In 2019-2020, Congress Introduced 40 Crypto And Blockchain Bills – Forbes

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The 116th U.S. Congress convened on January 3, 2019 and will conclude on January 3, 2021 - and while 2020 will represent for millions one of the most unprecedented years in history, Congress has still found time to introduce 40 bills on the subject of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

Of the 40 bills introduced, 11 have passed the House of Representatives and two have become law. The two laws are part of much larger bills involving the appropriations process where one called for a briefing to Congress on how cryptocurrency affects economic sanctions and another called for a briefing on how the Department of Defense could potentially use blockchain technology.

For the nine bills that passed the House of Representatives but wait action by the U.S. Senate, three bills call for essentially the same action by the Department of Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to explore blockchain and digital identity technologies to improve the data analysis process and distribution of information to other law enforcement bodies.

The United States Capitol Building at night in Washington DC

The Financial Technology Protection Act of 2019 (H.R. 56), was sponsored by Congressman Ted Budd (R-NC) and Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and passed the House of Representatives all the way back on January 4, 2019. The bill involved the creation of an, Independent FinTech Task Force to Combat Terrorism and Illicit Financing and also offered a reward for terrorists found using digital currencies. The bill was co-sponsored by then Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC), now the current White House Chief of Staff, as well as Congressman Darren Soto (D-FL) and Congressman Warren Davidson (R-OH).

The Homeland Security Assessment of Terrorists' Use of Virtual Currencies Act sponsored by Representative Kathleen Rice (D-NY) was a bill that also passed the House of Representatives on January 29, 2019. Co-sponsored by Congressman Van Taylor (R-TX), Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), the bill asks Homeland Security to conduct an assessment of terrorist use of virtual currencies.

The Fight Illicit Networks and Detect Trafficking Act or the FIND Trafficking Act was introduced in both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate by Representative Juan Vargas (D-CA) and Senator Catherine Cortez-Mastro (D-NV). The House version of the bill, H.R. 502, required a report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) on virtual currency use in sex and drug trafficking. The bill also asked the GAO to examine how the unique characteristics of virtual currencies could be used to track and prosecute the illicit use of cryptocurrency.

Finally, the remaining three bills that made it out of the House of Representatives include the Blockchain Innovation Act (H.R. 8153), The Advancing Blockchain Act (H.R. 6938), and part of the Digital Taxonomy Act (H.R. 2154). The Blockchain Innovation Act and the part of the Digital Taxonomy Act that were sponsored by Congressman Darren Soto (D-FL) were added into the Consumer Safety Technology Act (H.R. 8128) that passed the House of Representatives. On the same day, the American Competitiveness on More Productive Emerging Tech Economy (COMPETE) Act (H.R. 8132) passed the House of Representatives as well. Co-sponsored by Representative Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) and Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL), the bill included the language from the Advancing Blockchain Act from Congressman Brett Guthrie (R-KY).

Of the 40 bills, the types of legislation are broken done into four categories. The breakdown by percentage includes the Use of Cryptocurrency by Terrorists, Money Launderers, Human and Sex Traffickers at 30%, Regulatory Clarity for Crypto and Blockchain Companies at 40%, the Use of Blockchain Technology In Government & Business at 22%, and the Digital Dollar legislation at 8%. For 30 out of 40 bills (70%) that would either impact cryptocurrency use by criminals or improve cryptocurrency and blockchain regulations, none have successfully become law over the last two years in the U.S.

Percentage breakdown of the types of cryptocurrency and blockchain bills in Congress

Thus, the only actions impacting the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry are from agencies or financial regulators themselves, whether it is the recently released Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework by the Department of Justice, enforcement actions from the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) or Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), or most notably the recent guidance in the form of interpretive letters released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

The first bill introduced in the 116th Congress was extremely interesting when looking back at what has transpired over the last two years in terms of racial strife faced by our nation. On January 3, 2019, Congressman Bobby Rush (D-GA) introduced the RESCUE Act for Black and Community Banks that looked to spur growth for minority banks, Black banks, community banks, womens banks and low-income credit unions. The bill included a blockchain study to be carried out by the Comptroller General of the GAO to see, whether such technology could be used to increase investment by lower-income individuals in startups and other crowd-funded companies.

Rush also later introduced, as shown above, one of the bills (American COMPETE Act) that successfully passed the House of Representatives in dealing with how the U.S. will compete with China on emerging technologies such as blockchain. While there are typically the usual suspects in Congress that introduce the majority of legislation, which include Congressman Tom Emmer (R-MN), Congressman Darren Soto (D-CA), Congressman Warren Davidson (R-NC), Congressman Ted Budd (R-NC), as well as Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ) and Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL). Emmer, Soto, Schweikert, and Foster are Co-Chairs of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus and have also played a critical role in sending letters to get the attention of the administration on these technologies as well.

For example, Soto led the charge on a letter last year to the National Economic Council asking the White House to hold a forum on blockchain, and this year asked the U.S. Treasury Secretary to evaluate blockchain for speeding up the processing of Covid-19 stimulus checks and wrote President Trump on the criticality of this technology as well. Foster, along with Congressman French Hill (R-AZ), wrote a letter last year asking the Federal Reserve what types of efforts the central bank had started to take in terms of investigating a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

A full report of all 40 bills with corresponding research will be released toward the end of 2020 by the Value Technology Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit research think tank on blockchain and cryptocurrency in Washington D.C.

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In 2019-2020, Congress Introduced 40 Crypto And Blockchain Bills - Forbes

Here’s how blockchain could help crack down on abusive imagery – World Economic Forum

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Last month, India was shaken to the core by an alleged gang rape of a fifteen-year-old girl, which the perpetrators reportedly filmed and shared online. Sadly, this type of crime and its documentation occur in every country. For survivors of sexual violence, knowing that images of their ordeal exist and circulate online can cause even more emotional damage. The images may also be used to blackmail and silence the victim.

Cloud storage platforms and social media networks, where photos and videos are stored every time they are posted or shared, typically do not tackle this issue, citing respecting user privacy. Developments in technology, however, can provide a solution that will enable cloud platforms to remove illegal imageries, limiting user privacy concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recent social and political unrest have created a profound sense of urgency for companies to actively work to tackle racial injustice and inequality. In response, the Forum's Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society has established a high-level community of Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officers. The community will develop a vision, strategies and tools to proactively embed equity into the post-pandemic recovery and shape long-term inclusive change in our economies and societies.

As businesses emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, they have a unique opportunity to ensure that equity, inclusion and justice define the "new normal" and tackle exclusion, bias and discrimination related to race, gender, ability, sexual orientation and all other forms of human diversity. It is increasingly clear that new workplace technologies and practices can be leveraged to significantly improve diversity, equity and inclusion outcomes.

The World Economic Forum has developed a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolkit, to outline the practical opportunities that this new technology represents for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, while describing the challenges that come with it.

The toolkit explores how technology can help reduce bias from recruitment processes, diversify talent pools and benchmark diversity and inclusion across organisations. The toolkit also cites research that suggests well-managed diverse teams significantly outperform homogenous ones over time, across profitability, innovation, decision-making and employee engagement.

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Toolkit is available here.

The majority of people who share and view abusive images do so on completely legal, popular social media platforms and through ordinary messaging services. Research from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children measured the growth rate of child sexual abuse imagery on the internet. The results are horrendous: a frightening increase from 3,000 reports of such images in 1998, to 1.0 million in 2014, and to 18.4 million in 2018. Social media networks provide both viewer participation and sufficient storage space, meaning that large files, e.g. videos, can be easily stored and shared. Hence the key to cutting the supply of such content is to remove it from the cloud.

A technological solutionTechnology exists, however, to assist cloud storage platforms to remove all illegal and abusive images from their databases, and prevent the addition of new ones. This solution combines both blockchain technology and a technology called PhotoDNA, which has been developed by Microsoft and Dartmouth College. PhotoDNA creates a unique digital fingerprint of a digital image or video. This digital fingerprint remains mostly the same even if the image is cropped, resized, changed with filters, or manipulated in some other way. Importantly, while it is easy to generate a fingerprint from an image, it is impossible to reverse-engineer the image from a fingerprint. There is therefore no risk of fingerprints being misused to covertly disseminate images. In the case of sexual exploitation images, this is of particular importance.

Blockchain is a decentralized and distributed database that allows multiple parties, who do not necessarily trust each other, to create a trusted source of truth they can share, update and work with. Unlike a centralized database, with blockchain no single party is in charge of or owns the database. Everybody owns it equally.

Some law enforcement agencies already have databases of child sexual exploitation imagery and their digital fingerprints, however they usually do not share them with anyone. What they could use however, is a way to coordinate their activities, be it locally or globally, in order to remove these images regardless of their jurisdiction. It is here that blockchain technology is a game changer. It can allow for a global coordinated database, accessible by all, and yet owned by none, in order to scan and remove images - regardless of where in the world they are posted. Using both technologies, the agencies could share the fingerprints they have already collected as part of a joint global effort. Each agency could then access this information, even if it doesnt have any fingerprints to share.

Being blockchain-based, the database is highly secure by nature. Specifically in our use case, there are no incentives for hackers to attack it, as the database will not hold any images, only fingerprints of images. As I explained above, the digital fingerprint by itself is meaningless since it cannot be used to recreate the image, nor does it link back to the original image. In this context, its only value is to offer a way of labelling or categorizing images without actually looking at or sharing them.

Cloud storage platforms would get read-only access to this blockchain database of digital fingerprints of illegal images. Generating an images digital fingerprint is fast and easy. So is the process of looking up a fingerprint within the database. Therefore, cloud platforms could generate a digital fingerprint of any image that is uploaded and check whether it exists in the database. In the same manner, this process would allow them to scan already existing stored data and look for illegal content that had already been uploaded. Local law enforcement agencies would be required to provide instructions on the next steps, once an image has been identified as illegal. The following chart sums up the screening procedure:

Orbs

Image: Detecting illegal images from a users point of view.

Importantly, the entire process will be completely transparent, since it will be recorded on the blockchain, enabling visibility of each new piece of information being added to the chain. Enforcement agencies will be able to see who added which fingerprints. Cloud platforms will know exactly which fingerprints they need to screen in which jurisdictions. Enforcement agencies will easily be able to check whether their restrictions are properly enforced by cloud platforms. This alone would be a major reason for using blockchain.

To be sure, no solution is perfect and this solution alone cannot eradicate exploitative imagery. Users would most likely be averse to having their content screened - or even tagged or removed. And once illegal content is discovered by a cloud platform, the onus could be on that platform to take the next step and coordinate actions with law enforcement, opening up a larger debate on freedom of speech and censorship.

Additionally, technology cannot stop highly determined perpetrators. These individuals will continue posting abusive images of children on the illegal corners of the internet, also known as the darknet. There will never be one single solution that will eliminate sexual images of children from the internet.

Still, while we can not eliminate the problem, we can make a significant dent in it. Perpetrators who are very technologically savvy will have to be tracked down and stopped in other ways. However for most of the online users who do not have the technological expertise to access the darknet, we can, and should easily and quickly remove these images. Importantly, since the blockchain is immutable, every transaction on it is documented forever. Meaning that if someone did try to upload illegal images, was rejected and then tried to delete those images from their own systems, the blockchain would still have a record that they attempted to upload illegal content. This, I imagine, could be a very useful tool for law enforcement.

As a Co-Founder of Orbs, the largest blockchain infrastructure company in Israel, it was important for me to use our technology for good and promote blockchain for social impact. Consequently, I founded the Hexa Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the use of blockchain technology for social impact. At the Foundation we focus on educating governments on the potential added value and efficiencies of blockchain, and on executing blockchain projects that create social impact. We are currently in talks with governments and enforcement agencies to explore the opportunity of using blockchain as a solution that will help cloud platforms remove these images.

Change will not be simple. As in many solutions that require coordination, the hardest part here is aligning interests and politics of enforcement agencies globally. There is reason for optimism here: Since no one claims ownership over this database, and it is shared amongst all players, the incentive to participate will hopefully be greater than in other consortium efforts in which politics can sometimes hamper advancement. Still, in order to kickstart progress, at least one major agency would need to lead the way. Some of the agencies that we are in touch with are showing great interest and are hopefully willing to take the lead. Wide adoption, however, will take time. It will also take a mindset shift and new training to ensure that a wider set of policing agencies understand the role new technologies like blockchain could play in crime prevention

It is blockchain which allows for coordination between bodies in a way that was not previously possible, and thus creates an effective and efficient solution - and one that I hope can help the healing process of victims, globally.

Abusive images of children are in themselves a form of abuse. Every person who shares or views such images becomes complicit in the original abuse, and further damages the victim. There have been many reports of survivors haunted by the continued circulation of images recorded years ago. It can make it extremely difficult if not impossible for them to perceive their suffering and trauma as being in the past. Instead, their ordeal just continues. By succeeding to remove one part of the problem we actually can, today, make an impact for the better.

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Here's how blockchain could help crack down on abusive imagery - World Economic Forum

AP Election 2020 Results Will be Recorded on a Blockchain – CoinDesk – CoinDesk

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The Associated Presss (AP) 2020 election results will be recorded on a blockchain database, a first for the nearly 200-year-old news agency.

Announced Thursday, the collaboration between the not-for-profit wire service and the Everipedia tech startup will see more than 7,000 state and national election race calls recorded on a blockchain, with a publicly accessible user interface displaying the results. Everipedias database runs on top of EOS, the 14th-largest blockchain network by market cap, according to Nomics, though the race calls themselves will be recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

Chainlink was chosen as the intermediary between the AP data and Everipedia, according to a press release.

Everipedia will publish the final results declared by AP after sufficient votes are counted, said Dwayne Desaulniers, the news organizations director of enterprise, environmental, social and governance and data licensing.

For us this is different and very interesting, he said. Were watching very closely to see how our work can be applied to this media. Everipedia has been good to work with, a solid partnership. We do the race calls, they do the technical stuff.

The AP will call the presidential, Senate, House of Representatives, state and local elections, in a process that could take anywhere from a few hours to days depending on how results are reported by election officials, Desaulniers told CoinDesk in a phone call.

Well watch the data and whenever we see enough data thats complete, that factors in all the mail-in [ballots] and all of the votes. Whenever our race callers then decide to declare a winner theyll do so, he said. Most of them will be on election night Were ready to make really great race calls whenever the data and rules tell us that were good.

Everipedia, a sort of decentralized alternative to Wikipedia with its own token, will be recording the results for posterity, said Sam Kazemian, the projects president and co-founder. It launched its mainnet on top of the EOS blockchain in 2018.

While this is the first time APs election results will be recorded on a blockchain, the company has worked with other blockchain initiatives in the past. AP tried to license articles with now-defunct blockchain startup Civil in 2018.

Election day

Roughly 4,000 AP employees will be deployed across the U.S. on Election Day, working from polling centers, city halls and clerks offices around the country. As precincts begin reporting numbers, these employees will start recording the vote results in an internal system, updating as new numbers roll in.

The proprietary system will compare the results with similar data from two, four and six years ago in an effort to prevent any major errors from creeping through, Desaulniers said.

This data will, in turn, go to race callers, individuals who are familiar with the politics of the region they are in. (Desaulniers is a race caller for the U.S. state of New Hampshire.) These individuals compare current data with historic data and internal models that AP builds to declare if and when certain races are won.

Its very intense, he said. I think its the biggest journalistic enterprise that were aware of.

Everipedia takes over the process at this point. Once a race is called, that information is entered into another internal AP system. Everipedia will pull the final declaration from an API and record it on its own ledger, permanently storing what AP sees as the final result.

So when we declare a governor has won, Everipedia will get that data immediately from our systems and theyll be able to publish that, he explained.

What Everipedia will not record are the vote totals; while most races will be called on Nov. 3, not every race will be. Those that are too close to call or which may end up going to a recount will not be called, Desaulniers said.

On top of the normal races that are tight and require time to call, 2020 has a massive number of voters who are using mail-in ballots so they can avoid large crowds during the coronavirus pandemic, which might make it difficult for precincts to report voting numbers quickly.

As of Oct. 14, 13.2 million absentee ballots have been returned with a further 68.6 million yet to be returned, according to the New York Times.

This is sort of an extraordinary year, Desaulniers said. Theres no one system, one set of rules. Some states will only begin counting the early votes on election night, and therefore in some counties, in some races, it will extend into Wednesday and possibly later.

For AP and Everipedia, this means the running list of races called will be continuously updated past Election Day itself.

Trusted systems

In Kazemians view, working with AP is a matter of trust.

The organization is a non-governmental, unbiased arbiter with close to two centuries worth of history, and has earned its reputation, he said.

Its a different approach from projects that hope to solve the problem of figuring out which sources to trust by creating a system wherein token holders vote on what the truth is for a given story.

This is one of those times where Im super pro-blockchain but, like, it might probably be better to actually trust the centralized organization thats professionally done this for over 100 years right. This is a good example of that, he said.

This lets Everipedia focus on making the data easily accessible on-chain and publicly readable, he said. In this collaboration, Everipedia will handle all aspects of storing the data on its EOS-based network.

The 2020 election is a sort of proving ground. Kazemian envisions other efforts with different news and media organizations.

Storing APs race calls on its network can be beneficial for prediction markets or futures-defined products that are focused on the election, he said.

These markets might be looking for a specific result at a specific time, but it is likely that the projected winner of the election might change depending on how mail-in ballots are counted and when the full results roll in, Kazemian said.

It allows people to build prediction markets that resolve around what a verified organization says or reports or allows people to vote or reward or create smart contracts, autonomous systems around whatever information is being put on-chain, he said.

In a statement, Chainlink head of business development Daniel Kochis noted that the process would result in a verifiable, tamper-proof record for tracking the election.

Kazemian noted the uncertainty around this years election timing, where President Donald Trump might appear to be in the lead as in-person votes are counted, but Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden may be declared the winner after the mail-in ballots and early votes are counted, as one scenario.

CORRECTION (Oct. 16, 2020, 06:30 UTC): Everipedia does not have its own native blockchain as this article originally suggested; the data is being recorded on the public Ethereum ledger.

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AP Election 2020 Results Will be Recorded on a Blockchain - CoinDesk - CoinDesk

Germany looks to blockchain to help decentralize their energy economy – Cointelegraph

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The Deutsche Energie-Agentur, also known as DENA the main governmental group responsible for energy innovation in Germany is looking to move its energy ecosystem to a decentralized database.

When infrastructure cant go down - when the lights need to stay on - the systems you use need to be resilient, and decentralized technologies deliver that, Parity Technologies head of public affairs, Peter Mauric, told Cointelegraph. Parity Technologies stands as one of the companies involved in DENAs project. Mauric added:

The concept of microgrids smaller, decentralized energy grids to improve resiliency energy generation, storage and distribution have been a focus for the energy industry for years, so we should not be surprised that similar decentralized approaches are being explored across the entire energy market.

Working with over 20 other crypto and blockchain entities, Energy Web will build a distributed energy resource database for Germany at the request of DENA, an Oct. 13 blog post from Energy Web detailed, adding:

The project will enable energy assets in Germany, such as thermostats, solar PV systems, batteries, and electric vehicle charging stations to undertake automatic registration with a decentralized ledger of identities, allowing their utilisation by the German grid for a range of services such as virtual power plants and frequency regulation.

Germanys energy innovation wing, combined with Energy Web and numerous blockchain and crypto companies, essentially want to digitize the countrys energy system by storing necessary components on a decentralized database.

One of DENAs brass, Philipp Richard, explained in the post that the endeavor faces remaining hurdles in terms of setting the project into motion, although blockchain-based digital identities (which are currently undergoing testing) look favorable.

Built for the next generation of energy ecosystems, Energy Webs open-source blockchain-based decentralized operating system, called EW-DOS, holds as a key component of the new decentralized databases test model.

The project, however, plans to utilize multiple blockchains, and include technology from KILT Protocol and Parity Substrate which come from BOTLabs and Parity Technologies respectively, the post said.

As a core blockchain infrastructure development company, we are excited to be working closely alongside Energy Web and our partners to implement this solution for DENA using Substrate, the blockchain-building framework we built for Polkadot, Mauric said. Polkadot has gained significant prevalence in the crypto space in recent weeks, seeing the price of its DOT asset rise dramatically.

The new project follows the inception of the Future Energy Lab, which is a broad, recently-announced move from DENA. This project is aimed toward developing a trio of initiatives a blockchain machine identity ledger (BMIL), a CO2 emissions visualization, and a smart contract register, the post said.

UPDATE Oct. 13, 20:06 UTC: This article has been updated with added information and quotes from Parity Technologies.

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Germany looks to blockchain to help decentralize their energy economy - Cointelegraph

A Map for the New World of Blockchain – JD Supra

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A collaborative project led by the Global Blockchain Business Council represents an unprecedented effort to analyze the technical and regulatory blockchain landscape.

On October 14, 2020, the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC) and the World Economic Forum released the 2020 Global Standards Mapping Initiative (GSMI), the first comprehensive effort to assess and map global blockchain standards. The GSMI synthesizes key blockchain data and trends, and provides action-oriented guidance for public- and private-sector stakeholders. Latham & Watkins provided legal and regulatory review for the project.

The GSMI comprises two component reports (Technical Overview and Legal & Regulatory Overview) and an interactive world map of blockchain and digital asset legislation, regulation, and guidance. The survey encompasses data aggregated from 185 jurisdictions, 379 industry groups, and more than 30 technical standard-setting entities. The blockchain and digital asset landscape is mapped across three distinct areas: (i) technical standards; (ii) legislation and guidance by sovereign and international bodies; and (iii) industry best practices and standards.

Regulatory findings across the 185 jurisdictions surveyed are organized into the following 10 themes:

Key Regulatory Takeaways

Among the many insights to be found across the reports and interactive world map, some key insights related to regulation and standard-setting include:

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A Map for the New World of Blockchain - JD Supra

Standards report assesses the current state of blockchain – SmartCitiesWorld

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Report also provides action-oriented guidance for public and private sectors

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), an industry advocacy association, have partnered to assess the current state of blockchain technology.

According to the organisations, the outcome the Global Standards Mapping Initiative (GSMI) report is the most comprehensive endeavour so far to assess the current state of blockchain.

Based on input from over 30 technical standard-setting entities, 185 jurisdictions and nearly 400 industry groups, the report seeks to provide a summary of the current blockchain landscape by charting existing technical standardisation efforts, identifying gaps, and providing the industry with action-oriented guidance.

There has been a strong demand signal for a catalogue of standards-related activity that could serve as a cornerstone for facilitating responsible deployment and interoperability, Sheila Warren, head of blockchain at the WEF.

We were excited to collaborate with the Global Blockchain Business Council and members of our Blockchain Council to create this open resource that can be used by the ecosystem, policy-makers, and beyond, to inform their approaches to the technology and standards moving forward.

Key insights highlighted in the report include the technologys fragmentation both worldwide and within jurisdictions, overlaps, gaps, as well as conflicts in standard-setting and where these activities may be premature.

As blockchain continues to evolve and scale, clarity on its technical, regulatory and governance models will be paramount in shaping the trajectory and potential of the technology

The GSMI finds a lack of dynamic guidance for new uses of the technology, the need for proactive strategies from organisations, and outlines the important role regulators will play in shaping the future of the technology.

It notes: As blockchain continues to evolve and scale, clarity on its technical, regulatory and governance models will be paramount in shaping the trajectory and potential of the technology.

The report also provides action-oriented guidance for public and private sector stakeholders and includes an interactive world map of blockchain legislation and guidance.

GSMI partners and collaborators are a diverse group of stakeholders across industries, governments and academia who represent a range of perspectives and ideologies. Their coming together to lay the foundation towards greater harmonisation and clarity surrounding standard-setting exemplifies the unique ethos of the blockchain community rooted in collective progress and collaboration, added Sandra Ro, chief executive officer of GBBC.

GBBC is proud to have incubated this initiative alongside the World Economic Forum and looks forward to continued collaboration as the GSMI evolves and develops beyond this initial release. We invite new partners to join us as we build upon this initial body of work, GSMI version 1.0.

The initiative is led by WEF and GBBC with core collaborators: Accenture; Digital Currency Initiative; MIT Media Lab; ESG Intelligence; Global Digital Finance (GDF); Hyperledger, the Linux Foundation; ING; the Milken Institute; SIX Digital Exchange (SDX); and other global entities.

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Standards report assesses the current state of blockchain - SmartCitiesWorld

SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc. (OTC:SMKG) Announces Completion of OriginatorX Ethereum Blockchain Issuing and Publishing Tokens Platform for Equity,…

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New York, NY, Oct. 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire-- SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc. (OTC:SMKG)announced today that its Managed Partnership division completed the staging environment of the OriginatorX platform host for Ethereum (ERC20) Blockchain for ICOs, Crypto and Alternative derivatives offerings with the ability of Underwriting and Smart-Contracts auctions, sales and auditing management.

Market Overview

The Digital Asset Management Market (henceforth, referred to as the market studied) was valued at USD 2541.8 Million in 2019, and it is expected to reach USD 7756.1 Million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 21.23%, during the period of 2020-2025. Artificial Intelligence, including facial recognition, has been introduced to the world of DAM. https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/digital-asset-management-dam-market

SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc (OTC:SMKG),a leader in Fintech & Payment solutions, offers up a unique Cloud & Mobility suite of applications for SMEs & Larger Enterprises to empower their Digital Transformation processes with a unique Digital portfolio of proprietary Applications. In addition, the companys focus on Managed Partnerships is an exciting growth funnel of business which expands the Intellectual Property bandwidth of the company, creating additional value for stakeholders and shareholders.

CEO Massimo Barone stated,We are excited about the Managed Partnership with OriginatorX and the timing is right for the Digital Currency market and the huge demand from decentralized offices, which are all market events that are going to be part of a major move toward Digital Issuance for both Private and Public markets. We have a world class technology portfolio of proprietary Intellectual Property and with the utilities like OriginatorX to expand the Issuance and Publishing of Equity and Assets gives us the Financial solution to lead global markets.

We welcome partnerships with Cloud & Mobility based companies looking to offer a Digital Strategy combined with their Cloud services:partnerships@smartcardmarketingsystems.com

About OriginatorX PPT link

http://www.originatorx.com/assets/OriginatorX%202020%20PPT%20%20SITE.pdf

About us

SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc (OTC:SMKG)is an industry leader in specialized industry cloud and mobility applications to the global PayTech and FinTech markets. SMKG is an entrepreneurial boutique technology company, providing business intelligence and digital transformation strategies with a proprietary portfolio of applications and wireframes for banking, enterprises, retail e-wallets, digital-Id, e-kyc, digital workforce, events management, education, tele-medicine and ride-booking industries. For more info visitwww.smartcardmarketingsystems.comor visit our business applications marketplace atwww.Emphasispay.com.

We seek a safe harbor.

CONTACT: Massimo Barone CEO

mbarone@smartcardmarketingsystems.com

SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc. OTC:SMKG Ph: 1-844-843-7296

news@smartcardmarketingsystems.com

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SmartCard Marketing Systems Inc. (OTC:SMKG) Announces Completion of OriginatorX Ethereum Blockchain Issuing and Publishing Tokens Platform for Equity,...

Ripple: XRP and blockchain adoption will explode in the next months – Crypto News Flash

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Ripple has published its third annual report on Blockchain in Payments with positive results for the blockchain industry, the XRP digital asset, and cryptocurrencies. The report is based on a survey conducted from August to September of this year. The 854 respondents are involved in the provision of payment services and were spread over 22 countries.

In addition, Ripple revealed that the companies surveyed range in size in terms of revenue from $500,000 to more than $10 billion. In that regard, Ripple makes a comparison with the 2019 results and states that the blockchain industry is in its final phase of adoption. In the current context, with the global economy affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the report states:

Business interest in digital assets, when paired with blockchain technology for payments, has grown sharply as early adopters look to increase the speed in payment settlements.

In that sense, the report indicates that 79% of participants have shown growth by entering unexplored markets and improving their services and products. Of all sectors, the most crucial was innovation in payment technology, according to 44% of participants. The companies surveyed say that their customers expect them to continue to innovate in payment technologies.

In terms of adoption, the report found that 34% of participants are in the production of some solution with blockchain technology. Therefore, this sector has made a leap between early adopters to early majority. 24% of the participants expect to complete production and move on to a pilot test and a proof-of-concept within the next two years, as shown below.

Source: https://ripple.com/lp/blockchain-in-payments-report/

In emerging markets, 37% of participants are in production to implement blockchain technology. Asia and the Pacific (APAC) is the leading region in these terms with 41%, followed by Latin America (LATAM) by multiplying its participation in blockchain production by 6. Then, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) with 24% of production and a possible increase to 29%, as shown in the graph below.

Source: https://ripple.com/lp/blockchain-in-payments-report/

Another key point revealed by the Ripple report is the diversification in use cases by companies using blockchain technology. 98% of participants using a blockchain have deployed technology for supply chain management (62%), commerce, and finance (51%). So its not surprising that 99% of participants said their company could use a digital asset such as XRP to process payments or as a medium of exchange. In contrast to the 2018 results, this figure has grown by 94%.

Among the strengths that participants said blockchain technology has, the speed to make cross-border transactions received 40% of the responses. In this aspect, the digital asset XRP and its instantaneous transfers with Ripples On-Demand Liquidity solution offer the most important benefit for respondant companies. Along with cost (32%) and reliability (27%), as shown below.

Source: https://ripple.com/lp/blockchain-in-payments-report/

Among the obstacles to blockchain adoption, participants mentioned a lack of regulatory clarity, the amount of investment required to implement the technology, and security. However, the results show that digital assets such as XRP are increasingly becoming an important part of the development of the blockchain industry. The report concludes:

Emerging markets are leading the charge, recognizing that responsible usage of blockchain and digital assets can unleash tremendous potential for their economy. Without a doubt, both will drive greater financial inclusion and economic growth not unlike the Internets impact. Mature markets stand to benefit as well

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Ripple: XRP and blockchain adoption will explode in the next months - Crypto News Flash

It’s Not That Detroit Is Too Poor, But That Seattle Is Too Rich – TheStranger.com

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Let us, you and I, dismantle two recent articles.

One appeared in the center-right Seattle Times, and the other in the full-right Fox Business. The title of the former: "Seattle as the next Detroit? Thats not how we roll." The title of the latter: "Seattle's once-booming economy will soon be demolished by city's tax-addicted progressives."

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The latter, by Jason Rantz, ends with this operatic assessment: "And, just like that, the once-booming Seattle, desperate to be seen as world-class, becomes Detroit."

The former, by Jon Talton, opens with this bleak paragraph:

Two weeks ago I wrote about the extinction-level event facing Seattle small businesses, not just because of the pandemic but because of City Halls tolerance of crime. It produced the largest response of any column Ive ever written, 99.9% in agreement.

Indeed, Talton "was surprised by the number of readers who took the leap" and saw a future that has Seattle becoming another Detroit.

There is, of course, no substance in these comparisons between the Detroit of yesterday and the Seattle of tomorrow. These are just feelings that are structured by an experience that's imagined to exist outside of culture.

These authentic feeling feelings are culturally structured, and the culture that shaped them is easy to identify. It's dominated by a tiny circle of people who possess an overwhelming amount of social power in the form of moneya medium of exchange that is also a means of storing and accumulating socially recognized value.

Rantz imagines (or feels) he does not live in a society of this kind, one in which money is the key mechanism for the distribution and concentration of social power, and so he makes, with the elegance of a giraffe on ice skateslegs shaky, legs wideningunbelievably inept leaps from one point (Seattle today) to another (Detroit yesterday). Talton at least knows such leaps "are a stretch," but he resorts to an old and almost never challenged story of Detroit's spectacular decline: it began with the riots of 1967.

But the research of the urban historian Thomas J. Sugrue shows the decline of Detroit began at the moment many consider to be its peakthe mid-1940s. At the start of a boom that would last for over 30 ears, the Big Three (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler), already focused on cutting production costs by automation or relocation, either to the suburbs or to other states with weaker union power. This part of Detroit's story, as told by Sugrue, gibes with what's currently happening with Boeing and its concentration of production in South Carolina, a state with weak labor representation and laws.

But what we find in both Rantz's absolutely worthless assessment about the state of things and Talton's effort to provide a more sober assessment is the acceptance of a boom/bust economic system. The reason why Detroit is not doing as well as Seattle (boom) is it's not growing nearly as fast (bust). In fact, for the past 30 years, Detroit has gone into recession more often than not. During the middle part of the previous decade it did experience some growth, but nothing like the growth experienced by Seattle, a city whose tech-sector expansion opened for real estate developers and speculators a future that made the worst and most inefficient form of growth known to the history of our kind, that of finance-driven capitalism, possible.

Now, I want to stop wasting your time and get to the heart of the matter. If we do the right job when examining the wealth that Rantz feels is fleeing Seattle due to mindbogglingly dumb demands made by power-drunk leftist radicals, we will see that the wealth he has mind is not the only one of its kind. But for Rantz, and also sober Talton, it undoubtedly is. That is how they were born and raised. It was the meat and potatoes on the tray of their baby seat. It is still there for them to chomp today. For Rantz and Talton and, sadly, the majority of Americans, there is only wealth, in the way there is only economics. And so, excessive capital accumulation, the conatus of capitalist wealth, is like sunshine and rain, like joy and pain.

At this point, I suspect a number of readers have concluded that the course of my thinking can only end in hippie territory: wealth as fraternal feeling or communion with nature, wealth as inner spiritual enlightenment, and so on. Sorry, but that kind of thing is not my cup of tea. Or, to borrow the words of the British rapper Skepta: "That's not me." My course of thinking, directed by Joan Robinson's encounters with Michel Kalecki and Karl Marx (post-Keynesianism) and the recent thermodynamic theories of Steven Keen (neo-physiocratism), never leaves the realm of economic wealth. But my understanding, which is far richer than Rantz's, is that there is not just one type of wealth and one type of economy. There are forms of economic wealth that any society can adopt or mix. The boom/bust one is not the end-all and be-all.

In fact, this kind of capitalism died after World War Two and was reanimated by financial wizardry near the end of the Vietnam War. But an economy that limited the power of finance, the main means by which capital expands after economic saturation and consequent stagnation, can evidently function without major disruptions. Scan what is called the Golden Age of Capitalism in the US (1947 to 1972it's called the Trente Glorieuses in French) and you will not find a major market crash. This does not mean, however, that everything was hunky-dory during this generally prosperous time. Class conflicts were alive and well, as Sugrue's analysis of mid-century Detroit reveals. But the economics that Rantz and Talton see as eternal as nature itself has existed for the past 45 years or so. It is one that transformed class conflicts, such as those that gripped Detroit in the second half of the 20th century, into an economic law that explains booms and busts not as the result of excessive speculation but of excessive labor power, high wages, and top-class taxes.

And so, capitalism is not one thing. It has many forms: the neo-mercantilist capitalism of a China or a Germany; the financial capitalism of a US or a UK; the extractive capitalism of a Brazil or a South Africa. There is also the social democratic capitalism of Scandinavia, which would not exist if it did not export class conflict to other, poorer countries (the rise of anti-immigrant movements in these "enlightened" regions is a reaction to the colored or racial importation of this conflict).

The same goes with wealth. The kind of wealth Rantz and Talton confuse as universal is not in nature (or directly expressed through it) but very much outside of it. Their wealth is only one of the many products of culture, which is a product of the mind, which is a product of the social brain. And the human brain is impressive, but to be effective it must also be "wider than the Sky." We owe our impressive adaptability to the plasticity of our brain, which, by way of culture, liberated humans from one mode of life and accumulation.

The culture of boom/bust economics has been normalized because it is has disciplinary features that the rich find efficacious. Busts send wealth upwards (the pandemic crash is clear evidence of this"How billionaires got $637 billion richer during the coronavirus pandemic") while at the same time checking the power of the working and middle classes by making the means of socially necessary survival within the context of capitalist culture hard to obtain. (It is here we find the ultimate function of the police: they protect the rules that maintain capital's scarcity.) As Katharina Pistor and Nancy Fraser have made clear in books and lectures, capitalism is nothing but a set of laws that are backed by state power.

If we exit the wealth schema that Rantz and Talton see in the same way one might see the roots of a tree or loam, we find that it is not really up to the job. It is like a leaking pipe. On every part of it, waste and breaks. There are, of course, much more efficient ways to connect human economy with ecology, but the one we use does not, like a thriving eco-system, even have an energy budget. In the GDP, labor is counted, capital is counted, but energy inputs are nowhere to be found in the books. Detroit might be poorer than Seattle by the standards set by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but because of this, it is more efficient than Seattle. Excessive wealth accumulation (boom) only leads to mind-boggling waste.

But what happens when a sea of capital retreats from the shores of daily life? Long term, we get Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum in Detroit:

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Short term, we get Vivid Collective at what remains of CHAZ in Seattle...

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It's Not That Detroit Is Too Poor, But That Seattle Is Too Rich - TheStranger.com

Eye Gazing Exercise: Possible Benefits and How to Try It – Healthline

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Eye gazing is the act of looking into someones eyes for an extended amount of time. Its a powerful, intimate practice that can help you become closer to another person.

After all, eyes are the most expressive facial features. They can communicate a range of social cues and emotions, which can influence your social interactions.

Its no wonder eye contact is so impactful. It can trigger a personal connection, even if it lasts for only a few seconds.

Eye gazing takes it one step further: Its beneficial for fostering even deeper connections. Read on to learn about the science behind eye gazing, along with how to do it.

On a psychological level, prolonged eye contact can benefit your social relationships. Heres how:

Theres a reason why people say the eyes are the window to the soul.

Your eyes are a powerful representation of your emotions. In fact, a 2017 study suggests that humans determine how others are feeling by analyzing their eyes.

Eye gazing also creates an opportunity for emotional connection.

In a 2013 study of fifteen people, researchers found that direct gazing increased activity in the amygdala. This is the part of your brain involved in processing facial cues and peoples emotions.

Although the available research is old, theres some evidence that long eye contact can increase intimacy.

In a pair of studies from 1989, strangers who looked into each others eyes for 2 minutes experienced mutual feelings of love. A 2003 study found that the longer someone started at a face, the more they became attracted to it.

Additionally, in a 2009 study of 32 males, participants perceived female faces with a direct gaze as more attractive than those with an averted gaze.

Many people consider eye contact to be a sign of trustworthiness. On the other hand, not looking someone in the eye is often associated with lying.

If you want to build trust with another person, try eye gazing. According to a 2016 study, people are more likely to believe a person whos looking straight at them. This may be enhanced by continuously making eye contact.

Since eye gazing facilitates emotional bonding, it may also nurture a deeper connection.

A 2017 study of 35 university students determined that direct gazing is associated with whats known as self-other merging. This means it reduces the boundaries between self and other, creating a feeling of oneness and connection.

Tantra is an ancient philosophy based on Hinduism and Buddhism. Its origins are unknown, but some experts believe it was created between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago in India.

The practice is about achieving spiritual enlightenment. This may be done through meditation, mantras, and rituals, including yoga and sex. The purpose is to connect with your own energy on a deeper level.

In the late 1900s, tantra became popular in America and Europe. However, it was interpreted as a sex practice rather than a whole-life approach. The practice is known as tantric sex and involves techniques meant to enhance the spiritual aspect of sex.

Tantric eye gazing is one technique. During the exercise, you look deeply into your partners eyes to foster a spiritual and sexual connection.

There are many ways to do eye gazing. Heres one method:

The goal of this exercise is to connect your energies without speaking.

For some, eye gazing might feel uncomfortable at first. If so, start with a shorter session. Practice eye gazing for 30 seconds, then increase your session over time. Most tantric practitioners recommended eye gazing for 10 to 20 minutes.

Although eye gazing is a common tantric technique, its exact origins are unclear. If it was part of the original teachings, it may be thousands of years old.

As a tantric sex exercise, eye gazing may have a shorter history. The sexual interpretation of tantra became popular in the 1960s, when books were published on the topic. The books covered many tantric techniques, which may have included eye gazing.

If youd like to deepen your bond with another person, try eye gazing. It involves staring into each others eyes for an extended amount of time. The practice can increase trust and intimacy, plus help you understand each others emotions.

To start, try eye gazing with your partner for 30 seconds. Keep your gaze soft and relaxed. As you become more comfortable with the practice, you can increase your sessions to 10 to 20 minutes.

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Eye Gazing Exercise: Possible Benefits and How to Try It - Healthline

Batman: Bruce Wayne Has The Same Origin Story as The Buddha – Screen Rant

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Everyone knows Batman's comic book origins, but Bruce's journey from spoiled child to Dark Knight actually mirrors the path of the Buddha.

Batman has one of the best-known origins in superhero lore. Thanks to multiple film adaptations, comic book stories, and television shows, fans have seen how the tragic murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne led young Bruce Wayne to study under different masters before finally claiming the mantle of the Batman and developing his own unique brand of justice.

What is not so commonly known is that Bruces origin story has some remarkable similarities to another legendary figure the Buddha. While it might seem unlikely that a dark avenger like Batman could have anything in common with a spiritual teacher like the Buddha, the similarities in their stories have not gone unnoticed by Batmans writers or even Bruce Wayne himself.

Related:DC Just Took Back The Meaning of "I'm Batman"

Historians and scholars believe that Buddha was likely born in the 6th century in the region known today as Nepal. Born Siddhartha Gautama (translated as he who achieves his aim), the future Buddha was a prince with a very wealthy father who ruled the Shakya clan. Although Siddharthas mother died seven days after his birth, his father decided to shelter his son from all human misery and suffering by raising him in a palace built just for the boy.

Not only was this palace extremely beautiful, Siddharthas father made sure that it was only populated by young and beautiful people, that any sick people were kept from Siddharthas sight, and that his son would never see any dead human or creature. Siddhartha was also never instructed in religion or human hardship, keeping him ignorant of old age, sickness, and even death. Siddhartha lived a life of luxury well into his adulthood, even marrying a princess and raising a son. However, upon reaching adulthood, he finally took a ride outside of his palace and came across an old man, a sick man, and a corpse. When his driver explained to him what all of these things were, Siddhartha was overcome by the experience and resolved to leave his palace and find a way to relieve humanity of this suffering.

His search led him to study under many teachers from different spiritual schools. A brilliant scholar, he learned quickly and meditated for long periods of time, hoping to find enlightenment. When this didnt produce the results he wanted, he decided to endure great pain and suffering, fasting and even refusing water until his body became so skinny that he resembled a corpse.

Related:Who Are The Blue Lanterns? DCs Green Lantern Allies Explained

Siddhartha finally achieved the insight he desired when a young girl offered him some rice. Suddenly realizing that living in extreme luxury and living in extreme poverty were both the wrong ways to achieve liberation, he ate the rice, recovered his health, and meditated for a long period of time before finally achieving the enlightenment that allowed him to become the Buddha. Now a spiritual teacher, Buddha encouraged his followers to follow The Middle Way which offered a more balanced path than one of overindulgence or extreme suffering. His teachings became known as the Dharma and he emphasized to his disciples that they should follow no leader but instead, be your own light.

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Batman: Bruce Wayne Has The Same Origin Story as The Buddha - Screen Rant

Rabbi Art Green (still) believes Hasidic ideas are key to the Jewish future – The Jewish News of Northern California

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Rabbi Art Green is a scholar of worldwide renown, the author of dozens of books, one of the worlds leading experts on Hasidic Judaism and perhaps the only person ever to lead two different American rabbinical schools. Currently, he serves as rector of the rabbinical school at Hebrew College in Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

But hes also a self-described seeker, preoccupied for decades now with crafting a Jewish spiritual vocabulary that can speak to modern Jews living in liberal Western societies. At 79, Green believes that vocabulary can be found in neo-Hasidism, an updated version of practices associated with the Jewish revivalist movement that swept Eastern Europe in the 17th century.

In January, Stanford University Press will publish The Light of the Eyes, Greens translation of a series of Torah discourses by Rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, an 18th-century Hasidic master also known as the Meor Aynayim. Later this month, Green will be offering his first public classon Zoom based on the book.

Green spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in August about his forthcoming book, how Hasidic Jews became conservatives and the spiritual wisdom necessary to cope with a roiling political environment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

JTA: I feel like every conversation that I have now needs to begin with a five- or 10-minute session on how were all holding up. So: How are you holding up?

Green: So, Im holding up. I live alone. Im a widower, my wifes gone three years now. And doing this alone is not completely easy. You know, I did most of it in Israel. I went to Israel for the winter and I wound up staying six months because of the corona. From Israel, I was teaching five days a week on Zoom, and that kept me going. Coming back to America was somewhat hard because people here are palpably more scared than people there. I had gotten into this for several months without feeling a lot of fear, and suddenly I felt people really frightened. And Im sort of having to come to terms not so much with my fear, but with their fear. I think Im more afraid of Trump stealing the election right now than I am afraid of dying of Covid.

Well come back to Trump in a bit. But I wonder, since these sorts of ultimate questions are on so many peoples minds right now, if you can talk a bit about what is on yours. Youre 79 and have been active and teaching in the Jewish world for over five decades. Are you thinking about your legacy? Whats driving your work today?

Of course, Im thinking about legacy. Im going to turn 80 this year. How can you not think about legacy? But the last 10 years have been a very interesting period. When I turned 70, I saw the biblical verse staring me in the face that says: The days of our lives are 70. I said to myself, what else do you still want to get done while you can? And the answer was a whole lot. These have been the most productive 10 years of my life. In terms of writing and thinking, and producing and creating, I would say this has been a very big decade for me. And I hope I have another one.

At some point early in my career I looked around and said, Is there going to be a Jewish future? Is there anybody whos going to read this stuff that Im writing about the Jewish past? We have to write something that will help create a future. And around that point, I left the university for the first time and went to a rabbinical school. And that move was also a shift from just writing scholarship to writing theology and saying, what kind of Jewish language would be meaningful to people in the West? And thats still the question: How do we create a Jewish religious language that is compelling, that is intellectually honest, and that is meaningful to people. To keep this to keep this great tradition alive and creative in the age in which we live. And thats still a question Im still writing around in various ways.

At the risk of reducing a lifetime of work to a single word, your answer seems to be: Hasidism.

I was saved for Judaism by discovering Hasidism. I discovered early Hasidic thought when I was 20 years old. Somebody gave me an essay by Hillel Zeitlin about Hasidic thought and I said, This will be my religious language the rest of my life. And I have been trying to retool Hasidism in some ways. How does this work in an age when we believe in evolution and we believe the planet is 13 billion years old and all kinds of other things that the people who wrote these texts didnt believe? We do not check our intellectual baggage at the door when we come to Judaism. So how do we find meaning in premodern texts?

Im not a person who believes that the premodern tradition became outdated in 1780 or 1800, and now we just work as modern or postmodern Jews. I live in a very deep living connection to premodern Jewish authors. I spend all my time reading kabbalistic and Hasidic sources. But at the same time, I do ask these very contemporary questions about them.

What is there specifically in this tradition that you think answers the modern Jewish quest for meaning?

There is a combination of abstract thought and religious passion that can live together. Some people think that religious passion only works if you have an entirely personal relationship to an entirely personal God. Somebody you talk to, somebody you have a relationship very much like the relationship of a parent or a king or a friend. And the Hasidic masters created a kind of abstract Jewish theology, based on Kabbalah but simplified, made accessible. And you understand God not as something other, but something of which you are a part, of which we are all a part. Theres a kind of universal embrace of divinity that underlies Hasidism. At the same time, theres intimacy and theres passion.

One of those Hasidic masters is the subject of a book of yours that will be coming out in a few months The Light of the Eyes, or Meor Aynayim in Hebrew, a translation of a Hasidic work by the Chernobyl rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Nahum Twersky. What attracts you to this work in particular?

I love the Meor Aynayim. Its a different face of Hasidism than people see today. People who look at Hasidism today experience three kinds of Hasidism. Theres Chabad, which is very much worldly, messianically oriented do more mitzvahs and that will bring the redemption closer. Theres Breslov, which is also redemption-centered have faith in me, have faith in Rebbe Nachman and he will save you. And then theres Satmar, which is Hasidism as traditionalism do it exactly the same way as they did it in the 18th century.

The kind of Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov [the founder of the Hasidic movement], which is loving and gentle and forgiving and world-embracing, that kind of Hasidism has somehow gotten lost. And the Meor Aynayim is one of its best spokesmen. So I want to use the Meor Aynayim in some ways to bring that gentle kind of Hasidism back into the world. You can serve God in everything you do, you find sparks of holiness everywhere, all of life is about seeking out divinity wherever you find it and raising it up and making it one again.

The Meor Aynayim is not an ascetic. Hes a very earthy guy and really believed that holiness was to be found everywhere. And if you punish yourself, you were denying God because God is in everything all your thoughts and all your deeds. Within the 18th-century Jewish context, he was a kind of free-spirited person, which isnt to say that he was careless about the law at all. But it was a love of life and a love of normal earthy human beings that motivated him, and in trying to find a spirituality that would work for such people.

I suspect many people will not recognize this brand of Hasidism.

Hasidism went through very big changes. It began as a movement of radical innovation. And remember the Hasidim were condemned by the great rabbis in the 18th century. They were persecuted. But by the turn of the 19th century, the rabbis and the Hasidim both looked around and they saw a much more dangerous enemy on the horizon: modernity or haskalah [Jewish enlightenment]. And the rabbis and the Hasidim made peace with one another to fight this common enemy called the modern world.

The Hasidim were thrilled by that because they would not be persecuted anymore. They agreed to be the tip of the spear in the battle against haskalah. And thats when Hasidism moved from being a movement of radical rebirth and renewal to an ultraconservative force. And Chernobyl was right there with the rest of them. By the second generation of Chernobyl, theyre already turning far to the right and becoming very different. Some of the spirit is still alive. You can still see it in a farbrengen [Hasidic gathering], the spontaneity and the charisma. Theres still a radiance about Hasidism that I think plain old-fashioned Litvishe [haredi Orthodox] Judaism doesnt have. But that radiance is very much reined in by this ultra-tight concern with praxis.

That kind of extremism was very far from the Baal Shem Tov and the Meor Aynayim. These were people who wanted an intense spiritual life. At the same time, they wanted to raise families and therefore have to support those families and live in this world. And so its a very worldly kind of spirituality for people who want both. And since Im one of those people, I have fallen in love with it, as you can tell. And this is about sharing that love.

Do you think most modern Jews today are looking for an intense spiritual life?

No, of course not. Thats why I created rabbinical schools, because I believe in finding people who are serious about it. They will go out, they will have to beat their heads against a wall and find a couple of people in each of those congregations who also take it seriously. What I have to say is not for everybody, but there are lots of seekers among Jews. I love and Im heartbroken by the huge number of Jewish seekers who have turned elsewhere. Some of the very best books on spirituality in the past 50 years have been written by Buddhists with names like Kornfeld and Salzberg and Boorstein. I feel a great sadness about those people. I dont blame them in the slightest. Its not their fault. Its our fault as Jewish educators that here were such profound seekers. And they couldnt find anything interesting or attractive in Judaism. Thats our failure.

Liberal Jewish leaders have been banging their heads against this problem for a long time. Whats the answer?

We will be in the future, I believe, a much smaller community. I look around to the grandchildren of my first cousins, most of whom are no longer Jews. And thats even on the more traditional side of the family. My fathers side of the family, who were pretty secular, theyre almost completely gone. And so I think we are a shrinking community.

On the other hand, I think there will remain a core in the liberal community who care about learning, who care about Jewish knowledge, more than people did before. Now getting those learners also to engage in a regular praxis is not completely easy. Getting people to do things in a really disciplined way, in a regular way, a daily sacred practice, whether its called davening or meditation, its hard. Its hard to get people to make commitments. Outside the haredi community, even in the Modern Orthodox world, everybody knows Im choosing to do this. You could get off an airplane in another city and go do whatever you want, eat whatever you want, and so on, without anybody knowing. Its all a matter of personal discipline. And I think spiritual life does need regularity and discipline. Ive become a pretty steadily observant Jew after many years of ambivalence about it. But convincing people to take on that discipline you can only do that retail, not wholesale. I cant do it by any arguments that will convince people in a book. Thats why rabbis are involved in the retail business. And Jews have been good at retail for a long time.

But it will be small groups. I continue writing because I know that people are still reading it. But if you ask me if what I have to say is going to save all of Jews and bring everybody back? No, I dont have such pretenses.

Lets turn to politics for a moment. Were in a moment now when politics seems to suffuse every part of our culture. Youre not an apolitical person recently youpublished a responseto Peter Beinarts call for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this time when the political divide is so wide that it extends even to what the warring factions accept as truth, how can we reconcile the spiritual impulse toward unity with the need for political action in an ever more fractious culture?

One has to be careful about those narrow spaces and remember that the people on the other side of the argument also need love and also deserve to be loved. And some of them are in those places we consider ridiculous because they need love. Even the president of the United States sometimes that can happen to. And Im not saying hes easy to love, but we Jews have learned for a long time that sometimes we have neighbors who are very hard to love.

A core piece of Torah for me is the controversy of Rabbi Akiva and his friend Ben Azzai about klal gadol ba-Torah, whats the most basic rule of Torah? Rabbi Akiva said the most basic rule of Torah is love your neighbor as yourself. And Ben Azzai said, I know something bigger than that. And that is when God created human beings, he created the male and female each one in his image. The image of God, tzelem Elohim, is the most basic principle.

I think their argument is about two things. I think Ben Azzai is saying to Akiva, watch out. Love your neighbor as yourself can be narrowed. It can mean only your Jewish neighbor, only your frum neighbor, only your Satmar neighbor. When you see it goes back to God creating humans in Gods image, that of necessity includes everybody.

But also, love is a very hard thing to demand. We Jews know what it is to have lousy neighbors, and theyre not always very lovable. But even if you cant love them, treat them as though they are created in Gods image. Every human being deserves to be treated like that, even the ones I find unlovable. So Im a Ben Azzai guy.

Listen, I dont believe in a God who governs history and makes that war happen and cures cancer. Thats not my kind of God. But if I look around at the world, I see that just at the moment when the world is recovering from this terrible blow of colonialism, the Jews, after suffering a blow where a third of the Jews are slaughtered, get put in this position where, in order to survive, they wind up establishing a state that much of the world sees as neocolonial. Is that not a moment where you say this is where our tradition is being challenged? Of course, were not colonialists, because we have no other country to go back to. But this challenge, to be involved in the most intractable of ethnic conflicts when the whole world needs to learn how to solve ethnic conflicts, maybe we were put there for some reason. I dont want to say an act of God did this to us, but maybe there is some meaning in the fact that we are in this situation. And thats our spiritual task, to figure it out, to figure out how to be human and how to treat the other as human in a situation thats so hard and painful and fraught.

Is there an American analogue to that?

There is a vision of America that some of the founding fathers had and it was a rather beautiful vision. I think life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not completely far from tzelem Elohim. And that has to be extended to as many people as you can. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness didnt count women, it didnt count Black people. Tzelem Elohim didnt count gay people. And because they werent treated like tzelem Elohim, we delegitimized their love lives so much that their love lives became compulsive and ugly and underground. That the whole gay and lesbian community has rediscovered marriage and partnership and loving relationships is such a magnificent thing to behold in our age. And thats because they were accorded decency. Look how much they leapt into it.

How do we extend this to more people? Yes, it means immigrants. I think we have to have immigration laws. Im not a wide open borders person. I believe in national entities. But treating people like human beings and not putting children in cages thats pretty basic humanity to me. These are not just liberal values, these are Jewish values. Its not that Im adjusting Judaism to liberalism as Im adjusting Judaism to a deeper Judaism. And if Ben Azzai tells me that tzelem Elohim is the very basis of the Torah, then I have to say if some other part of the Torah doesnt confirm tzelem Elohim for as many people as possible in as many moments as possible, it has to be reinterpreted in terms of tzelem Elohim, because thats the klal gadol, thats the most basic rule.

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Rabbi Art Green (still) believes Hasidic ideas are key to the Jewish future - The Jewish News of Northern California

Fiction: Into the Darkness With Don DeLillo – Wall Street Journal

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As an oenophile loves wine, Don DeLillo loves words. To read his fiction18 novels and novellas with the appearance of The Silence (Scribner, 117 pages, $22)is to experience a performance of lexical connoisseurship. He appreciates tone, complexity and mouthfeel: Idaho, I thought. Idaho, the word, so voweled and obscure; or asymmetrical, the serpentine word . . . slightly off kilter, with the single additional letter [a] that changes everything. He obsesses over origins: Fascinating, yes. An interesting word. From the Latin fascinus. An amulet shaped like a phallus. A word progressing from the same root as the word fascism. And veneration, as for any devotee, brings about moments of spiritual intensity, a form of sublunary transcendenceFiction, at least as I write it and think of it, he once explained in a letter to a reader, is a kind of religious meditation in which language is the final enlightenment.

In The Silence, a word that stands out for its components and cadences and mystical echoes is cryptocurrencies, which two characters repeat to each other as though initiating an esoteric ritual: Somewhere within all those syllables, something secret, covert, intimate. In past books Mr. DeLillo, who is now 83, has mined the lexicons of the military, the corporate world, the hard sciences, politics, sports and consumerism. His focus here is on technology andas is the case with most of his fictionwhat it might look like if the system around it were to collapse.

The book takes place on the night of the Super Bowl in 2022, as a couple, Diane and Max, hosts a small gathering in their Manhattan apartment. Their only guest at first is Dianes former student Martin, a high-school physics instructor infatuated with Albert Einstein. Later their friends, Jim and Tessa, stumble in, having survived a harrowing crash landing on their flight back from Paris. The cause of the accident appears to be the same thing that has plunged the party into bewildered darkness: a massive power outage that has cut off electricity, internet and phone service.

Whether this is a temporary inconvenience or the start of a nuclear holocaust is impossible to guess, as the story is largely confined to the apartment, where the characters speculate on events by candlelight and haltingly carry on with the party. The tension remains somewhat hypothetical. In a foreshadowing scene in the airplane at the start of the book, Tessa remembers a factoid without the use of her phone. She found this satisfying, Mr. DeLillo writes. Came out of nowhere. There is almost nothing left of nowhere. But the blackout enlarges the specter of nowhere, the place beyond the known world of digital mediation. The Silence is about the glimpsethe abrupt, jarring semi-premonitionof a post-technological void.

This all sounds fairly timely and will no doubt burnish Mr. DeLillos reputation as an oracle dispassionately communicating the news from the future. (If youre convinced of his prescience enough to put money on it, incidentally, he has the Seahawks playing the Titans in Super Bowl LVI.) But in my experienceand I have been wrestling with Mr. DeLillos books since I was a teenager, not always sympatheticallythe least rewarding way to approach this author is as some kind of shaman dispensing secret wisdom about the madness and malaise of Americas institutions. To take him too seriously, much less to take him literally, is to inflate him into a portentous crank who has been divining the seeds of decay in every single aspect of culture since the early 70s. Judged on the basis of topicality, The Silence is less than a trifle. It doesnt take a guru, after all, to tell us that were addicted to our devices.

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Fiction: Into the Darkness With Don DeLillo - Wall Street Journal

The joy of the Mallorcan landscape – Majorca Daily Bulletin

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Enjoying Majorca

2020-10-14 10:23:00PalmaBy Andrew Ede

Paisatge, landscape, is a word that crops up all the time in Mallorca. Politicians refer to it, as do businesses, environmentalists, artists and others. The landscape is something to be enjoyed and to be defended. Landscape is inherent to sustainability, and landscape is heritage, history and culture. But landscape has a deeper meaning, one that supersedes its physical existence, as landscape is Mallorca, so rooted is the almost spiritual reverence in which it is held and which thus inspires all the calls - from different sources - for its defence.

Landscape isnt confined to the countryside, the mountains and the coasts, but allusion to it presupposes a natural rather than urban connotation. This natural landscape isnt, however, without its artificiality. Quite obviously it isnt. But human intervention is often what elevates landscape to ever greater heights of reverence - the intervention of farmers and of builders that has created its own natural history of Mallorca, one that is inextricably linked to a unified but at the same time diverse Mediterranean culture. Only in certain instances has, for example, Anglo-Saxon intervention intruded; the shaping of Albufera by the British engineers is a case in point.

From next Monday, the Council of Mallorca will be celebrating the Setmana del Paisatge. Landscape Week, from what one can gather, will only entail a series of discussions, presentations and workshops. Which all sounds somewhat sterile and probably will be, but one presentation will be of a book devoted to rephotography of the Tramuntana Mountains landscape, implying a then and now of the most iconic of all Majorcas landscapes.

There will also be a session dedicated to the application of the European Landscape Convention and so also to the Mallorcan Landscape Strategy and the creation of the Landscape Observatory, an advisory body for coordinating actions that influence the landscape and improve, preserve and promote it.

A technical approach is therefore to be applied to something which on the face of it is purely natural but is at least partially the consequence of technical ability, which in the mediaeval era meant the passing of this ability down through generations and within cultures. Unesco didnt declare the Tramuntana a World Heritage Site just because it is a range of mountains; the cultural interplay was the decisive aspect. This was the collision of that Mediterranean unity but diversity - predominantly Muslim and Christian which moulded the Tramuntana and gave the mountains a unique personality. It was a blend of dry-stone, hydraulics and plantation. The natural landscape of the Tramuntana is also a product of human ingenuity, labour and struggle.

Even the more recent interventions, some on a massive scale, have embellished this landscape. Twisting roads, finca estates, the railway, the Soller Tunnel, and above all the vast manmade lakes - the Cuber and Gorg Blau reservoirs - have all played their part in moulding this natural space through technology, but without losing sight of its natural essence and, yes, its spirituality. The mountains are Majorcas most spiritual territory, courtesy of - in particular - Our Lady of Lluc and Ramon Llulls Miramar. And through Llull, this spiritual and landscape combination spills out of the Tramuntana to an elevation on Majorcas plain, the Puig de Randa in Algaida with the hermitage of Nostra Senyora de Cura and the cave where it is said that Llull had the enlightenment to eventually write his art, the Ars Magna, the scientific method by which no one could rationally argue in favour of any religion other than Christianity.

It was the landscape of the Tramuntana, as has been well-chronicled, which inspired the painters of the early years of the twentieth century to create what proved to be groundbreaking works in bringing the worlds attention to Mallorca. But the painters didnt neglect the islands whole landscape. The Argentine Francisco Bernareggi opened a workshop in the Tramuntana in 1903, but he was to discover very different landscape in the islands southeast. In Santanyi he captured the harmonies in the water of Cala Figuera. And there was Joan ONeille, a one-time secretary general of the Provincial Academy of Fine Arts, whose works with romantic traits were often simple in their execution and in their title. ONeille once painted some countryside land. He called it Paisatge.

ONeille was to say: Not everyone who looks, sees. The ones who see are those who observe and meditate.

See the Mallorcan landscape and meditate.

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The joy of the Mallorcan landscape - Majorca Daily Bulletin

Alan Arkin on Hollywood success: ‘I was miserable pretty much all of the time’ – The Guardian

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Alan Arkin met his guru on a Hollywood film set in 1969. Arkin was the star and John was his stand-in, a lowly factotum, the id to his ego. At the time, Arkin was successful but unsatisfied, looking for meaning, craving some guidance. His encounter with John set him on a path towards enlightenment that continues to this day. As for the guru, he took a different, darker route.

Arkin recently wrote a book, Out of My Mind, about his spiritual journey and the lessons hes learned. He subheaded it Not Quite a Memoir because he worried that people might be expecting a tell-all autobiography, the sort of gossipy trash hed never write. Damned if hes going to dish the dirt on Audrey Hepburn, Al Pacino, Johnny Depp and all the others hes worked with. Hed rather write about meditation, reincarnation and Tibetan Buddhism. Hed rather write about John - at least up to a point.

At the age of 86, he can look back on a powerhouse career that has carried him from Broadway to Hollywood, and from Catch 22 to an Oscar-winning role as the heroin-snorting grandad in Little Miss Sunshine. Arkin has always been such an authoritative actor strong, warm and nuanced. But he insists that his skill was actually born out of weakness. He was a shy, anxious child: acting gave him strength.

I had this sense that I didnt exist. My parents were wonderful people in many ways, but they werent affectionate. I dont remember ever being touched by either one. I felt ignored to the point where I didnt even exist so acting was my lifeline to not feeling like I was being obliterated. For many years, the only place I felt alive was on stage.

Arkin was born on the east coast and raised on the west, a Brooklyn scrapper turned California seeker. His father worked as a teacher but lost his job during the Red Scare. The family went hungry and lived under a cloud. That was a terrible period, he recalls. The phony patriotism; the wilful cruelty. It slightly reminds him of today. But I think its worse now. Back then it was just a small segment of the population that was affected at first hand. The rest of them didnt give a damn. They were into Elvis Presley and Gidget Goes Hawaiian.

As it happens, Arkin was once a pop sensation himself. Back in 1956 he sang in a folk band and scored a top five hit with The Banana Boat Song. After that, he switched music for theatre, then theatre for cinema picking up an Oscar nomination for his screen debut as the stranded Soviet submariner in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. By his mid-30s the actor was living the dream, on top of the world. He snorts. And I was miserable pretty much all of the time.

Hes happier now, thanks to his meeting with John and the changes it brought. In his book he writes (always charmingly; sometimes convincingly) about past lives and faith healers and the tenets of eastern philosophy. He tells us about John, who he worked with for over 20 years and who became a central figure in his life. John led the way, Arkin gratefully followed. He writes: My devotion to his teachings became virtually ironclad.

My devotion to John's teachings became virtually ironclad

In the book, Arkin mentions that the pair eventually drifted apart but he doesnt go into details or reveal Johns surname. It appears, though, that the actors mentor was John Battista (sometimes known as Batiste), a one-time Broadway actor who ran an Agni Yoga ashram in upstate New York. In 1993, Battista was charged with the sexual abuse of three women and a teenage girl whom he had reportedly put in a trance-like state and then molested. The tabloid press dubbed him The Creep Guru.

I ask Arkin if I have this right - if his John was that John - and he sighs. Oh my God, that was a dark night of the soul if ever there was one. I cant even begin to tell you what that meant, not just for me but for my family. I could hardly leave my room for about six months. I found myself saying, Dont throw out the baby with the bathwater. But I couldnt work out what was the baby and what was the bathwater.

Maybe its all dirty. Maybe chuck it all out. Well no, he says. Because I was finally able to sort it out. I felt that I had grown so much. So much had borne fruit. Some miraculous things were going on as a direct result of meditation. It saved my life. I couldnt throw it out. If I threw it out, then suicide would have been the only viable alternative. And for reasons which well go into over a cup of tea one day, I knew that suicide was not the answer. I knew that suicide was not going to solve anything for me or my family or anybody I knew.

Ive read that Battista killed himself. He did, yeah, thats true, Arkin says. But I doggedly went on and Im glad that I did.

I cant help feeling that Out of My Mind would have been a richer, darker book if it had focused more on the shifting relationship between the actor and his stand-in, the star and his shadow. But Arkin is determined to accentuate the positive. Its part of his philosophy, the path that hes chosen. The world is full of such storm-clouds, its best to limit your exposure. He explains that he and his wife lead a quiet life in California now. They rarely leave the house and avoid discussing politics, or the state of the environment. I dont want to live in a state of terror, he says.

In recent years, Arkins had a nice Netflix gig, playing a weathered Hollywood agent in The Kominsky Method. Yeah, I still have threads that connect me, he says. Im like a horse going down the trail. Acting is so ingrained in my physiognomy and the channels of my brain that I find myself missing aspects of the business. But I dont need it any more. I should probably get over it.

The older he gets, he says, the more he has come to appreciate silence and solitude. Beethoven used to be a heroin injection for me. Jazz, the same. The great novels, the same. I could not conceive of going through a day without reading great literature or listening to great music. Now its mostly an assault. Living in silence. Looking at the garden. Having a relationship with trees and flowers and the sky. Thats whats profound to me now.

I tell him that it sounds as though hes preparing for the end. But thats a crass western notion. It risks missing the point of his book. There is no end, Arkin says. There was no beginning and there is no end. We are all a part of that endless flow.

Out of My Mind by Alan Arkin is published by Viva Editions.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at http://www.befrienders.org.

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Alan Arkin on Hollywood success: 'I was miserable pretty much all of the time' - The Guardian

Sudbury author explores the power of healing – The Sudbury Star

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Sudbury author Teresa Naseba Marsh is celebrating her new book, The Courage of a Nation: Healing from Intergenerational Trauma, Addiction and Multiple Loss, with a book signing on Oct. 17, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sudbury Paint & Custom Framing on Elgin St.

Im very excited about my new book, Marsh said in a release. The writing of this book was inspired by my visits to the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Nation on Vancouver Island and meeting Elder Allen Dick and the two Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities, Tseshaht and Ahousaht.

Other inspirations emerged from my experience as a PhD student and my experiences working with the Anishinaabek peoples in Northern Ontario.

This is Marshs second book, with her first one, Enlightenment Is Letting Go: Healing from Trauma, Addiction and Multiple Loss, published in 2010. My new book is written in a similar style to my first book, but in the Indigenous context and voice as a testimony of the impact of intergenerational or abuse-related trauma, addiction and multiple loss on the lives and well-being of the Indigenous peoples in Canada and globally.

Similar to my first book, this book is written through storytelling and poetry, as well as researched knowledge and wisdom.

Join Marsh on Oct. 17 to buy a signed copy and to meet the author. For everyone who attends, there will be a chance to win a book.

For more information about Marsh or her new book, visit http://www.teresamarshauthor.com.

The Courage of a Nation: Healing from Intergenerational Trauma, Addiction and Multiple Loss is available to order; visit eresamarshauthor.com. For more information, contact Marsh at thunzi@me.com.

Marsh immigrated to Canada from South Africa in 1992 and continued to contribute to healing approaches to overcome suffering, trauma, addiction, intergenerational trauma, multiple loss and the aftermath of oppression. She also works closely with, supervises and teaches Indigenous professionals how to work through a trauma-informed, decolonizing lens.

She is the founder of her private practice, Thunzi Umphefumlo, an assistant professor, clinical sciences, with the Northern Ontario School of Medicine at Laurentian and Lakehead Universities.

March works as a consultant with Indigenous communities with a focus on healing from intergenerational trauma and addiction.

She lives in Sudbury with her husband, Dr. David Marsh.

What inspired you to write about your story?

The writing of this book was inspired by my visits to the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Nation on Vancouver Island and meeting Elder Allen Dick and the two Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities, Tseshaht and Ahousaht. When I met Elder Allen Dick and ventured through a deeply Spiritual experience with him. While he was giving his teachings, something deep within moved me and I was inspired to document this experience through poetry. I wrote my first poem about the Elder and his life.

Why did you decide to publish?

The next day I read this poem at a community event. As I read the poem, I realized that the words had a profound healing energy and the poem had a power of its own. It was as if the poem were telling the story of so many people. Men and women came up to me and thanked me for the words. Some stated that I spoke the words that they yearned to speak and say for so many years. I experienced tears and laughter, joy and love from the people. These feelings I felt came from a deep place within. My Elder and many of the community members encouraged me to write a book about their courage and healing and to use these poems. I kept my promise to Elder Allen and the community and I wrote this

book. Also, other inspirations emerged from my experience as a PhD student and my experience working with the Anishinaabek peoples in Northern Ontario. As an Indigenous woman from Cape Town, South Africa, I have witnessed and experienced the debilitating symptoms of intergenerational trauma (IGT) and substance use disorder (SUD). As a witness to trauma and the range of ways in which it can degrade the human mind and soul, I am once again compelled to share the voices, experiences and viewpoints of the recipients of such atrocities.

What do you hope readers will get from reading your book?

The content in this book explores treatment models from both Indigenous and Western Spiritual and health-care practices. I also discuss the impact of combined interventions and through the stories of participants showcases the impact and healing powers of these interventions. My hope is that readers will connect through the storytelling, spoken word and poetry, and learn that we are all born to heal. I hope they will believe that we all have the capacity for growth, transcendence, joy, unconditional love, peace and self-determination when we connect to our Spirit and embrace each other with love and kindness. I also hope that this book will take the reader on a journey of the complexity and courage of the human spirit and soul. My hope is that this book will inspire our capacity and ability to reconnect with the body, mind and spirit through belief in self and healing.

This is a deeply personal story for you, what did you learn about yourself through the writing process?

As I said in my acknowledgements, that in my life, there was a presence I recognized as the Stream of Love that accompanied me. During the writing of this book, I merged with the stream and I experienced passion and bliss. I was receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer when I decided to complete the manuscript, so that I could keep my promise to my Elder and his community. I learned that if we tap into that stream of love that anything is possible. I recovered and I published the book. I thank the Creator and all my ancestors for the stream of love, light, inspiration, hope and joy that walked with me as I was writing this book over the years.

Tell me a piece of wisdom you would like to impart with your readers.

As a helper and healer, I believe that the greatest quality a healer possesses is the understanding of spirituality and healing. We are all helpers and healers. Spiritual healing is the practice (and experience) of restoring, harmonizing and balancing our Spirit or Soul. Spiritual healing is also seen as a transcendental experience of reconnecting with our true nature. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Begin to consciously reconnect with your essential being, your true self, your essence, the core of our being, the wise, loving, powerful, creative entity that you are at your core and find that magic, the light. Take time to be quiet with yourself and you will be able to go there. Finally, please read this book and discover the magic that resides in you and everyone in this universe.

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @SudburyStar

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Sudbury author explores the power of healing - The Sudbury Star

The Revolutionary Beethoven – CounterPunch.org – CounterPunch

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Two hundred and fifty years after Beethovens birth, were faced with something of a paradox: his music is known and beloved all over the world, probably more than that of any other composer, even as its real significance is hardly ever remarked on except in critical studies largely unread by the public. Familiarity, it seems, has bred, not contempt but ignorance. We hear the famous melodies for the thousandth time, whether in movies, commercials, or concerts, melodies from the third, fifth, sixth, ninth or other symphonies, or from piano concertos and sonatas or pieces of chamber music, but the cutting edge of this music has been dulled through overuse. That is, we have forgotten, and no longer seem to hear, the intensely political nature of Beethovens musicits subversive, revolutionary, passionately democratic and freedom-exalting nature.

In the year of the great composers 250th birthday, it would be fitting to recapture the musics essence, retune our ears to pick up its political and philosophical message. This is especially appropriate in our own time of democratic struggles against a corrupt and decaying ancien rgime, a time of parallels with the Beethovenian era of revolution, hidebound reaction, and soaring hopes to realize the rights of man. Beethoven belongs, heart and soul, to the political left. Centuries after his death, his music, especially if properly understood, still retains the power to transform, transfigure, and revivify, no matter how many political defeats its partisans and spiritual comrades suffer.

We might start with the most famous of Beethovenian motifs, the opening notes of the Fifth Symphony (1808). Weve all heard the legend that they represent fate knocking at the door. The source of this idea is Anton Schindler, Beethovens notoriously unreliable secretary. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, world-renowned conductor, has a different interpretation: he detects the influence of Cherubinis revolutionary Hymne du Panthon of 1794 in the famous notes. We swear, sword in hand, to die for the Republic and for the rights of man, the chorus sings, to the rhythm of da-da-da-duuum. Beethoven was a great admirer of Cherubini, not to mention a devoted republican, so Gardiners theory is hardly far-fetched. In the stultifyingly conservative and repressive Vienna of 1808, Beethoven issued a clarion call to revolution in the very opening notes of one of his most revolutionary, Napoleonic symphonies. No wonder conservatives detested his music!

Some biographical details are in order. Beethoven was a child of the Enlightenment and remained so his whole life. Bonn in the late eighteenth century was steeped in the most progressive thought of the age: Kant, the philosopher of freedom, was a lively subject of discussion at the university, as was his follower Schiller, the poet of freedom, impassioned enemy of tyrants everywhere. The young Beethoven was heavily influenced by Eulogius Schneider, whose lectures he attended: one of the most important of German Jacobins, Schneider was so radical that in 1791 he was kicked out of the liberal university, whereupon he joined the Jacobin Club in Strasbourg. (There, he was appointed public prosecutor for the Revolutionary Tribunal, enthusiastically sending aristocrats to the guillotineuntil he lost his own head a couple years later.) Schneiders republicanism stayed with Beethoven, but it was Schiller whom Beethoven worshiped.

Schillers poem An die Freude, of course, impressed Beethoven immensely, given that he planned early on to set it to music and finally did so in the Ninth Symphony. But he was just as enamored of Schillers idealistic, heroic plays, such as The Robbers, William Tell, and Don Carlos. In marginal notations on the latter play, he jotted down his own thoughts as a young man: To do good whenever one can, to love liberty above all else, never to deny the truth, even though it be before the throne. Decades later, we find him exclaiming in a letter, Freedom!!!! What more does one want??? In a similar vein, he once wrote to a friend, From my earliest childhood, my zeal to serve our poor suffering humanity in any way whatsoever by means of my art has made no compromise with any lower motive. I am thoroughly delighted, he continued, to have found in you a friend of the oppressed. The historian Hugo Leichtentritt concludes, Beethoven was a passionate democrat, even in his youth; he was, in fact, the first German musician who had strong political interests, ideals, and ambitions.

Indeed, his first significant composition was his Cantata on the Death of Joseph II, a heartfelt and moving tribute to the enlightened reformer who died in 1790. Beethoven, who always disliked hierarchy, was wholly in sympathy with Josephs attacks on the power of the Catholic Church and the Austrian aristocracy. His contempt for aristocrats was such that, years later, he was able to write an insulting note to his most generous benefactor, Prince Lichnowsky: Prince, what you are, you are by circumstance and birth; what I am, I am through myself. There are, and always will be, thousands of princes; but there is only one Beethoven. Even his fashion sense was democratic. A woman who knew him wrote a reminiscence of his behavior in aristocratic Viennese salons: I still remember clearly Haydn and Salieri sitting on a sofaboth carefully dressed in the old-fashioned way with wig, shoes, and silk stockings, while Beethoven would come dressed in the informal fashion of the other side of the Rhine, almost badly dressed. Corresponding to this was the fact that he was without manners in both gesture and demeanor. He was very haughty. I myself saw the mother of Princess Lichnowskygo down on her knees to him as he lolled on the sofa, begging him to play something. But Beethoven did not.

One reason for Beethovens decades-long fascination with Napoleon was that the latter was not an aristocrat, that he was the little corporal who had conquered Europe by his own efforts. He admired Napoleons ascent from such a low beginning, remarked a French officer he befriended in 1809. It suited his democratic ideas. On the other hand, Napoleons crowning himself Emperor certainly did not suit Beethovens ideas, as we know from the anecdote of how he furiously tore up the title page of the Eroica Symphony (1803), which he had originally intendedincredibly, given the political repression in Viennato title Buonaparte. So he is nothing more than an ordinary man! Beethoven raged. Now he too will trample underfoot all the rights of manand become a tyrant! And yet twenty years later, in the thick of the Restoration, his views had softened: earlier I couldnt have tolerated him [Napoleon]. Now I think completely differently. However bad Napoleon was, he wasnt the despised Emperor Francis IIor, even worse, Metternich.

The Eroica is arguably the most revolutionary of Beethovens symphonies, which may be why it remained his favorite, at least until the Ninth. John Clubbe, author of Beethoven: The Relentless Revolutionary (2019), believes the famous first two chords, which crash like cannon shots, are indeed supposed to represent the cannon fired by Napoleons armies as they marched across Europe carrying the banner of revolution. The chords recall the world of the [French] Revolution: exuberant, over-the-top, colossal. They are wake-up calls to jolt [the] somnolent audiences in Vienna and elsewherefor Beethoven loathed the complacent, apolitical, frivolous Viennese of his day, intimidated by repression and censorship into sybaritic silence. The symphony is full of the techniques of disruption that have come to be considered quintessentially Beethovenian, including sudden dynamic contrasts, extreme dissonance, colossal noise, massive dimensions, density of ideas, bursting of forms and conventions, even an extra French horn to conjure the atmosphere of revolution. All of it together serves to communicate the abiding essence of Beethovens music: struggle, ending in triumph. It is not mere personal struggle, such as his struggle against deafness; it is collective, universal, timeless struggle, a war against limits, so to speakartistic, creative, moral, political, even spatial and temporal. Gardiners characterization is apt: Beethoven represents the struggle to bring the divine down to Earth, a struggle he shares with revolutionaries everywhere. (Gardiner contrasts this with Bach and Mozart, the first representing the divine on Earth, the second giving us the music you would hear in heaven.)

Theodor Adorno was surely right when he said, If we listen to Beethoven and do not hear anything of the revolutionary bourgeoisienot the echo of its slogans, the need to realize them, the cry for that totality in which reason and freedom are to have their warrantwe understand Beethoven no better than does one who cannot follow the purely musical content of his pieces. The man was so political that, by the end of his life, some of his friends refused to dine with him: either they were bored of his constant politicizing or they feared police spies would overhear him. You are a revolutionary, a Carbonaro, a friend of his wrote in his conversation book in 1823, referring to an Italian secret society that had played a role in various national uprisings. Well past the point that it had become (to his contemporaries) anachronistic, Beethoven kept the Enlightenment faith.

It is beyond the scope of this article to trace Beethovens hortatory humanism through all its musical permutations, from the bucolic poetry of the Sixth Symphony (he had a nearly pantheistic love of nature) to the peace that passeth understanding of the final piano sonata, with the dazzling variety of forms and content in between. We can hardly ignore, however, the one opera he wrote, whether in its initial form (as Leonore) or its final form almost ten years later (1814) as Fidelio (which he wanted to dedicate, much like Lord Byron, to the Greek freedom fighters in their war against the Ottoman Empire). Here was a chance for the great democrat to express his convictions in words, not only music. And the words, music, and plot of the opera are unambiguous: in them the Revolution is not depicted but reenacted as in a ritual, to quote Adorno.

Fidelio gives free rein to Beethovens unalloyed idealism, as the choral movement of the Ninth Symphony would do a decade later. The plot is simple (and ostensibly based on actual events that occurred during the French Revolution). Leonore, disguised as a young man named Fidelio, gets a job at a prison where she suspects her husband Florestan is being held for political reasons. He is, in fact, being slowly starved to death in the dungeon for having denounced the crimes of the prisons governor, Pizarro. The minister Don Fernando will arrive the next day to investigate accusations of cruelty in the prison, so Pizarro resolves to kill Florestan in order to keep his existence and unjust imprisonment a secret. Fidelio and a few others are sent to the dungeon to dig a grave; meanwhile, they set most of the prisoners free, at least temporarily, to gather in the courtyard and see the sun once again. At last the time is come for Pizarro to kill Florestan: he approaches with a dagger, but Fidelio leaps between him and Florestan and reveals herself, to everyones shock, as Leonore. She threatens Pizarro with a pistol, but at that moment a distant bugle is heard, announcing the arrival of the benevolent minister. Pizarro ends up imprisoned himself, as Leonore frees Florestan from his chains and is celebrated for her heroism by the crowd of emancipated prisoners.

The symbolism and allegorical meanings of the opera are not hard to discern. Beethoven believed in the courage and heroism of women just as much as men, and was just as affected by its contemplation and depiction. He was, in fact, a lifelong child, as sincere and pure in his valuesas well as in his utterly untamed personality (quoting Goethe)as a nave boy reading Schiller for the first time. Doubtless it is this quality that so moves audiences, that inspires flash mobs with millions of views on YouTube, and that has made his music immortal. The greatest art is always affirmative in spirit, and no one is more profoundly affirmativeor more entitled to affirmation, in light of his terrible sufferingthan Beethoven.

The spirit of his music is as simple as the spirits of his models (he insisted) Socrates and Jesus: good will triumph over evil; cherish freedom but live with moral seriousness, always challenging authority; love your fellow human beings, not parochially, as in the mode of nationalism, but universally; never compromise your ideals or integrity; above all, struggle for emancipation. Freedom remained the fundamental motif of Beethovens thought and music, Clubbe writes.

Lest a political conservative misinterpret this last point, I must insist that freedom for Beethoven did not mean the freedom to try to start a business, to rent yourself to a corporation (on pain of starving), or to enjoy the wealth you have inherited. These are deeply impoverished freedoms, however glorified they may be in the rhetoric of modern conservatism. Richer is the republican freedom to participate actively in politics, or the freedom to create and think and speak what you will, where you will. Politics as the art of creating society, a society that will express a richer and fuller life, was Beethovens favorite theme, according to his biographer W. J. Turner. Indeed, there is something incongruous about the attendance of the lavishly dressed moneyed elite at public concerts of Beethoven symphonies or concertos, given the musics expression of the revolutionary, democratic, humanitarian spirit the elites existence is premised on crushing. But such are the ironies that result when the historical specificity of art is denied or forgotten and all that is left is a vague feeling of aesthetic enjoyment.

Still, even the pure aesthetic enjoyment is significant. The music is exquisitely beautiful in the mode of invigoration: no composer in history is more humanistic than Beethoven. As Leonard Bernstein once said,

No composer has ever lived who speaks so directly to so many people, to young and old, educated and ignorant, amateur and professional, sophisticated and nave. To all these people, of all classes, nationalities, and racial backgrounds, this music speaks a universality of thought, of human brotherhood, freedom, and love.

That even our modern aristocrats and reactionaries can love Beethoven, however perversely, suggests just how universal his music is.

Let us, then, turn again with fresh ears and open minds to the first great democrat of music, in the words of Ferruccio Busoni. Let us draw inspiration from him in our own struggles to humanize and democratize the world. And lets be sure not to forget, in the cultural wasteland that is twenty-first-century America, the nobler aspects of our civilizations heritage.

Admirers of Richard Wagners music have been known to call it the Music of the Future. Lets hope that Beethovens is the real Music of the Future, and that humanity one day will be free.

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Exercising Religion and Taming Faction – Los Angeles Review of Books – lareviewofbooks

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OCTOBER 18, 2020

AMERICAN RELIGION WAS a shock to Frances Trollope. The reform-minded English writer came to the United States in 1827 with hopes of revitalizing her family finances. But she left disappointed after four years. In her memoir of her American travels, Trollope commented on the dynamic but bewildering religious life of the young nation. The whole people appear to be divided into an almost endless variety of religious factions. She found it distressingly chaotic. Better, thought Trollope, to have a respectable established church as a home for the quiet, non-fractious Christians.

A generation earlier, James Madison had reached the opposite conclusion about American religion. The worst way to resolve the differences between religious sects, Madison argued, was legal establishment. That would force religious sects into a competition among themselves for dominance under the law. A just government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another. It is Madisons analysis, not Trollopes, that seems most natural to Americans today. Why this is so is a question historian Jack Rakove tackles in his new book, Beyond Belief, Beyond Conscience.

Madison and his collaborator, Thomas Jefferson, are pivotal characters in Rakoves elegant and engaging new study of religious liberty in America. Madison and Jefferson are familiar characters who appear in countless histories of free exercise, from professional historical scholarship to judicial opinions to popular history documentaries. Rakoves goal is not to radically upset a familiar narrative but to approach it in a more sophisticated way. Its a work that synthesizes the latest scholarship and is liberally sprinkled with Rakoves own insights, gleaned from years of study of the founding and particularly of Madisons thought about constitutional design.

The Problem of Faction

An organizing theme in the book is faction. Faction was central to Madisons political thought. Religious diversity captured in microcosm this problem and its solution.

Madison worried that the splintering of the American polity into factions could destroy the young nation. In Federalist numbers 10 and 51, two of the most famous essays in American political thought, Madison argued that democratic governments tend to break into self-interested factions. His solution was to harness rather than eliminate faction. As Rakove summarizes Madisons point, the best security for liberty would rely on the existence of a multiplicity of sects (or interests) that would cure the mischiefs of faction. Rather than design a perfect government, the goal was a government in which the conflict of faction would be productively channeled; ambition would counteract ambition and the government would be kept in balance.

Religious freedom presented an analogous problem, and Madison opted for a similar solution. Religious groups were factions with powerful claims on the loyalty of adherents. In a situation with establishment, one faction had power that others could only struggle to obtain. Mere toleration would not necessarily avoid serious conflict, as the sects that were tolerated but not established could still only wish to have the power and authority achieved by becoming established.

The solution was not just government toleration of religious diversity a concession (magnanimous or grudging) by a government that could decide to regulate religion more directly if it wished but rather recognizing religion as outside the scope of government regulation. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights declared, [R]eligion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.

Rakove argues that Madison and Jeffersons thought about religious freedom was at the cutting edge of constitutional thinking: No other right placed as great a value on the moral autonomy of individuals [] or on their capacity to shield their beliefs and behavior from the scrutiny of the state.

Told this way, Rakoves history sounds like the story of an American enlightenment. But while Rakove does indeed cast Madison and Jefferson as intellectual visionaries, he doesnt reduce the story to one of intellectual genealogy.

A Culture of Religious Conflict

Factions mattered in theory because conflicts between religious groups were such a prominent part of Europeans lived experience for the two centuries preceding the American founding.

This conflict is Rakoves starting point. Wars of religion broke out almost immediately after the introduction of Protestantism in Germany in the early 16th century. England was late to the wars but had years of religious upheaval nonetheless. King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic church and claimed the title of head of the church for himself in 1531; Parliament confirmed his position with the Act of Supremacy in 1534.

With every change of monarch came upheaval in English religion hardly a formula for national peace. Henrys heir Edward VI (only nine years old when crowned) sympathized with the far-reaching reform agenda of proto-Puritans, but his efforts to institute the reforms were cut short by his death at age 15. His half-sister took the throne and worked to restore Catholicism, earning the nickname Bloody Mary from her opponents by her zeal for executing Protestants. Elizabeth restored the moderate Protestantism of the Church of England; now Catholics were persecuted. Meanwhile, a growing group of hot Protestants, eventually known as Puritans, began agitating for more rigorous reform within the Church of England. The Puritan movement grew in strength during the reigns of James I and Charles I, even as it was constantly riven with internal disagreements and periodically persecuted by the leadership of the established church. The English Civil War was among other things a religious conflict; Puritans were victorious, but after the protectorship of Cromwell, the restoration of the monarchy brought with it a return to the moderate Anglican status quo.

Moderate, Rakove makes clear, does not mean tolerant. It meant avoiding extremes of behavior, but also an effort to limit the growth of rival sects through a vigorous projection of the power of the state. This was the basic policy embraced by Elizabeth and the Stuart monarchs, from James I until Charles II. James II, a convert to Catholicism, complicated the issue with a fairly radical move toward toleration. However one assesses Jamess intentions, whether one sees him as a potentially enlightened architect of a religious Magna Carta or an artful absolutist seeking to co-opt his political opposition, his bid for religious toleration could never outweigh his Catholic and Francophile commitments, Rakove writes. This doomed his efforts and his monarchy; he was ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. John Lockes famous letter on toleration synthesized some of the newer ideas about toleration. But in its own day, it was overshadowed by the political issues in the Glorious Revolution.

An American Culture of Religious Liberty

The divergence was not merely religious conflict versus Enlightenment. In Rakoves telling, it was old world versus new. Rakove argues that Americans became habituated to religious diversity and dropped the instinct toward establishment in a way that Europe had not been able to do. Indeed, Rakove explains, [B]y the middle of the eighteenth century before Jefferson and Madison entered the scene Americans were already accepting the norms of free exercise.

To explain why this happened, Rakove takes readers on a whirlwind tour of colonial Americas cultural history. New England Puritans developed a strict and intensely spiritual culture. Despite its strong communal aspect centered around local churches, Rakove identifies an individualist strand in Calvinistic Puritan thought: constant introspection, attention to ones conscience and ones understanding of Scripture. In this society, no one could afford to abandon the exercise of conscience. Before long, the dream of a religiously homogeneous colony was in jeopardy, as Quakers, Baptists, and antinomians assaulted the Puritan sensibilities in New England. Further south, the middle colonies of New York, East and West Jersey, and above all Pennsylvania became increasingly tolerant of diversity. In the early 18th century, religious awakenings punctuated the usual rhythms of religious life with heightened emotion, controversy, and fragmentation.

Its not that the American colonies had an epiphany and abandoned coerced religious belief. Rather, Rakove says, the idea of a sharp divide between establishment and dissent fizzled away by the middle of the 18th century. Dissent became an increasingly meaningless category as it became ever more difficult to say where orthodoxy resided.

Turning Culture into Law

If so much of the practical reality of religious liberty emerged through a highly contingent cultural evolution, whats left for folks like Madison and Jefferson to do? Basically, Rakove presents them as completing the paradigm shift from European-style establishment, well beyond toleration, to the modern American regime of free exercise. The Revolution was the catalyst, and Madison and Jefferson are Rakoves case studies to understand the revolutionary moments potential. In using them and the Virginia experience somewhat more broadly as case studies, Rakove has the opportunity to delve into the political theory underlying their project. (This comes with a risk of over-emphasizing the importance of Madison and Jefferson, whose theories especially about religion were sometimes outside the mainstream of then-current American political thought.) The ultimate result of the revolutionary project in Virginia was full and formal disestablishment. With this came several iterations of the principle of religious liberty, in legal documents like the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) and the Statute for Religious Freedom (1786) as well as in the political discourse, including Madisons Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785). These experiences in turn informed Madisons approach at the national level when the principle of non-establishment and free exercise was embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Disestablishment in Virginia cast a long shadow, and its story is the most frequently told, but it wasnt the only state that mattered. Rakove finds that in the early years of the young American republic, the most influential statement of religious freedom was not the handiwork of the Virginians but of the Pennsylvanians. The language in the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790 was copied with only slight variations by Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Missouri (1820), Arkansas (1836), Texas (1845), and Wisconsin (1848). It described free exercise of conscience as a natural right: no one could be compelled to support any religious institution nor be subjected to coercion by any religious institution.

Disestablishment ushered in an era of intense ferment in American religion. Religious sects formed, divided, competed, and sometimes litigated. The results largely vindicated the Madisonian approach, Rakove argues. Different religious groups guarded against the dominance of any one particular sect over the others.

It did not, however, prevent a broad Protestant consensus from shaping law and government policy. This led to trouble as American religion continued to diversify. Catholics complained about the Protestantism of American public education. Mormons got into trouble for practicing polygamy, leading to the Supreme Courts first case interpreting the Free Exercise Clause.

Judicial doctrine interpreting the Constitutions free exercise guarantee didnt really grow until the 1940s. The Jehovahs Witnesses were the catalyst then. Other key cases featured Seventh-day Adventists, Amish, and Santeria adherents, among others.

Private Religion and the Balance of Power

Reflecting on the cases in the latter half of the 20th century, Rakove is troubled by the rise of religious exemptions. Starting with Sherbert v. Verner (1963), the Supreme Court interpreted the First Amendments Free Exercise Clause as requiring religious exemptions unless the government has narrowly tailored its law to further a compelling government interest. After the Court walked this back in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), Congress legislatively recreated the exemptions system through the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993).

Rakove explains that the exemptions regime would have been foreign to the founders. Moreover, he argues that it threatens a key assumption of the Madisonian approach to religious liberty: religion is protected when it is kept private and voluntary. Once it steps out into the public, as it were, things change: no longer should religion be exempt from the regulatory authority of the state. The corollary, Rakove believes, is that the less private religion is, the more it becomes just one more interest in the unseemly competition of politics.

Rakove is a historian, not a legal theorist. He is diffident, as historians usually are in print, about moving from historical analysis to normative analysis. So he doesnt claim to have all the answers. Still, one might wonder if the public-private distinction that Rakove emphasizes really has as much to offer as he thinks it does.

First, the sharp divide between public and private that is, between interior belief and external conduct is not exactly clear-cut historically. Even if one thinks with Rakove that Madison and Jefferson tended in this direction, such views were of limited public influence historically. Public funding for religious schools and even funding for mission efforts to native peoples were regular parts of public practice in the early republic. Religious exemptions from general laws were legislatively enacted and occasionally required by courts. Again, to be fair to Rakove, he doesnt claim that American law and culture neatly reflect the Madisonian theory he finds attractive. But its worth emphasizing the distinction between the theory and the history. The heavy emphasis on the public-private distinction is a theoretical point that glosses the most Enlightenment-influenced elements of Jefferson and Madisons thought. But things were never this neat in practice.

Second, theres reason to question whether what Rakove calls the Madisonian theory really solves many problems in the real world. Privatizing religion might be a neat solution if it were possible. But is it? What does a really private religion look like? Has one ever existed? (There is good reason that the public-private distinction was an easy, and early, target for critical legal scholars.) Taken to its logical extreme, a privatization paradigm doesnt seem to leave much in the way of protection for free exercise. To say that one can believe whatever one wishes in the most private of all domains, the beliefs of the heart and commitments of the conscience, is such a minimal commitment as to be banal. Interior conscience isnt the same as religion, with its commitment to some kinds of practice and which might not always be based on conscience (religious commitment could, for instance, be based on tradition, a sense of cultural fidelity, or something else). The moment a commitment to religious liberty involves something more than just conscience, the difficulty of defining the public-private distinction comes back. Prayer is conduct; how publicly can it be done? What about scripture reading? What takes place inside a church is arguably private (within a somewhat more capacious framework) but what if its a church that wants to meet during a pandemic?

The point is not that all of these practices would or should be protected by any particular conception of free exercise of religion. But it is to point out that the public-private distinction that Rakove emphasizes doesnt get us very far in answering the hard questions.

One could imagine a different way of putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Take as the starting point the link (so insightfully noted by Rakove) between Madisons theory of faction and his thought about religious liberty. Then consider the fact that (as Rakove points out) the religious groups kept outside the mainstream were the ones who caused trouble: Catholics agitating against the Protestant dominance of public education in the 19th century; unpopular Jehovahs Witnesses litigating for their rights to proselytize; Sabbatarians seeking exemptions from Saturday work requirements. If the point is to have ambition counteract ambition, then this seems to be working quite right. Could we say that the minority groups are fulfilling an important function every time they seek to push back in the name of religious liberty against majoritarian assumptions and policies? This raises some intriguing possibilities about contemporary religious liberty litigation, which, more than in the past, seems to feature religious groups in the mainstream of American religion: evangelical protestants, mainstream Catholics. Perhaps they are subverting religious liberty by making it into a tool for the majority. Or perhaps the Madisonian system is working just fine, forcing necessary conversations (in law and politics) about how these groups live out their religious commitments in a complicated world where important policies on contraception, for instance impinge on some traditions religious beliefs. Either way, though, I think the more interesting conversation is the one that builds on Rakoves points about faction rather than about the public-private divide.

The Value in a Historical Perspective

Frances Trollope would doubtless be no happier with American religion today than she was when observing its chaotic energy in the Jacksonian era. The religious field is only more diverse. The problems of religious exercise are only more pervasive in an era with a much larger regulatory state than anyone dreamed of in the early republic. Historical perspective helps us to think beyond our contemporary moment to the larger questions about how we got here and whats at stake. Rakoves book provides perspective in a form that is accessible even as it communicates insights from some of the best recent historical scholarship on the subject. It arguably overemphasizes Jefferson and Madison, and there are reasons to question whether the points of political theory that Rakove emphasizes are the most helpful or persuasive for sorting out religious liberty as a normative matter. Still,the writing is clear and crisp; the subject matter compelling; Rakoves analysis is consistently thought-provoking.

Lael Weinberger is the Olin-Searle-Smith Fellow in Law at Harvard Law School. Follow him athttps://twitter.com/LaelWeinberger.

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Op-Ed: The civil rights legend who opposed critical race theory – The Center Square

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Critical race theory, or CRT, is in the news these days but many people still may not know what it really means. They think CRT is part of the Rev. Martin Luther King's civil rights efforts. In truth, it is directly opposed to the central concept and vision he most stood for. One of the last and greatest civil rights leaders of our time and one of King's closest friends and advisers did understand CRT, and explicitly rejected it.

Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker was a legend in the American civil rights movement. Executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the critical years of 1960-1964, he was a co-founder of CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality), chief of staff to King, and King's "field general" in the organized resistance against notorious Birmingham safety commissioner "Bull" Connor. Walker compiled and named King's "The Letter From Birmingham Jail." He was with King for the march on Washington that produced the "I have a dream" speech, and in Oslo for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Afterward, Dr. Walker came north to New York City to serve as minister of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem. He was one of the nation's most respected ministers until his death in 2018. In his book "David and Goliath," Malcolm Gladwell dedicated a chapter to Dr. Walker and his work in Birmingham. The cover of Ebony magazine called Walker "The Man Behind Martin Luther King." In short, no one may have known King's thoughts better or been closer to them than Dr. Walker.

This column initially appeared at realclearpolitics.com. It is republished here with permission.

Even as he aged, Dr. Walker never backed down from the passionate pursuit of civil rights for all. Later in his life, he was chairman of the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network and a supporter of reparations for African Americans. I got to know him soon after Amadou Diallo had been horribly gunned down in New York City in 1999. We joined together to form New York's first and longest-surviving charter school, now named the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem. We stayed friends from that time until he died.

In 2015, Dr. Walker and I co-authored an essay about education reform and race relations, where we wrote:

"Today, too many remedies such as Critical Race Theory, the increasingly fashionable post-Marxist/postmodernist approach that analyzes society as institutional group power structures rather than on a spiritual or one-to-one human level are taking us in the wrong direction: separating even elementary school children into explicit racial groups, and emphasizing differences instead of similarities.

The answer is to go deeper than race, deeper than wealth, deeper than ethnic identity, deeper than gender. To teach ourselves to comprehend each person, not as a symbol of a group, but as a unique and special individual within a common context of shared humanity. To go to that fundamental place where we are all simply mortal creatures, seeking to create order, beauty, family, and connection to the world that on its own seems to bend too often towards randomness and entropy."

Before publishing this essay, I questioned Dr. Walker to make sure he really wanted to be on record with this opposition to CRT. I was worried this might put him in a bad way with other civil rights leaders. But he had never backed down in his life, and he reiterated that this was his position.

In hindsight, I believe that Dr. Walker was not so much against anything, as for something. He was for what Dr. King was for, and for what so many well intended people are for who may misunderstand the difference between CRT and traditional (i.e., King-style) civil rights.

Dr. Walker was for a fundamental respect for all people, without regard to their ethnic group or religion or the color of their skin. Dr. Walker's civil rights views tie back to religious values, to humanism, to rationalism, to the Enlightenment. The roots of CRT are planted in entirely different intellectual soil. It begins with "blocs" (with each person assigned to an identity or economic bloc, as in Marxism). Human-to-human interactions are replaced with bloc-to-bloc interactions.

As Dr. Walker tried to make clear, thinking in terms of blocs of people, rather than of people as individuals, leads to a whole set of insidious results. How can two people bind together in friendship if they are members of power blocs that are presumed to be inherently opposed? How can a person prove his innocence if he is branded as inevitably a part of a guilty group? Why should an individual strive to succeed by individual merit if group dynamics are presumed to be overwhelming and inescapable? How can we ever find peace among the races and religions if we won't look to each other, person by person, based on actual facts and actual intentions?

The saddest thing is to see well-intentioned people, trying to achieve Martin Luther King's dream by employing CRT methods that are the opposite of King's dream. King asked for everyone to be judged by the content of their own individual character, not by their inescapable genetic links to post-Marxist style analytical power groups. Supporters of civil rights should follow the example of Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, and not allow the two incompatible definitions of civil rights King's and CRT's to be confused with one another.

Steve Klinsky is chairman of the American Investment Council, and founder and CEO of New Mountain Capital. Klinsky worked with Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker in the education reform movement, and knew him as a co-author and friend.

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Quantum Computing and the Cryptography Conundrum – CXOToday.com

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By: Anand Patil

On October 23, 2019, researchers from Google made an official announcement of a major breakthrough one that scientists compared to the Wright Brothers first flight, or even mans first moon landing. They said to have achieved Quantum Supremacy, meaning that they had created a Quantum Computer that could perform a calculation that is considered impossible by the classical computers of today. The announcement was a landmark, highlighting the possibilities of Quantum Computing.

The concept of Quantum Computing itself isnt new. It is a field that has been a point of interest of physicists and computer researchers since the 1980s. Googles announcement, however, has brought it to the mainstream, and shone a spotlight on the promise that this niche field of innovation holds. Of course, like someone once said, with great power comes with great responsibility, so this field isnt without complexities.

The Possibilities of Quantum Computing

Quantum Computing is a branch of computer science that is focused on leveraging the principles of quantum physics to develop computer technology. Quantum Computers hold the promise to power major advances in various fields that require complex calculations from materials science and pharmaceuticals to aerospace and artificial intelligence (AI).

So far, Quantum Computers have been nothing more than fancy laboratory experiments large and expensive but they have successfully demonstrated that the underlying principles are sound and have the potential to transform industries and accelerate innovation like never before. This has spurred scientific and industrial interest in this nascent field, giving rise to multiple projects across the world in pursuit of creating a viable, general-use Quantum Computer. That said, it may still be many years before Quantum Computers are commercially and generally available.

So Why Does It Matter Today?The possibility of Quantum Computers poses a serious challenge to cryptographic algorithms deployed widely today. Todays key-exchange algorithms, like RSA, Diffie-Hellman, and others, rely on very difficult mathematical problems such as prime factorization for their security, which a Quantum computer would be able to solve much faster than a classical computer.

For example, it would take a classical computer centuries or even longer, to break modern algorithms like DH, RSA-2048 etc. by using brute-force methods. However, given the power and efficiency of quantum machines in calculations such as finding prime factors of large numbers it may be possible for a quantum computer to break current asymmetric algorithms in a matter of days

So, while the encrypted internet is not at risk at the moment, all that a bad actor has to do is capture the encrypted data today including the initial key exchange, and then wait until a powerful enough quantum computer is available to decrypt it. This is particularly a problem for organizations that have large amounts of sensitive data that they need to protect over the long term such as Banks, Governments and Defense agencies.

What Can I Do Now?For organizations that could be at risk in the future, this is the best time to start evaluating post-quantum cryptography. Simply put, this means moving to algorithms and/or keys that are a lot more robust and can withstand a brute-force attack by a quantum computer i.e. quantum resistant.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US is leading the effort towards the standardization of post-quantum secure algorithms. However, given the lengthy process involved, this may take many years to fructify.

An alternative is to use Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) techniques with existing algorithms that are considered quantum-safe. This involves using a dedicated optical channel to exchange keys using the quantum properties of photons. Any attempt to tap this secure channel will lead to a change in the quantum state of the photon and can be immediately detected and therefore the key is unhackable. One of the limitations of QKD in this method is the need for a dedicated optical channel that cannot span more than 50km between the two terminals. Of course, this also means that the existing encryption devices or routers should be capable of ingesting such Quantum-Generated keys.

Post-Quantum Cryptography and CiscoCisco is an active contributor to the efforts to standardize post-quantum algorithms. However, recognizing that an implementable standard may be some years away, there is work ongoing to ensure that organizations are able to implement quantum-resistant encryption techniques in the interim, that leverage existing network devices like routers which are most commonly used as encryptors.

To start with, a team of veteran technical leaders and cryptography experts from the US and India developed an API interface called the Secure Key Import Protocol or SKIP through which Cisco routers can securely ingest keys from an external post-quantum key source. This allows existing Cisco routers to be quantum-ready, with just the addition of an external QKD system. Going forward, this team is working on a way to deliver quantum-safe encryption keys without the need for short-range point-to-point connections.

The advantage of this method is that organizations can integrate post-quantum key sources with existing networking gear in a modular fashion without the need to replace anything already installed. In this manner, you could create a quantum-ready network for all traffic with minimal effort.

Getting Ready for the Post-Quantum WorldQuantum Supremacy is an event which demonstrates that a quantum machine is able to solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in a feasible amount of time. This race has gathered momentum in the recent past with several companies joining the bandwagon, and some even claiming to have achieved it.

There is an unprecedented amount of attention focused on making a commercially viable quantum computer. Many believe it is inevitable, and only a question of time. When it does happen, the currently used cryptography techniques will become vulnerable, and therefore be limited in their security. The good news is, there are methods available to adopt strong encryption techniques that will remain secure even after quantum computers are generally available.

If you are an organization that wants to protect its sensitive data over the long term, you should start to evaluate post-quantum secure encryption techniques today. By leveraging existing networking infrastructure and adding suitable post-quantum key distribution techniques, it is possible to take a quantum leap in securing your data.

(The author is Director, Systems Engineering, Cisco India and SAARC and the views expressed in this article are his own)

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