Scrutinising the anarchical situation of wage regulation in the country amid the covid pandemic – Lexology

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The pandemic has proven to be challenging times for every community in the country. The worst hit by this crisis is the lower income group of the nation which is not only vulnerable because the low wage system but also due to the lack of infrastructure of the country in terms of health, housing, transportation, food and life security. With all the business being shut it has evidently taken a toll upon the economy of the country. The pandemic has been successful in affecting each and every sector of our economic built up. If analysed from a wider perspective the crisis has created a multi dimensional domino effect. With a pandemic at hand, it has also given rise to a migrant crisis added with the burden of providing people with suitable security needed amid the economic slowdown. Within all this, a crucial question of payment of wages and salaries to the employees came into the picture before the government which went to a number of twist and turns throughout the period of last 3 months. Now, from any natural justice giving mechanism it is clearly expected that, the system would be able to empathise with all the parties involved and shall be able to reach, in the words of the Supreme Court- a reasonable solution through negotiation. The attempt would be to analyse the opinions and conditions attached to both judiciary and the legislative decisions in the matter. Adding to which determination regarding the numerous other interests and strategies involved is also be made which shall guide us towards understanding this convoluted affair which comprises of the some major stakeholders of our welfare oriented state.

The issue begins with an order passed on March 20 by the Ministry of Labour and Employment where it was notified that all the employers were duly bound to pay the wages or salaries to all their employees, further adding that they also could not deduct any percentage of money from the payment. Interestingly not much clarity was given on the specifications as to what kind of work does it apply to nor did it specify as to what nature of employer- employee relationship comes into its ambit thus giving it a larger scope of interpretation which aided to the deteriorating chaotic conditions. In a addition to this on March 29 the Government of India, to effectively implement the lockdown order and to mitigate the economic hardship of the migrant workers issued an order under Section 10(2)(1) of the NDMA. It directed the State governments and the Union Territories to issue orders, compulsorily requiring all the employers in the industrial sector, shops and commercial establishments to pay wages to their workers at their workplaces on the due date without any deduction during their closure due to lockdown. With this, the government gave it a legal angle by making it an obligation and non adherence of which was a straight legal offence. This was practiced by The Home Secretary, Ministry of home affairs in exercise of the powers conferred by Section 10(2) (l)of the Disaster Management Act, 2005. The Central Government issued the MHA Order to restrict the movement of migrant workers within the country in order to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the country.The MHA Order directed the governments and authorities of the states or union territories to take necessary action and issue orders to their respective District Magistrate or Deputy Commissioner and Senior Superintendent of Police or Superintendent of Police or Deputy Commissioner of Police, to implement the additional measures contained therein. Furthermore the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship ordered all the establishments to pay full stipend to the designated and trade apprentices engaged by them during the lockdown period. All these tumultuous orders coming back to back from different ministries were bound to create panic amongst the industrial employers of the country also keeping in mind that the vagueness of all these order further makes the condition even more vulnerable due to its open interpretation.

It was after this, that numerous petitions were filed in the Supreme Court challenging the order. A batch of petitions came before the Apex Court challenging the constitutional validity of the MHA Order. Among the petitioners, the Karnataka-based Ficus Pax Private Limited filed a writ petitionchallenging the constitutional validity of the MHA Order as well as an advisory dated March 20, 2020issued by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, on the grounds that they violated Articles 14 and 19(1)(g) of the Constitution of India and, were in contravention of the principles of 'equal work, equalpay' and 'no work, no pay'by not differentiating between the workers so covered and those who had been working during the lockdown. The petitioners submitted that in light of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, many industries were unsustainable and already at the brink of insolvency, wherein payment of full wages to its workers would drive them out of business. They even argued that they should be allowed to pay the worker 70% less and the rest of the amount should be taken care of throughthe funds collected by the Employees State Insurance Corporation or the PM Cares Fund or through any other government fund. The basis of this demand seemed compelling and credible pertaining to the fact that they have not been able to conduct business because of the nationwide lockdown and that being forced to pay workers in full in these compelling circumstances has put extreme financial and mental stress on them. Amid all this, the reasoning given by the government was that it was a temporary order which shall be mandatorily applicable for 54 days as the migrant crisis was at its peak, thus the payments of wages would help in bringing the crisis into some stability. The bases of the orders were termed to be completely altruistic and humanitarian which had the goal to avert human suffering. What needs to be analysed here is that the way in which the orders have turned out by different ministries without much interpretation or conditional clauses clearly shows the short sightedness of the government. It seems as if the government failed to recognise that the ongoing pandemic is not limited to the vulnerable sections of the society but even the middle class employers and high end firms are under its atrocities as well. During this global pandemic and economic slowdown, solutions in the form of such orders are by no means an efficient solution. Further adding to the facts if we may try to connect the dots the orders are so ambiguous by each ministry that not only do they create an unrest is the industrial set up but are also unable to address the more technical aspects of the issue including the question of managerial level employees, paid leave adjustments, accurate timing of the payment etc. All these factors leave a room for a lot of exploitation while social welfare of the country takes a back seat.

Acknowledging the gravity of the situation, on May 15, 2020, the Apex Court had asked the Central Government not to take any coercive action for a week against companies and employers who were unable to pay full wages to their workers or employees during the nationwide lockdown. After reserving the order on June 4 2020, the judgement was pronounced by three judge bench comprising Justice Ashok Bhushan, SK Kaul and MR Shah in batch of petitions filed by more than 15 MSMEson 12 June 2020. The court highly emphasised upon the fact that the notification compelled the payment of 100% of the salaries. It could have been around 50 to 75% by the firms. So the question stood, do they have the power to get them to pay 100%, and on their failure to do so, prosecute them. The court was also of the point of view that such standards should only be set after the negotiations with the industries and the government should rather act as a facilitator of solutions rather than behaving in an authoritarian manner such as in the present case. So on June 12 2020 the court gave its verdict upon the issue addressing the various aspects and expectations from the parties involved. The court expressed that, the employers willing to enter into negotiation and settlement with the workers or employees regarding payment of wages for the 50 Days period, may initiate a process of negotiation with their employees' organization and enter into a settlement with them. If they are unable to settle by themselves, a request may be submitted to the concerned labour authorities. This advisory was also made to those firms which were functioning during the lockdown period but not to their full capacity. The court also conveyed that the employers who proceed to take the steps recommended shall publicize and communicate about their steps to the workers and employees for their response or participation. Such a settlement would be without prejudice to the rights of employers and would promote the willingness of the parties towards a solution. Further adding, that if a mutual agreement is reached by the parties till the end of July then further legal formalities would be initiated. The present directions given are the most practical and viable solutions which the judiciary could have provided given the uncertainty of the situation, considering that due and timely payment of wages also comes within the ambit of legal rights of the labourers but at the same time it is equally important to address and acknowledge the special case of the ongoing of pandemic. Keeping the same in mind, the harmonious approach which the court has recommended to follow sets a precedent for any future decision which the government might take to cater to the present crisis. A key highlight which shall be noticed here is that the court was silent upon the non compliance of any regulation which would be initiated after the negotiation. This sends us into an assumption that it was done so with an intention to maintain harmonious relationships within the industry and also to prevent any further disturbances. The essence of the judgement is the far sightedness adapted by the court as all the steps suggested would not only almost solve the current issue at hand but would also ensure and aid the process of the post crisis economy revival.

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Scrutinising the anarchical situation of wage regulation in the country amid the covid pandemic - Lexology

When Everything Is a Crisis, Nothing Is – Foreign Policy

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Coal heavers wear sandwich boards to protest against low wages in 1921. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

No word is invoked more to characterize the current era than crisis. The term has been wielded incessantly in 2020already the most tumultuous year since 1968 and still only half overto designate a series of new and ongoing plights. It has named the impeachment crisis and the constitutional crisis many thought it revealed, themselves signs of the crisis of polarization in U.S. politics. Crisis nearly always describes the coronavirus pandemic and the economic turmoil it has unleashed. Journalists speak of a crisis of police violence against Black people in the United States, a slow-burn tragedy that sparked a crisis of civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd. And Americans move nervously toward a presidential election whose results, regardless of the outcome, will be thrown into doubt by accusations of foreign meddling or partisan hijacking. A crisis of legitimacy, perhaps even a crisis of emergency powers, looms on the horizon.

Yet these problems, as awful and intractable as they are, add layers to an already familiar crisis atmosphere: There is also the environmental crisis, the health care crisis, the energy crisis, the housing crisis, the drug crisis, the debt crisis, the migrant crisis, the education crisis, and the marriage crisis. There is even a loneliness crisis.

None of these problems can be isolated; each extends into other domains embroiled in their own dysfunction, with the result that the world feels entangled in overlapping and intersecting crises.

How is it, then, that the term crisis should apply across so many fieldsforeign affairs, domestic politics, climate, culture, economics, to name only a few? Does crisis have any meaning, beyond just a catch-all term for trouble? Is there any logic, or novelty, to the constant proclamations of crisis?

Historians are well suited to address such questions, given their training in alertness to context, eye for continuity and change, and ornery eagerness to question the terms of debate. Perhaps no part of the historians guild is better placed to ponder the meaning of crisis than historians of Germany, a nation whose atrocities and traumas, and willingness to grapple with their meaning, are unsurpassed in modern times. Above all, it is Weimar Germanypoised between the catastrophe of World War I and the even greater calamity of Nazism and the Holocaustthat has been portrayed as the quintessential society in crisis.

Weimar is much invoked nowadays, by pundits and experts alike. This commonly involves the search for parallels between that time and today, as though such correspondences might predict humanitys future. Will democracy collapse? Will fascism return? Are protesters toppling statues a totalitarian political movement, as Tucker Carlson claimed? Is Trumpism?

What research by historians of Germany suggests, however, is that the deepest similarity between Weimar and today is not in any particular danger; rather, it is in the outsized role that fear, apocalyptic expectation, and longings for salvation play in the populations political imagination.

Research on Weimar Germany also illuminates the role of ideology and activism within this crisis-consciousness. In a 2009 article on Suicide and Crisis in Weimar Berlin, the historian Moritz Fllmer explored how political actors at the time cited cases of suicide to support their partisan agendas. For the Nazis, suicides highlighted how ordinary Germans suffered from the nations humiliation under the punitive Treaty of Versailles. Communists invoked suicides as proof of capitalisms dehumanizing impact on workers. According to liberals and Social Democrats, suicides attested to the deleterious effect of an authoritarian school system. And traditional conservatives appealed to suicides as a sign of the breakdown of religion and family life. The only consensus was that suicides confirmed the corruptions of a system that forced its inhabitants to kill themselves.

How could suicides supply proof for such disparate conclusions? Because all sides cherry-picked cases and shoehorned them into pet views about what Weimars crisis was and what it demanded. As Fllmer put it, Right-wing authors emphasized the need for decision in an existential, all-or-nothing situation; Communists predicted the imminent downfall of capitalism as the prerequisite for a proletarian revolution; Social Democrats and liberals used the notion of crisis to opt for reform in a spirit of democratic humanism. For all these voices, the present was dire but the future yielded many opportunities, provided it was ushered in soon.

Such ideological crisis-consciousness, spun from panic about the present and the call to save the future from certain doom, is the strongest link joining todays world to the Weimar pastand not just to that past but to several centuries of modern life marked by convulsive change. The world has truly been here before.

A comparative history of crisis offers not a crystal ball into the future but a powerful lens into both the concepts meaning and its function today. There are three lessons in particular that ought to be learned.

The preeminent scholar of crisis is Reinhart Koselleck, one of the great historians of the past century, who died in 2006. Kosellecks first book was a blockbuster 1959 work on the 18th-century Republic of Letters called Critique and Crisis, which rebuked Enlightenment thinkers for criticizing the absolutist state based on unrealistic expectations of what politics could accomplish.

The Enlightenments Utopian constructs of the future, Koselleck argued, damned the present to the trash heap of history; in so doing, they destabilized European society and provoked the political crisis that led to the French Revolutiona cataclysm driven by idealistic demands for virtue and unspoiled democracy whose unfulfilled, and perhaps unfulfillable, promise has been shaping political events ever since.

The fingerprints of Kosellecks Weimar youth are all over the book. His first political experience, he once recalled, was watching partisans of the radical left and right bash each other in the schoolyard during Germanys 1932 presidential election. In Kosellecks view, the utopianism of communists and Nazi Brownshirts was traceable to the rigid moralization of politics of 18th-century critics like Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the belief that today is rotten, that history can be engineered for the better, that the unmerry facts of political lifecompeting interests, plural perspectives, shady compromisesmight pass away as a pure society is created on Earth.

Kosellecks most ambitious project was a collaborative, multivolume lexicon mapping the conceptual shifts that took place with the advent of modernity. He dubbed this the Sattelzeit (saddle age), a bridging period, from roughly 1750 to 1850, when words like revolution and citizen took on new, complex meanings in line with the enormous social and political changes underway in the West.

Koselleck wrote the entry on crisis himself. He began with the words Greek originsfrom a verb meaning to judge or decide, it had long implied stark choices, including a medical usage, enshrined by the ancient physician Galen, for the decisive moment in an illness that determines if the patient will live or die. But Koselleck went beyond the etymology of crisis to trace its birth as modernitys fundamental mode of interpreting historical time.

For Koselleck, the turning point came in the years around 1770, when the concepts residual meaning from Galen combined with a post-theological notion of history as the stage for final judgment. If society is sick, it must be healed and savedor else. Rousseaus Emile (1762) was the first text to deploy crisis in the fully modern sense, joining a diagnosis of current ills and a prognosis for the future within a philosophy of history that views the present as a moment pregnant with change and ripe for action.

Crisis in this sense fires the imagination. It takes hold of old experiences, Koselleck wrote, and transforms them metaphorically in ways that create altogether new expectations. We are reaching a crisis that will culminate in either slavery or liberty, Rousseaus fellow Enlightenment philosophe Denis Diderot declared in 1771. These are the times that try mens souls, proclaimed Thomas Paine a few years later, in a pamphlet series urging American independence aptly titled The Crisis.

In the 19th century, crisis became a key term in economics. For liberals, it named the trough in capitalisms boom-and-bust cycles; shorn of its eschatological dimensions, crisis became an agent of creative destructiona bringer of progress.

For Marxists, on the other hand, economic crises were not bumps on the road to innovation; rather, they were the inevitable journey to a terminal crisis, following intensifying busts, that would bury capitalism forever and usher in a socialist utopia. But the reliance on the idea of crisis remained, despite the terms semantic wobble between acute circumstance and epochal shift.

In the 20th century, crisis-talk sprawled everywhere. So haphazard was invocation of crisis, so omnipresent was its appearance in headlines and novel compounds (crisis of self-confidence, crisis expert, mini-crisis, etc.), that it threatened to lose even the modicum of meaning it once had as imposing an unavoidable choice between alternatives. In an age of crisis, Koselleck suggested, crisis itself had ended up in crisishollowed out to fit the exigencies of whatever perturbs people at a particular moment.

The dark side of modernity, its propensity to produce seismic fractures, was taken up by the German historian Detlev Peukert in his influential 1987 book, The Weimar Republic. For Peukert, Weimar was an extreme casea society in which successive upheavals generated a deep-seated sense of unease and disorientation, an awareness that the conditions underlying everyday life and experience were in flux. Nazism was merely a drastic answer to an all-embracing crisis that refused to yield to conventional remedies.

What Adolf Hitlers Germany demonstrates, Peukert argued, is how cascading turmoil can tip over into catastrophe when coupled with the modern states technological and bureaucratic powers to intervene. The Great Depression, parliamentary gridlock, the traumatic legacies of World War I, and meteoric social and cultural change fueled a crisis-ridden popular mood that swung between enthusiasm and anxiety, hopes of national reawakening and fears of national extinction.

Though Peukert presented Weimars crisis as an objective condition, his emotional languagehis talk of unease, anxiety, fear, and hopehelps readers see that it was more than just an external fact. Crisis also lives in peoples heads, bounded by the horizons of dream and dread.

In 2010, Rdiger Graf, another historian of Weimar Germany working in the wake of Koselleck and Peukert, argued that no one can ever construct a necessary causal chain linking external events to the experience of those events as a crisis.

No economic indicator, for example, decides how a society or government will respond. What steers the imagination are normative ideals about politics and society, a vision of history, and expectations and desires. What demands explanation is the feeling of crisis itself.

Most people naturally resist this idea: Declaring a crisis, they think, is the only reasonable response to facts they decry. But even a pandemic is first and foremost a crisis at the level of interpretation, not blunt fact. A disease becomes a crisis not because it kills widely but because it seizes the mind in a certain way.

Adam Gopnik captured the interpretive dimension of the coronavirus crisis in a moving account of New Yorks recent lockdown. Plagues happen only to people, Gopnik observed in the New Yorker. Animals can suffer from mass infections, of course, but they experience them as one more bad blow from an unpredictable and predatory natural environment. Only people put mental brackets around a phenomenon like the coronavirus pandemic and attempt to give it a name and some historical perspective, some sense of precedence and possibility.

It is not that hardship does not really exist; it surely doesand just as surely can it wax and wane. Crisis, however, is the product of a narrative that exceeds any particular data point of pain. No matter how bad, disorderly, and turbulent events and processes at a certain time are, Graf argued, they become a crisis only by relating them to a past development and projecting two different paths into the future, thereby defining the present as the critical moment of decision. In other words, crisis springs from the story that tells you what the pain means, what can be done, and what (or who) is responsible.

Talk of crisis can be a justifiable reaction to grave conditions. But because there is no narrative-free way to relate the present to past and future, crisis should be seen in narrative terms, as a strategy to cope with present trouble by imagining that trouble within a story leading to plausibleyet morally or existentially contrastingfutures. Crisis stories are always speculative interpretations of lived experience, inextricably interwoven with the storytellers principles and purposes.

Because crisis in its true sense is a stage in a dramatic plot, in which the present teeters on the brink of ruin, the identification is not neutral. Human agency is implied in the proclamation of crisis; it presumes that something still can and must be done. As Graf noted, it is difficult to find any prominent author, politician, intellectual, or journalist in Weimar Germany who publicly used the notion of crisis in a pessimistic or even fatalistic sense.

This is the true meaning of the clich never let a crisis go to waste. It is not that crises happen and then must be exploited. Rather, it is that a sense of the cure is already built into the determination of the disease. With timely activism, the looming catastrophe that opens up the present as a time of decision can be averted. Crisis does not paralyzeit empowers.

This is also why railing against those who would politicize a crisis misses the point. It is only because people are already politicized that they can assess the moment and declare it critical. The darker ones view of the present and the more exalted ones hopes for the future, the more justifiable radicalism seems. Clucking at opponents politicization of a crisis often means only that you cast the crisis in different terms and demand different solutions. Sometimes it means you do not share their sense of emergency to begin with.

The coronavirus pandemic has loosed a flood of calls to openly politicize it or to at least recognize the political choices entailed by the diseases uneven impact on societies and demographics. COVID-19, we are told, has exposed myriad needsfor expertise in government, for better public health infrastructure, for sovereignty and borders, for tough measures against China, for more democratic government, for racial justiceneeds that the current emergency can finally awaken humanity to address.

Such calls are almost honest. Crisis does have a revelatory power. What it reveals, however, are not just societal needs but the speakers ideology too, which constructs the crisis as an opportunity for change.

As Fllmer observed, Weimar Berlins suicides were deciphered through an ideological lens that linked those deaths to crisis in order to advance solutions that were no less ideological. While suicides were real enough, the crisis remained an imaginative construct. Fllmer pointed out that, from 1929 to 1932, as unemployment soared and the gears of government ground to a halt, the suicide rate rose by only 11.9 percent. A definite uptick but certainly not enough to serve as dramatic evidence for a desperate state of mind.

Then as now, the utility of crisis lies in the dramatization of the present for those with an agenda to change it. Its significance is in the stories we tell to mobilize ourselves and others.

Can grasping the meaning of crisis inform political thinking today, at a time when crisis has literally gone viral? For Koselleck, the problem with crisis, in particular for academics, was its growing imprecision. When we assess its role in public discourse, however, the trouble is not so much the terms vagueness as its reliable function as a catalyst of action, an accelerant of fear and expectationanother log on the fire.

The law of crisis is that crisis-talk fuels itself: Every time a choice is pitched as life-or-death, or an institution is pronounced in crisis, panic and partisanship and zero-sum thinking gain ground. Use of crisis mirrors your ideological commitments. If you want to raise the temperature, then breathlessly framing your cause as a crisis will do the trick. Crisis-talk is the gas pedal, not the brakes.

If you want to lower the temperature, then resist the impulse to reflexively label every problem a crisis. Keeping crisis-talk in check preserves the words potency for the time when the true watershed arrives. The difficulty faced by those who would declare 2020, with much justification, a year of crisis is that the word has been overused for generations. Not just COVID-19 but a host of deadly maladiesAlzheimers, malaria, AIDS, diabetes, tuberculosis, heart disease, cancerare regularly cast in crisis terms. Every election is declared the most important in our lifetime. When everything is a crisis, nothing can be.

Using crisis with care may also make solving some problems easier, since avoiding the term helps enlarge the middle ground and with it the room for political maneuver. Crisis can create unrealistic expectations of unity while, ironically, hindering a societys ability to work together. Often enough, it invites demagoguery and makes people impatient with pluralism and dissent and the necessary but sometimes sordid deal-making of party politics. Compromise and cooperation work best in non-crisis mode.

But there is a trade-off to swearing off crisis-talk: Doing so also means surrendering power to enrage voters and open wallets. And sometimes rage and mobilization are appropriate; sometimes societies do stand at the crossroads.

Crisis, when understood as a state of emergency, can even pose a threat to liberty and representative government because of the perceived need it creates to curtail rights and centralize power. The Roman Republic enacted a temporary dictatorship during times of military danger. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the American Civil War. Hitler and Benito Mussolini came to power in an atmosphere of crisis and used emergency powers to further dismantle constitutional government. Franklin D. Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor. Restricting freedoms in moments of extremis may save open societiesbut the decision itself is a political one and prone to abuse.

More recently, authoritarians on the left and rightincluding Venezuelas Nicols Maduro and Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdoganhave declared crises in order to seize greater power and silence critics. In March, as coronavirus cases surged elsewhere in Europe, Hungarys Viktor Orban pushed through an emergency law that would permit him to rule by decree. In Brazil, the coronavirus is sowing instability that critics fear the nations scandal-plagued president, Jair Bolsonaro, could use as a pretext for a military takeover.

Crisis bends in an illiberal direction for a more insidious reason as well. David Moshfegh, another historian of Germany, assigns Koselleck to his students. I ask them whether they think crisis is a positive or a negative word, Moshfegh told me. More than 90 percent each year say it is negative and explain it as meaning something stressful and abnormal.

In Moshfeghs view, crisis is nowadays approached in the spirit of crisis management, which aims to go through a crisis and re-create stability and normality without having to make any big fundamental changes. To be sure, there are still people for whom crisis offers hope for fundamental change. Black Lives Matter, which seeks to channel rage against police violence into a broad crusade against systemic oppression, comes to mind. But Moshfegh is correct that rampant use of crisis also gives voice to a pervasive unease, a deep sense that a great many things are not as they should be, a craving not for apocalypse or utopia but for things to be normal.

In this sense, authoritarian reaction is crisis management writ largethe urge, in a time of chaos, to re-create a bygone stability and normality while avoiding big social change. Fascism in the Hitlerian sense was revolutionary, promising a heroic thousand-year empire for the Nordic Man. But the garden-variety authoritarianisms of today promise something more prosaic: security, predictability, order, traditionin short, normalityin a topsy-turvy world.

In a 2017 Hungarian Review essay on the crisis of Europe, Orban pointed to a generalized restlessness, anxiety, and tension that, he claimed, testified to [l]arge masses of people [who] want something radically different than what is being proposed and done by the traditional elites. Orban offered himself as a tribune of this populist discontent. His response has been to create an overtly illiberal Hungary shielded from the disruptions of free elections, a free press, and open bordersa new normal.

Today, crisis risks priming populations, in the United States and around the world, for authoritarian temptation, though what lures most people is less fascist revolution than autocratic stabilization. Faced with the anxiety of total crisis, it is easy to embrace, even normalize, those who promise to manage, by authoritarian means, the volatility and bewilderment of modern life.

It is worth remembering that what killed the Weimar Republic, Germanys first liberal democracy, was not an objective predicament but the fear and desperation of runaway crisis-consciousness, which led a majority of Germans to abandon the democratic center for illiberal ideologies of the radical right and left. Those who would again destroy democracy must first ride the mood of crisis. Every time you abstain from loose crisis-talk, you take a bit of wind out of their sails.

Continued here:

When Everything Is a Crisis, Nothing Is - Foreign Policy

Visions, Mushrooms, Fungi, Cacti, and Toads: Joseph Smith’s Reported Use of Entheogens – Patheos

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A new article by Brian Hales has appeared in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

Visions, Mushrooms, Fungi, Cacti, and Toads: Joseph Smiths Reported Use of Entheogens

Abstract:An article recently published in an online journal entitled The Entheogenic Origins of Mormonism: A Working Hypothesis posits that Joseph Smith used naturally occurring chemicals, called entheogens, to facilitate visionary experiences among his early followers. The entheogenic substances were reportedly derived from two mushrooms, a fungus, three plants (including one cactus), and the secretions from the parotid glands of the Sonoran Desert toad. Although it is an intriguing theory, the authors consistently fail to connect important dots regarding chemical and historical cause-and-effect issues. Documentation of entheogen acquisition and consumption by the early Saints is not provided, but consistently speculated. Equally, the visionary experiences recounted by early Latter-day Saints are highly dissimilar from the predictable psychedelic effects arising from entheogen ingestion. The likelihood that Joseph Smith would have condemned entheogenic influences as intoxication is unaddressed in the article.

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And heres another item from the Interpreter Foundation:

A Video Supplement forCome, Follow MeBook of Mormon Lesson 30 The Great Plan of Happiness (Alma 39-42)

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This is coming up soon, so dont miss it:

Questions about the gospel? Find answers at the FairMormon Virtual Conference

***

Finally, my attention was just now called to this petition, which, I think, first appeared about twenty-four hours ago:

Emphasizing Christ-Centered Education at Brigham Young University

I have no connection with the petition, and I neither know the principal figures involved nor known anything about them.

Originally posted here:

Visions, Mushrooms, Fungi, Cacti, and Toads: Joseph Smith's Reported Use of Entheogens - Patheos

22nd Century Group Reports Financial Results and Business Highlights for the Second Quarter 2020 – GlobeNewswire

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Key Highlights:

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y., Aug. 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 22nd Century Group, Inc. (NYSE American: XXII) (22nd Century or the Company), a leading plant biotechnology company focused on technologies that alter the level of nicotine in tobacco plants and the level of cannabinoids in hemp/cannabis plants through genetic engineering, gene-editing, and modern plant breeding, today reported results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2020.

Despite the unprecedented challenges brought on by COVID-19, I am pleased to report net sales revenue of $6.4 million for the second quarter of 2020, up 11% from the prior year, continued gross profit margin expansion, and improved operating loss. These results demonstrate our ability to execute on our initiatives to improve our margins and cost structure. Our financial position remains strong and we will continue to operate with strict cost controls, allocate our resources efficiently, and deploy capital where we believe it will give us the greatest return on our investments, said James A. Mish, Chief Executive Officer of 22nd Century Group.

With the comment period now closed on our Modified Risk Tobacco Product Application, the team is laser focused on setting the stage for a successful VLN launch upon the authorization of our MRTP Application by the FDA. I am exceedingly proud of the dedication and tremendous progress the team has made so far this year and believe we are well positioned to capitalize on the many opportunities ahead, Mish added.

Business Highlights and Notable Events:

COVID-19 Update

2020 Second Quarter and Year-to-Date Financial Results

Balance Sheet and Liquidity

Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call22nd Century will host an audio-only webcast today at 8:00 a.m. ET to discuss the Companys second quarter 2020 financial results.

The live audio webcast will be accessible in the Events section on the Company's Investor Relations website at http://www.xxiicentury.com/investors/events. An archived replay of the webcast will also be available shortly after the live event has concluded.

About 22nd Century Group, Inc.22nd Century Group, Inc. (NYSE American: XXII) is a leading plant biotechnology company focused on technologies that alter the level of nicotine in tobacco plants and the level of cannabinoids in hemp/cannabis plants through genetic engineering, gene-editing and modern plant breeding. The Companys primary mission in tobacco is to reduce the harm caused by smoking by bringing its proprietary reduced nicotine content tobacco cigarettes containing 95% less nicotine than conventional cigarettes to adult smokers in the U.S. and international markets. The Companys primary mission in hemp/cannabis is to develop proprietary hemp/cannabis plants with valuable cannabinoid profiles and agronomic traits and to commercialize those plants through a synergistic portfolio of strategic partnerships in the hemp/cannabis industry.

Learn more atxxiicentury.com, on Twitter@_xxiicenturyand onLinkedIn.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements concerning our business, operations and financial performance and condition as well as our plans, objectives and expectations for our business operations and financial performance and condition that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are forward-looking statements. You can identify these statements by words such as aim, anticipate, assume, believe, could, due, estimate, expect, goal, intend, may, objective, plan, potential, positioned, predict, should, target, will, would and other similar expressions that are predictions of or indicate future events and future trends. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about our business and the industry in which we operate and our management's beliefs and assumptions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance or development and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that are in some cases beyond our control. All forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and others that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our forward-looking statements. Please refer to the Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on March 11, 2020 and in our subsequently filed Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law

Adjusted EBITDA, which the Company defines as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, as adjusted by the Company for certain non-cash and non-operating expenses, as well as certain one-time expenses, is a financial measure not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). In order to calculate Adjusted EBITDA, the Company adjusts the net (loss) income for certain non-cash and non-operating income and expense items listed in the table above in order to measure the Companys operating performance. The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is an important measure that supplements discussions and analysis of its operations and enhances an understanding of its operating performance. While management considers Adjusted EBITDA to be important, it should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for or superior to, other measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP, such as operating loss, net (loss) income and cash flows from operations. Adjusted EBITDA is susceptible to varying calculations and the Companys measurement of Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to those of other companies.

Below is a table containing information relating to the Companys Adjusted EBTIDA for the three and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2019, including a reconciliation of net (loss) income to Adjusted EBTIDA for such periods.

Contacts:Mei Kuo22nd Century Group(716) 300-1221mkuo@xxiicentury.com

John MillsICR(646) 277-1254john.mills@icrinc.com

Deirdre ThomsonICR(646) 277-1283deirdre.thomson@icrinc.com

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22nd Century Group Reports Financial Results and Business Highlights for the Second Quarter 2020 - GlobeNewswire

Genetic Engineering Market Growing Popularity and Emerging Trends in the with Key Players 2027 – eRealty Express

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The global Genetic Engineering Market, which is extensively assessed in the report contemplates the best need development angles and how they could affect the market over the figure residency under thought. The experts have taken careful endeavors to thoroughly evaluating every development factor of the market, other than indicating how certain market restrictions could represent a danger to players in the coming years. In addition, the report additionally gives data on top patterns and openings and how players could take advantage of them to take up the difficulties in the Genetic Engineering Market. This could be a helpful rule for players to concrete their situation in the business or make a rebound in the market.

The Leading Market Players Covered in this Report are : Integrated DNA Technologies, IncThermo Fisher Scientific Inc, Merck KGaA, Horizon Discovery Group Plc, .Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals Inc., New England Biolabs, Genscript Biotech Corporation, Lonza Group, Origene Technologies, Inc., Sangamo Therapeutics, Inc.

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Impact of Covid-19 in Genetic Engineering Market:The utility-owned segment is mainly being driven by increasing financial incentives and regulatory supports from the governments globally. The current utility-owned Genetic Engineering are affected primarily by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the projects in China, the US, Germany, and South Korea are delayed, and the companies are facing short-term operational issues due to supply chain constraints and lack of site access due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to get highly affected by the spread of the COVID-19 due to the effect of the pandemic in China, Japan, and India. China is the epic center of this lethal disease. China is a major country in terms of the chemical industry.

Genetic Engineering Market Regional Analysis Includes: Asia-Pacific(Vietnam, China, Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, Korea, Thailand, India, Indonesia, and Australia) Europe(Turkey, Germany, Russia UK, Italy, France, etc.) North America(the United States, Mexico, and Canada.) South America(Brazil etc.) The Middle East and Africa(GCC Countries and Egypt.)

Key Highlights of the Table of Contents:Genetic Engineering Market Study Coverage:It includes key market segments, key manufacturers covered, the scope of products offered in the years considered, global Genetic Engineering market and study objectives. Additionally, it touches the segmentation study provided in the report on the basis of the type of product and applications.Genetic Engineering Market Executive summary:This section emphasizes the key studies, market growth rate, competitive landscape, market drivers, trends, and issues in addition to the macroscopic indicators.Genetic Engineering Market Production by Region:The report delivers data related to import and export, revenue, production, and key players of all regional markets studied are covered in this section.Genetic Engineering Market Profile of Manufacturers:Analysis of each market player profiled is detailed in this section. This segment also provides SWOT analysis, products, production, value, capacity, and other vital factors of the individual player.

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Key Questions Answered: To gain insightful analyses of the Genetic Engineering market and have a comprehensive understanding of the global market and its commercial landscape. Assess the production processes, major issues, and solutions to mitigate the development risk. To understand the most affecting driving and restraining forces in the market and its impact on the global Genetic Engineering market. Learn about the Genetic Engineering market strategies that are being adopted by leading respective organizations. To understand the future outlook and prospects for the market. Besides the standard structure reports, we also provide custom research according to specific requirements.

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Genetic Engineering Market Growing Popularity and Emerging Trends in the with Key Players 2027 - eRealty Express

Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market 2020 Outlook with Industry Trends, Size, Share, Effective Strategies and Forecast by 2026 | Bhler, Toshiba,…

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Market research report on Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market 2020 with Industry Analysis, Size, Competitors, Trends and Forecast 2025.

Market Research Port offers you a comprehensive market research report on the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market. This report contains in-depth information on all the key aspects of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market. This report contains data such as facts & figures, market research, market analysis, competitive landscape, regional analysis, and future growth prospects. The report also contains qualitative and quantitative research which gives you a detailed analysis of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market. The report has been compiled by experts who have researched and documented all the important aspects of global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market. The report authors are experienced and highly qualified, so you can trust the data provided in this report.

Get The Sample Report PDF with Detail TOC & List of [emailprotected]https://marketresearchport.com/request-sample/55063

This market research report also has data of all the important players in the industry. From their market share in the industry, to their growth plans, important information has been compiled in the report to let you get an insightful look at the leading players operating in the industry and what their strategies are. The functioning of the leading companies in the (industry name) market has a huge impact on how the market behaves. Therefore, data on these companies can also help you understand and predict how the market behaves. The competitor analysis in the report will give you a complete breakdown of all the important information you need about these top market players.

Major Companies Covered:

Bhler, Toshiba, Dynacast, Frech, Idra Group, HMT Machine Tools Limited, ItalPresse, Japan Steel Works (JSW), UBE, Toyo Machinery & Metal

In the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market report, there is solid in-depth data on various segments as well. These segments give a deeper look into the products, applications and what impact they are going to have on the market. The report also looks at new products and innovation that can be real game-changers.

The Report is Divided into The Following Segments:

Market Segmentation by Product Types:Light (4000kN), Middle (4000kN10,000kN), Heavy (10,000kN)

Market Segmentation by Applications:Home Appliance, Medical Instrument, 3C Industries, Others

Regions Mentioned in the Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market:

The Middle East and Africa North America South America Europe Asia-Pacific Middle East Oceania Rest of the World

Following Questions are Answered in This Report:

What will be the size of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market in 2025? What is the current CAGR of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market? Which product is expected to show the highest market growth? Which application is projected to gain a lions share of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market? Which region is foretold to create the most number of opportunities in the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market? Will there be any changes in market competition during the forecast period? Which are the top players currently operating in the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market? How will the market situation change in the coming years? What are the common business tactics adopted by players? What is the growth outlook of the global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery market?

The data of the market research report has been studied, compiled and corroborated by leading experts and established authors. The format followed in the report is in accordance with most international market research reports. However, if you have any specific requirements, you can get in touch with us, and we will modify the report accordingly.

Do Enquiry For Customized Report as per Your [emailprotected]https://www.marketresearchport.com/reports/2015-2025-global-aluminum-die-casting-machinery-market-research-report-by-product-type-applications-key-play/55063

Table of Content:Chapter 1 Market Overview1.1 Market Definition And Segment1.1.1 Product Definition1.1.2 Product Type1.1.3 End-Use1.1.4 Marketing Channel1.2 Major Regions1.2.1 Europe Market Size And GrowthFigure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Size And Growth Rate, 2015e-2020f (Million Usd)Figure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Forecast And Growth Rate, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)1.2.2 America Market Size And GrowthFigure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Size And Growth Rate, 2015e-2020f (Million Usd)Figure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Forecast And Growth Rate, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)1.2.3 Asia Market Size And GrowthFigure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Size And Growth Rate, 2015e-2020f (Million Usd)Figure Asiaaluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Forecast And Growth Rate, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)1.2.4 Oceania Market Size And GrowthFigure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Size And Growth Rate, 2015e-2020f (Million Usd)Figure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Forecast And Growth Rate, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)1.2.5 Africa Market Size And GrowthFigure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Size And Growth Rate, 2015e-2020f (Million Usd)Figure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Forecast And Growth Rate, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)

Chapter 2 Global Market Segmentation2.1 Global Production OverviewTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20202.2 Global Consumption OverviewTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20202.3 Global Production By TypeTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)2.4 Global Consumption By End-UseTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)2.5 Global Consumption By RegionTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 3 Europe Market Segmentation3.1 Europe Production OverviewTable Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20203.2 Europe Consumption OverviewTable Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20203.3 Europe Production By TypeTable Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)3.4 Europe Consumption By End-UseTable Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)3.5 Europe Consumption By RegionTable Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 4 America Market Segmentation4.1 America Production OverviewTable America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20204.2 America Consumption OverviewTable America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20204.3 America Production By TypeTable America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)4.4 America Consumption By End-UseTable America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)4.5 America Consumption By RegionTable America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 5 Asia Market Segmentation5.1 Asia Production OverviewTable Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20205.2 Asia Consumption OverviewTable Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20205.3 Asia Production By TypeTable Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)5.4 Asia Consumption By End-UseTable Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)5.5 Asia Consumption By RegionTable Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 6 Oceania Market Segmentation6.1 Oceania Production OverviewTable Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20206.2 Oceania Consumption OverviewTable Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20206.3 Oceania Production By TypeTable Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)6.4 Oceania Consumption By End-UseTable Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)6.5 Oceania Consumption By RegionTable Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 7 Africa Market Segmentation7.1 Africa Production OverviewTable Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume (Volume), Ex-Factory Price, Revenue (Million Usd) And Gross Margin (%) List, 2015-20207.2 Africa Consumption OverviewTable Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume (Volume), Terminal Price And Consumption Value (Million Usd) List, 2015-20207.3 Africa Production By TypeTable Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2020 (Volume)7.4 Africa Consumption By End-UseTable Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Figure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2020 (Million Usd)Table Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2015-2020 (Volume)Figure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By End-Use In 2020 (Volume)7.5 Africa Consumption By RegionTable Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2015-2020 (Million Usd)Table Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2015-2020 (Volume)

Chapter 8 Global Market Forecast8.1 Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production ForecastFigure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue And Growth Rate Forecast 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume And Growth Rate Forecast 2020e-2025f (Volume)8.2 Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Forecast By TypeTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue By Type, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Revenue Share By Type In 2025 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume By Type, 2020e-2025f (Volume)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Production Volume Share By Type In 2025 (Volume)8.3 Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Forecast By End-Use (2020e-2025f)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By End-Use, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By End-Use In 2025 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By End-Use, 2020e-2025f (Volume)8.4 Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Forecast By Region (2020e-2025f)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value By Region, 2020e-2025f (Million Usd)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Value Share By Region In 2025 (Million Usd)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume By Region, 2020e-2025f (Volume)Figure Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Consumption Volume Share By Region In 2025 (Volume)

Chapter 9 Global Major Companies List9.1 Bhler9.1.1 Bhler ProfileTable Bhler Overview List9.1.2 Bhler Products & Services9.1.3 Bhler Company Dynamics & News9.1.4 Bhler Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Bhler (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.2 Toshiba9.2.1 Toshiba ProfileTable Toshiba Overview List9.2.2 Toshiba Products & Services9.2.3 Toshiba Company Dynamics & News9.2.4 Toshiba Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Toshiba (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.3 Dynacast9.3.1 Dynacast ProfileTable Dynacast Overview List9.3.2 Dynacast Products & Services9.3.3 Dynacast Company Dynamics & News9.3.4 Dynacast Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Dynacast (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.4 Frech9.4.1 Frech ProfileTable Frech Overview List9.4.2 Frech Products & Services9.4.3 Frech Company Dynamics & News9.4.4 Frech Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Frech (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.5 Idra Group9.5.1 Idra Group ProfileTable Idra Group Overview List9.5.2 Idra Group Products & Services9.5.3 Idra Group Company Dynamics & News9.5.4 Idra Group Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Idra Group (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.6 Hmt Machine Tools Limited9.6.1 Hmt Machine Tools Limited ProfileTable Hmt Machine Tools Limited Overview List9.6.2 Hmt Machine Tools Limited Products & Services9.6.3 Hmt Machine Tools Limited Company Dynamics & News9.6.4 Hmt Machine Tools Limited Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Hmt Machine Tools Limited (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.7 Italpresse9.7.1 Italpresse ProfileTable Italpresse Overview List9.7.2 Italpresse Products & Services9.7.3 Italpresse Company Dynamics & News9.7.4 Italpresse Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Italpresse (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.8 Japan Steel Works (Jsw)9.8.1 Japan Steel Works (Jsw) ProfileTable Japan Steel Works (Jsw) Overview List9.8.2 Japan Steel Works (Jsw) Products & Services9.8.3 Japan Steel Works (Jsw) Company Dynamics & News9.8.4 Japan Steel Works (Jsw) Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Japan Steel Works (Jsw) (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.9 Ube9.9.1 Ube ProfileTable Ube Overview List9.9.2 Ube Products & Services9.9.3 Ube Company Dynamics & News9.9.4 Ube Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Ube (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)9.10 Toyo Machinery & Metal9.10.1 Toyo Machinery & Metal ProfileTable Toyo Machinery & Metal Overview List9.10.2 Toyo Machinery & Metal Products & Services9.10.3 Toyo Machinery & Metal Company Dynamics & News9.10.4 Toyo Machinery & Metal Business Operation ConditionsTable Business Operation Of Toyo Machinery & Metal (Sales Revenue, Sales Volume, Price, Cost, Gross Margin)

Part 10 Market Competition10.1 Key Company Market ShareTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Sales Revenue 2015-2020e, By Companies, In Usd MillionTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Sales Revenue Share, 2015-2020e, By Companies, In UsdTable Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Sales Volume By Companies, 2015-2020e (Volume)Table Global Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Sales Volume Share By Companies, 2015-2020e (Volume)10.2 Regional Market ConcentrationFigure Europe Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Concentration Ratio In 2020eFigure America Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Concentration Ratio In 2020eFigure Asia Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Concentration Ratio In 2020eFigure Oceania Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Concentration Ratio In 2020eFigure Africa Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market Concentration Ratio In 2020e

Part 11 Coronavirus Impact On Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Industry11.1 Impact On Industry Upstream11.2 Impact On Industry Downstream11.3 Impact On Industry Channels11.4 Impact On Industry Competition11.5 Impact On Industry Obtain Employment

Part 12 Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Industry Summary & Conclusion

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Aluminum Die Casting Machinery Market 2020 Outlook with Industry Trends, Size, Share, Effective Strategies and Forecast by 2026 | Bhler, Toshiba,...

Vegetable Packing Machines Market 2020 Forthcoming Developments, Trends, Competitive Landscape, Regional Analysis and Forecast 2026 | CHLB Packing…

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In depth market research report on Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market 2020 with Industry Analysis, Size, Competitors, Trends and Forecast 2026.

Market Research Port offers you a comprehensive market research report on the global Vegetable Packing Machines market. This report contains in-depth information on all the key aspects of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market. This report contains data such as facts & figures, market research, market analysis, competitive landscape, regional analysis, and future growth prospects. The report also contains qualitative and quantitative research which gives you a detailed analysis of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market. The report has been compiled by experts who have researched and documented all the important aspects of global Vegetable Packing Machines market. The report authors are experienced and highly qualified, so you can trust the data provided in this report.

Get The Sample Report PDF with Detail TOC & List of [emailprotected]https://marketresearchport.com/request-sample/49066

This market research report also has data of all the important players in the industry. From their market share in the industry, to their growth plans, important information has been compiled in the report to let you get an insightful look at the leading players operating in the industry and what their strategies are. The functioning of the leading companies in the (industry name) market has a huge impact on how the market behaves. Therefore, data on these companies can also help you understand and predict how the market behaves. The competitor analysis in the report will give you a complete breakdown of all the important information you need about these top market players.

Major Companies Covered:

CHLB Packing Machine, Haith Group, SS Automation & Packaging Machines, Paxiom, Laxmi Enterprises, Viking Masek, Honor Pack, Minipack-torre, Premier Tech Chronos, YaT GUAN, MP Pack

In the global Vegetable Packing Machines market report, there is solid in-depth data on various segments as well. These segments give a deeper look into the products, applications and what impact they are going to have on the market. The report also looks at new products and innovation that can be real game-changers.

The Report is Divided into The Following Segments:

Market Segmentation by Product Types:Full-Automatic Packing Machine, Semi-Automatic Packing Machine

Market Segmentation by Applications:Commercial, Residential

Regions Mentioned in the Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market:

The Middle East and Africa North America South America Europe Asia-Pacific Middle East Oceania Rest of the World

Following Questions are Answered in This Report:

What will be the size of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market in 2025? What is the current CAGR of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market? Which product is expected to show the highest market growth? Which application is projected to gain a lions share of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market? Which region is foretold to create the most number of opportunities in the global Vegetable Packing Machines market? Will there be any changes in market competition during the forecast period? Which are the top players currently operating in the global Vegetable Packing Machines market? How will the market situation change in the coming years? What are the common business tactics adopted by players? What is the growth outlook of the global Vegetable Packing Machines market?

The data of the market research report has been studied, compiled and corroborated by leading experts and established authors. The format followed in the report is in accordance with most international market research reports. However, if you have any specific requirements, you can get in touch with us, and we will modify the report accordingly.

Do Enquiry For Customized Report as per Your [emailprotected]https://marketresearchport.com/enquiry-before-buying/49066

Table of Content:Chapter 1 Industry Overview1.1 Definition1.2 Assumptions1.3 Research Scope1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.2 East Asia Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.3 Europe Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.4 South Asia Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.6 Middle East Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.7 Africa Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.8 Oceania Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.4.9 South America Market States and Outlook (2021-2026)1.5 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market Size Analysis from 2021 to 20261.5.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market Size Analysis from 2021 to 2026 by Consumption Volume1.5.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market Size Analysis from 2021 to 2026 by Value1.5.3 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Price Trends Analysis from 2021 to 20261.6 COVID-19 Outbreak: Vegetable Packing Machines Industry Impact

Chapter 2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Competition by Types, Applications, and Top Regions and Countries2.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines (Volume and Value) by Type2.1.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Market Share by Type (2015-2020)2.1.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Revenue and Market Share by Type (2015-2020)2.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines (Volume and Value) by Application2.2.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Market Share by Application (2015-2020)2.2.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Revenue and Market Share by Application (2015-2020)2.3 Global Vegetable Packing Machines (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Market Share by Regions (2015-2020)2.3.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2015-2020)

Chapter 3 Production Market Analysis3.1 Global Production Market Analysis3.1.1 2015-2020 Global Capacity, Production, Capacity Utilization Rate, Ex-Factory Price, Revenue, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis3.1.2 2015-2020 Major Manufacturers Performance and Market Share3.2 Regional Production Market Analysis3.2.1 2015-2020 Regional Market Performance and Market Share3.2.2 North America Market3.2.3 East Asia Market3.2.4 Europe Market3.2.5 South Asia Market3.2.6 Southeast Asia Market3.2.7 Middle East Market3.2.8 Africa Market3.2.9 Oceania Market3.2.10 South America Market3.2.11 Rest of the World Market

Chapter 4 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2015-2020)4.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Regions (2015-2020)4.2 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.3 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.4 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.5 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.6 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.7 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.8 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.9 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)4.10 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Sales, Consumption, Export, Import (2015-2020)

Chapter 5 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis5.1 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis5.1.1 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-195.2 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types5.3 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application5.4 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries5.4.1 United States Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20205.4.2 Canada Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20205.4.3 Mexico Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 6 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis6.1 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis6.1.1 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-196.2 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types6.3 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application6.4 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries6.4.1 China Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20206.4.2 Japan Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20206.4.3 South Korea Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 7 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis7.1 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis7.1.1 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-197.2 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types7.3 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application7.4 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries7.4.1 Germany Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.2 UK Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.3 France Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.4 Italy Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.5 Russia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.6 Spain Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.7 Netherlands Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.8 Switzerland Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20207.4.9 Poland Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 8 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis8.1 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis8.1.1 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-198.2 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types8.3 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application8.4 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries8.4.1 India Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20208.4.2 Pakistan Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20208.4.3 Bangladesh Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 9 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis9.1 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis9.1.1 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-199.2 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types9.3 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application9.4 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries9.4.1 Indonesia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.2 Thailand Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.3 Singapore Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.4 Malaysia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.5 Philippines Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.6 Vietnam Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 20209.4.7 Myanmar Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 10 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis10.1 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis10.1.1 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-1910.2 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types10.3 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application10.4 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries10.4.1 Turkey Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.2 Saudi Arabia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.3 Iran Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.4 United Arab Emirates Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.5 Israel Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.6 Iraq Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.7 Qatar Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.8 Kuwait Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202010.4.9 Oman Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 11 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis11.1 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis11.1.1 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-1911.2 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types11.3 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application11.4 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries11.4.1 Nigeria Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202011.4.2 South Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202011.4.3 Egypt Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202011.4.4 Algeria Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202011.4.5 Morocco Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 12 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis12.1 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis12.2 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types12.3 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application12.4 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption by Top Countries12.4.1 Australia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202012.4.2 New Zealand Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 13 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Market Analysis13.1 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption and Value Analysis13.1.1 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Market Under COVID-1913.2 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Types13.3 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Structure by Application13.4 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume by Major Countries13.4.1 Brazil Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.2 Argentina Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.3 Columbia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.4 Chile Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.5 Venezuela Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.6 Peru Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.7 Puerto Rico Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 202013.4.8 Ecuador Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume from 2015 to 2020

Chapter 14 Company Profiles and Key Figures in Vegetable Packing Machines Business14.1 CHLB Packing Machine14.1.1 CHLB Packing Machine Company Profile14.1.2 CHLB Packing Machine Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.1.3 CHLB Packing Machine Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.2 Haith Group14.2.1 Haith Group Company Profile14.2.2 Haith Group Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.2.3 Haith Group Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.3 SS Automation & Packaging Machines14.3.1 SS Automation & Packaging Machines Company Profile14.3.2 SS Automation & Packaging Machines Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.3.3 SS Automation & Packaging Machines Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.4 Paxiom14.4.1 Paxiom Company Profile14.4.2 Paxiom Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.4.3 Paxiom Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.5 Laxmi Enterprises14.5.1 Laxmi Enterprises Company Profile14.5.2 Laxmi Enterprises Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.5.3 Laxmi Enterprises Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.6 Viking Masek14.6.1 Viking Masek Company Profile14.6.2 Viking Masek Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.6.3 Viking Masek Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.7 Honor Pack14.7.1 Honor Pack Company Profile14.7.2 Honor Pack Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.7.3 Honor Pack Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.8 Minipack-torre14.8.1 Minipack-torre Company Profile14.8.2 Minipack-torre Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.8.3 Minipack-torre Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.9 Premier Tech Chronos14.9.1 Premier Tech Chronos Company Profile14.9.2 Premier Tech Chronos Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.9.3 Premier Tech Chronos Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.10 YaT GUAN14.10.1 YaT GUAN Company Profile14.10.2 YaT GUAN Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.10.3 YaT GUAN Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)14.11 MP Pack14.11.1 MP Pack Company Profile14.11.2 MP Pack Vegetable Packing Machines Product Specification14.11.3 MP Pack Vegetable Packing Machines Production Capacity, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2015-2020)

Chapter 15 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Market Forecast (2021-2026)15.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast (2021-2026)15.1.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.1.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Value and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Value and Growth Rate Forecast by Region (2021-2026)15.2.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume and Growth Rate Forecast by Regions (2021-2026)15.2.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Value and Growth Rate Forecast by Regions (2021-2026)15.2.3 North America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.4 East Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.5 Europe Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.6 South Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.7 Southeast Asia Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.8 Middle East Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.9 Africa Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.10 Oceania Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.2.11 South America Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Growth Rate Forecast (2021-2026)15.3 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume, Revenue and Price Forecast by Type (2021-2026)15.3.1 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Forecast by Type (2021-2026)15.3.2 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Revenue Forecast by Type (2021-2026)15.3.3 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Price Forecast by Type (2021-2026)15.4 Global Vegetable Packing Machines Consumption Volume Forecast by Application (2021-2026)15.5 Vegetable Packing Machines Market Forecast Under COVID-19

Chapter 16 ConclusionsResearch Methodology

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Vegetable Packing Machines Market 2020 Forthcoming Developments, Trends, Competitive Landscape, Regional Analysis and Forecast 2026 | CHLB Packing...

WE’RE IN THE MONEY, MAYBE | Cap City – Illinois Times

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With nearly $32 million available from recreational marijuana taxes, the state expects to award grants next month to help repair damage from the war on drugs, and Springfield hopes to be a player. Mayor Jim Langfelder says the city has applied for a grant that would fund home rehabilitation to help neighborhoods deemed by the state to have been disproportionately impacted by the government's war on drugs. The mayor pegged the request at more than $700,000, which he said was the maximum allowable, and added that the city also has made a smaller request for planning efforts. Both public and private entities are eligible for grants set to be awarded by a state board that includes elected officials and representatives of agencies ranging from the Department of Corrections to the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. Langfelder says that he's endorsed a grant application submitted by The Outlet, a nonprofit agency that provides mentoring to fatherless kids. Michael Phelon, Outlet founder and chief executive officer, could not be immediately reached for comment.

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WE'RE IN THE MONEY, MAYBE | Cap City - Illinois Times

China Is Waging Cyber-Enabled Economic War on the U.S. How to Fight Back. – Barron’s

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For all practical intents, the United States is at war with China. This may come as a surprise since no bullets have been fired nor declarations made. Yet there is little question that, for over a decade, the Chinese government has engaged in a sustained campaign of cyber-enabled economic aggression against us and our allies. They have targeted our most productive economic sectors and are currently winning. But as we restart our economy after Covid-19, we have a unique opportunity to shift this fight decisively back in our favor.

At the heart of this conflict is a series of grand economic competitions across key industries, including telecommunications, advanced computing, robotics, energy generation, resource extraction, aerospace, and the medical sciences, to name just a few. We are currently facing off with China on 5G technology, machine learning, quantum computing, nuclear and solar power, satellites, rare earth metals, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. Fundamental to the Chinese strategy for winning in each of these areasand many moreis the rampant theft of American intellectual property.

The Chinese playbook is deceptively simple: Why spend trillions of dollars on basic science or advanced research when it can be stolen with almost no penalties? The Chinese government is stunningly good at this theft. Not only do they employ thousands of government operatives to engage in this effort, a new federal indictment charges that they have fostered a criminal hacker class that works for its personal economic gain as well as for the Chinese state.

This brazen theft is not just limited to intellectual property. It also involves the pilfering of massive amounts of datafrom the likes of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Equifax, Marriott, and Anthemthat will fuel intelligence operations and train machine learning algorithms, generating economic and political gain for decades.

Chinese companies also look to acquire American technology through investment, acquisition, litigation, and bankruptcy, turning our own markets and courts against us. They masquerade as American companies while under the control of the Chinese government. Even worse, they take advantage of our companies looking to do business in China by extorting them into creating joint ventures, transferring intellectual property, and providing data to the Chinese Communist Party.

They likewise send students and researchers to our best research universities, all the while pressuring them to steal information for the Chinese state. The recent indictment of a Chinese military officer allegedly masquerading as a researcher at Stanford is but one such example. Chinese intelligence agencies likewise seek to co-opt American academics by providing grant funding for joint research projects and invitations to write for cash.

All of this economic warfare is directed at one key goal: to replace the United States as the global leader. Their agents do this by handing over the spoils of the state-run hacking and extortion campaign to Chinese companies which, in turn, exploit Chinese (and other) workers to make goods at reduced cost, selling them back to us and our allies, making us more reliant upon them.

Weve all now seen the price of this reliance in the difficulty many Americans face in getting medical gear and life-saving drugs. But our reliance is hardly limited to these goods. We also rely on China for all manner of finished goods and key inputs, the loss of which could grind our economy to a virtual halt overnight. Indeed, years ago, the Chinese created a plan to make us reliant on them in a dozen key areas. They now see Covid-19 as an opportunity to surge forward. But it need not be so. We have a chance, in this very moment of economic turmoil, to regain the edge.

First, the U.S. government must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our private sector to protect and push back. Just as the Chinese back their companies in competition with us, we must do the same for our industry. We should collect and share actionable threat intelligence and actively collaborate with the private sector to protect them through collective defense. We must also push back, using all elements of national power, to end the Chinese campaign of cyber-enabled economic warfare, including through the use of trade measures, sanctions, persistent cyber engagement, and, where necessary, more aggressive actions. We cannot allow trade deals or our desire for cheap Chinese goods to force us to sit on our hands, leaving our private sector alone to fight this war. Doing so means certain defeat.

Second, we must also work with our allies across the globe, including in the Indo-Pacific region, which the administration has identified as the single most consequential region for our future. Indias recent travails at Chinas hands should be a warning to all in the region and we must reject this aggression just as we have in the South China Sea. Likewise, having brought the British back on board on 5G, we must also now convince Germany to join this unified front. America need not stand alone. Making common cause with our longstanding allies is the right approach.

Finally, as we look to restart our economy, we must incentivize Americans to invest their money here and protect our innovation base. We must create tax and regulatory incentives that encourage investment in American companies struggling to survive and protect their intellectual property. These investors should be able to take advantage of low-cost capital to reorganize and reorient companies working on dual-use technologies to accelerate us into recovery and bring manufacturing and jobs back to the United States.

If we are to preserve this nation and remain a global leader, we cannot permit the continued theft of our childrens future right from under our noses. Now is the time to act.

Gen. (Ret) Keith B. Alexander is the former director of the National Security Agency and Founding Commander of United States Cyber Command, and currently serves as chairman, president and co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, a start-up technology company focused on network threat analytics and collective defense and is on the Board of Advisors for the National Security Institute at George Mason Universitys Scalia Law School. Jamil N. Jaffer is the former chief counsel and senior advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and served in senior national security roles in the George W. Bush Justice Department and White House, and currently serves as senior vice president for strategy, partnerships and corporate development at IronNet Cybersecurity and as the founder and executive director of NSI.

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China Is Waging Cyber-Enabled Economic War on the U.S. How to Fight Back. - Barron's

Juvenile Records Laws Must Be Reformed to Prevent Ongoing Racism – Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

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The juvenile justice system was created 120 years ago to reform and rehabilitate wayward youth to ensure they had the opportunity to achieve productive futures. To this end, it was widely accepted that juvenile system involvement should remain confidential and that all records should be sealed or eradicated to ensure youth a clean slate upon reaching adulthood. Juvenile records laws were enacted to protect the privacy of system-involved youth.

Today, however, the privacy protections afforded by juvenile records laws have hollowed out by loopholes and limitations that make confidentiality the exception more than the rule for many juvenile offenders. The broad accessibility permitted by juvenile records laws combined with technological innovation in data storage and mining make juvenile record information more available than ever. This means, more often than not, that the record of offenses children commit can be accessed by law enforcement, employers, landlords, schools and the public.

The consequences of the loss of juvenile system anonymity are far-reaching for youth and include an inability to secure housing, maintain stable employment and pursue post-secondary opportunities. The impact of these collateral consequences is supported by the data: In college admissions, 62.5% of system-involved youth were discouraged from completing college applications because of a records disclosure requirement, while 20% of applicants who disclosed records information were automatically denied admission.

Andrew Keats

Of the over 90% of employers who run background checks on applicants, over 40% reported that they would definitely or probably not hire an applicant with a record for a job not requiring a college degree, while 50% were less likely to call back or extend a job offer. Furthermore, 11% of these employers reported that even an applicant with a minor criminal infraction would not be hired. The existence of a juvenile record may also foreclose a young person and/or their entire family from securing public housing.

Black youth suffer the collateral consequences of juvenile record disclosure most severely. It is widely known that Black youth are subject to disproportionate system involvement. It is less widely recognized, however, that the records of this disproportionate system involvement enable a disproportionate level of racial discrimination long after their actual system involvement is over.

While Black youth represent only 15% of the U.S. population between the ages of 10-17, they represent 26% of all juvenile arrests and 30% of all delinquency referrals. Black youth represent 45% of all preadjudication decisions and 46% of cases transferred to adult criminal court. These records are all searchable by and available to the individuals with power to provide youth opportunities.

So why is a system intended to rehabilitate kids being used to mark them for a lifetime of discrimination?

The answer lies in the changing nature of Americas own unique brand of institutionalized racism over the last century. As a result of sweeping civil rights victories in the 1960s, America increasingly relied on the criminalization of Black people, and especially Black children, to justify continued oppression and inequality.

From the war on drugs to the myth of the child superpredator, racist stereotypes of Black people and particularly Black youth, together with discriminatory policies (like Broken Windows and stop-and-frisk) afforded white America the opportunity to transform skin color into a record of system involvement that could legally justify continued discrimination.

Harsh punishments enacted in the 1990s amplified the stakes of early system involvement mandatory sentencing schemes, youth transfer and new three strikes laws ushered in our modern era of mass incarceration. Under this system of white supremacy, juvenile records laws that afford broad access transform juvenile missteps into life sentences that serve to immobilize and disenfranchise Black communities.

In 2014, Juvenile Law Center published the first-ever comprehensive evaluation of each states juvenile records laws. The results of that study demonstrated that, as measured against best practices, over 50% of states fail to adequately protect juveniles from the consequences of juvenile records. Now, six years later, a new juvenile record scorecard report shows continued and widespread deficiencies in the protections necessary to keep juvenile records secure.

Recognizing that broad access to juvenile records advances inequality and systemic racism and holds kids back from achieving their full potential, it is imperative that every state review its records laws and take all steps necessary to protect our youths right to privacy by mandating automatic sealing and expungement of juvenile records.

Andrew Keats is a staff attorney at the Juvenile Law Center, where his work currently focuses on addressing economic justice and equity and second chances for youth in the juvenile justice system and youth tried as adults in the criminal justice system. Before that he spent a decade as a litigator with a leading global law firm in Los Angeles and New York, where he litigated a broad range of complex commercial disputes plus securities, class action, bankruptcy and real estate matters.

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Juvenile Records Laws Must Be Reformed to Prevent Ongoing Racism - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Reparations is a nonstarter in Congress. Not in this Southern city. – The Christian Science Monitor

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Reparations to Black Americans for slavery is an old and fraught national topic. It has been taken up recently by activists seeking racial justice and police reform in cities, including Asheville, North Carolina, which styles itself as a progressive city but has a history of urban renewal that largely excluded Black people from sharing in the wealth created.

In July, the Asheville City Council passed a reparations ordinance, one of only a handful enacted in the U.S. Among other measures, it pledges new investment in Black homeownership as a way to redress the racial wealth gap. As in other segregated cities, Black children in Asheville are far more likely to grow up in poor neighborhoods.

Ashevilles ordinance doesnt provide financial restitution for past discrimination and its unclear how much money will be committed. But advocates say it represents a potentially new approach to reparations, one that puts the emphasis on local actions as a building block toward a national effort to tackle structural racial inequities.

Anthropologist Paul Mullins says Asheville is acknowledging its role in perpetuating injustices and providing a path forward. And thats deep-down what reparations are about: How can we have a measure of response to injustice that leads to some sort of racial reconciliation?

Asheville, N.C.

For all the funky exterior of a progressive mountain redoubt, this city has until now often looked the other way when it comes to racial inequity.

Two months after days of intense racial justice protests, however, a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that had stood for nearly a century is gone. And an obelisk in the honor of Confederate-era Gov. Zeb Vance is now wrapped in black plastic, as the city considers its removal.

But those symbolic changes have been followed by something that could prove more concrete. Last month, the majority-white Asheville City Council unanimously passed a reparations ordinance aimed at righting not just historic injustice against Black Americans, but more recent wrongs against Ashevilles Black population.

In the past 40 years, residents say, urban renewal and discriminatory banking practices dispossessed especially older Black residents from historic Asheville neighborhoods. Today, 60% of public housing residents are Black, even though they only make up 12% of Ashevilles population, reflecting thenational trend in which Black children are far more likely than their white peers to grow up in poor neighborhoods.

Asheville is a microcosm of the nation right now, says John Hennon, a retired corporate executive turned pro-Black rights protester. Its done talking and its now acting.

The city ordinance isnt strictly reparations, which involve the direct redistribution of wealth. Its real contribution, though, may be to sharpen the optics for a national rethink of the concept: how laws and practices that were both explicitly and implicitly discriminatory have reinforced yawning gaps around wealth, health, even of hope.

Closing those racial gaps runs up against entrenched opposition. Even white liberals have balked at reforms like building public housing in gentrified neighborhoods. President Donald Trump has touted his save-the-suburbs campaign by undoing federal executive orders intended to add low-income housing in predominantly white middle-class districts.

These tensions arent going to go away magically if we ignore them, and frankly were in a historical moment where the [reparations] conversation is ... more publicly palatable, says Indiana University anthropologist Paul Mullins, author of Race and Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture.

He frames the Asheville ordinance as a political statement that acknowledges racial injustices around land ownership and dispossession after World War II. Moreover, it outlines a first step toward some sort of reconciliation. And thats deep-down what reparations are about: How can we have a measure of response to injustice that leads to some sort of racial reconciliation?

The idea of compensating formerly enslaved Black Americans has been around since before the Declaration of Independence. Even some white Southerners urged the idea as an economic stimulus for the postwar South. More recently, the U.S. has paid reparations to Japanese Americans interned during World War II.

Still, two-thirds of Americans regularly pan the proposal. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senates only Black Republican, has likened reparations to trying to unscramble that egg. President Barack Obama in 2016 called the idea impractical.

Polls show most Black Americans agree with the concept of reparations. But even as support has grown in that community in recent months, overall white support has barely budged.

White people opposed to reparations say it would be unfair to force modern-day Americans to underwrite a wealth transfer for injustices they didnt personally commit. Scholars have estimated that the price tag could be as much as $10 trillion, or nearly half the nations annual economic output.

Ruben Dejernette is one of those torn by the concept. The white Asheville homeowner bought a house four years ago in what used to be the citys Black neighborhood on South French Broad.

There is no escaping that we have been doing the Black community wrong, but every time I go over it in my head I dont know what can actually be done to fix it, says Mr. Dejernette.

Nearly all Democratic presidential candidates, including Joe Biden, have come out in favor of a national commission to study reparations. A House study bill that would do just that has gone nowhere in Congress for 30 years.

Conservative Black commentator Vince Ellison says the Black community would be foolish to expect progressive Democrats to remunerate them for slavery. He calls reparations a lie.

Black people should look at white people who think theyre going to solve my problem and say, Who the hell do you think you are? says Mr. Ellison, a Virginia-based pastor and author.

Reparations just make you a slave looking for a master. Reparations is about making them pay, but youll never get enough. Forgiveness cannot be earned, and it shouldnt be expected.

In 2014, the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates penned a case for reparations in a widely-read cover story for The Atlantic. [A]s surely as the creation of the [racial] wealth gap required the cooperation of every aspect of the society, bridging it will require the same, he wrote.

Yet as the slow walk for the House study bill shows, even studying reparations is deeply unpopular, says David Bateman, co-author of Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy After Reconstruction.

The question is, how do you actually amass a winning and enduring coalition that can sustain a particular vision? How do you define it and what would it look like? That might be easier done at the local level,thoughmost localities dont have the fiscal capacity or reach necessary to achieve a meaningful redistributive program.

In June, the California Assembly voted to create a reparations task force, and in July, Providence, Rhode Island, embarked on a truth telling and reparations process. The effort in Rhode Island underscores the extent to which Northern cities also profited from slavery and segregation.

In November, Evanston, Illinois, by an 8-1 vote, became the first entity to establish a reparations fund through a future recreational marijuana tax. How the money will be dispersed is still not clear.

Advocates for reparations say such efforts may ultimately nourish a broader national reparations bill by laying groundwork for what reparations look and feel like to Americans living in segregated areas, whether in the North or South.

This is a situation where many different entities states, cities, religious institutions, industries are beginning to recognize and realize that each unjustly benefited from the stolen labor during the enslavement era and through continuing laws and practice like gerrymandering, redlining, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration, says Washington, D.C., civil rights attorney Nkechi Taifa.

They are looking in their own backyards to rectify some of these abuses they themselves not personally, but institutionally were responsible for.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Black rights activist John Hennon holds a sign next to the Zeb Vance monument in Asheville, North Carolina, on July 29, 2020. In response to racial justice protests, the city wrapped the obelisk, a monument to a Confederate-era governor, in plastic.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, a familiar pattern played out here in Asheville, which has become known as a beer brewing mecca.

Urban renewal brought the promise of a fresh start, and in some ways it laid the groundwork for the tourist destination the city is today. But renewal came at the expense of Black people. The cheapest properties to buy were targeted, with the city clearing out parts of the South French Broad neighborhood where Mr. Dejernette lives. Today, even a small home there can fetch $700,000.

But it wasnt just white people who benefited from Ashevilles gentrification. Retired paper mill worker Amanuel Lytle, who is Black, bought his newly vacant lot for $1, with a promise that he would build a new house on it.

A lot of the homes were falling down, says Mr. Lytle. The people who lived there didnt have enough money for upkeep, and the taxes kept going up.

A white builder agreed to cosign Mr. Lytles mortgage so that the bank would pay for the house that now stands there.

Many others, says Mr. Lytle, didnt have such benefactors. Today, most Black people live in public housing. Rates of Black homeownership in the city have declined as housing values and white wealth have soared.

These disparities, rooted in economic and social policy, are now part of the reparations conversation here.

Ashevilles reparations ordinance offers an official apology and vows to create policy and programs that will establish the creation of generational wealth and address reparations due in the black community. It also asks the state legislature and federal government to do the same.

That process may involve replacing lost housing stock by using city-owned land and its bonding authority to create new housing that will boost Black wealth, Sheneika Smith, a Black city councilor, has said.

If a community says were going to redevelop the urban core and were going to favor descendant communities ... you could dramatically and radically reshape a city that way through modest kinds of policies that dont cost a ton of money, says Professor Mullins.

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Reparations is a nonstarter in Congress. Not in this Southern city. - The Christian Science Monitor

The road to riches – Illinois Times

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Illustration by Chris Britt

Dr. Lawrence Hatchett says he feels like he's stuck in a desert.

He grew up in Colp, a southern Illinois village once known as a safe place for African Americans amid sundown towns where folks who weren't white couldn't venture after dark. Basketball was his ticket out. Good enough to land a scholarship at Marquette University, he didn't star but went on to graduate from medical school at the University of Chicago. After a residency in North Carolina, he landed a fellowship at Harvard and ultimately returned to the region of his upbringing, where he practices urology in Marion.

"My best friend, he went to prison; I went to Harvard," Hatchett says. "He's still my most trusted friend."

If all goes well, Hatchett hopes to help folks like his friend by getting into the cannabis business with a little help from the state and perhaps Doc Rivers, who coaches the Los Angeles Clippers and played college ball with Hatchett, who says he's contacted his former teammate asking if he'd like to invest.

Hatchett is waiting for the state to decide whether he'll get licenses to grow and sell weed. By now, he should know. The law says that 75 dispensary licenses were supposed to be awarded on May 1, and 40 licenses to grow pot were due on July 1. But, like hundreds of other applicants for pot licenses in what experts predict will be one of the nation's most lucrative weed markets, Hatchett is waiting long after deadlines have passed.

State regulators blame coronavirus for delays. Hatchett, who is seeking two grow operations and 10 dispensaries, says he's spent $200,000 on the venture with no guarantee of a return. Each application can consume hundreds of pages, fueling a cottage industry of lawyers and consultants to provide guidance and advice on negotiating regulations to come up with a winning plan. Those who want to grow pot must show they have sites available, which can mean paying for options on real estate if applicants don't already have property.

"I'm like a camel that's out in the desert, and I need some water," Hatchett says. "I'm at the point of no return."

Loopholes and going slow

Hatchett and his partners have plenty of company. The state has received thousands of applications for licenses to grow or sell pot, mostly from folks who claim social equity status under a provision designed to give the disadvantaged a leg up.

Dispensaries and cultivation centers now in business that began as medical marijuana operations are mostly white, and often corporate, undertakings. The state says it wants people impacted by the war on drugs to profit from pot, and so it has established a licensing system designed to benefit "social equity" applicants. With 20 percent of the grade based on whether an applicant qualifies under the social equity program, it is the single biggest consideration in awarding licenses.

Hatchett says that he's been approached by well-heeled investors who wouldn't qualify as social equity applicants. " 'Do you really want to do that application on your own are you sure you don't want to join us?'" he recalls.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation has received 4,517 applications for dispensaries, with 4,400 coming from applicants who say they qualify for social equity points. Entities can have more than one license, and of more than 900 entities that have applied, more than 800 have claimed social equity status, the department says. The Department of Agriculture has received 853 applications to grow, transport and make edibles and other non-smokable products from cannabis, with 721 of the applicants asserting they qualify under the state's social equity program.

The numbers make Hatchett wonder.

"How can there be such a high percentage who say they are social equity applicants?" he asks.

Akele Parnell, attorney with the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, has an answer: The law has loopholes, he says, and the definition of "social equity applicant" is overly broad.

"I've seen a lot that makes me wary," says Parnell, who was a lawyer for Green Thumb Industries, a Chicago-based marijuana company with stock traded on the Canadian stock exchange, before taking his current job last year.

Dr. Lawrence Hatchett has applied for licenses to start 10 dispensaries and two grow operations.

People who've been arrested on marijuana charges but not convicted, whether as adults or juveniles, qualify, as do people who've been convicted. Spouses, parents and children of people who've been arrested or convicted of pot offenses also qualify. And so a wealthy person who hired top-notch lawyers to handle his son's arrest for pot possession would meet the standard, Parnell notes. He uses the example of George W. Bush, who was once arrested for driving under the influence: If it had been weed, Bush and his parents if they were still alive and his daughters would all qualify as social equity applicants if they moved here (the law requires that social equity applicants, but not other applicants, live in Illinois). Eric Clapton, who beat the rap in 1968, also would qualify, as would Snoop Dogg, who's been busted more than once.

Where someone lives, or has lived, can also make a difference. Based on demographics that include poverty rates and arrest statistics, the state has identified census tracts deemed to have suffered disproportionately from the war on drugs, and people who have lived in such areas for at least five of the past 10 years qualify. The areas include Jerome, which is adjacent to a dilapidated apartment complex that's been cleaned up, and Humboldt Park in Chicago, where gentrification has taken hold, Parnell says. And so a well-off Humboldt Park denizen who doesn't know anyone who's been arrested could qualify, as would Jerome Mayor Mike Lopez. Dr. Hatchett says he qualifies by virtue of living in a census tract deemed disproportionately impacted.

Parnell also sees a loophole in a provision allowing license seekers to qualify as social equity applicants if they have at least 10 employees and more than half live in areas deemed disproportionately impacted. Employees who've been arrested or convicted of marijuana offenses also count, as do employees who have spouses, parents or children who've gotten busted for low-level marijuana crimes. Parnell notes that there is no requirement that applicants keep such folks on the payroll once licenses are awarded. The entire provision, he argues, should be abolished: Ownership, he says, is what should matter, not whether applicants have hired disadvantaged people.

Parnell also argues for a tiered approach. A rich person with a relative who got busted for weed but was never convicted shouldn't be treated the same as a poor person who served time for pot. Instead, he suggests, give more consideration to people who have suffered the most.

"I think there's going to be a lot of folks who win who are not social equity applicants in the spirit of social equity," says Parnell, who predicts that nearly all of the licenses will go to social equity applicants. "My prediction is, less than 50 percent, maybe 25 percent, will be real social equity applicants. That's a little cynical. I hope that's not the case."

The law also rewards applicants who submit diversity plans that explain how they would provide opportunities in management, contracting and employment. In the case of grow operations, a diversity plan can earn an applicant 100 of a possible 1,000 points, more points than can be gained with plans to train employees or ensure product safety and accurate labeling. Points are awarded in 12 categories, with only social equity status, plans for security and recordkeeping, and business plans that include financing sources and evidence of business acumen carrying more weight than diversity plans. While operators will be required to submit diversity reports when renewing licenses, it's not clear how the state will ensure that diversity plans submitted by successful applicants will be carried out.

Applications are not subject to public disclosure, but the importance of diversity plans was evident last month, when backers of a proposed Pleasant Plains grow operation told neighbors that owners would concentrate on hiring minorities. Chris Stone, who's been in the pot business since the state legalized medical marijuana, explained the proposal to neighbors and said that employees who've been with the company for more than three years will get stakes through a stock ownership program after the business has been in operation for five years.

"The owners...want to provide opportunity for the creation of generational wealth for those that do not have these opportunities currently," backers wrote in a handout distributed to neighbors who attended an informational meeting.

Also, there is a question of scale. Each of the 21 existing cultivation centers established when medical pot was legalized can grow 210,000 square feet of marijuana for recreational use; there is no cap on how many square feet of medical marijuana can be grown. No more medical cultivation licenses will be issued under current law, and no additional large-scale cultivation centers for recreational pot are anticipated. New growers will be capped at 14,000 square feet at full build out. Parnell asks why startups shouldn't be allowed to establish grow operations as large as ones now allowed in an industry dominated by white people.

Photo by Bruce Rushton

LInes are common outside Illinois pot dispensaries, where nearly $240 million worth of pot and cannabis products were sold during the first six months of this year despite shortages.

"The larger ones are going to benefit from economy of scale: It's not a competitive business model," Parnell says. "Can you even survive and, if so, for how long? That's not something that's talked about a lot, but it should be, and it will be."

Toi Hutchinson, a former state senator who helped push the pot legalization bill through the legislature last year and now oversees the state's recreational cannabis program as an adviser to Gov. JB Pritzker, acknowledges that tweaks might be needed as the state gains experience.

"As a former legislator, I know there's no such thing as a perfect piece of legislation I came into this knowing that my whole role would be to identify what we figured out in the beginning and what we're learning as we go," she says. "This is a growth industry that's going to adapt and change and move."

There's nothing to prevent successful applicants who meet social equity requirements from selling licenses, although reduced licensing fees as well as state grants and low-interest loans reserved for social equity enterprises would have to be repaid if licenses are sold within five years of being granted. Larry O'Hern, who owns a Fulton County cultivation center and an interest in a Peoria dispensary, says entities that stand little chance of winning licenses are watching. "There are multiple companies from out of state, like hawks on a fence, waiting for them to be awarded so they can pick them off," he says.

While Hutchinson says the state's cannabis program is set up to promote diverse ownership that endures, there are no guarantees, and licensees can do what they wish with licenses once they are awarded. "I do not want to reduce the property rights of a minority owner so they have less property rights than white counterparts," Hutchinson said.

Hutchinson said uncertainties are why Illinois has adopted a go-slow strategy. The limited number of Illinois dispensary and growing licenses each will come with five-figure annual fees to successful applicants. The law also decrees how many dispensaries will be allowed in given cities. Springfield, where two dispensaries now do business and licenses for two additional dispensaries have been issued, has been allotted one new dispensary in the initial round of applications. By the end of next year, the state is due to issue another 110 dispensary licenses and an additional 60 licenses to grow marijuana. Beyond that, the state has set a hard cap of 500 recreational dispensaries and 150 new recreational grow facilities.

Other states have issued far more licenses, more quickly, and without geographic restrictions. The law requires Hutchinson to deliver a report next spring on whether discrimination exists in the industry and what might be preventing people from entering the pot business.

"We'll be looking at how ownership changes, how it actually ends up growing and changing in real time," Hutchinson said. "These are all reasons why this is a slow, multiyear, phased approach. ... When we get through this phase, we will study this whole process, how it started, how the application process worked, who got licenses, where are the barriers, what does the industry look like."

"We're super-excited"

Dr. Hatchett lauds the goal, and he agrees with limiting the number of licenses. "I give credit to Illinois for this process I really think they're trying to do it the right way," he says. But the wait has not been easy.

Former state Sen. Toi Hutchinson, who helped write the marijuana bill and advises Gov. JB Pritzker, says that starting slow is best.

"It's stressful that we're being put on delay," he says. "We're praying for September."

Hutchinson blames coronavirus for delays in granting licenses that were due in May and last month. The General Assembly, due to a truncated session, didn't pass legislation setting tiebreaker rules in the event top applicants have identical scores, she notes. Absent rules written into statute by lawmakers, the state Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, which establishes rules necessary for agencies to oversee laws, must approve rules. The earliest that can happen is next month.

Also, the application scoring process has taken longer than expected. The state has hired KPMG, an accounting firm, to score applications for dispensaries and growing operations, and more applications were submitted than expected. According to a recent report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the state's contract with KPMG has ballooned from $2.5 million to $6.7 million. The newspaper also has reported that the contract required KPMG to physically pick up applications for dispensary licenses, which wasn't possible because the firm instituted a travel ban in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Parnell says some applicants are skeptical that a travel ban could delay license awards for this long. "A lot of folks are suspicious, I'll say that," he says. "What's the real cause of it? I don't know." But Parnell doesn't dispute that rules to resolve ties are needed, in part to avoid litigation from losers.

Given the number of applicants, there will be plenty of losers. Still, experts say that Illinois is among the most promising marijuana markets in the nation, with predictions of annual sales ranging as high as $4 billion once there is sufficient product and retail outlets to meet demand. During the first six months of this year, nearly $239.2 million in weed, edibles and other cannabis products were sold in the state's 55 recreational dispensaries. Recreational pot isn't legal in any state that touches Illinois, and nonresidents accounted for $56.8 million of the total.

"With its permissive laws for visitors and intelligently constructed plan to make medical dispensaries the first (recreational) dispensaries, the state seems primed for an effective transition and the opportunity to bring in massive business from neighboring states," wrote attorneys for Thompson Coburn, a law firm, in a 2019 ranking of states based on how favorable they are for pot businesses. The silk-stocking firm, which provides legal advice to marijuana businesses, includes such past and present partners as John Cullerton, former Illinois Senate president, Kit Bond, former Missouri governor and U.S. senator and the late Thomas Eagleton, former U.S. senator from Missouri.

Illinois shot from number 18 to number 6 in the firm's rankings, thanks to legalization of recreational pot and a regulatory scheme the firm calls "expansive and canny." Other top-tier states include Oregon, Colorado and Nevada, which have granted far more licenses at lower cost and with less bureaucracy than Illinois. "I would say it comes down to your preference in business," says Michael Rosenblum, a Thompson Coburn lawyer who helped prepare the rankings. "If you feel you can acquire a limited number of licenses, barriers to entry will protect you." On the other hand, small businesses, he says, might prefer states with large numbers of licenses issued at low cost because it's easier to get started.

In a June appearance on "Mad Money," a CNBC television program on the stock market, Ben Kovlar, CEO of Green Thumb Industries, set the future value of the Illinois market at $3 billion. "There are going to be many, many, many winners," he said. "We're super-excited about the Illinois market."

Akele Parnell, a lawyer for the Chicago Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights, sees loopholes and predicts that fewer than half of licensees will meet the spirit of the law designed to create social equity.

GTI, which has two large cultivation centers and five recreational dispensaries in Illinois along with operations in 11 other states, plans to establish an incubator program for startups, which is one way established companies can meet a state requirement to provide financial assistance and otherwise help new licensees. Another way is to write checks for deposit into a state fund set up to provide loans and grants to social equity enterprises. In its most recent annual report, GTI says it has partnerships with other enterprises in four states, including Illinois. "The company structures its joint ventures on a case-by-case basis but generally maintains operational control over the joint venture business and a variable economic interest," the company says.

Partnerships are welcome, Hutchinson says. "It's a fact that small businesses are competing against very big businesses," she says. "I'm hoping to see a lot of these small enterprises hook up or partner. I love to hear entrepreneurs think about it in a very fulsome way."

It is better for regulators to go slow and small at the start than big and fast, Hutchinson says, because what happens now will define the future. "I can't erase the fact that the medical (marijuana) industry existed for six years before we did this," she says. The state, she says, needs to be cautious. "You can't go backwards, you can't unring that bell," she says. "Once they're there, they're there."

Meanwhile, applicants wait. Despite requirements that growers not discriminate in selling product to dispensaries, Hatchett says he needs a growing facility in addition to dispensaries to ensure an adequate supply of product. He isn't banking on getting everything he's asked for.

"If I get more than one location, I'll be tremendously happy," he says. "We're going to have diversity and we'll try to be as independent as possible and bring in people of color."

Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.

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The road to riches - Illinois Times

Opinion Defining defunding the police to help our community – The CT Mirror

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If we asked 25 different people what defund the police means, we would likely get 25 different definitions. Our definition focuses on where the investment should take place while recognizing that public safety is a priority.

A 2014 Pew Research study reporting 52% of African Americans and 63% of Hispanics responded that police do a good job of enforcing the law. While the numbers are not overwhelming and likely have changed due to recent events, they do indicate that there is a level of recognition for a need for a police force. The need for reform will have to wait for another day.

The terms defund and invest are used intentionally as defunding the police does not mean merely saving money. It means investing in our people and our communities to defeat systemic racism, to start saving one person at a time, and to redefine what our expectations of police are. A 2015 report commissioned by President Obama and led by Chief Charles Ramsey, former Commissioner of Philadelphia Police Department and recent consultant on community policing with the Bridgeport Police Department, said that an overarching goal for 21st century policing should promote programs that take a comprehensive and inclusive look at community-based initiatives that address core issues of poverty, education, health, and safety.

On a personal/professional level, we repeatedly have had conversations with police officers themselves who have expressed frustration at societys expectation that they act as social workers, mental health experts, substance abuse counselors, and mediators. At the top of their frustration list is when school resource officers are asked to intervene in a school discipline issue. Naturally, this is the same frustration we hear from urban teachers (who throw in parenting as one of their expectations) who work for an institution that has been defunded for years. We cant make the same mistake here and reduce funding without reinvesting those dollars in interventions that work..

Police are currently asked to intervene in many situations where a crime has yet to be committed. Mental health issues, substance abuse issues, domestic violence cases, pets in trees or distress, health emergencies are all situations where a trained professional may be a better option. And they receive very little training for these activities.

In fact, if our conversations with police officers tell us how they feel about working on these issues they will generally tell you they are not trained to perform them and that they are the most difficult cases for them. So why not transfer these incidents to mental health, substance abuse, social welfare, healthcare professionals where they will be treated by skilled professionals in the field.

Unfortunately, data show Black and brown people are more likely to be treated harshly by law enforcement than white people. The question for us is not to defund the police, but to examine all the ways police are involved in peoples lives and determine their appropriateness and whether they might be handled more effectively by trained professionals and do not result in an arrest.

In our research, we have recently read about Cahoots, a partnership between the Eugene, Oregon Police Department and a community agency that has saved the city $8.5 million dollars annually with the real impact on individuals being transformational. New Orleans has recently outsourced minor traffic accidents to a private company at no cost to the city. Many police departments such as West Palm Beach, Fla. are piloting an Australian co-responding model with a social worker or substance abuse counselor who can respond to overdoses, domestic abuses, or other mental health situations.

We all know that substance abuse/mental health issues are better dealt with by behavioral health specialists who are trained to de-escalate conflicts that may arise because of the substance abuse or mental health issue. Unfortunately, substance abuse has been the primary reason the United States imprisons more people than any country in the world.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, over 70 million Americans have a criminal record and we know the War on Drugs has focused most of its attention on Black and brown communities. Further strengthening the treatment-versus-incarceration argument is the National Institute on Drug Abuses finding that $1 invested in addiction treatment results in $12 in savings on the justice system side.

The actions of young people with developmental disabilities are often misconstrued to mimic criminal behavior. For example, autistic children may be either overly affectionate, which looks like wrestling, or they cant be touched because when you touch them they strike out; both of which they may be arrested instead of more benign and appropriate treatment.

School resource officers or SROs are called to intervene in all sorts of disturbances at school better handled by teachers, administrators, guidance counselors and social workers. Bridgeport Police have removed the physical presence of SROs in schools for a few years now, which has resulted in many fewer school arrests and much more appropriate intervention.

Police also are called whenever there is a health emergency; they accompany firefighters to fires; they respond to lost pets or pets up trees; etc. We have repeatedly heard the narrative backed by multiple research papers about Black people being stopped for broken tail lights, lost mirrors, simply driving while Black or simply looking suspicious. We have seen the narratives of the next step of going for their license and registration that escalate into arrests and even death like Philando Castile.

By utilizing alternative options as discussed above, we prevent and avoid a number of potential negative interactions between police and the community. We provide the space for the police to serve as public safety officers, the space for social workers and mental health counselors to support and treat mental illness, and the space for substance abuse counselors to treat addiction. All professionals get to do what they are good at, what they are trained for, and, most importantly, what they are passionate about.

By ensuring the right professional responds, we keep citizens out of the justice system and reduce the likelihood of negative interaction with the police that sometimes escalates into criminal behavior. Our community is therefore safer. These investments can be incorporated as a team and community response alongside and in partnership with the police and will result in a safer and healthier community.

All of this results in a safer, happier, healthier community and we can agree that that outcome is not a political argument. Our communities need a police force. We just need it to look differently.

Marc Donald is Executive Director of RYASAP (Regional Youth Adult Social Action Partnership) and Robert Francis is the organizations former Executive Director.

CTViewpoints welcomes rebuttal or opposing views to this and all its commentaries. Read our guidelines andsubmit your commentary here.

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Opinion Defining defunding the police to help our community - The CT Mirror

How at 34 I’m working out if I really want to be a mother one day – iNews

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Since my early twenties, the question of motherhood and whether its for me is one I havent fully considered. Like most of the big decisions in my life, Ive avoided tackling it by shoving it to the bottom of my to-do list.

Ive just turned 34, which, according to some fertility experts, means I supposedly have only one year until my biological clock starts plummeting into an oblivion of dwindling eggs and eventually menopause.

My school education didnt really prepare girls for one of the biggest, life-defining decisions theyll make as a woman. Instead, we were taught how to avoid becoming pregnant, which I have to admit is a refreshing change from the days when women were taught our sole purpose was to be a housewife.

My knight in shining armour has come in the form of endless Tinder and Hinge dates

However, were still continually being sold the millennial dream of women being able to have it all a successful career, marriage and kids but the reality has left me feeling disillusioned. My knight in shining armour has come in the form of endless Tinder and Hinge dates, who are mostly not ready for commitment, or say they are, but then leave me on read or just vanish. Then the price of London living is hefty especially when youre doing it on your own, and dont have the high-flying salary to match.

Culturally, I feel like a British-Ghanaian spinster, as back in Ghana a woman is really expected to be married with kids by the age of 25 a complete juxtaposition from my life here. Despite all of my glittering achievements, my dear sweet grandmothers favourite topic to discuss with me on the phone is when are you going to have a baby? This is what she views as the real fulfillment of womanhood especially as she has had 12 children.

All this and more has left me riddled with anxiety about how I can even contemplate becoming a mother in this climate, and it seems Im not the only one who feels this way. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show women under 30 are having babies at a record low and the only age group in which births are increasing is the over-40s.

For those without children like myself, these findings give some assurance that Im not the only one still trying to decide on parenthood. But within my own personal circle, gradually more friends are hopping off the young, free and single bus and switching to married with kids and a mortgage.

Seeing some of my die-hard party compadres transform into doting mothers has been a joy to watch, and has left me playing the role of the cool auntie travelling all over the globe. However, my life has changed since the Covid-19 pandemic. I can no longer jet from country to country or distract myself with endless schmoozing at Londons finest soires. Ive been homebound and will remain so for a while, which leaves me with the time to dwell on the things Ive been putting off, like my personal stance on becoming a mother. Having this opportunity to explore this has led me to looking into options that could potentially buy me more time, or just less mental stress.

Im elated women like myself have more avenues available to us such as adoption, freezing our eggs or heading to the sperm bank. But while these modern choices are game changers, they dont really appeal to me. Freezing eggs seems like a costly process financially, physically and emotionally which, at the end of it, doesnt guarantee a baby. Call me a heartless cynic, but I would rather invest that money into getting on the property ladder.

The short-term benefits of a sperm donor seems like the perfect match for me, but I do worry about never having the answer to whos my daddy? So its a no from me, but I will forever admire the women who have the strength and courage to do it alone.

My quest down the online rabbit hole of parental indecision led me to self-described motherhood clarity mentor Ann Davidman. Ann is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has a private psychotherapy practice in Oakland, California.

Parenthood hesitancy has been her area of expertise since 1991, when she and fellow therapist Denise L. Carlini created a group for the undecided population, like myself, who are seeking help deciding whether to have a child or not. The pair co-wrote a book, Motherhood Is It for Me? Your Step-By-Step Guide to Clarity in 2016.

Fast forward to 2020, Ann counsels both women and men worldwide, in a three-month online Motherhood/Fatherhood clarity group course, costing 800 or for a cheaper price tag, you can follow the guidance and assignments in the book. She has a growing UK clientele, who reach out to her to take part in the online clarity courses or to be counselled individually in one-to-one sessions.

Ann says she has found herself busier than ever in lockdown as the hectic lives of 30 and 40-somethings have been turned down a notch.

This one-of-a-kind program, which I am now participating in, has started my journey to deciphering my own private, uncensored feelings away from the judgement of other peoples opinions. Each week, I am set a writing assignment that aims to help me dissect and evaluate external circumstances that cloud my decision-making when it comes to parenthood.

I am addressing my fear that a child free life is going to be paved with regrets at a later stage

In week one I was set the task of drawing my family map and tracing generational patterns and attitudes to relationships and children. My findings were then discussed on a live call so we could explore any common traits or unsettling feelings. Alongside written assignments are recorded guided visualisations, which come packaged as a healing aid to help you relax and process your subconscious thoughts in a variety of role play scenarios. In one scenario, you visualise that you have decided to become a mother and journal your uncensored initial feelings that come with this decision.

In an alternative scenario, I am addressing my fear that a child free life is going to be paved with regrets at a later stage especially when Im older and my career is no longer the light of my life.

Of her method, Ann explains: Everything is to stir up the unconscious recordings that you carry, and its designed to record the information because often people are reacting to something outside of them, reacting to societys pressure, or living in a pro-natal society, where you are taught you should want children or what someone else wants for you.

Most people who are ambivalent or undecided, they dont even mention it to people because theres so much backlash. Ambivalence in general is uncomfortable for people, so, if you say youre not sure what you want to do about children, people have a hard time with that so that makes you go further underground and [feel] more alone.

She adds: You may desire to be a parent but live a child free life. Each part of that is a personal decision. The important thing is you know why youre making that decision which is really between you and you, its not an explanation you owe to anyone but yourself.

So far in the motherhood clarity mentoring process, Ive dealt with the uncomfortable truth that my thinking behind wanting to become a mum has solely been to keep up appearances as if a baby is a trendy accessory. Ive started shedding those beliefs and moved more towards questioning myself on whether I want the lifelong responsibility of an offspring, and if I am capable of providing them with love, guidance, wisdom, protection and financial security for as long as Im alive?

Im slowly learning that if the answer is no it doesnt make me a horrible person or any less of a woman.

During lockdown Ive spent time researching the pros and cons of motherhood by speaking to friends who have shared their wisdom, joys and honest regrets about becoming a mother. Ive googled and watched almost every Ted Talk on the subject and read numerous articles on the women deciding to go against the grain by remaining childfree and happy.

I have considered my lifestyle as a travel writer and being able to go anywhere in the world at the drop of the hat and how this may look different if I were to become a mother. But from speaking to travel mums who are successfully combining both of these worlds, Ive realised nothing is impossible, and actually family travel could turn out to be just as adventurous as solo travel.

I would say millennials feel more entitled to question and decide for themselves whats going to work, so they are reaching out more and feel less shame about not knowing, says Ann.

Speaking to Ann has made me understand its not a woman vs man battle when it comes to parenthood, as some men are also going through the same complexities of trying to understand what being a father may mean for them. Sometimes men reach out to me because theyre single and theyve been dating and their relationships keep ending over this topic so they want to get clear on it, so they know who to date, she says. They want to do right by themselves and their partner.

Motherhood clarity mentoring is enlightening and is making me feel more comfortable with the thought of becoming a mum one day but only for the right reasons, and Im giving myself the time to work out what these reasons are.

I now know that parenthood hesitancy is not something to be frightened of, as motherhood isnt so black and white. I am also learning to make peace with the fact that if I never have my own children naturally, I have the nurturing and loving spirit most women have. I am already a mother to children like my four Godchildren, who arent my own, but whom I love with the maternal yearnings within me. At any moment I can adopt the role of being a mum because, as the African proverb says, it takes a village to raise a child.

For more information on Ann Davidman and her services visit her website.

Stephanie Takyi is a travel and showbusiness journalist based in London

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How at 34 I'm working out if I really want to be a mother one day - iNews

Asterisk or not, the 2020 NBA champions will be one to remember – Yahoo Sports

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This year's NBA champion will never be forgotten. (Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images)

This quarantine has done nothing but fuel my existentialism. Not mad at it though I like the process of having a seemingly enigmatic thought and dismantling it until I unearth an answer that Im satisfied with. I dont have to like it, but I would like to understand it. Lately, I sometimes find myself wondering what the point of sport is. Since going without for months now, it's expected we have these musings. My brain has been smoothed by superficial notions of productivity (we learn, we work, we die), so when I witness passion through music, sports and art, I hold my breath in a display of reflex. Whats the catch?

There is no traditional quarterly goal with the mentioned modes of cultural production in order to be well regarded. It's all about the outcome the creation itself. People create and add immeasurable contributions to the global zeitgeist. So, when we look back in time and attempt to walk in the shoes of those existing in that specific moment of the past, we look to music, sport, art and film as a way to gauge what the societal atmosphere was like. What did these people watch? What did they hear? Value? Enjoy? Cheer for or against?

These are the thoughts that swam through my head when I pondered whether the 2020 NBA championship would possess the weight and value of years past. There are several rules in the basketball world that define the value of a championship win. Losses due to extenuating circumstances, such as injury to star players, are stricken from the record, to an extent.Wins are devalued if they come at the expense of injury to the opposition or lockout years. Its the way we satisfy our inherent need to rank, quantify and legitimize talent or success.

On the one hand, there are too many intrusive variables bleeding into current play in the bubble to document a championship winner without the dreaded asterisk. Players are bearing the weight and the psychological toll of being separated from family for months on end. This is all within the hurricane of the largest civil rights movement since, well, the civil rights movement, not to mention a global pandemic ravaging the state of Florida particularly harshly.

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Although many may be able to maintain the mamba mentality required to succeed in such an environment, to expect all players to do so is myopic. Trauma exhausts us. It triggers fight or flight responses and cultivates stress reactions. It occupies our minds and throws us into a pit of anxieties. How it manifests itself on the court we have yet to see, but absent-mindedness and reduced court awareness shouldnt be a shock to viewers.

Another variable to consider is the high probability of an outbreak of the virus within the bubble. The NBA itself acknowledged, and seems to be bracing for, the chance of this occurrence. A sick rotation player, let alone superstar, can challenge the integrity of the most balanced egalitarian systems. The race to the Finals and Larry OBrien trophy will be a question of what organization has retained peak physical and mental health. If theres anything we learned over the course of the last few months, its that these things are often times not in our control.

Players that experience a sort of stage fright before thousands of bombastic fans in packed arenas are sure to find themselves easing into shots they may not have otherwise attempted, and the same goes for those who struggle with free throws. Subsequently, professional shooters are already excited at the prospect of flexing their skillset in empty arenas. Orlando Magic sixth man and former Toronto Raptor Terrence Ross has already expressed such, commenting on an Instagram post that the depth perception in these gyms are perfect. Dont let a shooter get hot.

On the other hand, one can substantially argue that this may be the most memorable championship win in recent memory. Considering the ultimate value of sport as a contribution to the collective consciousness and culture, the winner of the trophy during a time of widespread unrest and epidemic will be bookmarked in history forever. The bubble, and all of those within it, will be a relic and reflection of the desperation of fans to see sports again and the desperation of investors to see profits again. Under the best circumstances, the awarded team and their treacherous journey may be viewed as a demonstration of durability and will. Whether people like it or not, the 2020 NBA champions will exist in a realm of perpetuity. Whatever happens, well never forget it and that is worth something.

There have been thorough debates regarding the ethics of resuming the NBA, and sports in general today. There is a pressure to play and there is a passion to play. More frequently than not, the line between the two is blurred. Regardless, the bubble experiment has commenced and Ive found myself hoping for the most organized and safest of executions.

It seems, for observers, that most players themselves see this as a valuable moment in history to use their platform as a means to amplify protest and liberating rhetoric, so perhaps there isnt a need to separate the postseason champion from this larger quest.Ultimately, the team to hoist the Larry OBrien may be dealt with an asterisk to accompany their title for years to come, but any attempt to devalue or erase their contribution to the zeitgeist will be fruitless because, guess what? Youll always remember it.

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Asterisk or not, the 2020 NBA champions will be one to remember - Yahoo Sports

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Richard Florida, Author, The Rise of the Creative Class – pittsburghquarterly.com

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Donald Bonk interviews Richard Florida, influential professor, author and urban theorist, as part of the Pittsburgh Tomorrow podcast series. This is the first part of a three-part interview. The transcript is abridged and edited for clarity.

View the episode archive here. Read Richard Floridas Creative Class bio here. Read his University of Toronto bio here.

weve studied the location of industries and firms for a century, but we really havent studied from an economic geography point of view, from an urbanist point of view, the location decisions of people. That was my motivating question. Why do we as people choose to live in the locations we do? Richard Florida

Donald Bonk: Welcome to a very special edition of Pittsburgh Tomorrow with Richard Florida, influential professor, author and urban theorist. Welcome, Richard.

Richard Florida: Its great to be with you, Donald. Thanks for having me. And its great to be back in Pittsburgh, if only virtually.

Bonk: Well, were happy to have you here. You know what Pittsburghs going through (COVID-19), as is the rest of the world right now, but we really want to focus first on the city of Pittsburgh and also your background; what youre doing and your connection to Pittsburgh.

Florida: Well, I moved to Pittsburgh in 1987 and I was 29 years old at the time. And its an interesting story. I was teaching at Ohio State (Im originally from Newark, N.J.). I got enough money to do a lecture series. I invited all of the eminent urbanists of the time, and they agreed for very small honoraria, to come give a talk in my lecture series.

There was a very eminent urbanist at Carnegie Mellon at the time, in what was then called SUPA, the School of Urban Public Affairs (now the Heinz School); his name was Gordon Clark. As it turns out, Gordon is now the Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford University. He went to graduate school in Canada, was at Harvard, was at the University of Chicago and moved from the University of Chicago to SUPA at Carnegie Mellon.

At the time, Carnegie Mellon was looking to hire a professor jointly between SUPA and Architecture, and they had had many eminent people out, that the two departments couldnt agree on. Very famous people. But Architecture and SUPA are very different places. Gordon said, Why dont you come out and interview for this position? I always heard a lot about the so-called Pittsburgh Renaissance and the comeback of Pittsburgh as an innovative center, artistic center, a great city of neighborhoods.

I went out, and lo and behold, people liked me, even though I was I was different than anyone because the people in SUPA were very technically quantitative. And the people in architecture were architecturally good. Im a qualitative researcher; Im not a quantitative researcher. Im not very numeric or mathematical, but they sort of liked me.

They offered me a job and I said, yeah. Dick Cyert was president of Carnegie Mellon. I forget who else was involved in it; but Dick (President Cyert), for sure, I know (Angel) Jordan was the provost. My dean was Alfred Blumstein.

Anyway, they had a major gift from John Heinz II, who was still alive, and Senator John Heinz III, to establish a center for economic development. Carnegie Mellon had all this capability in science, technology, computer science, electrical engineering, metallurgical engineering and material science. And the idea was to think about the ways to connect that to the economic future of Pittsburgh. I was brought in to help build that, as this young 29-year-old assistant professor.

I was thrust into a vortex of forces that were acting on Pittsburgh in the late 1980s. My growing up in Newark, N.J., and experiencing the civil rights movement and racial unrest, convinced me to be an urbanist as a young boy. I got a college degree at Rutgers (and later a Ph.D. at Columbia in urban studies). Those things and my life in Pittsburgh, where I lived for nearly 20 years, really shaped me as an urbanist.

Bonk: Very interestingthe power of serendipity in many cases.

Florida: Yeah. As a young single guy living in Shadyside, I could walk or bike or take a car to the university. And remember, at that time, this is really interesting; well before I wrote The Rise of the Creative Class, SUPA (CMU School of Urban and Public Affairs) was not in the building in Hamburg Hall. SUPA was in a second or third floor, up the stairs in Margaret Morrison Carnegie College. We were embedded with the arts and dance students.

I still remember my secretary. We had secretaries at the time and my office was lined with file cabinets because we still had paper centric offices.

My secretary, Mary Joyce, was this wonderful woman who supported a half dozen of us. She would say she was always hesitant to go to the restroom because there would not only be girls from the arts and dance program changing in there but there would be boys. Everybody is in the arts. They didnt care; they were artists.

But the point is that SUPA wasnt in computer science or electrical engineering. Our department was actually, literally in the creative hub of Margaret Morrison Carnegie College. Quite an introduction for me to Pittsburgh.

Bonk: It obviously played a role in your later theory. Its just interesting that your foundational experience on a physical level was exposure to the other side of Carnegie Mellon.

Florida: It was a long evolution from when I came to Carnegie Mellon to Rise of the Creative Class. It was a dozen years that I was at Carnegie Mellon before I even began to think in that way, shape or form. It was a long intellectual evolution shaped by my experience in Pittsburgh and at Carnegie Mellon, for sure.

Bonk: That gives us a deeper insight into your career that followed. You had this transformational insight around the turn of the century. Can you tie that to what youve been doing since then? So you were at Carnegie Mellon at the time. The Rise of the Creative Class became an international New York Times bestseller.

Florida: First of all, I had written several other books that were international non-sellers, and I fully expected The Rise of the Creative Class to not sell, other than my parents buying it, my brother and some relatives and friends. I didnt write that book to be a bestseller; I just got really lucky.

As any musician will tell you who has had a hit, they just wrote a lot of other good songs and got lucky. The timing was right. The mood was right. Something happened. Somebody wrote a story on it. I got lucky. And I had written a bunch of other books since and that havent done as well, so I think Ive got a great stroke of luck, but shaped by Pittsburgh.

When I came to Carnegie Mellon, I was thrust into the Center for Economic Development. I had been researching high tech industry complexes like Silicon Valley and Boston Route 128 and what happened in the Research Triangle (North Carolina). I had been studying at Carnegie Mellon with a brilliant economist named Wes Cohen, whos now at Duke.

We had been studying university industry partnerships and had a big grant from the Ford Foundation. University Industry Centers, National Science Foundation Centersall the stuff that Carnegie Mellon does spectacularly well.

At the same time, I was immersed in Pittsburgh. I was literally talking to the mayor. The mayor tells funny stories about me. Former (Pittsburgh) Mayor Murphy says he often introduced me by saying, Richard came to our office talking about the role of universities, and the knowledge and innovation in these research centers. We thought he was from the moon; we thought he was just completely bonkers.

But I was puzzling over what Id call the Pittsburgh paradox. Why, when I looked at Stanford, M.I.T. and Carnegie Mellon, did they look like analogous institutions? Why was Carnegie Mellon producing fantastic research? It was actually, at that point, not (yet) spinning off as many companies into the local environment at the rate of M.I.T. in Boston and Stanford in the Silicon Valley.

The people I was meeting at Carnegie Mellon were going to lead those companies. The head of research at Microsoft was a Carnegie Mellon guy, and the head of research at Apple was a Carnegie Mellon guy. People who were going to what ultimately became Google were from Carnegie Mellon. I see all this flow of people, but Pittsburgh hadnt developed that high tech industry complex. Why?

So I went off to do a sabbatical at Harvard. By this time, I had gotten notorious enough. I hadnt written The Rise of the Creative Class, but I was a young scholar, about 38, 40, and I was invited by a very eminent guy named Harvey Brooks. Harvey was the Benjamin Franklin Pierce Professor of Physics and Applied Engineering, who had really established that unit at Harvard. He was a scientist and engineer and had gone off to establish the Program for Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard.

He had recruited the former head of NASA to join him. He had recruited the former head of science at IBM, Lewis Branscomb, whose father, Harvey Branscomb, was the president of Vanderbilt. I mean, it was like a Whos Who of America. There were Nobel Prize winners that were populating this, and they brought me up there because they looked at Pittsburgh. Plus, Florida is an interesting guy. But look at whats happening in Pittsburgh and the rise of Pittsburgh around Carnegie Mellon. Is that a case that we could use to talk about the role of science and technology university research, to revitalize an older Rust Belt industrial city?

I was writing up my book chapter when I got to the story that I told in The Rise of the Creative Class. I read a story in The Boston Globe which said Lycos (a Search Engine), one of the startups out of Carnegie Mellon, founded by two Carnegie Mellon people, was moving to Boston. I said, Whoa, why?

A lot of us had paid attention, a lot of people in the Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization (at Carnegie Mellon); I, and others, had paid a lot of attention to Lycos. When we began to really dig into it, Lycos was moving to Boston to get access to a talented pool of people that they said were already living in Boston, not just techies.

There were marketing people and management people and all the people that they needed for the businessthe whole ecosystem necessary to grow a company. Thats what tipped me off. I went back to my students in the fall and said, How many of you will live in Pittsburgh when you graduate? Only one hand went up.

Well, (I asked the students), where do you want to go? I want to go to Silicon Valley. I want to go to New York. I want to go to Austin. I want to go to the North Carolina. I dont like Pittsburgh. Its not for me, it doesnt fit meblah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you know all that stuff. But then, why? Why do you want to go there? Well, because its a place I can make friends. I could have friends if there were more people like me. And that started the train of thought.

Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon had always told me, If you find a question nobody else asked, if youre lucky enough, go with that freaking question, Richard. So the question I said is, weve studied the location of industries and firms for a century, but we really havent studied from an economic geography point of view, from an urbanist point of view, the location decisions of people. That was my motivating question. Why do we as people choose to live in the locations we do?

And what are the factors that bear on this? And out of that, out of like three or four years of really horrific hard work, I came up with what we now know as The Rise of the Creative Class. It really was steeped by my experience with Pittsburgh and trying to answer that question.

What happened since? I can never get away from the heartland. I went off and I lived in Washington, D.C. for three years. That was fun. I developed my relationship with Brookings, with The Atlantic, which ultimately led to the formation of CityLab. George W. Bush got elected, an opportunity happened in Toronto.

I always liked Toronto. Its close to my wifes family in Michigan. My wifes family is in the Detroit suburbs. It came with a big research budget to move up to the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. By the way, there were Carnegie Mellon people who had been clueing me in about Rotman.

They had a dynamic young leader named Roger Martin. They had hired a few people, not from SUPA, not from the Heinz School, but from what was then GSIA, the business school, now the Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon. So it came with a $10 million dollar funding program for ten years. And I couldnt turn it down. So I ended up in Toronto, which is where I am now.

Bonk: Just a sidebar: Marshall McLuhan was always a big influence on me. He had mentioned in some of his books that Canada was a great place to look at the United States in particular and look at ideas because its involved in a big part of things, but its also removed.

Florida: Ill tell you right now that the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, it is surreal. It is. Ive always said, quoting McLuhan, that moving to Toronto has helped me learn more about the United States than I ever thought I would because of exactly what you said. You see the two countries in sharp relief.

But, boy, when you look at the dysfunction in our country now and you look at the way we pulled apart compared to the Canadians and Torontonians that have pulled togetherI just want to say this: Canada is a very divided country. It has a very liberal Prime Minister who would be very, much further left than Clinton or Obama. We have a Premier, which is our equivalent of a Governor, whos a kind of a Trumpist populist. His brother was Rob Ford, the crack mayor of Toronto. And we have a mayor in John Tory who wouldnt be elected in Pittsburgh. He would be a Republican. Hes a conservative. But he is a business conservative, kind of like Mike Bloomberg. Some of them literally hate one another. Yet everyone has worked together and now weve almost eliminated the virus.

One other thing Ill say: Theres another Pittsburgh-Toronto connection that bears mentioning on this podcast in the times we live. Toronto is now known alongside Pittsburgh as one of the great artificial intelligence capitals of the world and in many respects, maybe now in some segments more than Pittsburgh, even though Pittsburgh was the birthplace, with Raj Reddy and Herb Simon and Alan Newell.

Theres a fellow named Geoff Hinton. Geoff was at Carnegie Mellon as a professor. Hes a Brit who is pretty left-leaning as many Brits are. In 1980, he saw the United States going off on a wrong track. It elected Ronald Reagan, rightly or wrongly, and more than that, he saw defense funding becoming the principal source of funding for artificial intelligence.

He said, before the University of Toronto was what it is today, Im leaving the United States. Im moving to Toronto. This one guy, Geoffrey Hinton, moving from Carnegie Mellon to the University of Toronto, created the artificial intelligence scene there. Hes an expert in machine learning and deep learning. He and his students who now are all over Canada. Some in Montreal. Some in Edmonton, Winnipeg City, Calgary. When you hear about Canada or Toronto, and artificial intelligence, it all goes back to one guy, Geoffrey Hinton, who moved from Carnegie Mellon to the University of Toronto.

Toronto shows you what the heartland could be. Its a mosaic, not a melting pot. More than half the population was born offshore. It has a similar geography. By the way, the neighborhood that I live in looks like a Pittsburgh neighborhood, except the neighborhood I lived in Pittsburgh was more beautiful because Pittsburgh had more money at the time.

But, it does really feel like home. Even though I would have said as a kid, Ill probably end up staying in New York or living in Boston, or maybe Ill try San Francisco, Ive ended up living, when you think about it, from Ohio State and Columbus, to Pittsburgh for 17 years, thats 20. And now another 13 years in Toronto. Thats a big numbermore than three decades of my life in the Great Lakes region of the world. Its kind of amazing to me.

Bonk: And you found it to be a place where reinvention is taking place. Now, Toronto has an extraordinary urban reputation. Pittsburgh has also benefited from its rethinking, the 2009 G20 being held in Pittsburgh, and acting as a model. Youve been in all these places, so it seems in a way, that youre a leading indicator. It seems youre always ahead of the curve.

Florida: The funny thing about this is, if you looked at the Amazon HQ 2 list, which I did with some criticism, I thought Amazon should look for a great city. I just didnt like the subsidy packages, the incentive packages mayors were giving out.

Every city Ive lived in was on the list. I went to graduate school in New York Cityon the list. Taught at Ohio StateColumbus was on the list. Taught at Carnegie MellonPittsburgh was on the list. Taught at George Mason and lived in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. was on the list. Was a visiting professor at Harvard and M.I.T.Boston was on the list. And finally, because I live in Toronto, we have a winter place in Miami Beach, and Miami was on the list as well as Toronto.

Pittsburgh has been the most formative of all of them. Of all the places Ive lived, Pittsburghs transformation underpinned it all.

Although I think many Pittsburghers would disagree with me on this, I think that my work has been most influential on Pittsburgh of any place Ive ever lived. Now people say Florida; thats not true. When I was talking about the need to focus on talent, Pittsburgh was building giant convention centers and stadiums, focusing on industrial incentives and not really thinking about talent.

And when I was saying with my students. And this was really driven by students at that time, like yourself and others, saying, what would make me want to stay in Pittsburgh is, if the neighborhoods were brought back, and if Oakland was an exciting place. If the neighborhoods around the university were a second downtown and there was this quality of place or amenities, I was really channeling them.

I think Pittsburgh has delivered on that. Toronto had the wind at its back economically. But when I look at the expansion of bike lanes and green space, the transformation of Pittsburgh has been bigger. One of the best cities for bikes. One of the best cities for open space. One of the best cities for X. We were all pushing for that. But were all saying it would never happen, right? In many ways, I think I was lucky to be in Pittsburgh and lucky to develop those ideas. They were part of the Zeitgeist. In many ways, Pittsburgh has delivered on a lot of what I was trying to talk about and think about.

Bonk: Thats why this conversation is so important. When we were thinking about Pittsburghs future, you have probably spent more time thinking about Pittsburgh on so many different levels, that to have this opportunity is to almost take this time machine to look back at it from 2020.

I have to admit, having been in Pittsburgh the last 13 years, I didnt think it was going to make as much rapid progress as it has. Its been gratifying to me personally. My question now, though, is where we go from here.

Pittsburgh has made this extraordinary progress. You were a driver. Your ideas affected you and Pittsburgh in ways that even you didnt anticipate. But now were at a jumping off point.

I always said Pittsburgh was going to make a comeback. I knew in my bones growing up in western Pennsylvania that all those base elements you talked about were there. It was only a question of, if they could be catalyzed. The question I have is, how high of a bounce?

Weve made this bounce to Pittsburgh in 2020, which is much better than it ever was. Things are going well. Obviously, COVID is a challenge. Well touch on that. But the question is, how much further can it go and how is that put in the context of other great cities? So with that, maybe I can segue into this question about what would make Pittsburgh the most ideal city in the world, or the best city. If you can, put that in context with your other urban experiences, not only in America, but internationally.

Florida: I think Pittsburghs transformation is remarkable. Its more than either of us would have expected. And I think thats noted in the United States and globally. The fact that it was an Amazon HQ 2 finalist, whether or not it would win. I didnt think it would win; its too small and it didnt have the air connections. But whether or not it won, it was recognized as one of the 20 most important headquarter cities in the United States, if not the world.

So, its back. Its attracting people. Its attracting innovators. Its attracting artists. Pittsburgh, to my mind, is in the same group of cities where, when I was writing The Rise of the Creative Class, you might have said Boston was an up and coming city at that point, where 10 years ago you said Nashville. Pittsburgh is like that now, but better because its in the Midwest; its not in this kind of Sunbelt.

So I think its back at baseline. And I think it has a big upside. What I would pose for Pittsburgh is be the best smaller city in the world. Bar nonethe best, most innovative, most inclusive, most resilient, healthiest.

Back to COVID-19. Pittsburgh Medical Center, UPMC, the incredible medical complex. The focus on Health Technology, Urban Technology, surveillance technology, artificial intelligence technology coming out of Carnegie Mellon. The affordability of this city, the social cohesion, the way it pulled together in the wake of numerous tragedies, including the terrorist attacks on the temple in Squirrel Hill.

Look, Pittsburgh should pose the goal to be the best small city in the world. Its not going to be London or New York or Paris. It doesnt have to be. But it could be the best smaller city. Whats the population of the metro now? About 2, 2.5 million. Thats what it should be. It should be the best small metro in the world. There shouldnt be a better one. That scale should be wonderful because once you get the 5 million, you have to grow differently. You need to really grow around transit and trains and highways. Cars dont work and you get congested and you need much higher density in terms of multifamily, tower living.

I think Pittsburgh could be the best, the most livable, the most sustainable. And I would echo the most racially and economically inclusive. Mayor Peduto is an old friend of mine from my Pittsburgh days. Hes put an emphasis on inclusive innovation. I think this idea of a shared prosperity, harking back to the union movement, the steelworkers, to people who struggle, who literally fought pitched battles in the streets of Homestead in along the Monongahela River. I think Pittsburgh should be the model of the best, the most equitable, the most inclusive, the healthiest, the safest and most resilient small city in the world.

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Richard Florida, Author, The Rise of the Creative Class - pittsburghquarterly.com

Scream queens: Remembering the short-lived queer villains of horror – The Independent

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It was the late 1970s, and the burgeoning gay rights movement had become too important for Hollywood to ignore. A decade earlier, the Stonewall riots had led to a wave of political progress sexual orientation was becoming a new factor in anti-discrimination laws across the United States; pride marches and grassroots gay and lesbian organisations were born; and collective demand for equality reached fever pitch. In tandem with the real world, cinema got queered, too. In 1980, three major movies were released that featured openly queer leads. They also happened to be murderers and psychopaths.

In William Friedkins erotic thriller Cruising, Al Pacino is a rookie cop who ventures into New Yorks leather scene to catch a gay killer targeting other gay men. In Brian De Palmas Dressed to Kill, a transgender psychiatrist embarks on a series of sordid murders, with two plucky straights tasked with unravelling the mystery. And in Gordon Williss Windows, a vulnerable young woman is stalked by her lesbian best friend, who secretly watches her through a telescope and pays a man to sexually assault her.

All three are sleazy metropolitan nightmares, with naive heterosexuals terrorised by the queer unknown. They were also picketed during their respective productions, before being engulfed by controversy upon release. At a time when positive representation was most needed, these movies were awash in negative portrayals of queerness. But in the intervening decades since their release 40 years ago, its possible to view them in another light. Theres a strange power to these films, primarily because depictions of deliciously evil and unambiguously queer villainy are so rare. Two have been reframed as cult classics: Cruising and Dressed to Kill are today typically regarded as transgressive queer thrillers awash in deliberate luridness, their modern appreciation speaking to the ebbs and flows of queer acceptance. They also showcase how stagnant queer representation in the mainstream has tended to be in the decades since.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

In 1979, months after the assassination of Harvey Milk, Californias first openly gay elected official, this trio of movies were seen as a matter of life and death. Cruising is not a film about how we live, it is a film about why we should be killed, wrote Arthur Bell in New Yorks Village Voice newspaper. He would urge gay New Yorkers and allies to disrupt production of the film and play loud music during the shooting of street scenes. A San Francisco-based activist group known as Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media similarly called for a boycott of Dressed to Kill and Windows, with both films accused of glorifying violence against women and demonising the lesbian and transgender communities.

Considering all three films were written and directed by straight men, and the idea of queer equality was at the time so frightening to conservative America, few of their narratives were particularly surprising. After all, the country was built on a rigid understanding of sex and gender, and anyone existing outside of a repressed value system tended to be feared. If the cinema of the 1970s, from Dirty Harry to Death Wish, had instructed audiences to fear the black, working-class male, the 1980s seemed to pick the LGBT+ community as the new boogeyman.

This demonisation, says Dr Jon Mitchell, senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of East Anglia, was a continuation of the instincts hardwired to the American psyche. The US has a long history of constituting itself against otherness, he explains. Whether its the Puritans with the devil and witches, the US against the Soviets, or militia groups against the new world order. The sexual psychopath was just one in a long cast of villains.

Sexual bohemia: Al Pacino in Cruising (Lorimar/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Elements of the outrage channel the times. At a moment in which the most vocal opponents of gay rights would talk of the leather-clad deviance of queer sex, Cruisings exclusive focus on gay kink which would serve as an introduction to queer sex for many viewers at the time wasnt a particularly everyday depiction. The terrible screenplays for both Windows and Dressed to Kill also meant their respective villains were confused creations. In Windows, its sole lesbian character seems to believe a straight womans sexuality would change if she is assaulted by a man. And Dressed to Kills ignorance reduces transgender identity to a kind of split-personality disorder, the films villain being at the mercy of male and female psychological personas who are fighting for control.

They traffic in problematic tropes, says Mitchell of the trio of films. Theres the dead gay, the sexual psychopath, the pervert, the paedophile. This isnt to say that the film-makers were doing it deliberately but theyre there to appease the cultural sensitivities of the conservative zeitgeist.

Of the three films that appalled queer audiences in 1980, only Cruising could be considered a genuine work of art. While theres a detached, almost anthropological quality to Friedkins dramatisation of gay sexuality, theres also something richly empathetic about his approach, too. The leather bar at the centre of the film is presented as a space of sexual bohemia, with a freedom to dance and drink and explore that is cruelly absent from the rigid confines of the heterosexual world depicted elsewhere. The spectre of Aids on the horizon the first reported case was declared just over a year after Cruisings release adds to the films unexpected sense of melancholy, even if only in hindsight.

Hacky: The original theatrical poster for Windows (United Artists)

Theres also a curious subtext to Pacinos character, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the killers victims, and who immediately returns home to have sex with his girlfriend at the end of each undercover shift. When he articulates to a superior his concern about being in too deep while undercover, it can easily be read as a sexually confused man shocked to discover what gets him off. The films famously ambiguous ending, with Pacino appearing to transform into what he most fears (either metaphorically or literally), only accentuates his characters potential queerness.

While their hacky scripts prevent them from being genuinely great movies, Windows and Dressed to Kill have their virtues. The former is visually gorgeous, as Willis, a celebrated cinematographer whose work includes The Godfather, Manhattan and Klute, filled the screen with vivid blacks and crisp shots of autumnal Brooklyn. The latter, meanwhile, is nicely aware of its own griminess, its narrative failings eclipsed by De Palmas stylish showmanship. Its arguably the filmmaker in his aesthetic prime, full of OTT split screens, killer trans women in designer shades and porn star body doubles. Not a single person involved seems to take it seriously, which entirely rescues it.

Despite many of their failings, what is shared by all three movies is their embrace of outwardly queer villainy. Dangerous in 1980, its almost novel today. Queerness has always existed in horror genre antagonists, but historically it has been buried in the subtext. James Whale, one of Hollywoods first openly gay directors, imbued his films with subtle queer themes, notably the zany flamboyance of Bride of Frankenstein. Few could argue that Rebeccas Mrs Danvers, a tyrannical housekeeper fixated on the beauty of her former mistress, was anything other than a coded queer villain, while Psychos Norman Bates, a fey murderer who dresses up as his dead mother, was a gay, Freudian nightmare.

Cruising, Dressed to Kill and Windows are upfront about it all. Their villains are villainous literally because theyre queer, individuals pushed into madness by rejection and hostility from objects of affection, from family or society at large. Viewed in 2020, theyre like something out of an alternate universe. Only Dressed to Kill still seems potentially destructive. One of the great sadnesses of its 40th anniversary is that many of its baffling misunderstandings of trans identity are suddenly relevant again. Even a decade ago, when trans people werent being so regularly villainised in the mainstream press, Dressed to Kill could have been described as harmless, its messaging so obviously ludicrous. That no longer seems the case.

Coded: Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson in Rebecca (United Artists/Kobal/Shutterstock)

It is, of course, for the greater good that American cinema shifted away from this kind of representation. By 1982, a year into the Aids crisis, major studios were producing films like the forgotten coming-out comedy Making Love, as well as the lesbian track-and-field drama Personal Best. More sensitive portrayals of queer life came later, via the moving Longtime Companion (1989) or the heavy-handed Philadelphia (1993), about a homophobic lawyer taught the error of his ways by a kindly gay man dying of Aids. Instead of being demonised, queer characters were humanised by their physical and emotional proximity to straight ones the message evolved into we are all the same, ironing out much of the complexities or nuance.

It was progress, but also a vague form of assimilation. The queer sitcoms of the 1990s followed suit, with gay characters almost indistinguishable from their straight counterparts be it the upper-middle-class domesticity of lesbian couple Carol and Susan on Friends, or Will of Will & Grace, a gay man depicted as respectable and elegant, whose relatable neuroses were so often contrasted against the loud, delusional queeniness of Sean Hayess Jack. Complex depictions of queerness, of a kind that could be sexy, violent or difficult, were confined to the fringes of film-making, via indie pioneers like Gregg Araki, Cheryl Dunye, Rose Troche and Todd Haynes.

On-screen queerness has become more nuanced in recent years, particularly via queer storytellers from Lena Waithe and Mae Martin to Jeremy O Harris. It remains elusive, though, to see queer villains of overt evilness in something that would ever touch a multiplex, studios often fearful to present queerness as anything other than resolutely good.

Even something as woeful as Windows seems radical as a result, awash with such extreme levels of ill-judged bad taste that it becomes glorious. Like Cruising and Dressed to Kill, it is offensive and shocking and deeply trashy. And nothing could be more queer.

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Scream queens: Remembering the short-lived queer villains of horror - The Independent

Where Virtual and Augmented Reality Stand in 2020 – Variety

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In the mid 20th century, prognosticators foresaw a near-future where ordinary people would traverse the skies in flying cars and jetpacks.

That future never came, but something similar occurred in the middle of the last decade: tech pundits and industry boosters told us that hundreds of millions of people around the globe would soon be donning virtual reality goggles to play games, watch 360-degree videos and live sporting events, remotely interact with friends and relatives as if they were in the same room, and tour art museums, historical landmarks and far-off lands from the comfort of their couches.

Reality Check, the new 21-page special report from Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP), explores the hype machine behind virtual and augmented reality, and how investors, particularly in the entertainment space, may have jumped the gun too soon and projected outlandish expectations onto a medium that still has plenty of significant, unexplored potential.

The initial wave of investments in VR and AR following Facebooks acquisition of start-up Oculus VR in 2014 was a seemingly great sign for the gaming and tech spaces, with up to an estimated $2.3 billion in funding for VR and AR companies in 2016 (per Digi-Capital).

But something happened on the way to VR and ARs happy Hollywood ending.

The first wave of consumer VR headsets was greeted with underwhelming sales and complaints about eye fatigue, motion-induced nausea, blurry visuals, and a dearth of quality content. When AR smart glasses hit the market, the results were similarly disappointing, with price tags too high for the average consumer and entertainment applications that clearly werent ready for prime time.

By the late 2010s, it looked like virtual reality might join flying cars on the ash heap of techs broken promises, but the success of the Oculus Quest, released in 2019, is a rejuvenating sign of VRs commercial potential when the customer experience is prioritized.

However, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has spelled trouble for the industry, with consumers tightening their pockets and worldwide location-based VR outlets shutting down out of necessity.

As this report reveals, the future of VR may still shine bright and glossy, but the time for whimsical fantasizing is over, as this future wont be exactly what we envisioned, it wont necessarily wear a headset, and it certainly wont unfold across the timetable we were hoping for.

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Where Virtual and Augmented Reality Stand in 2020 - Variety

Curiious and Inner-City Arts Recognised for Game-Changing Virtual Reality Education Platform – PRWire

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Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, CA, August 6, 2020 A world-first educational Virtual Reality partnership between Inner-City Arts, a leading provider of quality arts education for underserved children in Los Angeles, and Curiious, an immersive communication company from Sydney, has finished 2nd in the Best of the Best segment for the California By Design TV series.

The first-of-its-kind VR platform, IQ, was developed by Curiious. Virtual Reality is typically designed for full individual immersion, but the IQ platform uniquely allows students to interact with each other live in the virtual environment and undertake a shared learning experience for the first time. It also allows teachers to synchronise a set of headsets, enabling them to monitor the classroom on a device such as a tablet, which acts as a virtual whiteboard; what the teacher annotates onto the tablet appears within the VR environment in real time.

Thanks to the generous support of Irwin J. and Patti Jaeger, Inner-City Arts deployed the Curiious IQ Creators Toolkit and enabled its students, using VR headsets, to design communities on Mars and immerse themselves in co-created 360-degree animations.

The partnership was highlighted as part of the California By DesignTV series, culminating in the Best of the Best program which aired on Saturday, August 1 on CBS 2 and CBS 5, and can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/yT5vC2BAB1M?t=1078

Its [using] new educational methodologies, and it's challenging students to think creatively and collaboratively in new ways, said California By Design Judge Caroline Flagiello on the program.

Were extremely proud of this recognition, and its a remarkable start to our adventure with Inner-City Arts, said Brett Heil, founder of Curiious. Its a tremendous achievement and validation of all of the incredible work our team has put into the IQ platform and the programs that Inner-City Arts has used so effectively.

The partnership remains in the running for the Peoples Choice award (votes can be lodged here). Voting closes August 9 US time, with the winners to be announced August 10.

Next for Curiious and Inner-City Arts, taking the VR environment beyond the four walls

The response to the platform from students, teachers, and now California By Design has emboldened the two organisations to take the platform to other communities, with Curiious able to now deploy the platform via the cloud using Microsoft Azure.

The continued partnership between Inner-City Arts and Curiious will support our collective goal of expanding access to students by removing location barriers, shared Collette Alleyne Williams, Inner-City Arts Chief Education Officer. Students will explore creativity in a way that fosters the development of 21st Century skills and social-emotional learning, building their confidence, understanding of their emotions, self-control, and ability to improve decision-making skills. Inner-City Arts will utilise VR as a delivery tool to enhance the creative process and discovery that exists in all studios across all art forms.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Inner-City Arts campus has moved its classes online, with virtual attendance of the schools art-based classes further vindicating the two organisations plans to enable remote access to the Curiious IQ Creators Toolkit and its social and emotional learning (SEL) capabilities, including Curiious SEL programWISE,for Inner-City Arts students and, soon, to other institutions and partners both in the US and abroad.

With VR there is no need for everyone to be within the four walls, and our goal is to enable remote access to these shared learning experiences, said Curiious Heil. The pandemic has highlighted the need for engaging remote learning, but were looking at this capability in spite of the pandemic, not because of it.

"We are evolving and changing globally in so many ways," said Steve Sobalvarro, Media Arts Teaching Artist at Inner-City Arts who has been educating young people since 2001. "It is my belief that our approach to education must follow. Working with Curiious and their VR software presents new and innovative ways for educating my students. The ability to control and annotate on top of 360 videos and the power to customise and create content that can be viewed and shared in VR are very exciting. These engaging and entertaining experiences for my students will continue to open doors to uncharted approaches to creativity, learning, and collaboration."

ABOUT CURIIOUS

Curiious is an Immersive Learning Company which focuses on setting new benchmarks in learning and measurement. For more than 20 years it has used creativity & technology to solve problems, grow businesses and challenge communication. With offices in Sydney and Los Angeles, they create outcome-driven immersive experiences, backed by the latest technology, innovative design and strategic thinking to captivate, inspire and educate audiences. http://WWW.CURIIOUS.COM

ABOUT INNER-CITY ARTS

Founded in 1989, Inner-City Arts is a learning oasis in the heart of Downtown Los Angeles. Under the guidance of professional teaching artists, Inner-City Arts students are immersed in a safe and supportive environment where they may engage in a variety of visual and performing art forms in a studio setting. Services include core classes during the instructional day for grade K-8 students, after school and weekend workshops for teens, and creativity based professional development training for educators. Children who attend Inner-City Arts develop skills that are highly valued in the 21st century workforce such as collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.

http://WWW.INNER-CITYARTS.ORG

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Those wishing to support Inner-City Arts efforts to help youth and families with creative arts learning can get involved at http://www.inner-cityarts.org/get-involved.

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Curiious and Inner-City Arts Recognised for Game-Changing Virtual Reality Education Platform - PRWire

5 Best virtual reality headsets 2020 from Oculus Rift S and Valve Index to PS4 VR – The Sun

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VIRTUAL reality (VR) is growing at an unprecedented rate.

From design to medical applications, this technology is becoming cheaper and more powerful by the day, allowing for new horizons to be explored.

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Of course, gaming is still at the top when it comes to VR use, and several games are bringing this tech to the next level.

As this technology evolves, it also becomes more affordable, compact, and easier to use.

Whether you're interested in virtual reality for games or other applications, however, finding the right headset is not always an easy feat, as flag-ship headsets' prices can still be quite prohibitive.

Using our experts' knowledge and user rating around the web, we have selected the best virtual reality headsets for your money.

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CPU: 4 Kryo 280 Gold (ARM Cortex-A73 based) @ 2.45 GHz + 4 Kryo 280 Silver (ARM CortexA73 based) @ 1.9 GHz. Memory: 4 GB x2. Storage: 64 GB, 128 GB. Display: PenTile OLED 1440 1600 per eye @ 72 Hz. Graphics: Adreno 540. Sound: Integrated stereo speakers, 2 3.5 mm headphone jack. Input: 6DOF inside-out tracking through 4 built-in cameras. Controller input: 2nd generation Oculus Touch motion tracked controllers. Camera: 4 cameras. Connectivity: USB Type-C, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi. Online services: Oculus Store. Weight: 571g

If your goal is to enjoy a virtual reality experience free from wires and without the need for powerful computers, look no further than the Oculus Quest.

The first truly all-in-one gaming headset, the Oculus Quest packs some interesting specs at a record-low price.

The tag price of 499.00 may seem daunting, but in the realm of high-specs VR headsets, that's actually a pretty good deal, as you won't need to spend anything else on an expensive PC.

No cables or external sensors also means you can charge your Oculus Quest in minutes via the provided USB-C cable and start playing straight away.

Put on the headset, create manual "gaming boundaries" with the help of the Quest's sensor cameras, and you are ready to go.

The headset will warn you if you're leaving the area, so you can rest assured you're not going to smash your TV while playing Beat Saber.

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Display: 5.7" OLED, 100 field of view. Graphics: 1080p RGB (960 1080 per eye; 90120Hz refresh rate). Sound: 3D audio through headphone jack, and available microphone input. Input: Positional tracking with 9 LEDs via PlayStation Camera. Controller input: DualShock 4 controller, PlayStation Aim, PlayStation Move. Camera: PlayStation Camera. Online services: Play Station Network. Weight: 600 g.

Coming down to only 249.00 but requiring a PlayStation 4 system, the Sony PlayStation VR is undoubtedly the best VR headset for console gaming.

With a responsive refresh rate and excellent head tracking, the PlayStation VR is an excellent competitor in the real of high-specs VR headsets.

It also has access to Sony's numerous PS exclusives and will be also compatible with the upcoming PS5 console.

The main downside of the PS VR headset has been for a while the fact that it required different sensors to work properly, such as PlayStation Camera and Move controllers.

However, Sony has recently started releasing bundles including these accessories for anyone who wants to start experiencing virtual reality.

Do you own a PS4? Then the PlayStation VR is probably the best headset for you.

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Display: Display of inserted smartphone. Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.2 BLE private profile. Lens (interpupilary distance (IPD) / eye relief): 62mm (fixed) / 10mm. Controller input: Motion Controller. Online services: Play Store. Weight: 345 g.

Before exploring the two most expensive and high-end VR headsets on the market, it is useful to mention here the Samsung Gear VR, as it is the best mobile headset by a long shot.

Of course, with the Oculus Quest changing the perception of VR on-the-go, it is uncertain if smartphone-powered VR headsets will retail their crown over the mobile VR market.

However, the biggest flaw of smartphone-powered VR headsets so far has been the lack of dedicated controllers, which made the gaze-based navigation frustrating at best.

The 2017 version of the Samsung Gear VR introduced a handy motion controller that works remarkably well.

Combined with the extremely low tag price of 114.49, this makes the Samsung Gear a good and cheaper alternative to any other mobile headset.

Of course, you'll have to have a decent Samsung smartphone to utilise the full power of this headset.

The Samsung Gear VR is compatible with most Samsung phones, including the Galaxy S9, S9+, Note8, S8, S8+, S7, S7 Edge, Note5, S6 Edge+, S6 and S6 Edge.

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Display: Fast-switch LCD 25601440 (12801440 per eye) @ 80 Hz. Sound: Integrated speakers. Input: 6DOF inside-out tracking through 5 built-in cameras. Controller input: 2nd generation Oculus Touch motion tracked controllers. Camera: 5 cameras. Online services: Oculus Store. Connectivity: Display Port 1.2, USB 3.0. Weight: 500 g.

A glance at the specs above will give you an idea why the Oculus Rift S is a great headset.Like its predecessor, the Rift S requires a high-end PC to truly shine.

The VR experience is somehow encumbered by the presence of cables on the back of the headset, but the trade-off is definitely worth it, as the Oculus Rift S packs in some spectacular graphics.

However, the headset only reached the second place in our list because it's only an incremental update when considering its predecessor Oculus Rift.

In fact, while the Rift S is easier to set up, has a wider game library than the Rift at its launch and has an improved resolution, it is a downgrade when it comes to audio and refresh rate.

5. The best PC VR headset: Valve Index

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Operating system: Windows, Linux. Display: 28801600 (14401600 per eye) LCD @ 80Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, or 144Hz. Sound: Integrated headphones, 3.5mm audio jack, built-in dual microphone array. Controller input: Valve Index Controllers (formerly known as Knuckles controllers). Camera: Front-facing 960960 stereo cameras. Connectivity: DisplayPort 1.2, USB 3.0 expansion port. Online services: Steam. Weight: 809 g.

The king of commercial virtual reality on the market, the Valve Index is the next-gen VR headset that everyone has been waiting for.

Extremely-high quality display, tracking of all fingers via motion controller and a wider field of view are only some of the best VR features this headset has to offer.

A consistent upgrade from the HTC Vive, the Valve Index also has an extensive game library via Steam.

With a price of almost 400, the headset is not cheap, but it is the only way to access the world of next-gen virtual reality.

As you might have noticed from the prices above, virtual reality headsets greatly vary in price, depending on a series of factors. The most obvious one is the distinction between mobile and desktop-powered VR headsets.

The first ones are usually cheaper, starting from a few quid for a Google Cardboard (which you can make yourself if you feel so inclined), to a little over 100 for the Samsung Gear VR, our pick for best mobile-powered VR headset.

If your smartphone is not compatible with the Samsung Gear VR, there are a series of mid-range mobile VR headsets you can check-out on Amazon.

In the middle between smartphone-powered and PC headsets are the standalone ones. A still quite niche category of which the Oculus Quest is the undisputed best.

Virtual reality headsets can be used for a variety of things. While gaming applications are still the most widespread by far, there are many apps today aiding people in various tasks.

For example, shoppers are using virtual reality experiences to visualise items of clothing and try them on.

VR is also used in healthcare, to train surgeons before they operate on humans, and to treat patients who suffer from anxiety and other mental conditions.

Finally, virtual reality is widely used in education, to deliver interactive learning experiences on a larger scale, and to reach rural areas which otherwise would have no access to education.

Of course, you can also watch movies in virtual reality. The quality of the footage itself will have to be high-quality to avoid blurry images, and the resolution of your headset will play a fundamental part in delivering an optimal experience.

That being said, in order to be able to watch something from "within the scene", the footage you're watching needs to be recorded using a 360 camera. YouTube is full of such videos, and you'll be able to experience them yourself with any VR headset.

If the video you're trying to watch was not filmed with a 360 camera, however, what you'll get is more or less a traditional "cinema" experience.

Many headsets have integrated software to play videos, and if you try to watch a regular movie, it will play in front of you, as if you were standing in front of a giant screen.

Not as immersive as with a 360 video, but definitely worth a shot if you have a good VR headset.

As mentioned earlier, you can assemble a complex system to enjoy virtual reality's capabilities to the fullest.

In addition to your headset and controllers, you'll be able to add further sensors for more accuracy in your control of the virtual environment, a sound system to enjoy truly directional sounds, and much more.

However, if you usually play virtual reality in a small space or if you can't be bothered setting up a complex system, you can always use a mobile VR headset and jump into the action immediately.

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This article and any featured products have been independently chosen by The Sun journalists. All recommendations within the article are informed by expert editorial opinion. If you click a link and buy a product we may earn revenue: this helps to support The Sun, and in no way affects our recommendations.

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5 Best virtual reality headsets 2020 from Oculus Rift S and Valve Index to PS4 VR - The Sun