particularly that which comes from lived experience.

White feminism isn't confined to the Western world; it has been exported and embedded all over the world. If the ongoing effects and implications of that haven't made you want to bare your fangs yet, this steely, incisive critique deserves your attention.

Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, book critic, and host of the Desi Books podcast. https://jennybhattwriter.com.

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'Against White Feminism' Is An Urgent Call To Action For Solidarity And Justice - NPR

‘My Body, My Choice’ Was Always A Lie, And Now Everyone Knows It – The Federalist

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At the center of many of our current cultural debates today is a single figure: me, the global me through which people argue the unifying theme of public policy, spending, and law should be a commitment to getting everyone whatever they desire.

Nowhere is that more apparent than on the issue of abortion, where activists have chanted my body, my choice for decades. Until now, when the term is collapsing by being applied across the board.

Irrefutable challenges from the world of science to corporate abortions favorite slogan have permanently undermined that knee-jerk argument for ending innocent life. It turns out that appeals for what my body wants can be ignored when those in power want something else.Me is not as all-powerful as generations of abortion supporters have led us to believe.

The first flaw in using obsession with self as justification for all abortion is the assertion that my body is the only body. As numerous legal briefs in the Dobbs v. Jackson case before the U.S. Supreme Court detail, there are at least two bodies at stake in every abortion. The insistence of abortion activists that the will of the biggest and strongest body should prevail is the kind of argument you would expect from bullies.

They seize their empowerment by force, leaving the smaller and the weaker to suffer. One body is destroyed at the hands of another body without any appeal, the ultimate proof of inequality. One body has no choice.

A second flaw in the argument has been recently revealed by the sometimes-draconian steps taken in reaction to COVID-19. It turns out that Uncle Sam can force bodies to take steps they oppose.

In New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, Minnesota, and New Jersey, Democrat governors chose to put COVID-19 sufferers in nursing homes, causing the tragic and avoidable deaths of many residents. Schools were closed, and teachers unions chose to fight to keep it that way, leaving children and parents without options.

Businesses were shuttered, and masks were mandated. Workers struggled to pay bills as jobs disappeared. Nobody could choose to get back to business on his own. In fact, some bodies were arrested for trying.

More than a year later, vaccines are mandated for our fighting men and women, and (in some places) for other groups of people like students, health-care workers, state employees, and even some private employees. And the debate over whether masks are needed goes back and forth with the speed of a tennis match at Wimbledon.

All kinds of bodies have been forced to make drastic changes based on choices made by those at the top. Cheering on those efforts are groups like Planned Parenthood, which quickly made its way toward the head of the line when COVID-19 relief became available.

The one thing corporate abortion does well is get paid. As Family Research Council reported, in the 25 years from 1994 to 2019, the nations largest abortion vendor pulled in $9.1 billion in total taxpayer funding.

But the engagement of groups like Planned Parenthood raises an obvious question: Why is it my body when the choice is about abortion, but Uncle Sams body when the choice is about COVID-19 precautions and vaccines?

And if it is my body, my choice, why isnt it also, my body, my money? Someones desire for a thing isnt a justification for dipping into the pockets of everyone in the nation. But for abortion, its my choice, your cash.

The American people have made it clear in polling that they do not want to pay for abortions here in the United States nor around the world. Yet the Biden administration and House Democrats are trying to open the door forfederal abortion funding by removing the longstanding Hyde Amendment.

Justifying the deaths of an estimated more than 62 million infants with a phrase that sounds like a toddlers complaint was always a shallow play. But given how quickly all the bodies in the United States and around the world have been forced into compliance with countless COVID-19 policies, its clear that those in power never believed personal choice was a real argument.

The raw abuse of authority shows that the actual agenda is often my choice, your compliance, whether the issue is abortion, COVID-19, or anything else. To truly fix that, we need politicians who understand that their choice as leaders is to assist the people the bodies who put them in office with respect for all, the born and preborn among them.

KristanHawkinsis president of Students for Life of America.

Link:

'My Body, My Choice' Was Always A Lie, And Now Everyone Knows It - The Federalist

Impasse between government and labour sets tone for a testy day at the ConCourt – News24

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The Constitutional Court.

Despite a hard-won public service wage deal being reached in late July, public service unions and government departments will on Tuesday return to the Constitutional Court where labour representatives are appealing a Labour Court ruling excusing government from sticking to a wage deal that dates back to 2018.

Unions have argued that government had an obligation to honour the agreement, regardless of circumstance, but he Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) and National Treasury say that government's fiscal constraints made honouring the agreement untenable.

The DPSA has meanwhile slammed the National Education Health and Allied Workers' Union (Nehawu) over a series of pickets planned for Tuesday at National Treasury, the Johannesburg office of the Gauteng premier, and the DPSA's office in Pretoria.

Nehawu is planning similar protests in several provinces this week to demand a higher wage increase for public servants. While the public service wage offer got the majority support required to be recognised to pass as a deal, some unions rejected it - Nehawu among them.

The latest public service wage deal was reached late last month and signed by the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu), the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa), the Health and Other Services Personnel Trade Union of South Africa (Hospersa), the Public Servants' Association of South Africa (PSA) and the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa).

The deal includes an offer of a 1.5% pensionable salary increase with a monthly lump sum gratuity ranging from R1 200 to R1 600 on a sliding scale from 1 April to 31 March next year.

The DPSA did not take kindly to Nehawu's intention to protest. Public Service and Administration director-general Yolisa Makhasi said while section 17 of the Constitution recognises the right to picket, this should comply with section 69 of the Labour Relations Act on pickets in support of a protected strike.

"The picket may only be held in a public place outside the premises of the employer or with the permission of the employer, inside its premises. The intended pickets by Nehawu do not comply with the elements outlined above and are therefore unprotected under the Labour Relations Act.

"A gathering for other purposes must comply with all other relevant laws, including the municipal bylaws and the prescripts issued in terms of the applicable Covid-19 regulations and protocols," said Makhasi.

Makhasi said no demonstrations were allowed on the premises of government departments and that pickets must not interfere with the operations of the departments or be held during working hours. No-work-no-pay would also apply, Makhasi said.

"The no-work-no-pay principle is to be applied accordingly. Departments are requested to report any instances impacting negatively on service delivery as a result of employees participating in this unprotected picket to the DPSA," Makhasi said.

Regarding the matter before the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, South African Democratic Teachers' Union secretary-general Mugwena Maluleke told Fin24 that the union was prepared to put up a fight for the deeper issues underpinning its appeal, which included the principle of collective bargaining.

"We believe it's important for the Constitutional Court to pay attention to the [right to] freedom of association which encompasses the right to bargain collectively," said Maluleke. Maluleke also noted thatit took government a long time to raise concerns over noncompliance with certain clauses in the concluded collective agreement.

Nehawu secretary-general Zola Saphetha shared a letter from Makhasi in which the director-general told him that planned demonstrations needed to comply with the Labour Relations Act as well as Covid-19 safety protocols.

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Letters: Post-Covid infection treatment is not the answer – The Florida Times-Union

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opinion/letters

As the disastrous results of Governor DeSantis COVID policies continue to unfold, he has decided to hedge his bet with Regeneron. Regeneron, a post-infection treatment costing $310 per treatment, is his Johnny-come-lately effort to stem the tide of illness and death his lack of leadership has allowed tovirtually go unchecked.

Im not suggesting that Regeneron is a bad thing, only that masks and vaccines combined cost far less than $310, and no reasonable person questions their efficacy. Rather than play fast and loose with the wellbeing of his constituents in order to gain the White House, which is despicable, he should have followed the science from the beginning.

Gary McManus,Jacksonville

New York City is requiring proof of Covid vaccination to attend many events including indoor dining. This is sound policy and must be extended to include all situations where people might gather including political rallies.

This is done to protect the public and allow the authorities to regulate the coming and going of potential political dissidents who object to our sensible policies.

A paper card is an inadequate form of identification since it can be easily forged. We must adopt a state of theart technology such as each person's cell phone as the only proper device to identify those who would break the law. Cell phones have the additional advantage of being accessible online for review by authorities. It will additionally be updated with other data about an individual such as their criminal record, organizations they belong to, and voting identification. For their protection, it would contain GPS information about their movement and present location in case of an emergency.

It would become the primary identification for boarding an airline, train, bus or any kind of public transportation. Total public safety. The cell phone can be quickly and easily scanned electronically for quick approval. You won't have to take it out of your pocket since it can get scanned as you walk by a scanning station.

Requiring everybody to have a cell phone puts everybody in easy contact with others thereby helping to unite all of us as one nation.

Alan Pease, Jacksonville

Floridas political sycophant-in-chief, Ron DeSantis, pushes his political ambitions by catering to his base. He deflects attention from his failure to manage the explosion of Delta infections and placates vaccine deniers by being an equivocator. He expands his position with Live Free or Die adherents by ridiculing face masks.

Numerous clusters of COVID-19 infections have spread among congregations, camps, schools, social gatherings. Rather than implementing public health measures, he promotes a fiction that Central American immigrants have caused the spike of infections.

He minimizes the risk of Delta for children by diverting attention to Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), an annual seasonal infection with relatively low mortality. He claims that face mask mandates infringe on parental rights. The double absurdity here is that RSV pales compared to COVID and more importantly, its spread is limited by face masks, handwashing, and soon, vaccines.

Recently, DeSantis topped himself. He acted heroically for having brought immune therapy for infected people to Jacksonville. I dont know how much this specific treatment costs, but typically, immunotherapy infusions cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Even elementary school children know the Ben Franklin adage, An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. DeSantis must have skipped that day.

Bottom line: the person responsible for promoting the health of all Floridians is passive in the vaccination effort, obstructive in the use of face masks, and misleading about the threat we face. He claims his positions are consistent with conservative principles to protect the economy and individual rights. But how does a fiscal conservative promote an expensive treatment instead of low-cost vaccines and masks? Whom will he blame for the economic downturn when the labor force has been decimated and people are hunkered down at home?

Stephen Entman, Jacksonville

A major responsibility of Governor DeSantis job is to protect citizens from harm. His current strategy of appeasing radicals does not meet his responsibility, and it will not defeat the pandemic. Infact, it makesmattersworse. Masks, distancing and vaccination are not matters of personal freedom.They are highly effective and palatable tools of public safety.

The governorshould look at the facts; masks, distancing and vaccination work. In fact, they are the most effective tools currently available to beat the pandemic.The governorshould stop ignoring them. They are the key to ending this medical and social nightmare.

IfThe governoris taking advice from Donald Trump, he should stop. He may be a good real estate salesman, and he may know how to get elected, but he is not a doctor. The governor, for the sake of the welfare of the citizens of Florida, and now the children whose health and well-being are needlessly threatened should have a change of heart. He should abandon the rhetoric of division and strife, and embrace the proven, effective tools of success; masks, distancing and vaccination.

The governor has an opportunity to be successful, but he must put the health and well-being of the citizens of Florida ahead of his personal ambition. Will he do that?

I have heard the governor is a graduate of Harvard, I find it very difficult to see that he has gained any benefit from that distinction when I observe the devastating consequences of his behavior dealing with the pandemic.

Richard Cortell,Elkton

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Letters: Post-Covid infection treatment is not the answer - The Florida Times-Union

I could have had a midlife crisis: Ed Balls on cooking and life after politics – The Guardian

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Ed Balls is unhappy about the mess. They say you can judge a cook by how he cleans and Britains one-time education minister, shadow chancellor of the exchequer and most popular Gangnam Style tribute act is surrounded by broken shells, tiramisu, pasta sauce, soup and to his mind most offensively runny custard in a hard pastry base. There are Le Creusets and frying pans and bowls and sieves, the detritus of any self-respecting cookery photoshoot.

Its very upsetting, Balls, 54, protests, brandishing a creamy whisk. Im a clean-as-you-go chef. I dont want people to get the wrong idea. This is more like Yvettes kitchen, he adds, throwing his wife, Yvette Cooper MP, under the slovenly bus. Shes like a snail, you can see wherever shes been. Its one of the reasons she doesnt cook. At a certain point I just decided it was easier for me to do it.

If the mess is out of character, hes coming clean about the cooking. Balls has always been a keen home chef, the primary meal-maker for himself, Yvette and their three children, Ellie, 22, Joe, 20, and Maddy, 17. For most of his career, however, it was a private passion. Then last summer, after Covid torpedoed a documentary he planned to make about Trumps America, he entered and won the BBCs Celebrity Best Home Cook, beating a group including the comedian Ed Byrne and Rachel Johnson, journalist and sister of Boris, for the approval of Mary Berry. Over eight episodes Balls showed aptitude for a range of dishes, but the highlight was a magnificent pirate-ship birthday cake, complete with Curlywurly cordage and white chocolate sails. When Balls explained that he had always made the birthday cakes for his children, even Berrys cockles were warmed.

In the wake of the show came the idea for a book that would expand on a collection of family recipes he collated for Ellie when she went away to university. The result is Appetite, an entertaining memoir told through food, complete with recipes for key dishes in his life. His grandmas shepherds pie. A roast like the one his mother would have on the table at the family home in Norwich every Sunday in the 1970s. The all-night slow-cooked pork he served at constituency parties, and for which he was shopping on 28 April 2011, when he accidentally tweeted his own name from Castleford Asda. Rather than be embarrassed by tweeting his own name, he leant into Ed Balls Day. The British political food book is not a crowded field, aside from Nigel Lawsons diet guide, but its fertile ground. Balls knows his onions.

By now we shouldnt be surprised by Ed Ballss extracurricular enthusiasms. In Isaiah Berlins formulation, people tend to be either hedgehogs, who know a lot about one thing, or foxes, who know a little about many things. For most of his life, Balls gave every impression of being a classic hedgehog, a gifted economist who read PPE at Oxford before a Kennedy Scholarship to Harvard and a brief career as a leader writer for the FT. At 27 he took a job working on fiscal policy for Gordon Brown with another bright young Labour wonk, Ed Miliband. It wasnt long before Balls was fast-tracked into becoming an MP, one of the heirs apparent to the Blair/Brown generation, and quickly elevated to the cabinet as secretary of state for children, schools and families. After Labour lost in 2010, Balls came third in the ensuing leadership contest behind the brothers Miliband, and emerged as the obvious choice to become shadow chancellor. He approached the 2015 general election reasonably confident he would be the next chancellor of the exchequer.

Everyone knows what happened next. A butterfly flapped its wing, David Cameron promised a referendum on the EU, Ed Miliband ate a bacon sandwich. Suddenly the Tories were in with a narrow majority. When the exit poll came in at 10pm on 7 May, Balls suffered one of those vertiginous reversals of fate that only politics, sport and war tend to offer. As dawn broke on a Conservative government, Balls found himself not only without a ministerial post, but seatless. A career that had looked guided on rails was suddenly off them. He was Labours Michael Portillo, an emblem of the changing of the guard.

In such situations politicians usually slink off, write a cathartic memoir not always in a shepherds hut and brood on what might have been. Instead, Balls threw himself into other activities with the zest he once brought to keeping Britain out of the euro. The hedgehog became distinctly foxlike. On Strictly Come Dancing, in fake tan and sequins, Balls showed BBC viewers a fun-loving, game side that hadnt always been obvious during his political career. When he got round to the cathartic book, Speaking Out, it was more readable than the usual political doorstops, a series of life lessons presented in digestible chapters. He climbed Kilimanjaro with Shirley Ballas and Dani Dyer for Comic Relief. He played the banjo at the Royal Variety Show. The big question about Ed Balls, one political journalist tells me, is how do you have that life nonstop up to the age of 48 and not end up a total psychopath? He had all these dry and busy jobs, but is also a very normal well-rounded person.

When Balls is done pretending to sieve flour we sit down for cod and chips from Knights, a West Norwood institution round the corner from the photo studio. The Balls family still often has Friday fish and chips in Castleford, Yvettes constituency, and it was a key dish in Ed and Yvettes early relationship. You cant beat chips cooked in beef fat, he says, tasting one and murmuring his approval. But you have to eat them quickly before they go completely solid.

As he digs into the fish he enumerates his other interests. A diehard Norwich City fan and club chairman for three years until 2018 Balls was a regular in the MPs v hacks fixture. He still plays once a week at Shoreditch Powerleague, with fellow ex-MP James Purnell and other old Labour lags. Then theres the piano. Ive just agreed to play in a concert in December a charity concert in Kings Place Im going to play the opening aria of the Goldberg Variations. Im starting to regret it I originally foolishly said in an interview when I was shadow chancellor that my goal was Grade 8 by 50, which sailed past. Its like the governments fiscal rules. You say, Over the next three years, I will and then every year its still within sight. Oh, and dont forget the sailing and golf.

Most politicians find ways to relax. Heath sailed, Churchill laid bricks, David Cameron chillaxed with Fruit Ninja. When politicians are still in office, these pastimes can have a whiff of being deployed for electoral effect. When Boris Johnson talked about painting crates to look like buses, it seemed calculating. Ballss life is not all beer and skittles. He is making a documentary about social care, the latest in a run that has taken him around Europe and America. Yet for the past six years Balls has given every impression of being that rarest of beasts: a happy freelancer, and politician actually enjoying being out of office.

When Labour left government in 2010 I was exhausted, he says. I thought I could have a spiralling midlife crisis. Instead, I decided I would channel that energy into other things. That sounds glib. But the serious point is that you think, Now is the time to do all the things youve really wanted to do, because youve got the chance. In social care you meet people who are young whove had something go wrong. You think, It could be me.

Ive come to terms with not having to succeed, he adds. I dont mind if Im not good. I quite like being OK at stuff. I spent years in a world where there was this drive and competition to get to the top and to feel the pressure of that. And the truth is I dont feel any pressure now. Part of me wishes Id got to that stage earlier. I wish Id spent more of my 30s and 40s with a bit more of that other stuff in the mix. I dont think doing more hours makes for better government. If I was running a team of surgeons, Id want to know they had time off.

One of his regrets is not spending more time with his children when they were young. He and Yvette were the first married couple to serve in the cabinet at the same time. We tried hard, he says. But we could have done better. Has cooking been a way to make up for lost time? Definitely. I would always do the weekend cooking when they were little, but its not just the cooking. Its asking them what they want, cooking the things they ask for, to be able to be the person who delivers. I didnt miss out entirely, but I wish I had done more. But you might as well find that out now rather than on your deathbed, because it leaves you time to do something about it.

Balls was taught to cook by his mother, and later in life it was through her meals that the family got the first inklings of her dementia, as the ever-reliable cook began serving uncooked food. I didnt think I was going to write about the dementia, he says. I was going to write about what my mum taught me and where my love of cooking began. But food was the first time we knew mums dementia was bad. I said this to my dad, and he said, For me, that happened all the time. It became normal. For you to see your mum, who had always cooked Sunday lunch, produce something raw, was a jarring moment. His dad slowly took over in the kitchen, which offended his increasingly disoriented mum. During the pandemic, with his mother in full-time care, his dad started to experiment with dishes he would never have tried before.

A whole chapter in Appetite is devoted to Ballss unsuccessful attempts at dieting, with recipes for prawn pho and black bean soup. I continually worry about my weight, but in an inadequate, slightly useless kind of way, he says. If it was just me, I probably wouldnt be having fish and chips for lunch. But as my mum says, Im heavy-boned, so Im never going to do well on the standard tables for height and weight. But I would really like to lose 8kg, I just never quite get round to it. With me its entirely about focus my lack of it.

If food at home has been about love, connection and tradition, food in politics is inevitably about power. When Peter Mandelson invited the young Balls to his flat to plot his future political career, he served just a soup and a salad. The power play was clear: Mandelson was in charge.

It was beautifully done, Balls says. Hed thought about it carefully. Its very memorable. The big food events in politics were not really about the food at all.

Later, Balls was present for the infamous dinner on Upper Street in Islington, at the now defunct restaurant Granita, where Blair and Brown are said to have agreed how they would divide up the leadership of the Labour party. Disoriented by a menu that featured polenta, Brown didnt eat, instead wolfing down a steak back at HQ. Gordon would have his steaks basically incinerated, Balls says. Of course I tried to have a word with him about that, but as my dad would say, There are different people and they like their beef cooked in different ways. Would Brown mind that the other recent world leader who preferred his steaks well done was Donald Trump? Gordon would not be happy about that, Balls says.

At dinner on trips abroad, Brown would often leave the unfamiliar food. Culinary conservatism helped his image, giving the impression he was simply too busy reforming the world economy to mind about such fripperies. Balls experienced the opposite, where the eating was so distracting it was impossible not to. When Ed Miliband was leader he was on a low-carb diet, I dont know why. Yet for some reason his office had ordered lasagne for this big team dinner in the shadow cabinet room. We were meant to be talking about the future of the Labour party, but all we could do was watch Ed separating meat from pasta.

Then there was bacon-sandwich-gate. You have to be very careful about what you eat on camera, Balls says. Never pasta. Pizza is tricky, too. I would have bacon and egg, but never in a sandwich. He shouldnt have been having a bacon sandwich in the first place, but he should at least have tried not to make it look like the sandwich was devouring him. It was such a stupid thing. Labours challenge at the time was not whether Ed could eat bacon sandwiches.

If the incident still rankles that may be because relations with Miliband have never recovered from his successful bid for the leadership. Eds fratricide of his brother David is well documented, but it was almost an equal betrayal of Balls. I should go and have a drink with Ed, he says. We dont have a fundamental difference about policy at all. Its just that we were both part of a tough time losing an election campaign.

Britain has witnessed a drastic change in culinary standards since 1967. For a student of globalisation like Balls, food has been a way to track a changing Britain. Any conversation about what we eat inevitably soon dovetails with other narratives in the UK, about insularity and inclusivity, the pace of change. I like the idea that I cook different things from my mum and dad, but I also like the idea that part of what I cook I inherited from them, he says.

For all Balls talks of his newfound freedom, the politician has not completely vanished. He cant resist a pop at the Tories over the school meals fiasco. They were so tin-eared, he says. What were they doing? If they had been on the ball, Marcus Rashford would not have had the same cut-through. He wont say whether he thinks Keir Starmer is the right man to lead the Labour party, only that he has his work cut out. Keirs working very hard at it, but the scale of the task is huge, he says. Its much harder than the last time either party had to rebuild like this. Hes dealing with the hard-left infiltration and the antisemitism, the disconnect that happened after the Brexit referendum. He knows that Labour cant win as an urban party and has never been able to do that.

Its also true that the pandemic has provided utter vindication to a Ballsian view of stimulus spending. After the financial crash, Balls as shadow chancellor made the case for government spending to support an economy in crisis. At the time George Osborne was able to persuade voters that austerity was a better course. Coronavirus, which put voters lives directly on the line, has put paid to that debate. Austerity feels like a very, very long time ago, Balls says. Our arguments in 2009-10 were that you have to support the economy and job creation. If you try to go too early to consolidate with austerity and cutting the state, youll make things worse. These are the arguments the Treasury, the Bank of England and the chancellor have made for the past 18 months. Theyre right. They were right 10 years ago, as well. Its taken a pandemic for people to be forced to see the wisdom of those ideas.

Listening to Balls back on his special subject, you wonder if theres still a pilot light of political ambition flickering deep within. A Labour party in search of an experienced centre-left candidate with strong economic credentials and broad public recognition could do worse than put Ed Balls into the search bar, as he himself famously failed to do. Theres an irony with Balls, as with Miliband, that the character we have been allowed to see since he left frontline politics is more appealing to voters than when he was standing. Would anything coax him back?

Im not going to say I never would, he says. The reality is I loved being in government. It was the hardest thing Ive ever done, but also the most satisfying. So if that opened up Id have to think really hard about it. But Labours not in government, nobodys asking me to do anything, Im not even in parliament. Do I ever expect to go back into politics? No.

Balls has said that hes comfortable with the idea people will remember him for his Gangnam Style routine rather than his achievements in government. Yet long after the memories of Strictly and Celebrity Best Home Cook have faded, the UK will still not be in the euro, the Bank of England will still be independent, the NHS will still be at the heart of British life. And to win elections, Labour will still need to find a way to appeal to voters beyond their base. Who knows, the wily fox might have another throw of the political dice in him. There could be a different kind of Ed Balls day to celebrate. Chancellor Balls? PM Balls? It wouldnt be the most surprising thing he has done.

Appetite: a Memoir in Recipes of Family and Food by Ed Balls is published by Simon & Schuster at 16.99. Buy it for 14.78 at guardianbookshop.com

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I could have had a midlife crisis: Ed Balls on cooking and life after politics - The Guardian

Niall Ferguson on why the end of Americas empire wont be peaceful – The Economist

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Aug 20th 2021

This By-invitation commentary is part of a series by global thinkers on the future of American powerexamining the forces shaping the country's global standing, from the rise of China to the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The contributions will be available here.

The Economist Today

A daily email with the best of our journalism

THE MULTITUDES remained plunged in ignorance and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them. So wrote Winston Churchill of the victors of the first world war in The Gathering Storm. He bitterly recalled a refusal to face unpleasant facts, desire for popularity and electoral success irrespective of the vital interests of the state. American readers watching their governments ignominious departure from Afghanistan, and listening to President Joe Bidens strained effort to justify the unholy mess he has made, may find at least some of Churchills critique of interwar Britain uncomfortably familiar.

Britains state of mind was the product of a combination of national exhaustion and imperial overstretch, to borrow a phrase from Paul Kennedy, a historian at Yale. Since 1914, the nation had endured war, financial crisis and in 1918-19 a terrible pandemic, the Spanish influenza. The economic landscape was overshadowed by a mountain of debt. Though the country remained the issuer of the dominant global currency, it was no longer unrivalled in that role. A highly unequal society inspired politicians on the left to demand redistribution if not outright socialism. A significant proportion of the intelligentsia went further, embracing communism or fascism.

Meanwhile the established political class preferred to ignore a deteriorating international situation. Britains global dominance was menaced in Europe, in Asia and in the Middle East. The system of collective securitybased on the League of Nations, which had been established in 1920 as part of the post-war peace settlementwas crumbling, leaving only the possibility of alliances to supplement thinly spread imperial resources. The result was a disastrous failure to acknowledge the scale of the totalitarian threat and to amass the means to deter the dictators.

Does Britains experience help us understand the future of American power? Americans prefer to draw lessons from the United States history, but it may be more illuminating to compare the country to its predecessor as an Anglophone global hegemon, for America today in many ways resembles Britain in the interwar period.

Like all such historical analogies, this one is not perfect. The vast amalgam of colonies and other dependencies that Britain ruled over in the 1930s has no real American counterpart today. This allows Americans to reassure themselves that they do not have an empire, even when withdrawing their soldiers and civilians from Afghanistan after a 20-year presence.

Despite its high covid-19 mortality, America is not recovering from the kind of trauma that Britain experienced in the first world war, when huge numbers of young men were slaughtered (nearly 900,000 died, some 6% of males aged 15 to 49 died, to say nothing of 1.7m wounded). Nor is America facing as clear and present a threat as Nazi Germany posed to Britain. Still, the resemblances are striking, and go beyond the failure of both countries to impose order on Afghanistan. (It is clear, noted The Economist in February 1930, after premature modernising reforms had triggered a revolt, that Afghanistan will have none of the West.) And the implications for the future of American power are unnerving.

So many books and articles predicting American decline have been written in recent decades that declinism has become a clich. But Britains experience between the 1930s and the 1950s is a reminder that there are worse fates than gentle, gradual decline.

Follow the moneyStart with the mountains of debt. Britains public debt after the first world war rose from 109% of GDP in 1918 to just under 200% in 1934. Americas federal debt is different in important ways, but it is comparable in magnitude. It will reach nearly 110% of GDP this year, even higher than its previous peak in the immediate aftermath of the second world war. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it could exceed 200% by 2051.

An important difference between the United States today and the United Kingdom roughly a century ago is that the average maturity of American federal debt is quite short (65 months), whereas more than 40% of the British public debt took the form of perpetual bonds or annuities. This means that the American debt today is a great deal more sensitive to moves in interest rates than Britains was.

Another key difference is the great shift there has been in fiscal and monetary theories, thanks in large measure to John Maynard Keyness critique of Britains interwar policies.

Britains decision in 1925 to return sterling to the gold standard at the overvalued pre-war price condemned Britain to eight years of deflation. The increased power of trade unions meant that wage cuts lagged behind price cuts during the depression. This contributed to job losses. At the nadir in 1932, the unemployment rate was 15%. Yet Britains depression was mild, not least because abandoning the gold standard in 1931 allowed the easing of monetary policy. Falling real interest rates meant a decline in the burden of debt service, creating new fiscal room for manoeuvre.

Such a reduction in debt-servicing costs seems unlikely for America in the coming years. Economists led by the former treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, have predicted inflationary dangers from the current fiscal and monetary policies. Where British real interest rates generally declined in the 1930s, in America they are projected to turn positive from 2027 and rise steadily to hit 2.5% by mid-century. True, forecasts of rising rates have been wrong before, and the Federal Reserve is in no hurry to tighten monetary policy. But if rates do rise, Americas debt will cost more to service, squeezing other parts of the federal budget, especially discretionary expenditures such as defence.

That brings us to the crux of the matter. Churchills great preoccupation in the 1930s was that the government was procrastinatingthe underlying rationale of its policy of appeasementrather than energetically rearming in response to the increasingly aggressive behaviour of Hitler, Mussolini and the militarist government of imperial Japan. A key argument of the appeasers was that fiscal and economic constraintsnot least the high cost of running an empire that extended from Fiji to Gambia to Guiana to Vancouvermade more rapid rearmament impossible.

It may seem fanciful to suggest that America faces comparable threats todaynot only from China, but also from Russia, Iran and North Korea. Yet the mere fact that it seems fanciful illustrates the point. The majority of Americans, like the majority of Britons between the wars, simply do not want to contemplate the possibility of a major war against one or more authoritarian regimes, coming on top of the countrys already extensive military commitments. That is why the projected decline of American defence spending as a share of GDP, from 3.4% in 2020 to 2.5% in 2031, will cause consternation only to Churchillian types. And they can expect the same hostile receptionthe same accusations of war-mongeringthat Churchill had to endure.

Power is relativeA relative decline compared with other countries is another point of resemblance. According to estimates by the economic historian Angus Maddison, the British economy by the 1930s had been overtaken in terms of output by not only Americas (as early as 1872), but also Germanys (in 1898 and again, after the disastrous years of war, hyperinflation and slump, in 1935) and the Soviet Union (in 1930). True, the British Empire as a whole had a bigger economy than the United Kingdom, especially if the Dominions are includedperhaps twice as large. But the American economy was even larger and remained more than double the size of Britains, despite the more severe impact of the Great Depression in the United States.

America today has a similar problem of relative decline in economic output. On the basis of purchasing-power parity, which allows for the lower prices of many Chinese domestic goods, the GDP of China caught up with that of America in 2014. On a current-dollar basis, the American economy is still bigger, but the gap is projected to narrow. This year Chinas current-dollar GDP will be around 75% of Americas. By 2026 it will be 89%.

It is no secret that China poses a bigger economic challenge than the Soviet Union once did, since the latters economy was never more than 44% the size of Americas during the cold war. Nor is it classified information that China is seeking to catch up with America in many technological domains with national-security applications, from artificial intelligence to quantum computing. And the ambitions of Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, are also well knownalong with his renewal of the Chinese Communist Partys ideological hostility to individual freedom, the rule of law and democracy.

American sentiment towards the Chinese government has markedly soured in the past five years. But that does not seem to be translating into public interest in actively countering the Chinese military threat. If Beijing invades Taiwan, most Americans will probably echo the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who notoriously described the German bid to carve up Czechoslovakia in 1938 as a quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing.

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A crucial source of British weakness between the wars was the revolt of the intelligentsia against the Empire and more generally against traditional British values. Churchill recalled with disgust the Oxford Union debate in 1933 that had carried the motion, This House refuses to fight for King and country. As he noted: It was easy to laugh off such an episode in England, but in Germany, in Russia, in Italy, in Japan, the idea of a decadent, degenerate Britain took deep root and swayed many calculations. This of course is precisely how Chinas new breed of wolf-warrior diplomats and nationalist intellectuals regard America today.

Nazis, fascists and communists alike had good reason to think the British were succumbing to self-hatred. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, George Orwell wrote of his time as a colonial policeman in his essay Shooting an Elephant. Not many intellectuals attained Orwells insight that Britains was nevertheless a great deal better than the younger empires that [were] going to supplant it. Manyunlike Orwellembraced Soviet communism, with disastrous results for Western intelligence. Meanwhile, a shocking number of members of the aristocratic social elite were attracted to Hitler. Even readers of the Daily Express were more inclined to make fun of the Empire than to celebrate it. Big White Carstairs in the Beachcomber column was an even more absurd caricature of the colonial type than David Lows Colonel Blimp.

The end of empiresAmericas empire may not manifest itself as dominions, colonies and protectorates, but the perception of international dominance, and the costs associated with overstretch, are similar. Both left and right in America now routinely ridicule or revile the idea of an imperial project. The American Empire is falling apart, gloats Tom Engelhardt, a journalist in The Nation. On the right, the economist Tyler Cowen sardonically imagines what the fall of the American empire could look like. At the same time as Cornel West, the progressive African-American philosopher, sees Black Lives Matter and the fight against US empire [as] one and the same, two pro-Trump Republicans, Ryan James Girdusky and Harlan Hill, call the pandemic the latest example of how the American empire has no clothes.

The right still defends the traditional account of the republics foundingas a rejection of British colonial ruleagainst the "woke lefts attempts to recast American history as primarily a tale of slavery and then segregation. But few on either side of the political spectrum pine for the era of global hegemony that began in the 1940s.

In short, like Britons in the 1930s, Americans in the 2020s have fallen out of love with empirea fact that Chinese observers have noticed and relish. Yet the empire remains. Granted, America has few true colonies: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in the north Pacific, and American Samoa in the south Pacific. By British standards, it is a paltry list of possessions. Nevertheless, the American military presence is almost as ubiquitous as Britains once was. American armed-forces personnel are to be found in more than 150 countries. The total number deployed beyond the borders of the 50 states is around 200,000.

The acquisition of such extensive global responsibilities was not easy. But it is a delusion to believe that shedding them will be easier. This is the lesson of British history to which Americans need to pay more heed. President Joe Bidens ill-advised decision for a final withdrawal from Afghanistan was just the latest signal by an American president that the country wants to reduce its overseas commitments. Barack Obama began the process by exiting Iraq too hastily and announcing in 2013 that America is not the world's policeman. Donald Trumps America First doctrine was just a populist version of the same impulse: he too itched to get out of Afghanistan and to substitute tariffs for counterinsurgency.

The problem, as this months debacle in Afghanistan perfectly illustrates, is that the retreat from global dominance is rarely a peaceful process. However you phrase it, announcing you are giving up on your longest war is an admission of defeat, and not only in the eyes of the Taliban. China, which shares a short stretch of its vast land border with Afghanistan, is also closely watching. So is Russia, with zloradstvoRussian for Schadenfreude. It was no mere coincidence that Russia intervened militarily in both Ukraine and Syria just months after Obamas renunciation of global policing.

Mr Bidens belief (expressed to Richard Holbrooke in 2010) that one could exit Afghanistan as Richard Nixon exited Vietnam and get away with it is bad history: Americas humiliation in Indochina did have consequences. It emboldened the Soviet Union and its allies to make trouble elsewherein southern and eastern Africa, in Central America and in Afghanistan, which it invaded in 1979. Reenacting the fall of Saigon in Kabul will have comparable adverse effects.

The end of American empire was not difficult to foresee, even at the height of neoconservative hubris following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There were at least four fundamental weaknesses of Americas global position at that time, as I first argued in Colossus: The Rise and Fall of Americas Empire (Penguin, 2004). They are a manpower deficit (few Americans have any desire to spend long periods of time in places like Afghanistan and Iraq); a fiscal deficit (see above); an attention deficit (the electorates tendency to lose interest in any large-scale intervention after roughly four years); and a history deficit (the reluctance of policymakers to learn lessons from their predecessors, much less from other countries).

These were never deficits of British imperialism. One other differencein many ways more profound than the fiscal deficitis the negative net international investment position (NIIP) of the United States, which is just under -70% of GDP. A negative NIIP essentially means that foreign ownership of American assets exceeds American ownership of foreign assets. By contrast, Britain still had a hugely positive NIIP between the wars, despite the amounts of overseas assets that had been liquidated to finance the first world war. From 1922 until 1936 it was consistently above 100% of GDP. By 1947 it was down to 3%.

Selling off the remaining imperial silver (to be precise, obliging British investors to sell overseas assets and hand over the dollars) was one of the ways Britain paid for the second world war. America, the great debtor empire, does not have an equivalent nest-egg. It can afford to pay the cost of maintaining its dominant position in the world only by selling yet more of its public debt to foreigners. That is a precarious basis for superpower status.

Facing new storms Churchills argument in The Gathering Storm was not that the rise of Germany, Italy and Japan was an unstoppable process, condemning Britain to decline. On the contrary, he insisted that war could have been avoided if the Western democracies had taken more decisive action earlier in the 1930s. When President Franklin Roosevelt asked him what the war should be called, Churchill at once replied: The Unnecessary War.

In the same way, there is nothing inexorable about Chinas rise, much less Russias, while all the lesser countries aligned with them are economic basket cases, from North Korea to Venezuela. Chinas population is ageing even faster than anticipated; its workforce is shrinking. Sky-high private-sector debt is weighing on growth. Its mishandling of the initial outbreak of covid-19 has greatly harmed its international standing. It also risks becoming the villain of the climate crisis, as it cannot easily kick the habit of burning coal to power its industry.

And yet it is all too easy to see a sequence of events unfolding that could lead to another unnecessary war, most probably over Taiwan, which Mr Xi covets and which America is (ambiguously) committed to defend against invasiona commitment that increasingly lacks credibility as the balance of military power shifts in East Asia. (The growing vulnerability of American aircraft carriers to Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the DF-21D is just one problem to which the Pentagon lacks a good solution.)

If American deterrence fails and China gambles on a coup de main, the United States will face the grim choice between fighting a long, hard waras Britain did in 1914 and 1939or folding, as happened over Suez in 1956.

Churchill said that he wrote The Gathering Storm to show:

how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous; how the structure and habits of democratic States, unless they are welded into larger organisms, lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses; how, even in matters of self-preservation the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger [how] the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bulls-eye of disaster.

He concluded the volume with one of his many pithy maxims: Facts are better than dreams. American leaders in recent years have become over-fond of dreams, from the full spectrum dominance fantasy of the neoconservatives under George W. Bush to the dark nightmare of American carnage conjured up by Donald Trump. As another global storm gathers, it may be time to face the fact that Churchill understood only too well: the end of empire is seldom, if ever, a painless process._____________

Niall Ferguson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and managing director of Greenmantle, a political-economic advisory firm. His latest book is Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Allen Lane, 2021).

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Niall Ferguson on why the end of Americas empire wont be peaceful - The Economist

Vandergrift’s Casino Theatre receives Westmoreland Cultural Trust art installation – TribLIVE

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Volunteers installed a wing-themed art installation on the grounds of Vandergrifts Casino Theatre Saturday as part of the Wings Across Westmoreland initiative.

Vandergrift was the eighth location included in Westmoreland Cultural Trusts countywide art initiative featuring metal wings inspired by places in various locations in Westmoreland County.

The Casino finally has its wings, said Janice Oberdorf, treasurer of the nonprofit Casino Theatre Restoration Management.

Community members were asked to submit their suggestions of landmark areas in Vandergrift via social media for consideration by Greensburg-based father and daughter artists Patrick and Riley Mahoney.

The wings feature recognizable landmarks in (the) Vandergrift (area) such as the gazebo at Kennedy Park, The Annual Art Festival, Wooden Door Winery, Festa Italiana di Vandergrift, Riverside Drive-In, churches and more, Oberdorf said.

Vandergrifts wings were revealed Saturday evening during an unveiling ceremony at its new location outside on the patio at the historic Casino Theatre.

The project was paid for through grants from the Allegheny Foundation and the National Road Heritage corridor of the Pennsylvania Heritage Program, under the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Oberdorf said the entire project cost about $20,000.

Vandergrift resident and council candidate Marilee Kessler attended Saturdays unveiling.

These wings are the only ones located in the northern part of Westmoreland County. Its great to see these good things happening beautiful artwork celebrating our community, Kessler said.

The wings share the patio with oversized glass tile mosaics created in 2017 by regional artist Daviea Davis.

Theater volunteers have updated the patio to offer an area for guests to mingle during intermission and before and after shows. Exterior electric work that was part of the upgrades was paid for through a $10,000 grant from the Rangos Foundation.

The wings are first painted on canvas, photographed, enlarged and finally printed on vinyl, which can withstand the elements.

The other wing sites are located in Ligonier, Greensburg, Smithton, Overlys Country Christmas, Youngwood, Jeanette and Mt. Pleasant.

Its the hope of the Westmoreland Cultural Trust that these sites become destination sites and we encourage everyone to stop and visit them all, Oberdorf said.

Joyce Hanz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joyce at 724-226-7725 , jhanz@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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Vandergrift's Casino Theatre receives Westmoreland Cultural Trust art installation - TribLIVE