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World Rugby makes stand clear on Nasilasila situation – Fijivillage

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

World Rugby says it does not condone any person convicted of a serious crime and currently serving their sentence undertaking any official rugby activities under Union jurisdiction.

In a statement released last night, World Rugby says following reaction from many areas to reports regarding the alleged participation of Amenoni Nasilasila for the Namosi team in Fiji, this position has been clearly communicated to the relevant bodies who have confirmed that the player in question was not permitted to participate in such activity.

It further says rugbys core values are fundamental to the game and World Rugby will continue to drive positive action to ensure they are reflected across the sport, on and off the field.

The world governing body for rugby says as such, World Rugby is fully supportive of and will continue to work with Oceania Rugby and its Unions on the important work being undertaken in the region in partnership with ChildFund and UN Women.

Nasilasila who raped a 24-year-old woman in a settlement in Sigatoka on 22nd December 2018 was spotted training with the Namosi rugby team earlier this month at the Suva Grammar School ground.

On 29th October last year, Nasilasila also took part in a scrimmage session between the Tuvalu 7s team and the Wardens Team which was preparing for the Oceania Rugby Sevens tournament.

This was only five days after he was sentenced to 8 years imprisonment by Judge Justice Daniel Goundar in the Lautoka High Court.

Advocates still fighting to have Emancipation Day recognized across Canada | News – Daily Hive

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

While Juneteenth (June 19) is celebrated in many US states as its Emancipation Day, Canada does not have an official day to recognize when members of its Black community were freed from slavery.

The day does exist though, because while unknown to some, August 1 marks the day that chattel slavery officially ended in Canada and across the British Empire.

According to the Royal Commonwealth Society of Canada (RCSC), in March 1793, John Simcoe, then Governor of Upper Canada what is now Ontario learned that an enslaved woman named Chloe Cooley was forcibly bound and taken by boat across the Niagara River to be sold.

Nobodys perfect, but the good part about Simcoe is that he saw something that happened that was wrong and tried to address it,Rosemary Sadlier, an author and chair of the Toronto branch of the RCSC, told Daily Hive in an interview. That is what caused him to attempt to end the enslavement of people of African descent in this country.

However,Sadlier says he was forced to compromise asmany of the officials he worked with in government-owned slaves and were not interested in giving them up.

That same year, Simcoe managed to pass legislation banning the importation of enslaved Africans into Upper Canada and guaranteeing freedom for the children of enslaved Africans born after that date when they reached the age of 25.

TheRCSC says this isthe first such law of its kind in the British Empire, and it would eventually lead to the abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in 1807.

It would still take almost 30 more years for the kingdom to pass the Slavery Abolition Act and fully bring an end to chattel slavery on August 1, 1834, in Britain, Canada, and several other colonies.

Ontario is currently the only province to have officially recognized Emancipation Day, and the August civic holiday that falls on the first Monday of the month has been named Simcoe Day in honour of the abolitionist.

ToSadlier, however, who has been lobbying to have the day recognized officially for 25 years, Ontario was only one of many steps to see the day officially recognized across the country, a battle still being fought today.

In 1999, a private members bill would be brought to the house of commons by the lateDeepak Obhrai, an MP for Calgary East, proposing the official recognition of the day.

It is important to recognize the heritage of Canadas Black community and the contributions that it has made and continues to make to Canada, the bill reads. Whereas it is also important to recall the ongoing international struggle for human rights, which can best be personified by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and it is appropriate to recognize August 1 formally as Emancipation Day and to celebrate it.

The bill would not reach a third reading in parliament, however, falling victim to a common political stumbling block the end of the parliamentary session.

It went to second reading twice in the house under Deepak Obhrai, whos now deceased, says Sadlier. The records still remain of what he said and what he did, but because governments change and what have you it never got the third reading.

Several other bills would follow, including in 2008, and again in 2018. A petition was also sponsored by Beaches-East York MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith asking for the commemoration of the day.

While the petition was politely declined by the government,based on already existing commitments to multiculturalism,the bill then made it to a second reading in the Senate but once again, the session would end.

More recently, Sadlier added, in March it went to first reading in the house and then COVID came.

While Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard, a supporter of the bill, would say at the time we were watching pandemics of racism and COVID-19 collide across the world, the emergence of the health crisis has stalled the bill once again.

Undeterred, the advocates of recognizing Emancipation Day continue to work for its passage.

It speaks to the resistance, it speaks to unity, it speaks to the efforts of people of African descent to make themselves free,Sadlier said, but it also speaks to those people on the other side of the equation who even if they may have come to the party a bit late did choose to work towards ending slavery.

There were advocates on both sides of the racial divide who were working towards the same purpose. And if we can look at that effort to work together and bring that into the present, continually, well then I think were doing a great job.

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Advocates still fighting to have Emancipation Day recognized across Canada | News - Daily Hive

Ask the author: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the loneliness of original work – SCOTUSblog

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

[A] man of high ambitions must face the loneliness of original work. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Brown University Commencement Address (1897)

The following is a series of questions posed by Ronald Collins toCatharine Pierce Wells in connection with her new book, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Willing Servant to an Unknown God (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Catharine Pierce Wells is a professor of law and a Law School Fund research scholar at Boston College Law School, where she teaches and writes in various areas of legal theory, including pragmatic legal theory, feminist jurisprudence and civil rights theory. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and also earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wells articles on Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes have appeared, among other places, in the Journal of Supreme Court History. Her new book was published in the Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society series, edited by Christopher Tomlins.

Welcome, Catharine, and thank you for taking the time to participate in this question-and-answer exchange for our readers. And congratulations on the publication of your book.

* * *

Holmes is on the way of becoming one of the great representative figures of his nation, a type of man which has so far been rare in American history. Max Rheinstein (1943)

[A]re we in danger of accepting him too uncritically? Max Lerner (1943)

Question: These two quotes reveal something of the spectrum of views on Holmes Olympian on the one hand, dark and dangerous on the other. Before we turn to your book, what is your general sense of this range of opinions?

Wells: As you say, Holmes is a controversial figure. What is surprising, of course, is not so much the range of opinions but the passion that animates them. While there are some moderate voices, assessments of Holmes and his influence have tended towards the extreme. They run the gamut from he is the greatest jurist who ever lived to he is a fascist and a dangerous influence on American law. It is hard to imagine John Marshall or William Howard Taft exciting such passionate responses.

One common explanation for the intensity is that Holmes became the symbol of generational conflict among law professors. One generation mythologized Holmes as its spokesman and leader, while a younger generation rebelled by seeking to desecrate his image. But this explanation does not account for the fact that Holmes was controversial even in his own time.

I think the true explanation is somewhat simpler. Holmes was an astute observer. He saw all sides of human life its heroism and villainy, its successes and failures, and its joy and despair. In addition, he made no excuse for doing what he thought was right, and he did not mince words when saying what he honestly thought. To put it in Thoreaus words, Holmes was a man who marched to the beat of his own drum. Some people think of this as a sign of courage; others as an unwarranted smugness. The former group tends to see in Holmes a captivating idealist; the latter group may see nothing but a cranky old man. The truth, of course, is somewhere in between.

Question: In an essay published last year in the book The Pragmatism and Prejudice of Oliver Wendell Holmes, you wrote: No expert on American law has been subject to as many differing interpretations as [Holmes]. In your own book, you concede that it is hard to have a fresh outlook on Holmes. Given that, how does your interpretation of the man and his legacy differ from what has already been offered up in the 6,275 biographical pages printed in books about Holmes?

Wells: What compelled me to write about Holmes was the feeling that, despite all that had been written, no one had gotten it quite right. I first read Holmes after completing a dissertation on Charles Peirce, the founder of American pragmatism.

Pragmatism is a complex philosophy. The men who formulated it were intelligent and well educated (even if self-educated) in philosophy. As philosophers, they had a somewhat contradictory vision. On the one hand, they sought to provide an analysis and justification of the scientific method. On the other, they were committed to recognizing the limits of scientific thought. Disagreeing with Kant, they believed that there was no objective foundation for science. Instead, they saw the value of science in its effectiveness as a guide for human action.

The essential insight of the pragmatists whether Peirce, William James or John Dewey was their recognition of the value of the subjective aspects of human experience. Thus, they did not view feelings and speculation as degraded junior partners to rational science. Rather, they understood them as an essential ingredient in the construction of meaning. As lawyers looked at Holmes, they did not see this aspect of his philosophy. Even Professor Thomas Grey, who recognized Holmes as a pragmatist, seemed to ignore it. It was this omission that challenged me to write one more book about Holmes. It was written in the belief that one had to take Holmes mystical statements seriously, and to treat them as an integral part of his pragmatism.

Question: The subtitle of your book is something of a riddle A Willing Servant to an Unknown God. Can you unravel that a bit for us?

Wells: Yes, it is a bit of a riddle, but one that is central to Holmes life. Remember he was descended from Puritans who thought that the meaning of life was to serve God. But he was also an agnostic who lived in a city where zealous Calvinism had morphed into a more liberal Unitarianism. He did not believe in the biblical God, preferring instead to think broadly in terms of an unknowable power that transcended the physical world. Thus, he found himself inhabiting a paradox. On the one hand, he believed in serving God, and on the other, he had no sure knowledge of God or what it meant to serve God.

Some members of his generation resolved this conflict by embracing a faith that defied skepticism. Others simply shrugged, finding it impossible to serve a God they did not understand. But Holmes followed Ralph Waldo Emerson on a harder, middle road. He dedicated himself to duty, but at the same time recognized that the nature of his duty could only be gleamed by momentary insights. The best he could do was to remain open to his experience and allow himself to be guided by the love he felt for honor and country.

Question: As you see it, how does Holmes life experience (especially his Civil War experience) connect to his philosophy and jurisprudence?

Wells: The standard answer to this question is that three years of blood and gore made him cynical and detached. This is the central narrative for those who think that Holmes lacked the idealism necessary for a legal legend. But I disagree. One can see a similar detachment in others of his generation who did not go to war. Think, for example, of his friend Henry Adams or his cousin, the historian John Torrey Morse.

As I began to reconstruct his experience in the war, what stood out to me was the constant back and forth between the horrors of the front and the comfort of home. He was wounded three times and each time spent a significant period in Boston. We can see in his letters that he came to realize the unbridgeable gap between the war as it was understood on the battlefield and the war as it was understood by the civilians in Boston. He also understood that the soldiers of the South were as idealistic and committed to justice (their vision of justice) as he was. These were formative experiences. Through them, he learned in the most dramatic fashion that perception depends on context.

What we see, sense and understand is always dependent upon perspective the way in which our past constructs and illuminates present experience. This emphasis on perspective was an important element of Holmes skepticism. On the one hand, he authentically held certain beliefs. On the other, he understood the substantial possibility that some or all of these beliefs were wrong.

Question: You write that we need to reject the simple image of Holmes as a [legal] realist. Please explain why you think that common portrayal is inaccurate.

Wells: When we approach Holmes through the lens of contemporary legal theory, it is natural to think that he must be either a formalist (someone who believes that legal decision-making is the result of applying logic to precedent) or a realist (someone who thinks that judges should decide on the basis of sound social policy). But this dichotomy overlooks a substantial middle ground.

Holmes was not a realist; he did not believe that judges should impose their own views of social policy. Nor was he a formalist, as is obvious from his criticism of Christopher Columbus Langdell.

Holmes understood something important about the common law. He saw that it was not the logic of precedent that constrained legal decision-making. Instead, he viewed the common law as a tradition with its own customs, norms and vocabulary. Judges were participants in the tradition and had to abide by its rules both stated and unstated.

Sometimes, but rarely, there would be a right answer to a legal question because there was a stated rule that dictated the result. Mostly, however, the constraints were less formal. There might be a right answer or a range of right answers because the law dictated the form in which questions could be raised, the strategies that might be deployed in analyzing legal problems, and the vocabulary to be used in their resolution. This way of looking at the common law is neither realist nor formalist as those terms are understood today.

Question: You note your interest in Holmes role as a judge and your consequent focus on his method of deciding cases. One of the opinions that you dwell on is Holmes 1896 dissent in Vegelahn v. Guntner. Why is that case important, and what does Holmes dissent tell us about his judicial method?

Wells: I focused on the Vegelahn opinion because it illustrates the type of constraint I just described. It is a clear example of Holmes use of a common law method in deciding cases of first impression. In this case, there is no stated rule that determines the outcome. Nevertheless, Holmes approach in this case is a good example of how adherence to the common law broadly understood commits him to a specific outcome.

The method is dialectical in the sense that it cycles between form and substance. His first move is to frame the issue in traditional tort terms. Then he suggests that privileges in tort cases are always a matter of substantive policy. The next step is to compare the case to other cases that seem to raise the same issue of substantive policy. He then applies the vocabulary and doctrines embodied in this latter group of cases to the case at hand. He reformulates the issue through this lens. Once this is done, he is able to decide the case based upon the fundamental principle of the common law like cases must be decided alike.

Question: All the chapter headings in the first part of your book come from lines in Holmes 1884 Memorial Day speech. In that speech, Holmes spoke words that would reappear in President John F. Kennedys 1961 inaugural address. Said Holmes: [I]t is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for the country in return.

Why is that 1884 speech so significant to your interpretive project?

Wells: I used the speech in the Prologue because it so clearly expresses Holmes basic attitude toward life. In it, we see the heart of his creed:

[Memorial Day] embodies our belief that to act with enthusiasm and faith is the condition of acting greatly. To fight a war, you must believe something and want something with all your might. (This you must) do to carry anything else to an end worth reaching. More than that, you must be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out. All that is required of you is that you should go somewhither as hard as ever you can. The rest belongs to fate. One may fall at the beginning of the charge or at the top of the earthworks; but in no other way can we reach the rewards of victory.

This summarizes not only his attitude toward fighting a war, but also his approach to studying law. I used phrases from the speech as chapter headings as part of an overall intention to tell Holmes story through his own words.

Question: You write about Holmes: How was it that the young man who had gone to war to fight for abolition had come to the Court forty years later seemingly uninterested in the project of restoring basic freedoms for those who had been emancipated? Might you say a few words about this apparent conflict?

Wells: Such a hard question. Perhaps the simplest answer is that the conflict is based upon his differing roles as soldier and judge, but this could use some elaboration.

Holmes favored abolition, but that was not the main reason he enlisted in the Union Army. He explained his reason in the Memorial Day speech:

I think the feeling that a man ought to take part in the war unless some conscientious scruple or strong practical reason made it impossible was right in the South as in the North. I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Note that his reason for enlisting was not necessarily a hope that his action would help end slavery. To some extent, it reflected his desire to participate in something larger than himself. This was a touchstone throughout his life full participation was a continuous goal. Thus, he threw himself into learning the law with total and intense commitment.

The key to understanding Holmes is to understand how he thought about his place in the world. He often said that we should not set ourselves up as little gods outside the universe. By this he meant that individuals should not imagine that they are masters of the universe, that they can improve the world by imposing their own ideals. As a result, he did not believe in mandates for reform. He was a judge. That was his job, and doing ones particular job was Holmes highest ideal. By the time Holmes got to the Supreme Court, he knew what this meant. His role required him to participate in the grand sweep of the common law, and this meant conformity to a very specific set of ideals. Common law judges, he believed, should resolve disputes by upsetting surrounding customs and usages at little as possible. He may have disapproved of slavery. He may have thought that Southern efforts to restrict voting rights were unfair. But it was not his personal beliefs that were at issue. As a judge he believed, rightly or wrongly, that he had no power or authority to overturn well-established social arrangements.

In our time, young people are idealistic; they often become lawyers because they want to change the world. But their desire would have puzzled Holmes. It was just not the way he thought about things. Possibly our attitude is better, but thinking about Holmes has convinced me of at least one thing that arrogance and hubris are attached to a commitment to social change.

Question: In his 1960 Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise lecture, Francis Biddle (who once served as a secretary, the former term for a law clerk, to Holmes) took aim at the growing ranks of critics of his former boss. That criticism began in in earnest in 1941. By 1945 it was so strong that the American Bar Journal published an article by Ben Palmer (a prolific Minneapolis corporate lawyer) titled Hobbes, Holmes and Hitler. A more judicious, but nonetheless highly critical, portrait of Holmes was painted by Professor Albert Alschuler in his book Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes (2002). And that criticism continues today on various fronts. In your opinion, is any of the harsh criticism warranted?

Wells: In 2002, I wrote a review of Professor Alschulers book; it was titled Reinventing Holmes: The Hidden, Inner, Life of a Cynical, Ambitious, Detached Old Judge without Values. As the title suggests, I do not think that Alschulers negative assessment of Holmes is fair. His book is one of a number of works that distort Holmes record by cherry-picking quotes and discussing his worst opinions. Nevertheless, I do concede that there is a dark side to Holmes, especially in his later years.

The question is whether this dark side constitutes a real defect in character. What exactly were his crimes? In 50 years on the bench he wrote a few bad opinions opinions that are bad in the sense that, 100 years later, we strongly disapprove of them. I wonder if Alschuler or any of the others could do better. I am pretty sure I could not.

Question: Ralph Waldo Emerson (philosopher, poet, essayist, lecturer and leader of a transcendentalist movement) receives a good dollop of attention in your treatment of Holmes. Tell us how you think he influenced the justice.

Wells: Holmes first read Emerson in his early teens. In his later years, he would say that it was Emerson who had stood the test of time. Emersons influence was important because it shaped the way in which Holmes thought about the world. We can see this clearly if we contrast Emersons views with those of the British empiricists. The empiricists thought of human beings as observers. They equated experience with the passive reception of sense data. Emerson, on the other hand, thought of the natural world as a teacher. It interacted with human spirits, teaching them not just about the characteristics of a physical world but also about the meaning of a greater, transcendent world. Experience, he thought, was a relationship between himself and a larger world of which he was a part. This difference affected Holmes understanding of law in many ways. The British empiricists, for example, thought that experience taught only the facts. For Emerson and Holmes, it taught not only facts but also values. We should learn from our experience not just how to do things but also what is worth doing. This is an especially important insight for one who is studying law. Note, for example, how this larger conception of experience enlightens Holmes famous phrase The life of the lawhas not been logic: it has been experience.

Question: You devote time and attention to a two-volume book Holmes read in 1897, written by Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and titled Farthest North: Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship FRAM, 1893-96 and of Fifteenth Months Sleigh Journey.

Can you give us a nutshell account of why this wild-eyed explorer caught Holmes and your attention?

Wells: It is obvious why Holmes liked it. At the turn of the century, a trip to the North Pole was the greatest possible adventure, and Holmes admired action and passion. Nansens trip was filled with insurmountable obstacles and seemingly certain death. I think Holmes saw this narrative as the ultimate expression of a life well lived. He also clearly identified with Nansens experience, thinking not only of his trials during the Civil War, but also of the rather grueling trip he took through the Alps with Leslie Stephen.

In his 1897 Brown University commencement speech, Holmes used Nansens book as a metaphor for his own life. In the speech, he compared the perils of Nansens journey with his own lonely struggle to understand the common law and the universe that it illuminated. Like Nansen, he saw his journey as a series of difficult challenges that required heroic efforts.

Question: The second half of your book makes ample use of the Brown commencement speech. All the chapter headings in Part Two come from lines in that speech. Apart from Max Lerners inclusion of it in his 1943 book on Holmes, that speech has received relatively little attention from Holmes scholars. What made you decide to focus on it?

Wells: When I first read the speech, I was struck by the fact that it so accurately described Holmes intellectual life. It is easy to overlook the fact that, from 1865 to 1880, Holmes spent virtually all his spare time studying law. Essentially, he was glued to a seat in the Social Law Library in Boston reading dusty legal texts and wondering what they said about the human condition. This was lonely work, and like Nansens trip to the pole, it was not accompanied by assurance of success. I wanted to emphasize this aspect of Holmes life, because it was so formative for him. If you ignore this period of his life, it is easy to suppose that Holmes was just one more well-bred, well-connected young man who was in the right place at the right time to make his mark on the world.

Question: On a chilly Friday in March of 1935, there was a service for Holmes at All Souls Unitarian Church, located at 16th and Harvard Streets NW in Washington, D.C. You fold Unitarianism into your biographical/jurisprudential account of Holmes. Please tell us more.

Wells: Someone in Washington once asked Fanny Holmes about their religious affiliation. She said that they were Unitarians, and added: In Boston, one has to be something and Unitarian is the least you can be. The Holmes were not joiners. They did not actively involve themselves in religious or social organizations. Nevertheless, as Fannys statement indicated, they were comfortable with the agnosticism of the more liberal wing of the Unitarian Church.

Question: For a variety of political reasons, it is hard to imagine that any modern president would nominate a jurist in the jurisprudential mold of Holmes to the Supreme Court. The public, you observe, has come to understand good judging in terms of political ideology. This is a tragedy. [But] Holmes reminds us there are alternatives namely, acting impartially. Absent that, we would confront a troubling prospect: With ten more years of ideological struggle, how much legitimacy will the Court retain?

If a Holmesian jurist were to be nominated and confirmed, would such a justice have any real allies on the Roberts court? Or would they be no more than an anomaly, without even a Justice Louis Brandeis to join in thoughtful dissent? Put another way: Are the days of a Holmesian jurist long past, both as nominee and justice?

Wells: Holmes placed law above politics without exception. As you know, he dissented in Northern Securities v. United States (1904) soon after he was appointed by Theodore Roosevelt. This was no small matter, as can be seen in a March 24, 1904 press account in The Citizen Republican:

The president is angry at Justice Holmes (for his) dissenting opinion in the Northern Securities case, and Mr. Roosevelt is not going to any great trouble to conceal his displeasure. The trouble with Justice Holmes was that he reached his conclusion with his own interpretation of the law, instead of deciding the question as Mr. Roosevelt wanted him to.

And Northern Securities was just the tip of the iceberg. Over and over again, he made decisions that he knew would be unpopular among those in power.

Of course, the situation is different now. The country is polarized and there is no one opinion that pleases the powers that be. But the basic lesson is the same putting law over politics would strengthen the Supreme Courts ability to fulfill its constitutional function. This notion has support among several of the justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts.

Unfortunately, there are countervailing factors. Bickering over abortion and gun rights has created a sense that law is irrelevant to constitutional decision-making. In addition, the court continues to make openly partisan decisions, inserting itself into the very heart of the electoral process by explicitly benefitting one party over the other. Bush v. Gore (2000) is an example, but there are others dealing with voting rights, campaign finance, etc. In each of these cases, the Supreme Court could have emphasized its neutrality by deferring to state courts or to the Congress. To make matters worse, the president unequivocally promised that he would make appointments that had been individually approved by one of his constituent groups. Obviously, these factors are very harmful to the credibility of the court.

Question: Thomas Jefferson wrote: We hold these truths to be self-evident. Holmes countered: No concrete proposition is self-evident, no matter how ready we may be to accept it. Do you think those two statements can be reconciled? If not, what does that tell us about Holmes grand view of things?

Wells: Holmes and the other pragmatists adopted Alexander Bains definition of belief as something upon which one was prepared to act. Looked at in this way, we understand that even Jefferson did not believe his self-evident proposition. Had Jefferson acted on it, he would have freed his slaves, but infamously he did not.

It is easy to assemble a number of positive qualities and say that we should all aspire to them. Perhaps, for example, it is self-evident that we should all eat healthy meals. But this statement does not tell us what a healthy meal is, nor does it do much to change unhealthy eating habits. It is not, in Holmes terms, a concrete proposition. Aspirations of this type have an obvious power to command acceptance, but acceptance does not always result in a commitment to act. When the Supreme Court decided Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), for example, it simply overruled one of Jeffersons self-evident propositions.

Then again, there are times when what is aspirational becomes real. One example of this was a suit by Quock Walker, an enslaved African American who sued for his freedom. The suit was based on the Massachusetts state constitution, which had been adopted a year earlier. He relied on a 1780 provision, similar to the one in the Declaration of Independence, which provided: All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

Based on that provision and good lawyering, a jury found in Walkers favor, ending the custom of slavery in Massachusetts. In Commonwealth v. Jennison (1783), the states highest court agreed. For the Massachusetts court, the idea that all men are created equal was a concrete proposition that had consequences for legal decision-making. At the same time, we must recognize that as the proposition became more concrete, it also became more controversial and less self-evident.

Ron, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss my book on Holmes.

Posted in Featured, Book reviews/Ask the author

Recommended Citation: Ron Collins, Ask the author: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the loneliness of original work, SCOTUSblog (Jul. 31, 2020, 10:20 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/07/ask-the-author-justice-oliver-wendell-holmes-and-the-loneliness-of-original-work/

Ask the author: Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and the loneliness of original work - SCOTUSblog

How Transformative Justice Can Address Harm Without Police – Shadowproof

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

In the wake of the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks, protesters have taken to the streets against the violence of policing and to make demands, including defunding policing.

That demand is gaining traction as organizers have ignited a new wave of interest in the abolition of prisons and policinga concept theorized mostly by Black women and femmes.

But this newfound hunger for abolition is accompanied by questions and concerns about how to implement abolition in practice. People wonder how society would hold people who commit violence accountable for their actions, and in particular, use sexual violence as an example.

One way abolitionists have confronted these questions is through the development of Transformative Justice (TJ) processes. These processes, which have roots in Indigenous practices, model a different set of skills and principles for approaching harmful and dangerous situations.

Abolitionists argue we should eliminate all forms of policing and incarceration, and instead fund life-giving, community-based social services. They understand that properly executing such services requires shifting values and resourcing the development of valuable relationship skills to give communities the tools they need to disrupt and intervene in patterns of harm. Thats where TJ comes in.

Abolition is not a new idea; its been theorized, practiced, and advocated for by Black feminists like Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Rachel Herzing for decades. They argue the carceral state emphasizes individual acts of harm, labeling those who commit harm as criminals to justify dehumanization, isolation, and punishment.

As demonstrated by the violence of policing, as well as the demographics of incarcerated populations, this is a mechanism of control over the most marginalized in American society: Black and brown people, Indigenous people, and often those who are poor, trans, sex-working, and/or disabled.

Those same people are proposing ways to exist and solve problems outside of this violent system.

In other words, abolitionists identify the punishment bureaucracy as a source of harm itself. Leila Raven is a queer mama, prison abolitionist, and organizer with Decrim NY and Hacking//Hustling, who points out that a thousand people are killed by police every year, Black people are three times as likely to be killed as white people, and half of those killed are people with disabilities. Sexual assault is also the second most common form of police brutality, primarily used against Black women and women of color who are also frequently criminalized for the strategies that we use to survive.

A police car on fire. Illustration by Dan Nott on Instagram (Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBV0i3kD8bl/)

While the state is actively harming folks at the margins, transformative justice seeks to do the opposite.

According to Mia Mingus, a writer, educator, and community organizer for disability justice and transformative justice, the process is a political framework and approach for responding to violence, harm and abuse. At its most basic, it seeks to respond to violence without creating more violence and/or engaging in harm reduction to lessen the violence.

JeKendriaa fat, Black, disabled, non-binary femme who is the Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS)argues TJ necessitates an understanding that the carceral system does not actually protect or heal survivors, but rather thrusts [them] into cycles of harm and trauma.

Like other abolitionists, she points out that sexual harm is still so prevalent despite having carceral systems in place. Not only is sexual violence prevalent within the carceral system, but she says that most rapists are not actually incarcerated. Instead, many have prominent positions of power.

Erin Gar-Yun Andriamahefa is a queer, genderfluid, Malagasy, Chinese person, who volunteers with CASS. She describes TJ as a framework through which people can begin to understand and address why harm is happening, while emphasizing collective responsibility to seek accountability when it happens.

It is a humanizing process, she told Shadowproof, that equips us to move beyond shame and punishment to normalize navigating conflict, seeing it as a portal for accountability, transformation, and healing.

CASS facilitates the creation of such a portal to accountability, transformation, and healing. JeKendria describes the organization as a small grassroots group that trains and supports communities, workplaces, bars/restaurants, and collectives in building safer environments that address harassment and assault through an intersectional, anti-carceral lens.

By prioritizing the survivors consent, safety, and healing, TJ ensures that carceral culture and systems arent recreated within communities.

Transformative justice is not one type of response, explains Ejeris Dixon, Executive Director of Vision Change Win.

We use transformative justice depending on what has happened, Dixon told Shadowproof. This can mean accountability processes, ways that we protect and interrupt violence in the moment through de-escalation or bystander intervention, ways that we can support survivors to heal, and structures that we create for communities to address violence, harm, and emergencies outside of the carceral state.

On an individual level, JeKendria explains that survivors lead the process, explaining what they need to feel safe. On a larger community scale, they say it can look like creating consistent containers for people to engage in co-learning, co-processing, and co-conspiring around upholding principles of collective safety and wellness. Communities have to be ready to pause, to assess and be accountable, to [create] shared agreements, principles, and methods that facilitate safety for everyone.

To JeKendria, this internal processing and work is paramount in collectives that organize externally as well.

A common refrain about transformative justice and other alternatives to carcerality is that they would only work in a utopia, or that they have never been used effectively. Though TJ generally requires community buy-in and consent of all of those involved, its untrue that alternatives to state solutions are not being practiced.

Raven points out that trans and queer people of color, especially those who are sex working, disabled, and housing insecure, have always known that we could not rely on policing for safety, and so we experiment frequently with many other strategies to keep each other safe.

Many of these folks may not have known or used the terms transformative justice, Dixon adds. But if we ask folks what they worked on, we will hear these practices in their answers.

Apart from engaging in community accountability and TJ processes, other non-carceral responses to harm can look like shared housing models that provide safety and stability to people by helping them rapidly exit houselessness.

It can also look like public calls for consequences. In these instances, people use the strength and reach of their combined platforms in an attempt to impose consequences on powerful individuals, who will not take accountability for engaging in harm.

Abolitionists are keenly aware that some people who engage in abuse will continue their harmful behaviors. Thats why TJ practitioners still believe in boundaries and consequences.

JeKendria emphasizes that consequences should be a series of steps grounded in minimizing future harm, taking power away from the harm-doer, and increasing the survivors agency and ability to thrive. This is different from punishment because to punish someone is to dehumanize, villainize, and inflict more harm on someone.

She offered examples of consequences, including the harm doer moving out of a housing situation, stepping down from a job, making a statement to every group theyre a part of disclosing the harm they caused, taking a break from social spaces where the survivor is present, dispersing funds to the survivor or to survivor-centered work, moving to another city, and gathering a dedicated group of accountability partners.

These steps require acknowledgment of the harm, as well as intentional and explicit actions to rectify it. According to JeKendria, this is something that punishment does not and cannot accomplish.

Consequences for gendered violence dont naturally occur in a cis heteropatriarchal society, Raven told Shadowproof. We have to actively disrupt oppressive behaviors and create consequences to keep people safe.

To her, such consequences can include the removal of someone engaging in abuse from spaces where they have power or access.

Since many people who engage in abuse are able to continue harming others and avoid taking accountability by expanding their access to important positions on multiple platforms, it can be important to deplatform them on social media, magazines, podcasts, and other media.

But experimentation is still necessary, as are adequate resources, to attempt to refine and increase the capacity of these approaches.

JeKendria sees this as rigorous study and training to continuously evolve in collective understanding of community safety and accountabilityhealing spaces that are proactive and address ancestral traumaradical consent and Black queer feminist trainings as a requirement for entering a movement space (shoutout to BYP100!).

Abolitionists apply these frameworks to their own lives and organizing spaces. To make those spaces safer, abolitionists continually analyze the environments they create and the harm that is perpetuated within them.

By questioning the conditions, environments, and systems that have allowed the harm to happen, Andriamahefa says, we reveal the spectrum and connection between our individual behavior and experiences and larger oppressive systems, including and upheld by the carceral state.

Understanding everyone is capable of committing harm, abolitionists have had to reckon with harms committed by other self-described abolitionists.

JeKendria argues that this should be a wake-up call for us to investigate how often were perpetuating harm in our movement spaces, how often were ignoring the signs of survivors, how easy it is for us to evade accountability, and how some of us weaponize and manipulate each other with TJ language.

A tree and stream appear where a burned-out police car once was. Illustration by Dan Nott on Instagram (Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBV0i3kD8bl/)

Its not easy work, as it requires us to focus on killing the cop in our heads and owning when we commit harm or enable others to do so. As we begin to actualize a world without police and prisons, we have to do the work to build communities of trust, with infrastructures of care to prevent the resurgence of carcerality as a solution.

Right now, organizers in New York City are confronting harm in their movement spaces. Lily Mishra, a Brooklyn-based organizer, is part of several organizing collectives in NYC. In response to abuse within one of her collectives, she and others entered a TJ process. (Shadowproof is using a pseudonym for Lily to protect the identity of those involved in the TJ process).

One of the difficult things, she says, is that were all at different points of personal reflection regarding everything that occurred. This makes an already difficult problem even harder, because people are going through their individual processes while realizing there were deeper structural issues that led to..how we collectively enabled abuse.

As Mishra notes, entering a transformative justice process is the beginning of a long journeya journey that takes commitments and consensus. Though these commitments are not always the most comfortable because of differences of opinion, theyre necessary when a group is prioritizing deep collective reflection. She says that this is particularly important in abolitionist collectives, where its important to organize at the scale of interpersonal relationships as well as institutional ones.

As such, its important to center survivors where they hadnt been centered before, such as within this particular collective. If not, the TJ process will not be a vehicle through which we learn how to transform that harm into vigilance and care, says Mishra.

Raven shared that after a recent experience of abuse and assault, she engaged in a process of community accountability with her abuser and their community.

I found myself revictimized and abused all over again by the community of the person who harmed me, and so I turned instead to the broader community to call on this group to be accountable by dissolving their collective and shifting resources toward Black-led abolitionist anti-violence work, Raven shared.

Something that I learned through this process, that now seems obvious, is that people who rape and abuse others are often surrounded by people who enable them.

Raven reiterates that despite the traumatic experience, she is hopeful that we can implement community accountability and TJ processes where we all acknowledge our role in causing harm, echoing JeKendria comments.

Dixon shared that one of the most important things to note is that TJ builds into the framework mechanisms through which we can support people who are navigating intense forms of violence. They note that TJ is as much about creating cultures of consent as it is about encouraging people to hold their friends and loved ones accountable, even when it is them who have committed sexual violence.

Im in a process right now holding a dear friend accountable, says Dixon, and it is both heartwrenching, challenging, and hope-creating.

Harm exists and will continue to exist. But the frameworks communities can use to address that harm are not static and can be improved. Transformative justice provides space to explore and react to individual situations as they arise.

We can use [transformative justice] to interrogate which systems need to be abolished and replaced in order for everyone to have their basic needs fully met, JeKendria said, and to grow communities that are communal, interdependent, and boldly accountable to each other.

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How Transformative Justice Can Address Harm Without Police - Shadowproof

How the rise of anti-crime politics caused lasting harm to Black Americans – CityMetric

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

The police killing of George Floyd, and the protest movement that emerged from it, has reinvigorated a national conversation around reinventing criminal justice policy in the United States.

At the same time, reports that violent crime is rising in many US cities have resurrected talk of the much-disputed Ferguson effect, a theory put forward by law enforcement professionals, and some researchers, who argued that police slowdowns in the wake of the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests resulted in elevated rates of violent crime. President Donald Trump is trying to weaponise this narrative, paired with images of federal officers clashing with protesters in the streets of Portland, to wage a 1968-style backlash election campaign.

People who want to mobilise a lock-them-up style of either policing or prosecution have tried to weaponise those short-term increases, says James Forman Jr., professor of law at Yale Law School. Criminologists will say you have to be very, very cautious about short-term movement [in crime statistics]. We don't know whether or not what we're seeing right now [with violent crime increasing] is going to sustain itself. But the fact is, it's here and people are talking about it.

In 2018, Forman won the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Drawing on his experience as a public defender in Washington, DC, he traced the emergence of anti-crime politics in late 20th century Black communities. Forman showed how newly empowered Black politicians fought for policies they believed would protect and uplift Black Americans, but inadvertently contributed to mass incarceration.

CityMetric recently caught up with Forman to discuss crime trends, where he sees reason for hope in this moment and how the Black political classs attitude toward crime and punishment has shifted since the latter part of the 20th century.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

There is talk right now about a resurgence of crime and violence in American cities. We saw similar, more localised concerns after the initial 2015 Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson and Baltimore. Do you fear this could reinvigorate the kind of politics you describe in your book among segments of the Black community and political class?

I fear that it could be reinvigorated nationally and also in the Black political class. Look at the political conversations that are happening in Atlanta right now, for example, a city that also has seen a short-term uptick in crime as it is a site of a lot of protests about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor on the national level, as well as Rayshard Brooks and Ahmaud Arbery more locally in Georgia.

I think that you can already see in some of the language of the local elected officials this idea that we have to be very careful about pulling back. [They are saying] while the protesters may make some valid points, we can't risk returning to the 80s and 90s. Those decades really traumatised the United States, and particularly traumatised Black communities. There's a deep fear about returning to the levels of the violence that we saw in the crack years.

You write a lot about class divides among Black Americans, where middle income and elite Black people don't suffer as much from extremely punitive policies. They also have closer ties to the politicians who are creating these policies. There are very specific groups of people, even in marginalised communities, whose voices are heard. As a result of these dynamics, you write about Black politicians fighting for things like mandatory minimum prison sentences or against decriminalising marijuana. Is there still that disconnect between those who suffer the most from criminal justice policies and those who are actually heard in political discourse?

Let me just say a caveat, that when we talk about class divisions in the Black community it's important to hold two truths in our head at the same time. Bruce Western and others have shown the way in which class, educational status, income can dramatically reduce the likelihood of being hardest hit by the criminal system namely incarcerated. Middle class and upper middle class Black people get some measure of protection. It's also true at the same time that Black people of all classes are worse off relative to their class counterparts in the white community.

One area where class is least protective is policing and police stops. The police do not know how many degrees you have. They don't know how much money you have in your bank account. I want to be very clear that in making this point about class, I'm not making the argument that race or racism don't matter in this context.

In terms of how it plays out now, I see an awareness that has developed in the Black community in the last 10 years or so about how deeply racist the criminal justice system has become. Twenty or 30 years ago they had a consciousness, but there's levels of understanding. Many of the people I write about in the book wanted to promote the interests of the Black community. They weren't motivated by indifference or callousness. When presented with mounting evidence of how awful this system has been in Black lives, they're reconsidering and recalibrating.

Lots of former elected officials have said to me some version of I didn't know at the time and I appreciate that you showed us in our full complexity. I appreciate that you showed the pressures we were under. If I had known then what I know now, maybe I would have been less quick to go along with some of these harsh measures.

The second thing that has affected the Black political class has been the emerging movements, led by Black people in particular and led by young people. They not only educated leaders, but pressured them and made them understand that there is a political cost. If you're not moved by the moral argument, then you'll be moved by the political argument. You'll be moved by the people protesting outside the office of District Attorney Jackie Lacey in Los Angeles, for example, where Black Lives Matter LA has held, I believe, a year of consecutive protests against a Black district attorney who has had really some of the worst practices.

From what I can tell, she's been pressured by the movement to change some of her positions on important issues like prosecution of low-level drug offenders, for example, and the aggressiveness with which she prosecutes police officers for acts of violence.

What do you make of the calls to defend or even abolish the police?

What I find so compelling about abolition, initially in the prison context and extended to the police as well, is that it shifts the conversation and forces us to go through experiments in which we imagine what it would take to build that world. I think that exercise is very important, because it pushes us further than we are naturally inclined to go. Cultivating a broader imagination is an incredibly important part of this work, because as you know from my book, often it was lack of imagination that caused people to fall back on [punitive policies].

That's what caused D.C. Councilmember David Clarke to call the police rather than public health experts when he was overwhelmed with letters about heroin addicts in public space. He was anti-drug war, but he couldn't imagine responding to a call for help with heroin addicts with anything other than police. That's a very common move from even really good and progressive people.

People who are for defunding, for abolition, are absolutely right about reinvesting that money into alternative structures that support communities. But the reinvestment part doesn't follow naturally from the terms. We might want to come up with a term that captures the new stuff we want to do. I think that's particularly important because one of the reasons Black communities have ended up supporting more police is that Black communities have always wanted their fair share of the resources.

Then, the evidence suggests the United States has too many police officers doing prophylactic, preventative, or stop-and-frisk style policing. The style of policing that leads to district level harassment, pulling people over for no reason. But we have too little investment in the parts of police departments that investigate unsolved crimes. I'm talking about the investigator or the detective who comes to your house after there's been a robbery, an assault, a rape, or homicide.

As compared to European countries, in the United States we actually underinvest in those parts of our police departments. Jill Leovys book Ghettoside shows this in dramatic detail. She describes an LAPD that's stopping and frisking Black drivers wantonly and yet the homicide detectives are still relying on a fax machine and the fax machine is broken. They have to go with their own money to Staples to buy a printer. Meanwhile, other aspects of the department are kitted out in this ridiculous riot gear that makes them look like they're in Fallujah.

That under investment is particularly damaging to Black communities because we're disproportionately victimised by crime. Because of racism and this allocation of resources, the police are less likely to respond in Black communities. The kids I used to work with in the charter schools in DC, we talk about no snitching, but one of the reasons they would never call the police after they'd been victimised by crime is they would say, They're not even going to come. You're wasting time.

I did a Q&A with Jill Leovy too and her argument is one I've struggled to articulate in our present moment. She argues the state doesn't have a monopoly on violence in low-income Black neighbourhoods, because investigations of violence are deemphasised and crime victims or their loved ones often take retribution into their own hands. But right now, establishing or preserving the state's monopoly on violence isn't an appealing talking point.

Yes, this is another thing nobody's talking about. Whatever we're going to do instead of the police has to be accountable to the public. The best, most direct way to have accountability is to have the individuals be public employees. As long as we have 300 million guns in this country at least some of those state employees are going to themselves be armed. It's unreasonable to ask them to do the job without it. Not as many need to be armed as are armed now, but some of them need to be. But they can't be hiding behind union contracts or civil service protections which make it impossible to remove even the worst performing, most abusive officers.

We can not call them police if we want to. That's semantic, but maybe symbolism matters. But those people have to be state employees. They can work with community-based nonprofits, but there are also communities that don't have as robust of a nonprofit network, and they deserve protection too. These [community] groups have to be accountable to the state and, when they don't exist, the state has to be there.

Progressives get all the points I just made when it's applied to education. The notion that things be public and accountable to the state is understood when it comes to schools. It's exactly why so many people on the left are opposed to charter schools, because they say they don't have public accountability. They want these things to be a state function. But this point about the difficulty in removing this entirely from the hands of the state is, I think, one that liberals and progressives understand from other contexts.

Jake Blumgart is a staff writer at CityMetric.

How the rise of anti-crime politics caused lasting harm to Black Americans - CityMetric

Done with Divorce FREE Webinar – Everything You Should Know – Patch.com

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Take advantage of this FREE webinar designed to share actionable next steps to transfer property, create independent financial and estate plans and generally, help moving forward in your post-divorce life.

August 5th speakers include:

4:00-4:25pm Wellness Presentation: Wellness Consultant, Mai Trinh of Mai Health Now LLC

4:25-4:55pm Financial Independence: CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst , Dianne Nolin and Cecile Hult of Argent Bridge Advisors

4:55-5:15pm Tax Planning: Accredited Financial Counselor and Enrolled Agent, Erin Kidd of Thompson Greenspon

5:15-5:55pm Estate Planning: Estate Attorney, Josh Headley of Buchanan, Ingersoll and Rooney PC

5:55-6:15pm Agreement Modification: Family Law Attorney, Christian Lapham of Bean, Kinney and Korman PC

Hop on, hop off the webinar as needed. We know its hard when you are working from home and/or have kids - or even worse, both! Make the time and come get the information you need to help you move forward. This is very interactive so come with your questions.

Visit our Facebook page Done with Divorce Seminar in Tysons. Watch our video to learn more about what this webinars offers.

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This is a webinar, not a meeting so no Zoombombing here! Argent Bridge Advisors is the host of this webinar. Learn more at http://www.argentbridge.com or email alycephinney@argentbridge.com

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Securities offered through Triad Advisors, LLC Member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory Services offered through Triad Hybrid Solutions LLC, a registered investment advisor. Argent Bridge Advisors, LLC and Triad Advisors, LLC are not affiliated. Guest speakers are not registered through or affiliated with Triad Advisors or Triad Hybrid Solutions.

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Done with Divorce FREE Webinar - Everything You Should Know - Patch.com

Builders Exchange of Michigan’s 64th Annual Golf Outing to Benefit Guiding Light’s Back to Work Program – The Rapidian

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Builders Exchange of Michigan will host its 64th Bart Austhof Memorial Golf Outing to benefit Guiding Lights Back to Work program on Monday, Aug. 31.

Community members are invited to join for a day of golfing and giving back at the Saskatoon Golf Club, located at 9038 92nd St. SE in Alto. The four-person scramble will begin at 10 a.m. on two 18-hole courses and be followed by awards and prizes. Enhanced sanitation protocols to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are in place so that all attendees can enjoy the event safely.

This is the fifth consecutive year proceeds from the annual event will support Guiding Lights Back to Work program, which provides a short-term stay for men who are experiencing homelessness and seeking full-time employment, allowing them to save money while they look for more permanent housing. The program is designed to support men who face significant barriers to finding and keeping full-time work, including debt, lack of housing, lack of transportation and other challenges.

Guiding Light works with each individual in our Back to Work program to overcome obstacles that keep him from succeeding in the workplace and maintaining employment, said Stuart P. Ray, Guiding Light executive director. We help build and hone life skills needed to do well in the workplace, such as management of time, finances and conflict with others.

The continued support of Builders Exchange through this event allows us to keep helping men who are struggling to regain financial independence re-engagement in society through meaningful work.

In addition to help with job research and coaching, budgeting support and other training, Guiding Light provides men in the program with the essentials: a bed and safe place for their belongings, three meals a day, transportation to and from work and daily encouragement. The nonprofit also helps cover the cost of any job prerequisites, like uniforms, work boots and tools.

When they enter Back to Work, men shoulder an average of $5,156 in debt. Men who successfully complete it leave the program having erased their debt and with an average savings of $1,714.

As an association serving the Michigan construction community, we love how Guiding Light truly gives men the tools they need to succeed, said Elizabeth Bovard Strong, executive vice president of Builders Exchange of Michigan and member of the Guiding Light Board of Directors. Leading up to the golf outing, weve been hard at work sharing with our members the good work that Guiding Light does, and especially what a blessing the organization has been during these challenging times.

There is such a spirit of generosity among our construction community and across the state of Michigan. We look forward to safely gathering at the end of August to celebrate that spirit and help a great organization.

In 2019, Builders Exchange raised $15,500 through its golf outing, a number that has increased each year since it began supporting the Back to Work program in 2016. The not-for-profit association is hoping to continue the positive trend by recruiting more teams to participate and securing more sponsors than previous years.

Those interested in participating in and/or sponsoring the golf outing may complete the registration and sponsorship form available at grbx.com.

To learn more ways to support Guiding Lights rescue, recovery and re-engagement services, visit guidinglightworks.org or contact Development Director Starla McDermott at [emailprotected] to make a donation.

The Rapidian, a program of the 501(c)3 nonprofit Community Media Center, relies on the communitys support to help cover the cost of training reporters and publishing content.

We need your help.

If each of our readers and content creators who values this community platform help support its creation and maintenance, The Rapidian can continue to educate and facilitate a conversation around issues for years to come.

Please support The Rapidian and make a contribution today.

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Builders Exchange of Michigan's 64th Annual Golf Outing to Benefit Guiding Light's Back to Work Program - The Rapidian

How likely it is that Prince George will see the throne – Insider – INSIDER

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Britain's Prince George is just 7 years old, and yet he is third in line to become monarch after Prince Charles and Prince William respectively.

The line of succession is regulated through descent and Parliamentary statute, according to the royal family's official website.

George known by his formal title Prince George of Cambridge is the great-grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, and son of the Duke of Cambridge.

When the Queen dies, Charles will become king. That is unless he abdicates, in which case the throne would go to his eldest son, William.

Therefore George, being the eldest of the three Cambridge children, will be first in line when his father is king.

But the likelihood of that exact scenario playing out is dependent on a number of factors.

If either William or Charles were to pass away before Queen Elizabeth's reign was over, this wouldn't decrease George's likelihood of becoming king.

"There is nothing to prevent William becoming king, other than his own premature death," Robert Hazell, a professor of government and the constitution at the University College London, previously told Insider.

Prince Charles with his sons Prince William and Prince Harry. Getty Images

In the unlikely scenario that 71-year-old Charles outlives his son, Prince Harry wouldn't take William's place in the line of succession. The spot would automatically go to Prince George, and then subsequently to his children if he had them.

If he didn't have children, Princess Charlotte would be next in line, followed by Prince Louis. This is due to The Succession to the Crown Act (2013) which means royal males born after 2011 do not automatically overtake their sisters in the line of succession like they used to.

"If William were to die before Charles, then on the death of Charles, Prince George would become king," Hazell said.

Nonetheless, this is all dependent on whether George actually wants to become the next monarch or whether he wants to be a working royal at all.

The last monarch to abdicate was Edward VIII, who ruled Britain for almost a year from January until December 1936, when he proposed to American divorcee Wallis Simpson. Since Edward didn't have children, the throne was passed to his younger brother, George VI (father of our current Queen, Elizabeth II).

Of course, the monarchy has evolved since then, and George's position wouldn't be affected by his choice of life partner.

Nonetheless, he could still choose to abdicate for other reasons.

Just as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry stepped back from royal duties to pursue financial independence for themselves and their son Archie, George will have the option to do the same if he so desires.

Prince George turns 7: The best photo from every year of the future king's life

8 royals who rejected their titles, and the surprising reasons why

How likely it is that Prince William will see the throne

Our Royal Insider Facebook group is the best place for up-to-date news and announcements about the British royal family, direct from Insider's royal reporters. Join here.

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How likely it is that Prince George will see the throne - Insider - INSIDER

Is Fastly Ready to Move Into the Slow Lane? – InvestorPlace

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

If you had never heard of the California company thats helping organizations deliver a better digital experience for its customers, youd swear Fastly (NASDAQ:FSLY) had invented the miracle cure for the novel coronavirus.

Source: Pavel Kapysh / Shutterstock.com

And after skyrocketing 49.9% in its first day of trading on May 16, 2019, FSLY stock has moved up an astounding 478.5% in its first 14 months as a public company.

However, when you consider that most of these gains have come since May 1, the fact that its lost some of its momentum in July, ought to have shareholders and non-shareholders alike wondering if Fastlys share price is ready to move into the slow lane.

Collectively, I have never written about Fastly before. That said, Ill lean on several of my InvestorPlace colleagues for a little understanding of the pros and cons of this particular company and its stock.

On the surface, it sounds like a business thats providing a useful service. Nonetheless, nearly 480% appreciation over 14 months is a bit rich even for a San Francisco tech high flyer.

Currently trading at more than 35 times sales with nothing to show for its efforts but plenty of losses, it would seem to be priced for perfection. And perhaps thats why its cooled off in recent weeks.

InvestorPlaces Chris Laus most recent article about the company focused exclusively on valuation. He pointed out that the seven analysts covering FSLY stock had a $67.33 price target on the stock. Furthermore, relative to its industry peers, its price-to-sales multiple is almost five times higher.

However, Lau points out that based on a five-year discounted cash flow exit model, its got a fair value of 85.26 about $10 lower from where its currently trading.

So, in his opinion, if you already own it, you probably dont want to sell. And if you dont, the possibility of a better entry point remains on the table.

The market correction in March was a wonderful learning moment for investors. And now, almost every quality stock that got hit by panic selling in mid-March has managed to reverse course and test new highs.

However, buying on the dip can be a very effective way to grow your investment portfolio. If you follow the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movements philosophy on life, buying on the dip is a critical piece of the puzzle.

Interestingly, if you look at a chart of FSLY stock from its IPO, the March correction barely registers. Yet, over an 11-day period (March 5 to March 16), FSLY stock fell by nearly 50% from $22 to $11. That said, if you were courageous enough to buy at that point, youre up more than 760%.

So, buying on the dip works. However, the question is whether the latest dip is a pause before it falls further, or were at a bottom and its okay to jump in.

On that note, InvestorPlace contributor Patrick Sanders believes its the latter.

First-quarter earnings were a signal of things to come for Fastly. The company reported revenue of $62.92 million, which beat analysts estimates of $59.38 million. Earnings per share came in at a loss of $0.06, which was better than the -$0.12 EPS that analysts had projected, Sanders stated July 24.

With that in mind, I would have to agree with my colleague. Fastly provides technology and a group of services that will remain in demand well beyond the end of this pandemic. Additionally, I find Fastlys 38% quarterly revenue growth to be good, but not too good. Sustainability is a critical factor in growth stories becoming the next Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) or Shopify (NYSE:SHOP).

Therefore, if Fastly continues to deliver 30% year-over-year sales growth, you can be sure that its share price in two years will be a lot more than $85. And, if it can keep this pace of growth while fattening the margins, free cash flow generation will become a regular part of its everyday existence.

Its not quite there its used $55 million in free cash flow in the trailing 12 months but its getting closer every day.

Overall, looking at Fastlys three most recent fiscal years, youll see that the companys chipped away at its operating expense ratio [defined as operating expenses divided by revenue] 83.2% in 2017 to 79.2% in 2019 at a time when the companys in serious growth mode.

To me, this demonstrates management has a keen eye on spending, something many tech firms are unable, or unwilling, to do. And that, more than anything, suggests Fastlys future is a bright one.

So, if youre investing for the long term despite what analysts have to say I believe you shouldnt be worried about buying at current prices. However, you might want to hold back a little cash just in case the dip isnt quite finished.

Will Ashworth has written about investments full-time since 2008. Publications where hes appeared include InvestorPlace, The Motley Fool Canada, Investopedia, Kiplinger, and several others in both the U.S. and Canada. He particularly enjoys creating model portfolios that stand the test of time. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. At the time of this writing Will Ashworth did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.

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Is Fastly Ready to Move Into the Slow Lane? - InvestorPlace

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are Now In Total Control Of Their Lives, Source Explains – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Fans were left stunned in January 2020 when Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex announced they would be leaving their roles as senior working members of the British royal family. Meghan, in particular, had been struggling amid constant bullying and scrutiny, but no one saw Megxit coming.

When the Sussexes announced their desire to step back, they decided they wanted to pursue financial independence and a life that would not leave every aspect of their beings up for examination and thought.

Later, Prince Harry also cited the fact that he did not want his son, Archie Harrison, growing up in the spotlight. Since moving to LA, the pair have been relatively low=key. However, one expert says the duke and duchess dont actually want a private life.

View this post on Instagram

After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution. We intend to step back as senior members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen. It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages. This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity. We look forward to sharing the full details of this exciting next step in due course, as we continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge and all relevant parties. Until then, please accept our deepest thanks for your continued support. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex For more information, please visit sussexroyal.com (link in bio) Image PA

A post shared by The Duke and Duchess of Sussex (@sussexroyal) on Jan 8, 2020 at 10:33am PST

RELATED:The Royal Family Was Alarmed by Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys Spending Habits, Source Reveals

One of the reasons Meghan could not get into the swing of royal life is because shed lost total control of her image and personal narrative. She was essentially gagged under the royals stiff upper lip policy. It was all too constraining for her.

Even though [Meghan] was a famous actress, she could still do what she wanted in the way of getting around freely,an insider told theDaily Mailin 2018. But in her current role she cant go anywhere without her protection team, and thats a massive constraining force on an individual like her.

Now, with their own representatives, the Sussexes can clap-back against lies and rumors without feeling helplessly unprotected.

RELATED:Meghan Markle Should Have Followed in Kate Middletons Footsteps and Ignored Bad Press, Expert Says

Though theyve been only doing virtual appearances and volunteering in LA amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the Sussexes have remained wildly popular. However, in order to maintain their global presence, they will need to be in the spotlight.

The couples future isnt certain,The Atlantics Caitlin Flanagan explained. They are hugely appealing and glamorous. Everyone in Hollywood is eager to host them. The first few years of this plan are going to be heady. [Harry] is in a rush to make his mark and seems to treat life as a race, too.

The Sussexes have a powerhouse Hollywood team and theyve recently signed to a prestigious speaking firm. However, they have not made any money yet. They do need to make money, royal expert Katie Nicholl toldEntertainment Tonight. Theyve been in LA since March, they left the Royal Family at the end of March, and as yet, they havent actually earned anything.

RELATED: Meghan Markle Is More Confident Than Ever, Body Language Expert Explains

Though they wanted control over their narratives and finances, Meghan and Prince Harry do not want a totally private life.

[Harry and Meghan] have stepped back not in search of a totally private life but for a different kind of public life, royal authorVictoria Murphy told Town & Country. A public life where they can have more control over who gets access to them and what they spend their time on.

As long as its the right path for them, thats all that matters.

Excerpt from:

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Are Now In Total Control Of Their Lives, Source Explains - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE July 31, 2020 – TheChronicleHerald.ca

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Manageable deficit

An $853-million deficit for Nova Scotia in 2020 looks terrifying. That is, until you examine long-term borrowing costs. A 30-year government of Canada bond costs the lender just one per cent interest. Long-term Nova Scotia government bonds can be sold for two per cent. So if the Nova Scotia government scraps the Yarmouth-Maine ferry, it can finance the $853-million deficit and have its liabilities pretty well unchanged.

How hard is that?

Michael Poulton, Halifax

Jim Vibert speaks about the health-destroying impact of poverty on Nova Scotians (July 29 column). A basic income for all would save tax dollars in the long term and transform lives in the process.

Its time to get serious about a basic income guarantee. I encourage all of us to learn more about it and weigh in. Political will for change will follow the will of voters.

Greg Hubbert, Berwick

Stephen McNeil, please note: Australia, Israel, Japan and Lebanon appeared to have brought the coronavirus contagion to heel in May. In July, after opening up, they all experienced alarming rises in cases, as have other countries.

Youd be inviting the same kind of virus invasion into Nova Scotia if you allowed in travellers from outside the Atlantic bubble. For all our sakes, keep the bubble closed. You once told us to stay to blazes home. We did that; we have contained the virus. Lets keep it that way. Can you not now tell outside travellers to stay to blazes home?

Errol Sharpe, HRM

Despite frequent advisories, many people still are not wearing a mask when out of their homes. Some are even openly resisting attempts to encourage mask-wearing, citing personal rights and freedoms.

Facial masks are simple measures that offer quite good protection from COVID-19. The beauty of this measure is that it is an act of personal concern for others more than oneself. As a recent ad stated, I wear a mask to protect you. You wear a mask to protect me. This reflects the fact that other people can be infected by the tiny droplets exiting our mouths or noses when we breathe, speak, sneeze or sing. A mask will catch the droplets so that they cannot infect another person.

Since even people who may not know they are infected can spread the virus, it behooves us all to be proactive in preventing further spread of this terrible virus.

I find wearing a mask not at all uncomfortable or limiting. I cannot understand why anyone would resist such an easy and effective way to avoid causing others great harm.

The Good Book asks that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Please think of others and wear a mask when out of your home.

Orland Kennedy, Brookfield

VOICE OF THE PEOPLE July 31, 2020 - TheChronicleHerald.ca

US Customs Issues Offshore Wind Farm Installation Guidance – Lexology

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

On July 15, 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued Jones Act guidance on the installation of offshore wind farms in U.S. waters. This is the first offshore wind guidance issued by CBP since 2011.

The Jones Act is the popular term for a group of laws which restrict certain activities in U.S. waters to qualified U.S.-flag vessels. Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act, 1920 in particular restricts the transportation of merchandise between two points in the United States to qualified U.S.-flag vessels owned and operated by U.S. citizens absent an exception.

Similar laws apply to the transportation of passengers as well as dredging, fishing and towing in defined U.S. waters. A point in the United States is every place within U.S. territorial waters as defined by CBP (out to three nautical miles from the coast) and can also include any man-made object, such as a drill rig, attached permanently or temporarily to the U.S. outer continental shelf beyond three nautical miles for defined purposes.

The request for guidance stated that the installation operations will occur at two sites located in U.S. territorial waters off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It is not evident from the ruling which sites CBP is referring to since U.S. territorial waters for purposes of the Jones Act (unlike other purposes) is three nautical miles from the coast, not 12 nautical miles from the coast.

In the ruling, CBP confirmed the well-understood maxim that a foreign installation vessel can install wind tower components so long as the vessel is stationary and does not transport components but is provided those components from shore via Jones Act qualified feeder vessels.

CBP also addressed the issue of vessel equipment for the first time since it issued new guidance on December 11, 2019, effective February 17, 2020. That guidance is the subject of ongoing litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

CBP has long held that vessel equipment is not merchandise and therefore can be transported by a foreign vessel between two points in the United States. The original definition utilized by CBP of vessel equipment is a 1939 definition providing that vessel equipment is portable articles necessary and appropriate for the navigation, operation or maintenance of the vessel and for the comfort and safety of the persons on board . . ..

Commencing in 1976, CBP issued a number of rulings focusing on whether items were necessary for the mission of the vessel as a gloss on the concept of being necessary and appropriate for the operation of the vessel. Subsequent rulings also focused on whether the item was used on or from the transporting vessel, whether the employment of items was foreseeable, incidental or de minimis (with unforeseeable, incidental or de minimis deployments weighing in favor of an item being equipment).

Under these formulations, CBP issued rulings to the effect that a variety of items utilized in oil and gas operations, such as risers and pipe connectors, were vessel equipment primarily under the interpretation that they were necessary for the mission of the vessel and therefore could be transported from a U.S. port to a U.S. point and installed by a foreign vessel.

These rulings became particularly controversial in 2009 when CBP first issued, and then withdrew, a ruling to the effect that a sub-sea assembly known as a Christmas tree was vessel equipment. CBP then proposed to revoke or modify a whole series of vessel equipment rulings, but the public opposition was substantial and CBP eventually withdrew that notice. Under that proposal, the term vessel equipment would have been very narrowing defined.

Ultimately, CBP issued a December 11, 2019 notice where CBP retained the 1939 definition as the basis for its interpretations and added that vessel equipment means items necessary and appropriate for the vessel to include, inter alia, those items that aid in the installation, inspection, repair, maintenance, surveying, positioning, modification, construction, decommissioning, drilling, completion, workover, abandonment or similar activities or operations of wells, seafloor or subsea infrastructure, flowlines, and surface production facilities.

CBP further emphasized that the fact that an item is returned to and departs with the vessel after an operation is completed, and is not left behind on the seabed, is a factor that weighs in favor of an item being classified as vessel equipment, but is not a determinative factor.

For some reason, CBP did not cite to its December 2019 guidance in its July 15, 2020 ruling. There it affirmed that tools taken on board a tower by the installation crew of the installation vessel that are returned to the vessel are vessel equipment, based on the 1939 definition, and can be transported from work site to work site by the foreign vessel. CBP also indicated that items needed for the comfort and safety of the crew such as containers, bags, personal protection equipment, food and drink and hand washing materials were also vessel equipment. CBP did not address items taken on board towers by the installation crew intended to be left behind such bolts and grout and other expendables.

With respect to the transportation of the installation crew from work site to work site, the question was apparently not addressed to CBP whether such crew are passengers or not within the meaning of the Passenger Vessel Services Act. A foreign vessel would only be prohibited from such transportation if such persons were considered passengers rather than crew.

See the original post here:

US Customs Issues Offshore Wind Farm Installation Guidance - Lexology

Muppets Now: Together Again, With a Touch of Amnesia – Rolling Stone

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

The Muppets specifically, the comedy-variety troupe featuring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great, et. al. are in their sixth decade of existence, but they have never been more perfectly deployed than in their first project together, the Seventies syndicated hit The Muppet Show. A faux variety series, each episode was a mix of two kinds of segments. The first were vaudeville-style sketches from the show-within-a-show, where the Muppets sang, danced, told corny jokes, and appeared in shows-within-the-show-within-the-show like Pigs in Space and Veterinarians Hospital. The second took place backstage at the dilapidated Muppet Theater, where Kermit was forever struggling to manage the egos and anxieties of his co-stars, who in turn were often busy sucking up to that weeks very special guest (everyone from Ethel Merman to Elton John stopped by during the series five-year run).

Though traditional variety shows were already on the way out when The Muppet Show premiered in 1976, the format was a perfect showcase for these characters. The sketches displayed their versatility some ridiculous spoofs, others utterly sincere performances. The backstage action, meanwhile, established the core Muppets as distinct, endearing personalities who, fur or forked tongues aside, wouldnt seem that out of place on a workplace sitcom with an otherwise human cast.

Most of the strongest Muppet-affiliated projects over the years borrow liberally from some or all of the original shows DNA. The Muppet Movie and Muppets Take Manhattan are varied origin stories for the troupe(*), while the 2011 film had the gang reuniting at the old theater to put on a show one more time. The Great Muppet Caper, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Muppets Most Wanted, meanwhile, inserted the characters into familiar genres or stories to demonstrate that Kermit could pass for Bob Cratchit or a fugitive from justice as easily as he could the harried manager of a comedy team.

(*) My friend Adam Bonin, an election lawyer who moonlights as a pop-culture commentator, had the best unifying field theory for all the Muppet films (and it applies to The Muppet Show, too): Only The Muppet Movie is real, and everything else is something the characters made under the standard rich and famous contract that Lew Lord signs them to at the end of that first film.

But keeping all of the franchises stylistic and tonal elements in balance is hard. In 2005, The Muppets Wizard of Oz tried to replicate the Muppet Christmas Carol magic, but came across as snarky toward both the Muppets and the source material. ABCs deservedly short-lived 2015 mockumentary series The Muppets was pretty much all backstage interaction, but with the characters all weirdly bitter and adult. The post-Jim Henson version of Kermit, played by Steve Whitmire, could occasionally seem too Pollyanna-ish(*), but this new iteration swung way too far in the other direction.

(*) One of my favorite Muppet Show subplots had Fozzie demanding a raise. Kermit stalls and stalls and stalls, and finally placates Fozzie by agreeing to pay him 10 times his (nonexistent) salary with Fozzie only realizing after the fact that ten times nothing is still nothing. Whitmires Kermit was never that cagey.

The Muppets have barely appeared since the ABC show was canceled, but they finally resurface this week with Muppets Now, a new Disney+ series that promises a back-to-basics approach: just comedy sketches featuring the Muppets, nothing else. Should work, right?

Well, yes and no.

Where The Muppet Show was spoofing Ed Sullivan, or Sonny and Cher, the largely improvised Muppets Now is riffing on YouTube and, to an extent, reality TV. Most of the segments recur from one episode to the next: a lifestyle-influencer show with Miss Piggy, Uncle Deadly(*), Taye Diggs, and Linda Cardellini (the actors appearing as themselves); an unpredictable game show hosted by Pepe the King Prawn;a MythBusters-style science show (the first one even has an Adam Savage cameo) hosted by Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker; a cooking competition pitting Swedish Chef against his real-life peers; and a celebrity interview show called Mup Close & Personal.

(*) The flamboyant, Vincent Price-esque Uncle Deadly was an extremely minor character on The Muppet Show, but has grown in stature ever since the 2011 movie. Today, hes the most prominent of several implicitly queer characters who make Muppets Nowa more LGBTQ-friendly series than it may have been in the past. (The first episode also has a male Muppet crushing on guest star RuPaul.)

The segments can be hit-or-miss. The sheer destructive power on display as Bunsen and Beaker, say, drop objects from a scissor lift to test the laws of gravity, is infectious. And Pepes game show, where hes constantly changing the format to the chagrin of sidekick Scooter, comes closest to recapturing the chaotic spirit of The Muppet Show. But doing every sketch as improv comedy is a mixed bag. The Muppet performers themselves including new Kermit actor Matt Vogel, whose voice will take some adjusting to (regardless of his take on Kermits personality, Whitmire still sounded a lot like Henson) are all good at riffing without breaking character. The guests, less so. The second episode has a very funny cook-off between Swedish Chef and the actor Danny Trejo (who also owns a taqueria), but star chefs like Roy Choi seem less comfortable bantering with the segments host (and one of the shows new creations), a turkey named Beverly Plume (played by Julianne Buescher). Aubrey Plaza gets some big laughs as she suffers through Miss Piggys Mup Close interviewing style, while Taye Diggs is mostly used as a prop in his segments with Piggy.

Overall, though, the sketches are pretty good. The larger problem is that there are usually just two Muppets in any sketch, and almost always in the same combination. In addition, Muppets Now barely has any backstage component to speak of. In between the sketches, we see a harried Scooter frantically trying to upload each segment onto a Disney server, while other Muppets harangue him by video chat. And thats it. Where the interaction among the Muppets both in large groups and in unexpected pairings has always been the heart of the idea, Muppets Now offers it very rarely.

It would be easy to assume that creative challenges presented by the pandemic are the reason the Muppets seem so isolated from one another, but thats not the case. The sketches were all filmed last year, which is also when the producers conceived the idea to link the shows recurring bits via Scooters desktop. The actual video-chat segments themselves were filmed in the performers homes during the quarantine, but everything else about the series was made at a time when it would have been safe and easy to put lots of Muppets in the same room. Still, that happens basically only once, during Kermits frequently interrupted Mup Close chat with RuPaul.

Since Disney+ launched last fall, many (including my own children) have wondered why the service doesnt include The Muppet Show. Whether theres a business reason or not, Muppets Now definitely looks better if theres no easy access to the original, superior antics of this group. While its a substantial improvement on the characters last TV series, it ultimately misses the point of playing the music and lighting the lights.

Muppets Now premieres July 31st on Disney+. Ive seen four of the six episodes.

See the article here:

Muppets Now: Together Again, With a Touch of Amnesia - Rolling Stone

Litecoin may be trying to pump into deflating fundamentals as price nears $60 – CryptoSlate

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Litecoin is currently caught within a slight uptrend that has allowed it to post some large gains throughout the past few days.

Notably, LTC is currently climbing higher while Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most other major altcoins see stalling momentum. This is a sign that it is incurring technical strength that is independent of the rest of the market.

While examining the on-chain factors underpinning LTC, however, it appears that there are some mixed signs with regards to this movements strength.

Among other things, Litecoins daily active address count is showing signs of faltering, and its network volume is currently lagging far behind its price.

While Bitcoin is consolidating around $11,000, Litecoin is currently pushing higher, with its buyers looking to target its next resistance at $60.00.

At the time of writing, LTC is trading up over three percent at its current price of $57, which marks a notable climb from weekly lows of $44.

Todays upswing marks a breakout after a single-day consolidation phase, and it has allowed the crypto-asset to outperform many of its peers.

There are a couple of fundamental metrics that spell trouble for Litecoins ongoing uptrend.

Analytics platform Santiment pointed to these in a recent blog post, explaining that daily active addresses and network activity are both flashing warning signs.

While looking towards the cryptocurrencys network volume, it has not seen any type of notable spike despite the rising price. They conclude that this may signal that LTC is trying to pump into deflating fundamentals.

While Litecoins price continues to rise, its network volume has yet to catch up, and trying to pump into stagnant or deflating fundamentals is rarely what you want to see in a coin.

This isnt the only factor that may be counting against Litecoin.

Santiment data also illustrates a sharp decline in the number of addresses sending and receiving the digital asset, showing that there may not be enough investor activity to support the ongoing upswing.

While speaking about this metric, the analytics firm explained that although its still too early to declare a clear downtrend while looking at daily active addresses, it is something to watch closely.

Keep an eye on Litecoins daily active addresses in the next couple of days after a few strong days correlating with the price action, the amount of addresses sending or receiving LTC dropped by -15% compared to the day prior.

If these metrics dont start trending upwards in the near-term, theres a high probability that Litecoins uptrend will be fleeting.

Litecoin, currently ranked #7 by market cap, is up 2.02% over the past 24 hours. LTC has a market cap of $3.7B with a 24 hour volume of $2.97B.

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Original post:

Litecoin may be trying to pump into deflating fundamentals as price nears $60 - CryptoSlate

Litecoin, Stellars Lumen, and Trons TRX Daily Analysis July 29th, 2020 – Yahoo Finance

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Litecoin

Litecoin rose by 4.61% on Tuesday. Following on from a 10.91% rally on Monday, Litecoin ended the day at $55.85.

It was a mixed start to the day. Litecoin rose to an early morning high $54.68 before falling to a late morning intraday low $51.71.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $48.12, Litecoin rallied to a late afternoon intraday high $57.99.

Litecoin broke through the first major resistance level at $57.46 before easing back.

At the time of writing, Litecoin was up by 0.21% to $55.97. A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin rise to an early morning high $56.28 before falling to a low $55.22.

Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early in the day.

Litecoin would need to avoid a fall through the $55.18 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $58.66.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from Tuesdays high $57.99.

Barring another crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $55.18 pivot would bring the first major support level at $52.38 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, however, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$50 levels. The second major support level sits at $48.90.

First Major Support Level: $52.38

First Major Resistance Level: $58.66

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $54

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $78

62% FIB Retracement Level: $104

Stellars Lumen rose by 3.66% on Tuesday. Partially reversing a 4.75% slide from Monday, Stellars Lumen ended the day at $0.097659.

It was a bearish start to the day. Stellars Lumen fell to an early morning intraday low $0.093592 before making a move.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $0.08854, Stellars Lumen rallied to a late intraday high $0.098536.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.10061, Stellars Lumen eased back to end the day at $0.097 levels.

At the time of writing, Stellars Lumen was up 0.33% to $0.097977. A mixed start to the day saw Stellars Lumen fall to an early morning low $0.096459 before rising to a high $0.098268.

Stellars Lumen left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Story continues

Stellars Lumen would need to avoid a fall through the $0.09660 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.9960.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Stellars Lumen to break out from Tuesdays high $0.0.098536.

Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely limit any upside.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $0.09660 pivot would bring the first major support level at $0.09466 into play.

Barring another extended crypto sell-off, however, Stellars Lumen should steer well clear of the second major support level at $0.09165.

First Major Support Level: $0.09466

First Major Resistance Level: $0.09660

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.09960

38% FIB Retracement Level: $0.14336518

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.2050

Trons TRX rose by 2.26% on Tuesday. Following on from a 0.94% gain on Monday, Trons TRX ended the day at $0.019179.

It was a mixed start to the day. Trons TRX rose to an early morning high $0.019031 before hitting reverse.

Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.019040, Trons TRX slid to a late morning intraday low $0.018233.

Steering clear of the first major support level at $0.01791, Trons TRX rallied to a late intraday high $0.019500.

Trons TRX broke through the first major resistance level at $0.01940 before falling back to sub-$0.019 levels.

Finding late support, however, Trons TRX recovered to end the day at $0.019 levels.

At the time of writing, Trons TRX was up by 2.15% to $0.019591. A mixed start to the day saw Trons TRX rise fall to an early morning low $0.018989 before rising to a high $0.019729.

Trons TRX broke through the first major resistance level at $0.019710 early on.

Trons TRX would need to avoid a fall through the $0.01897 pivot level to support another run at the first major resistance level at $0.01971.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Trons TRX to break out from the morning high $0.019729.

Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and morning high would likely cap any upside.

Failure to avoid a fall through the $0.01897 pivot level would bring the first major support level at $0.01844 into play.

Barring an extended crypto sell-off, Trons TRX should steer clear of sub-$0.018 levels. The second major support level sits at $0.01770.

First Major Support Level: $0.01844

First Major Resistance Level: $0.01971

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.0322

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $0.0452

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.0663

Please let us know what you think in the comments below

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

Continued here:

Litecoin, Stellars Lumen, and Trons TRX Daily Analysis July 29th, 2020 - Yahoo Finance

Litecoin (LTC) Down $0.46 On 4 Hour Chart, Underperforms All Top Cryptos to Start the Day; But Still in an Uptrend Over Past 14 Days – CFDTrading

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Litecoin 4 Hour Price Update

Updated July 30, 2020 03:20 AM GMT (11:20 PM EST)

Litecoin is down 0.83% ($0.46) since the previous 4 hours, marking the 2nd candle in a row it has gone down. Relative to other instruments in the Top Cryptos asset class, Litecoin ranked 3rd since the previous 4 hours in terms of percentage price change.

The choppiness in the recent daily price action of Litecoin continues; to start today, it came in at a price of 55.22 US dollars, down 1.13% ($0.63) since the previous day. The price move occurred on volume that was down 47.12% from the day prior, but up 236.77% from the same day the week before. Those trading within the Top Cryptos asset class should know that Litecoin was the worst performer in the class during the previous day. The daily price chart of Litecoin below illustrates.

The clearest trend exists on the 14 day timeframe, which shows price moving up over that time. Also of note is that on a 90 day basis price appears to be forming a base which could the stage for it being a support/resistance level going forward. For another vantage point, consider that Litecoins price has gone down 16 of the previous 30 trading days.

For laughs, fights, or genuinely useful information, lets see what the most popular tweets pertaining to Litecoin for the past day were:

@RichardHeartWin @SatoshiLite Cant imagine where Litecoin would be if @SatoshiLite hadnt dumped ALL his Litecoin at the top. Will it ever recover? We shall see! Thankfully I got into Litecoin early before the pump of 2017 but I flipped all my Litecoin for #Hex and never looked back. Best move I ever made!

@SatoshiLite litecoin is the only coin i will forever hate. Being dumped on the top by the founder and he claims it was a due to a conflict of interest is pure bs. I would of respected more if he had said that he was takin profits.

@Asadharari @Venkate11772346 I believe in a mega bullrun litecoin will outperform bitcoin in % increase. If btc doubles last bullrun price to 40k then litecoin can reach 1k.We just never know how this bull run will play out. Its my belief under the conditions next run will make 2017 look like a warm up

In terms of news links for Litecoin heres one to try:

Litecoin Foundation Donate crypto at Blockchair Donut

Support the nonprofit leading development and security of the Litecoin global payment network.David provides a monthly progress report which you can read on litecointalk.io In addition, The Litecoin Foundation helps to support adoption and align key partnerships to give Litecoin users financial tools to help with growth of the currency.

See the original post here:

Litecoin (LTC) Down $0.46 On 4 Hour Chart, Underperforms All Top Cryptos to Start the Day; But Still in an Uptrend Over Past 14 Days - CFDTrading

Litecoin (LTC) Down $0.55 in Last 4 Hours, Started Today Up 2.83%; Price Base in Formation Over Past 90 Days – CFDTrading

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Litecoin 4 Hour Price Update

Updated July 31, 2020 03:19 AM GMT (11:19 PM EST)

Litecoin is down 0.97% ($0.55) since the previous 4 hours, marking the 3rd candle in a row it has gone down. Relative to other instruments in the Top Cryptos asset class, Litecoin ranked 4th since the previous 4 hours in terms of percentage price change.

Litecoin entered today at $56.78, up 2.83% ($1.56) from the day prior. The price move occurred on stronger volume; specifically, yesterdays volume was up 17.77% from the day prior, and up 141.27% from the same day the week before. Out of the 5 instruments in the Top Cryptos asset class, Litecoin ended up ranking 2nd for the day in terms of price change relative to the day prior. Lets take a look at the daily price chart of Litecoin.

The clearest trend exists on the 14 day timeframe, which shows price moving up over that time. Price action traders in particular will want to note that the 90 day period appears to show price forming a base; this could indicate that a support/resistance level is developing. Or to view things another way, note that out of the past 10 days Litecoins price has gone up 6 them.

Over on Twitter, here were the top tweets about Litecoin:

The amount of litecoin added to grayscale has grown 5x 7/29 10.3M7/28 8.9M7/27 7.7M7/24 5.7M7/22 2.2M Litecoin is less than .002 percent of how much bitcoin is held on Grayscale We can easily see another 30Million in litecoin added to the litecoin trust$LTCN

We are bullish on litecoin. If you dont believe me or dont get it, I dont have time to try to convince you, sorry.#ltc #litecoin

As @BoilingPointLLC already pointed out, $LTC could start its bull run earlier than it did in the last cycle, since #Litecoin is much better than 4 years ago.If it pumps earlier, we already have our position. If not, we will have more time to accumulate.

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Litecoin (LTC) Down $0.55 in Last 4 Hours, Started Today Up 2.83%; Price Base in Formation Over Past 90 Days - CFDTrading

Bitcoin and Altcoins Start Fresh Increase, Ethereum Outperforms – Cryptonews

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

Bitcoin price remained stable above the USD 10,800 support and recently started a steady rise. BTC surpassed the USD 11,050 level and it is currently (08:30 UTC) trading near USD 11,100. The main hurdle on the upside is still USD 11,250, above which the bulls might aim at a new multi-week high above USD 11,450.

Similarly, most major altcoins are showing signs of a fresh increase, including ethereum, XRP, litecoin, bitcoin cash, BNB, EOS, TRX, XLM, and ADA. ETH/USD is up more than 6% and it even traded to a new monthly high at USD 342 before correcting gains. XRP/USD is also rising and it seems like the bulls are targeting a retest of USD 0.250.

Total market capitalization

After a short-term downside correction, bitcoin price recovered above USD 11,000 and USD 11,050. BTC is now rising steadily and it may soon retest the USD 11,200 and USD 11,250 levels. To continue higher and gain strength, the price must settle above the USD 11,250 level. The next resistance is near USD 11,400, above which the price might surge above USD 11,500.On the downside, the USD 11,000 level is an initial support. The main support is now forming near the USD 10,800 level.

Ethereum price outperformed bitcoin, and it climbed above the USD 335 resistance. ETH gained over 6% and it even spiked above USD 340. The current price action is positive, suggesting more possible upsides above the USD 340 and USD 345 levels.The first major support is near the USD 235 level, but the previous resistance near USD 230 might act as a strong buy zone if there is a downside correction.

Bitcoin cash price is gaining bullish momentum above USD 280 and it is slowly rising towards the USD 298 and USD 300 resistance levels. BCH is up around 3% and it might make another attempt to clear the USD 300 resistance. If the bulls fail, there is a risk of a bearish wave towards the USD 280 support.ADA is struggling to gain strength above the USD 0.142 and USD 0.145 resistance levels. If there is a clear break above USD 0.145, the price might climb higher towards the USD 0.150 and USD 0.152 levels. Conversely, the bears might push the price towards the USD 0.130 and USD 0.128 support levels.XRP price is consolidating above the USD 0.245 level and showing bullish signs. The price might climb towards the USD 0.248 and USD 0.250 levels. Any further gains could lead the price towards the USD 0.255 levels. On the downside, there are strong supports forming near USD 0.242 and USD 0.240.

In the past three sessions, many small altcoins gained over 5%, including BNT, FXC, VET, ANT, LINK, SNX, BAND, DIVI, HYN, ZIL, and HEDG. Conversely, ERD, RUNE, LUNA, TMTG, ABBC, and NEXO are down more than 5%.

Overall, bitcoin price is showing signs of a fresh increase above USD 11,200 and USD 11,250. If BTC fails again to settle above USD 11,250, there is a risk of a bearish reaction below USD 11,000 and USD 10,800._____

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Bitcoin and Altcoins Start Fresh Increase, Ethereum Outperforms - Cryptonews

Coronavirus Cases On The Rise In Italy. Freedom Does Not Mean Infecting Others – Forbes

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

ROME, ITALY - JULY 29: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte delivers his speech during the debate ... [+] at the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) about further initiatives related to the Covid-19 emergency, on July 29, 2020 in Rome, Italy. Today Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte reported at the Camera dei Deputati (Chamber of Deputies) to ask to vote on the extension of the state of emergency related to the Covid-19 emergency. (Photo by Antonio Masiello/Getty Images)

In line with other European countries, the trend of the coronavirus epidemic in Italy has started increasing again. Alongside Spain, France and Germany, the country has started recording higher levels of contagion, with 379 new cases today, mostly concentrated in the regions of Veneto and Lombardy. In 8 regions (out of 21) the contagion rate is above 1 point, the standard risk measurement used to establish the necessary attention level.

According to experts, the number of Covid-19 cases in our country is slightly rising, although it remains contained. This is expected as the epidemic is running high in different countries of the world and we are surrounded by countries where the number of cases is increasing, said Gianni Rezza, general director of the Prevention agency in the Italian ministry of Health. Luckily, our system is reacting well, and all hotbeds are instantly identified and contained. This still imposes the need to maintain prudent behavior, meaning maintaining physical distancing, using face masks in public places, especially indoors, and washing ones hands frequently, he added.

With the summer season and the lifting of restrictions all around Europe, Italy is trying to restart its economy, encouraging the shift back to normality. But the government is still cautious. Earlier this week prime minister Giuseppe Conte intervened in parliament to present a resolution to extend the state of emergency until October 15. This extension, if the debate leaves aside all ideological positions, is an inevitable choice, even obligated to some extent, and exclusively based on technical evaluations, he said.

Not everyone in the parliament shared this reasoning. I am not going to mince words, I think that what is happening is extremely serious. This is a block in a liberticidal drift that the government has put in place with the excuse of the coronavirus. There is no other reason, said Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right party Fratelli dItalia.

Along the same lines is the position of Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who in parliament refused to wear a mask and on multiple public occasions was found not adopting any protection measures, including distancing from others. A greeting by the elbow means the end of the human species, and I refuse to do it. Whenever someone comes close to me, if they give me their hand, I break the law and shake it, he said.

Italys president Sergio Mattarella hence called on Italians sense of responsibility. We cannot and we must not forget what happened, those weeks when hundreds of our fellow citizens died on a daily basis, when doctors and nurses in hospitals with self-sacrifice made extreme efforts, being at serious personal risk, to take care of those who were sick, when in the cemeteries there wasnt enough space for all the coffins. It was only four months ago. On March 31, 800 of our fellow citizens died in a single day. [] Sometimes, the theme of the violation of the rules of sanitary prudence is evoked as an expression of freedom. But freedom should not be confused with the right to make others sick. To learn how to live together with the virus until there is a vaccine, does not mean behaving as if the virus had disappeared. Only by remembering what happened, and without being divided based on prejudice, only this way, through a common search of perspective, we can pose solid foundations for the necessary recovery, and get to a new normal.

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Coronavirus Cases On The Rise In Italy. Freedom Does Not Mean Infecting Others - Forbes

Freedom Schools come to Wilmington, here’s what the program is all about [Free read] – Port City Daily

Posted on July 31, 2020 by Danzig

WILMINGTON Its Tuesday at Harambe and the gym at the International School at Gregory is having trouble containing the chanting, clapping and cheers.

About 50 students called scholars in the program are spread out on the floor. JaQuay Locke, a lanky rising Holly Shelter Middle School 7th grader, was locked in on one of the student leader interns (SLIs) Kaylee Lineberry as she stirred the scholars up into a frenzy.

The whole gym was clapping. Dancing. Stomping. Despite physically staying six feet apart, there was no distance between their voices.

Are you hype? Are you hype?

Nothing is said at Harambee. Its sung. Its shouted. Its chanted.

The group answered as one.

Yeah. Im hype. Im hype.

The call and answer go on for a bit. Each time the Lineberry calls out, the energy level rises until they get to the final answer.

Im hype for Freedom School.

The whole gym stomps and dances.

Turn up, turn up, turn up, turn up

Freedom School scholars white, Black, Hispanic begin every day with Harambee, which means lets pull together in Swahili.

Its the Freedom School way.

This is the first time the Childrens Defense Fund Freedom School program has been held in Wilmington, where its being implemented by Communities in Schools of Cape Fear. Rooted in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project of 1964, the six-week cultural and literacy program stokes the scholars passion for reading and builds up their self-worth and sense of community.

Freedom Schools arrives in Wilmington just as the United States faces a reckoning over systemic racism and police brutality, a truth the program doesnt shy away from. In fact, the curriculum was already tackling these issues. The program seeks to affirm and discuss the persistent problems scholars see and live every day and the importance of civic engagement to make meaningful change.

The heart of Freedom School is letting our scholars know they can make a difference in their families, in themselves, in their communities, Keisha Robinson, the site coordinator in Wilmington, said. Were building them up here but theyre taking it someplace else with them.

Freedom Schools are led by SLIs, students recruited from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and East Carolina University. They lead class discussions in the morning and activities like art, step, drama, and athletics in the afternoon. Before the program started Robinson sat down with the staff and learned all their hobbies and built the afternoon activities around them.

Theyre bringing a lot of what they know to it, Robinson said.

Keith Miller, a senior at UNCW studying psychology, took the Freedom Schools job after hearing about it from a fraternity brother. It was an opportunity to work with children. Miller said the Freedom School curriculum challenges the students to ask questions and think critically about not only what theyre taught but what they see in the community. For some of the students, this is the first time theyve read books with characters facing the same issues they do every day.

It challenges them to ask why, Miller said. Were getting real.

JaQuay said one of his favorite books was The Road to Paris byNikki Grimes. The book is about Paris, a nine-year old, biracial girl who is in foster system after her father leaves and her alcoholic mother cant take care of her and her brother. Paris is separated from her older brother Malcolm who has protected her after they run away from an abusive foster family.

The book led to conversations about violence, neglect, and racism. Topics that arent readily discussed in current curriculums. JaQuay said he felt safe in the classroom and said the conversations helped him, declining to get into specifics.

JaQuay said he identified with Malcom.

He is kind of like me, JaQuay said. I like helping people.

Like JaQuay, Maleya Ross, an 11-year-old rising 6th grader headed to Trask Middle School, identified with the characters and the situation.

It sounded like a real story to me,Maleya said.

Miller said the curriculum is relevant for today.

They take on racism, sexism, police brutality and gender, Miller said. I really think it is perfect. Easy to be relatable.

While the classes take on big issues, the structure was loose and focused on discussion more than rout learning. The classrooms were a place to explore and discuss. Before the first class, Miller made a pact with his scholars. Hed give his all if they did. They even signed a contract. Miller sees it like a coach/player relationship.

Just because Im the teacher, I can learn from them, Miller said. This sets them up to be self-aware and be someone.

Down the hall from Millers classroom, Dwayne AltmanLeach was leading his elementary-school-aged class in a discussion of Lillians Right to Vote: A Celebration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The book follows Lillian a one-hundred-year-old African American woman as she heads the polls. Along the way, she recounts her familys journey to gaining the right to vote. The book was published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Sitting in a circle, each scholar took a turn reading one page. With each page, there was a short discussion with AltmanLeach giving prompts. When they got to a part about voter suppression, AltmanLeach threw out some hints.

What group burned crosses? AltmanLeach said. This gang has 3 letters. Starts with a K.

It took a minute, but the scholars figured out he was talking about the Ku Klux Klan.

Theyre racist butt faces, a Black girl said.

Part of Lillians journey highlights the systems in place to suppress the Black vote like poll taxes and exams, which led to a conversation about who had the right to vote. At one point, AltmanLeach wrote, all men are created equal on the vote as they talked about who had the right to vote.

Men. Not Black men. Not women. Just white men. It angered the class.

Sexist B-words, one of the scholars a Black girl said.

AltmanLeach pointed out election officials were not asking white voters the same questions. The scholars were aghast.

That is messed up, the girl said.

These kinds of conversations are at the soul of Freedom Schools. The only way to engage the students on the importance of civic engagement is to show them the fight needed to get it. The lesson was clear: Voting is not a right to be squandered.

Civics and history are cornerstones of the curriculum. But Freedom Schools has loftier goals. They are creating a new generation of community leaders who understand the past and where they want to go. Robinson said it is one of the best ways to give students the confidence to be critical thinkers and create a community that can build a better world

Were here to serve them and as scholars it is their job to take everything they have and make something more of it, Robinson said.

Another benefit of the program is how it closes the achievement gap. A 2010 study of the program in Charlotte, N.C. and Bennettsville, S.C. found more than 90 percent of scholars suffered no summer learning loss after attending Freedom Schools. A Kansas study found scholars improved their reading by two grade levels after attending the program.

This year there was one Freedom School program. In five years, Robinson wants to see one at every elementary school in the county.

Weve got to create a new culture, Robinson said.

Few students took to Freedoms Schools like JaQuay. From entertaining the other scholars at breakfast to Harambee where he was one of the loudest voices in the gym to the honest discussions in class, JaQuay found a place where he could not only explore his own lived experience, but build a community to help him handle it.

The Freedom School way gave him confidence.

[At] my regular school the only time I can express myself is at recess, he said. Here, all day, I can express myself with actions and words.

Its Tuesday at Harambee and the community being built over six weeks will last long after the echoes fade from the gym.

Kevin Maurer is a journalist and author. He is currently the Director of Community Engagement at Cape Fear Collective.

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Freedom Schools come to Wilmington, here's what the program is all about [Free read] - Port City Daily

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