Westworld: Who Is the Charlotte Hale Host? – Collider.com

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One of the big questions going into Westworld Season 3 was how Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) would be returning to the show, and the third episode of the seasontitled The Absence of Fieldoffered us our closest look yet at the host inhabiting this new Charlotte body.

If youll recall, Dolores killed Charlotte at the end of Westworld Season 2 inside the park, but not before Dolores created a new body that looked exactly like Charlotte. This is how Dolores escaped the parkshe had her fancy lil marble thingy loaded into this Charlotte body and walked right out. Charlotte didnt meet any resistance because shes an incredibly high-up executive at Delos.

At the beginning of The Absence of Field, we flash back to when this new Charlotte body was brought online by Dolores out in the real world. Not-Charlotte asks, Who am I? and Dolores says, You know who you are. Its confirmed that this is not Charlottethe murderous Delos executive is definitely deadbut Dolores put one of her friends fancy lil marble thingies into this Charlotte body so they could infiltrate Delos as part of Dolores grand plan.

Image via HBO

Throughout the episode, Not-Charlotte navigates her way around Charlottes real life, which includes an ex-lover and a young son. Shes trying to play the role of Charlotte Hale but also struggling with some severe identity issues. Whoever this is inside Charlotte is a bit fragile, and he or she is having trouble adjusting to trying to lead this double lifewell, triple life actually.

We learn at the end of the episode that Charlotte was the mole inside Delos all along. Before the massacre at Westworld, Charlotte came to Rehoboam co-creator Engerraund Serac (Vincent Cassel) to tell him that the massacre was a certainty (likely predicted by the algorithm Rehoboam/Incite) and that she could use it to smuggle out that sweet, sweet guest data that Delos has been collecting.

But the question remains: Who is the Charlotte Hale host? We dont learn the answer at the end of the episode, but we do learn a couple of key factoids: it sure sounds like he/she was part of Wyatt/Dolores army; he/she was good at hurting people, but also maybe good at seducing them too; he/she really hates humans.

So with that in mind, here are the three most likely candidates

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Westworld: Who Is the Charlotte Hale Host? - Collider.com

Modsy Interior Design Review – The Pros, Cons, and Cost of Modsy – GoodHousekeeping.com

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Chances are you've been stumped figuring out how to decorate one of your rooms or completely reimagine your entire home. If you're not in a position to hire a professional to handle the job in person, an online interior design service, like Modsy, might be the way to go.

Modsy's main selling point is that it offers realistic 3D renderings to help you envision a redesigned look filled with shoppable furniture and home accessories. In order to get started, you upload photos and measurements of your space. You'll then complete Modsy's Style Quiz to share details about your aesthetic, existing furniture, and budget. Based on your responses, Modsy's designers will provide you with two 3D design concepts of your space.

Along with including suggested layouts, the 3D renderings will feature recommendations for furniture and accessories from top retailers. Once you've reviewed the designs, you can communicate any desired changes to the Modsy designer or handle them on your own via the platform's 3D Style Editor. Finally, to complete the project, you'll shop right within the design plans from more than 100 retailers such as Crate & Barrel, Wayfair, Interior Define, and Joybird.

Prices start from $89 per room for the Classic package, which includes a 3D rendering of your space, two initial design concepts, and guidance on two revised plans. The highest package, called Luxe, comes with everything from access to a top-tier designer by phone, e-mail, or text, to paint and window treatment suggestions. (View other Modsy packages here.)

Courtesy of Modsy

Courtesy of Modsy

The Good Housekeeping Institute Textiles Lab invited real Modsy users to share their experience with the service, challenges they encountered, and whether they would use it again. Here's the feedback they provided:

Pros

Courtesy of Modsy

Just about any design service will have its own set of positives and negatives. If you're on a budget and intend to have an open mind throughout the design process and maintain clear communication with your designer, Modsy is worth considering.

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Modsy Interior Design Review - The Pros, Cons, and Cost of Modsy - GoodHousekeeping.com

Can you see someone’s profile picture if they have blocked you on WhatsApp? Here’s what you need to know – Times Now

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Can you see profile picture if blocked on WhatsApp? (Representational Image)  |  Photo Credit: BCCL

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is one of the most widely used instant messaging apps. From sending texts to voice notes, WhatsApp comes with a plethora of features. You can also change your profile picture and upload status on WhatsApp to help people know about your whereabouts. WhatsApp has been updating its features from time to time to keep its users engaged right from bringing Gifs to the emoji features and many more

WhatsApp also helps us do voice calls and video calls and you can also do group video call on WhatsApp. You just need to have an active internet connection.

However, many times, you may feel that somebody has been stalking you too much or has been peeping too much into your personal lives. He/she may be spamming you with unnecessary messages as well. Keeping all these things in mind, WhatsApp also comes up with security features where you can block a contact if you feel the need.

You can simply click on Settings and click on Privacy. Then you must click on blocked contacts and click on the add user option and enter the contact you want to block.

At times, you may feel that you have been blocked by someone but you are unsure whether you have been blocked or not. You cannot see the status, profile picture of the contact and you might be confused whether you have been blocked or have they changed their privacy settings. Many people wonder if they can see the profile picture of the contact if they have been blocked.

Once you have been blocked, you will no longer be able to see the profile picture of the person. You will see a blank image on his/her profile and you can't see his/her image.Chances may be there that they might have changed their profile picture privacy to nobody as well so you can check by sending a text. If you send a text and you can see a grey tick, you should be very sure that you have been blocked.

Thus, if you have been blocked, you will no longer send texts, nor can you view their profile picture. You will also not see their last seen activity and even they will also be barred from seeing your last seen until they unblock you and you will also not be updated about their status update. Being blocked will also not allow you to make calls to them, where you can call them but the person who has blocked you on WhatsApp won't be notified about it.

You will also not be able to seethe About section of the user if you have been blocked. However, you can still send and receive each other messages only in a group chat else there is no way where you can send a text to a person if they have blocked you on WhatsApp. They will also not be able to see your profile picture if they have blocked you.

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Can you see someone's profile picture if they have blocked you on WhatsApp? Here's what you need to know - Times Now

How the FE sector is adapting to the coronavirus crisis – FE Week

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Colleges and training providers have adapted in positive and innovative ways to continue learning and support the local community during the Covid-19 crisis.

Here, FE Week shares some examples, including hospital donations, virtual horticulture, cooking and mental health classes, as well as zumba!

Care apprentices in the Midlands have been deployed to care homes to alleviate pressure on nurses during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Two hundred and fifty health and social care apprentices from private provider GB Training, some of whom are fresh out of school, have been armed with face masks, more facilities for handwashing and sterilising, and updated infection control training, to take on even greater responsibilities.

At The Chimes Residential care home in Stoke-on-Trent, elderly people have been isolated to their rooms and professional visitors are not being allowed past reception, so level 3 lead adult care worker apprentices have had to carry out tasks usually fulfilled by district nurses, including taking diabetics blood sugar levels.

Taherabanu Rajabali, Level 2 Health and Social Care Apprentice, IHI Care Services, Birmingham

The homes care manager, Julie Davey, said how very proud she was of her team, especially the apprentices as they are stepping up to the bar and learning the necessary skills to keep giving the vital care that older people need.

The district nurses, she said, have given the apprentices an A* for all they have learned in these uncertain times.

Tracey Bradley, an apprentice working at a care home in Birmingham, said it had been very stressful, but they have no choice as the learners both know the people and care for them deeply.

That wed do all we can to help protect them goes without question, she said, adding it was rewarding to be using skills and training she had learned to protect people, particularly when they are some of those most at risk from this horrible disease.

At Awarding Care, 92-year-old resident Stella Powell has given her thanks to level 2 apprentices for your kindness and dedication. Not only now, but always.

Youve become more than carers youre friends to us too. Thank you doesnt seem enough.

But its not just the apprentices who are helping health services during this pandemic: a tutor at GB Training, Gemma Smith, has been contacted by a hospital she worked at for several years to request she join an emergency list in case of a lockdown in the UK.

The provider said despite the challenges and the anxieties, many of the apprentices are working overtime to cover fluctuating staff shortages, and morale remains high.

Managing director Lawrence Barton expressed his and his whole organisations pride in seeing the apprentices rise to the additional challenges placed upon them.

Our apprentices are serving on the front line in the struggle against this pandemic and helping to save lives. In a number of cases, they find themselves caring for and protecting some of the most vulnerable in our society, many of whom are the same age as their grandparents.

PICTURED ABOVE: GB Training Health and Social Care apprentices receive 90 bunches of flowers donated by Marks & Spencers for both residents and carers as a gesture of gratitude for their hard work

An independent training provider has donated more than 20,000 to an emergency coronavirus fund.

Learning Curve Group handed over the entirety of its charity foundations balance to help front-line community groups and local charities working to ease the pressure on those worst affected by the pandemic in County Durham.

Chief executive Brenda McLeish said: People are at the centre of everything we do, so weve made an important decision to change the pillars upon which our fund was established with the aim of supporting those who are in need of funds more than ever.

As changes are announced daily, we are committed to supporting the local community in whatever way we can.

The County Durham Community Foundation has set up the County Durham Covid-19 Response Fund to help community groups survive during this period, and the Learning Curve Group Charity Foundation was one of the funds founding supporters.

Learning Curve Group HQ

The money will be spent on a range of activities. For example, 5 will go towards a hot dinner for an older person self-isolating.

In addition, 10 may be spent on purchasing items for a food bank and 20 could buy fuel to help a volunteer deliver meals on wheels. Larger sums of 50 will support volunteers from groups based in village halls calling elderly people in self-isolation, while 100 could keep the lights on for a community group.

Chief executive of County Durham Community Foundation, Michelle Cooper, said: The situation is becoming more serious as each hour passes, and we cannot afford to wait around. We are devoting all of our time and energy into supporting our local grassroots groups, which in turn will bolster our communities.

Illness, isolation, loneliness and poverty are very real in County Durham and Darlington right now, and exasperated by the spread of Covid-19: but if we work together we can provide support to the life-changing local community services that will lessen the blow.

An independent training provider has drafted in a mental health and wellbeing coach to keep apprentices motivated in their studies during the crisis.

Amazing Apprenticeships have launched a series of webinars for employers and providers who are trying to support their apprentices while facing their own challenges.

Director Anna Morrison said: We have received an overwhelming response from the sector.

Were building a real sense of community and everyone is so positive about helping and supporting each other.

The provider has partnered with Gen Healthy Minds and one of its coaches, George Anderson, to provide content for the sessions. Anderson has 20 years experience in the fitness and wellbeing industry and his Facebook group On the wagon has more than 5,000 members.

He said: Never before has there been a more important time to teach resilience, wellbeing and mental health management techniques.

Im delighted to be delivering this series of online masterclasses to a group of individuals who have the potential to influence large numbers of apprentices.

Around 300 participants from across the country took part in the first webinar on Wednesday and 500 have registered for the next masterclass on Monday.

Mike Thompson, a managing partner at Gen Healthy Minds, said: Mental health and wellbeing of apprentices must be our number one priority right now and the team at Gen Healthy Minds will help employers and providers in whatever way we can.

Many of the providers participating in the webinars have been supporting apprentices in the NHS as well as those working in food production and distribution.

The programme is free to join and is being funded by Amazing Apprenticeships.

The provider has also set up a LinkedIn group to encourage sharing of best practice, ideas and support.

York College has donated almost 800 pieces of personal protective equipment to its local hospital to help battle against shortages brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

A range of masks, gloves, overalls and safety glasses, which are usually in stock for use by construction, engineering and stonemasonry students, have been handed to the York Teaching Hospital Trust.

York College principal Lee Probert said: Since weve moved to online delivery only, we decided that these should be given to front-line staff in the NHS who are saving lives.

His colleges childcare students and staff have also been called upon to volunteer in some of the citys childcare centres that are stretched for staff, while other employees are being encouraged to join voluntary groups in the community if they wish to do so.

Probert added: Ive acknowledged that whilst were working in this brave new way not all staff will be able to work as productively at home as they could do if the college was open, and empowered people to sign up for the citys volunteering effort, if they feel able to do so.

York Colleges PPE donation

He also said that the college is going through its food stocks to donate goods due to expire in the coming weeks and months to food banks in the area.

These are items which we might have to write off if were not open in the traditional sense for a significant length of time.

We know that food bank stocks are becoming depleted and wed rather they had it to put to good use than it be wasted.

For its own students, York College is live-streaming interactive lessons in all curriculum areas every day.

Probert praised his staff for creating hundreds of online lessons and resources and working really hard to ensure students successes.

They have also been asked to stay in touch with learners to ensure they are not isolated and are in the best possible position to engage with whatever system for awarding qualifications emerges.

Daily remote enrichment programmes and quizzes are also being organised for the staff.

A college in Merseyside has been using technology to stream live cooking demos, host competitions and offer pastoral support as they adapt to teaching in isolation.

Level 1 hospitality students at Hugh Baird Colleges L20 Hotel School have been recreating dishes made by chef lecturers at home.

On Monday, level 1 students learned how to poach eggs as part of a remote breakfast lesson.

Steve Otty, curriculum co-ordinator, told FE Week the outbreak of Covid-19 has resulted in a rethink of delivering methods, with the hospitality team embracing online teaching.

He said: This has been a little challenging due to the very nature of vocational training. At college we have industry standard kitchens, a range of different ingredients and obviously were able to work more closely with learners.

But it has been great fun and the learners have enjoyed the experience.

L20 Hotel Schools learners have also taken part in an online student competition where they were challenged to upload a picture of the most unusual food item in their cupboards at home.

Nikolas Arnaudov, a 16-year-old who is studying for a level 1 VRQ Diploma in professional cooking, was victorious with Bulgarian pastries his mother had made while on lockdown.

Otty said the use of live group chats had resulted in positive student contributions and improved collaboration within groups.

He added: It has been key that we have continued to engage and communicate with learners.

I think that continuing with their course online has helped to lift their spirits and has kept their minds focused.

Andy Howard, one of the colleges directors, also devised a way for Microsoft Teams software to offer emotional support to students during this period.

A tiered framework has been introduced to enable check-ins on learners and prompt further engagement if there are any concerns.

He said: Planning the pastoral support is just as vital for our students as the academic delivery, if not more so.

Principal Rachael Hennigan added: I could not be prouder of all our staff at the college.

Their response to an unprecedented situation has been sensational.

A college with over 30,000 learners has not missed a step in moving services like horticulture lessons and mental health support online during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Weston College principal Paul Phillips commended his tremendous staff for their work in mobilising their digital strategy during the crisis, saying tutors have actually increased their interaction with students since the campus closed on Friday.

The college has developed a portfolio of courses, such as digital skills and mental health wellbeing, to upskill employees and members of the local community at home, and said it is continuing to get requests from employers who are looking to use the lockdown to help boost their workers skills while they are homeworking.

Emma Wilkinson, a digital marketing apprentice at Weston College

The team of digital educators and developers at the college have helped build a digital learning culture at the college over the past two years, with the help of 565,000 from the Department for Educations Flexible Learning Fund, which was used to train staff in techniques like video presentations.

Phillips says it was clear the digital strategy was not just about creating online learning, but also creating a strategy that would ensure the virtual classroom was outstanding and that social isolation is minimised, that motivation is maximised, and that mental health support is embedded holistically.

To that end, the college has also rolled out body and mind physical and wellbeing activities for groups of learners, as well as sessions like watching Netflix together and sharing a break for tea.

But it is not just students getting a digital helping hand during these times: Phillips is also running regular briefings over the internet with colleagues to keep morale high.

He has urged other principals to do the same, saying: Encourage staff to digitally innovate to keep students engaged in education and use their virtual community as a mechanism to reduce self-isolation and to improve mental health, and success will come from a ground-up approach.

The #myvirtualcollege hashtag has also been launched by Weston to capture best practice, ideas and suggestions for the future.

The coronavirus has not prevented East Durham College from caring for the livestock on its farm, with staff stepping in where students left off.

The college has a 24-horse yard, 200 sheep and an animal care unit which houses Wrinkles the giant tortoise as well as wallabies.

Its Houghall Campus is set in around 500 acres of arable, grazing and woodland. Lindsay Haggis, director of landbased studies, told FE Week: The farm is ticking away absolutely brilliantly.

I guess the disappointing thing is the learners would have been here to see it all and that is the opportunities that they are missing at the moment.

She said the equine lecturing team had pulled out all the stops the week before the college closed to ensure that learners had completed the practical assessments required to achieve their qualifications.

Staff have been using Facebook and Microsoft Teams to keep learners updated with what their favourite horses are up to as well as providing information on how Covid-19 is impacting the industry.

Yard manger Kate Lee and her team of four have been following a rota to take care of the horses and ensure they will be ready for when the students return.

Wrinkles, the giant sulcata tortoise

Most agriculture, animal management and foundation learners had the opportunity to get involved with the lambing season before closure but the colleges suckler herd of native cattle have just started calving, with three born so far and another 27 on the way.

Haggis said: Luckily the farm staff always take the time to take a snap or two so we can share these events with the learners.

Similarly, level 3 agriculture students had managed to complete their ploughing assessments before classes ended.

Haggis added: While its a shame the learners didnt get to follow this up with drilling, they will see the fruits of their labours when they return for year two and get on with harvest.

The director also stressed it is very much business as usual in the animal care unit, with senior animal care technician Imogen Wright training giant sulcata tortoise Wrinkles as well as looking after the rest of the animals, which include wallabies and raccoons.

A college senior leader by day and dance instructor by night is running free online classes to keep her colleagues active during Covid-19.

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How the FE sector is adapting to the coronavirus crisis - FE Week

The Feds Response to COVID-19 Is Impressive and Alarming – New York Magazine

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I, for one, dont necessarily welcome our technocratic overlords. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Earlier this week, congressional Democrats and Republicans were locked in contentious negotiations over what the American public should ask of corporations before bailing them out. Conservatives contended that Uncle Sam should not interfere with these private enterprises internal affairs. After all, airlines, hotels, fast-food chains, and retailers didnt create the economic crisis that now threatens to bankrupt them. Rather, the governments failure to prepare for the COVID-19 pandemic and the heavy-handed social distancing measures that its under-preparation necessitated robbed these companies of expected revenue. Thus, the state had an obligation to extend cheap credit to corporate America, no strings attached.

Progressives saw things differently. In their view, all corporations are, fundamentally, creations of the state. After all, it was our democratically enacted laws of limited liability that brought these institutions into being, and our publicly funded infrastructure, technology, education, and social services that undergird their profits. In recent decades, our corporate-funded political class had rewritten the rules of our market economy in a manner that redounded to the benefit of corporate executives and well-heeled shareholders thereby enabling the rich to commandeer the gains of economic growth. Now, in a context of neo-feudal levels of wealth inequality, the American people shouldnt be asked to stem the capitalist classs losses unless we get something in return: Bailed-out corporations should have to provide their workers with job security, collective-bargaining rights, board representation, and higher wages, and provide the broader public with voting shares.

And then while these factions were still arguing the Federal Reserve went ahead and started lending money directly to private corporations with no significant conditions.

The central banks unprecedented decision to start directly financing the real economy as opposed to lending to private banks came in the face of equally unprecedented conditions. The coronavirus pandemic hadnt just obliterated demand in the service sector. It had also indirectly threatened the ability of virtually all corporations to access affordable credit, even if their business models were somewhat insulated from the effects of mass lockdowns and social distancing. Investors had lost their appetite for all manner of corporate bonds. This was partly due to a self-reinforcing flight to cash: Once anxiety led some investors to shy away from bonds, other investors began to fear that, if they didnt also abandon the market, they would end up saddled with bonds that were impossible to resell without taking a steep loss. The Fed therefore moved to shore up liquidity (i.e., convertibility to cash) in the corporate-bond market through a relatively conventional intervention: It started buying corporate bonds from financial institutions at a rate intended to stabilize demand for such instruments. (The name for this program is the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, or SMCCF.)

But investors skittishness about buying corporate bonds wasnt just about liquidity. It also reflected fears that a wide variety of companies might not be able to pay back their debts, given the COVID-19 crisis and its potential ripple effects. The Fed could not solve that dimension of corporate Americas funding woes by juicing demand for its bonds on secondary markets. Rather, this problem could only be significantly mitigated by providing cheap public credit directly to private firms. Which is, traditionally, the kind of thing that requires the approval of our governments elected branches. But the economy was imploding, and Congress was dilly-dallying and so the Fed just went ahead and established a Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility (PMCCF).

Narayana Kocherlakota, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, found this alarming, writing for Bloomberg View:

[T]he Fed shouldnt get in the business of lending directly to corporations through a vehicle like the PMCCF. Because the Fed is fixing the liquidity problems through the SMCCF, its direct loans are simply a way to assume default risk without receiving a compensatory return. This is simply a direct taxpayer subsidy to corporate shareholders.

Right now, there is a debate in Congress about the shape of a fiscal stimulus package. The administration clearly believes that corporate subsidies are desirable. Its Democratic opponents are much less convinced. By setting up the PMCCF, the Fed is using its independence to decide this important and necessary debate in favor of the White House. Congress would be doing the Fed a favor by eliminating its ability to make direct loans to nonfinancial corporations.

But Kocherlakota was lonely in his alarm. For understandable reasons, few lay news consumers took much interest in (or notice of) the central banks latest alphabet soup of inscrutable lending programs. And anyhow, days later, the Senate gave its formal blessing to the Feds direct lending to corporations. Democrats were able to attach a couple modest conditions to the loans. But the terms were far more lax than progressives had been calling for; the public will assume the risk of lending to embattled corporations without securing any significant claim on their future profits, or durable influence over their operations. Meanwhile, discretion over which businesses should and should not be bailed out was largely outsourced to the unelected bureaucrats at the central bank. Congress simply provided the Fed with a (largely symbolic) $454 billion pot of capital with which to backstop upward of $4 trillion worth of loans, leaving the central bank in charge of divvying up that credit between individual corporations, small businesses, and state governments. There is now a bipartisan consensus in favor of top-down economic planning just so long as that planning is done by officials who are less accountable to the median voter than to the median investment bank, debated far afield from the media spotlight, and articulated in acronym-laden jargon completely inaccessible to ordinary people.

Our elected officials havent just been contracting out wide swaths of economic policymaking to the Fed. Theyve also been letting the central bank make immensely consequential foreign-policy decisions with no public scrutiny or debate.

During the 2008 financial crisis, private banks all across the world suffered from a sudden shortage of U.S. dollars. Such institutions had financed hundreds of billions in dollar-denominated loans by borrowing U.S. currency on wholesale money markets; when investor panic depleted those markets, their funding suddenly dried up. The Federal Reserve came to their rescue. By establishing dollar swap lines with foreign central banks which is to say, allowing those banks to trade their own currencies for however many dollars their nations private banks happened to need the Fed effectively bailed out banks throughout Europe. This constituted nothing less than an epochal reformation of global economic governance, executed with virtually no democratic input or even public awareness. As the historian Adam Tooze summarizes the development, The central banks had, in other words, staged their Bretton Woods 2.0. But they had omitted to invite the cameras or the public, or indeed to explain what they were doing.

The Feds dollar swap lines like most of their crisis-fighting measures, both in 2008 and today were preferable to inaction. Few Americans (or humans more broadly) would have been well-served by cascading bank failures across the pond. But our central bank didnt just impartially stabilize the global financial system it decided which foreign nations central banks would enjoy privileged access to dollars and which would not. Western Europe was cut in on the deal; Eastern Europe was not. These policy choices had profound geopolitical consequences, and were made without any input from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, or any other elected body.

Last week, with global banks once again running short on dollars, the Fed reestablished unlimited drawing rights for all 14 of the central banks that had enjoyed such privileges 12 years ago. Whether the central bank sticks to that legacy system or extends its largesse to dollar-starved developing countries and/or China is a question with wide-ranging economic and geostrategic implications. And its one that none of our elected officials are publicly debating.

There is much to admire in how the Federal Reserve has conducted itself under chairman Jerome Powells leadership. After decades of prioritizing the prevention of hypothetical inflation over the elimination of actual unemployment, Powells Fed has kept interest rates historically low so as to facilitate genuinely full employment. After Alan Greenspan strong-armed the Clinton administration into deficit reduction, Powell explicitly encouraged House Democrats to go big on fiscal policy. And as Congress spent the past two weeks struggling to formulate a relief package remotely commensurate with the scale of the economic crisis, the Federal Reserve has taken a series of quick, ambitious, and creative actions to keep the financial system afloat.

But theres also much to lament about the outsize role that the Fed has come to play in governing our self-professed republic. For much of our nations history, questions of monetary policy which is to say, of how the money supply should be managed, and credit should be allocated were at the very center of democratic debate. In fact, the desire to secure monetary democracy was among the animating passions of the American Revolution.

In 1764, Britain forbade its American colonies from printing new paper money, a policy that produced a currency shortage and devastating deflation. As money appreciated in value faster than agricultural products, farmers struggled to pay back their existing debts, and were forced to accept onerous terms on new credit. In this context, popular control over the powers of money and credit creation became central to colonists conception of independence and self-government.

The historian Terry Bouton has detailed how radicals in revolutionary-era Pennsylvania sought to secure democratic control of what would later become the (putatively nonpolitical) Federal Reserves core functions.

To bring money and credit to the masses, Pennsylvanianscalled for the creation of a government-run loan office to offer ordinary folks low-cost mortgages as long as they owned a modest amount of land or propertyAt the time, most Pennsylvanians believed that privatizing finance turning control of money and credit over to private banks promoted inequality and oppression and, therefore, posed a threat to liberty every bit as dire as control by Britain. People viewed private banks (which did not yet exist in America) as dangerous institutions that undermined freedom by putting economic power in the hands of unaccountable men.

Once independence was secured, the revolutions merchant and planter wing beat back the masses calls for democratizing finance. But the ambition to exert popular influence over monetary policy remained integral to democratic movements in the United States for more than a century, animating the original Populist Partys calls for expanding access to money and credit through the unlimited coinage of silver.

Today, private finance reins supreme, and monetary policy has been depoliticized. Goldbug cranks, socialists, and MMTers may agitate against the Feds independence from popular influence. But for the median voter, monetary policy is neither salient nor readily comprehensible. Meanwhile, liberals and conservatives alike hail the central banks immunity from popular passions as a positive good. And not without reason.

These days, even a militant small-d democrat might have trouble getting worked up about the Fed impinging on this Congresss prerogatives. After all, our federal legislature routinely acts in blatant defiance of public opinion, allows the hired hands of well-heeled interest groups to write its laws, and spends much of its time soliciting campaign funds from plutocratic patrons. Our central bank may be a bit more insulated from democratic accountability. But at least its policymakers boast some genuine expertise, and are capable of responding to pressing challenges without first engaging in several days-worth of performative demagoguery. If our options are to be ruled by a blundering, pseudo-democratic body (a.k.a. Mitch McConnells Senate) or by competent, unelected technocrats one might reasonably prefer the latter.

And yet, Congresss present dysfunction is not extricable from the depoliticization of money and credit that such dysfunction now serves to justify. In truth, the past four decades of exploding inequality, trade-union decline and the plutocratic politics that these two developments have facilitated are in no small part attributable to the deregulation of finance and undemocratic monetary policymaking of the late 1970s. In that era, a crisis of low growth and high inflation had rendered credit scarce. And New Deal-era financial regulations politicized this scarcity: Congress found itself in the position of routinely needing to ration credit between its disparate constituencies; if it rewrote regulations to channel more lending towards businesses, it would threaten the availability of credit to homeowners, and vice versa. As Greta Krippner documents in her book Capitalizing on Crisis, Congresss embrace of financial deregulation was largely motivated by the desire to escape such difficult votes by letting the free market ration credit for it. This had the unintended consequence of making credit abundant albeit, for many working Americans, at usurious interest rates.

Meanwhile, under Paul Volckers leadership, the Federal Reserve chose to lick the countrys persistent inflation problem by giving price stability absolute priority over full employment. In the view of Volcker and his fellow technocrats, reducing price growth required reducing demand, which required reducing working-class wages. To achieve the latter, Volcker engineered a recession by raising benchmark interest rates to unprecedented heights. This policy had its intended effects along with a variety of others. The exorbitant price of credit in the early 1980s didnt just drive up unemployment (and thus, drive down workers bargaining power). It also gave large corporations an immense competitive advantage over less creditworthy small businesses, thereby fueling corporate consolidation. Meanwhile, sky-high benchmark interest rates combined with deregulated financial markets redistributed enormous sums of wealth from debtors to creditors. Add to all this Ronald Reagans regressive changes to the tax code and assault on organized labor, and you get a recipe for a neo-Gilded Age.

The coronavirus crisis is changing our world in many sorrowful respects. It has rendered our already atomized and aching society poorer, sicker, and lonelier than it was a few months ago. If this weeks bailout legislation plays out as some progressive analysts predict, the pandemics economic side effects will accelerate corporate concentration and income inequality.

But this disaster also offers a vital opportunity for beneficent forms of change. By accentuating the perversity of our nations employment-based health insurance model which is now causing millions of workers to lose coverage in the midst of a pandemic the crisis creates an opening for progressives to remake the politics of health reform. By spotlighting the indispensable labor that grocery store clerks and delivery drivers contribute, it could help unionists illustrate the markets unjust undervaluation of such low-skill work. And by politicizing just about every aspect of our economy which is to say, by forcing Congress to demonstrate the private sectors dependence on the state, and to allocate scarce subsidies and credit between corporations, small businesses, and individuals the crisis gives us a fighting chance to secure a more democratic and egalitarian form of economic governance.

Unless, ya know, we just throw up our hands, curse those clowns in Congress, and wait for Jerome Powell & Co. to restore some facsimile of the world we just lost.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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The Feds Response to COVID-19 Is Impressive and Alarming - New York Magazine

COVID-19 response and its impact on domestic violence – Daily Mercury

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HOW might our government policies responding to COVID-19 effect women who are victims of domestic violence, where home is already an unsafe space?

Thats a question raised by CQUniversity domestic violence researcher Dr Brian Sullivan, who also asks how could our COVID-19 response embolden already abusing and controlling men?

Dr Sullivan has reflected on possible consequences but says these concerns are in no way meant to be definitive.

Enforced lockdown

If a woman is living with a coercive controlling abusive man, she and her life are already in lockdown she is microregulated in the home her movements and whereabouts are monitored she is living with an atmosphere of oppression and domination already under threat and under surveillance already, like a hostage.

A COVID-19 lockdown could limit her freedom even more and make him even more dangerous because her isolation is now government policy.

If services (government and non-government) are also in lockdown and services are running with skeletal staff, will this mean that womens support services are going to be harder to access? Will this mean that police response to domestic violence is going to be compromised? Will this mean that mens domestic violence intervention programs are no longer able to keep eyes on him and keep him motivated to change if groups are not up and running?

If hospitals are inundated with patients who have contracted COVID-19 and emergency wards are overloaded, will this mean that a woman who is a victim of domestic violence is unable to get the medical attention she needs and when she needs it?

Will womens domestic violence shelters be open and functioning and accessible? A womans pathways to safety may be roadblocked by enforced lockdown.

If churches, gyms, schools, kindergartens, etc are closed for business, are these other potential avenues of support for the woman that are now blocked for her?

Social distancing

If neighbours are in lockdown and social distancing is the expected behaviour, could that mean a woman who is a domestic violence victim is even more isolated and cut off from informal social and extended family supports?

We know that disasters can cause financial strains and this context can be where an already violent and abusive man can escalate his violence and abuse. How are our already stretched intervention systems going to be able to cope with this likelihood to keep women safe and perpetrators nonviolent?

There are many unknowns, unanswered questions and ongoing complexities in the current situation our society is trying to navigate, Dr Sullivan says.

What we do know is that when resources are low, and responses are slow then the safety of women and children is compromised and our ability to contain and constrain perpetrators is weakened. We need to be on guard and prepared for this contingency also.

If this article has raised concerns or you have experienced domestic or family violence, call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732 (24/7 counselling).

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COVID-19 response and its impact on domestic violence - Daily Mercury

A Novelization Revelation and the Force – That Hashtag Show

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Rhett WilkinsonMarch 30, 2020Rey in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Disney/Lucasfilm)

-SPOILERS AHEAD FOR STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER-

Reys father being a failed clone (and nothing about her mother being Sheev Palpatines daughter and presumably not Force-sensitive) is revealed the novelization of The Rise of Skywalker. It preserves the emphasis in the saga that you can be a nobody but be Force-sensitive.

Kylo Ren tells Rey in the film version of The Rise of Skywalker that Palpatine is Reys grandfather. That seemingly explained why Rey was (very) Force-sensitive: she inherited it from the Dark Lord of the Sith.

But then the novelization of revealed what it did about Reys father, aside from Palpatine being a clone.

This continues an emphasis in Star Wars in the last few years of people not needing to be Force-sensitive by blood, where anyone could be Force-sensitive a democratization of the Force.

This emphasis was especially marked by Star Wars: The Last Jedi ending with a slave boy using the Force to grab a broom to continue his slave work.

It may even be a shift given that the previous focus in Star Wars has been on the Skywalker line, the stories of father and son Anakin and Luke Skywalker, with their Force powers.

Its true that Anakin was not powerful in the Force because of blood, but that was a whole other enchilada an Immaculate Conception, Star Wars style.

This new emphasis is good. Its important to teach children that anyone can be special and that your last name doesnt determine your abilities. Its important to teach children that you can make your life incredible regardless of your family line.

Further, the democratization of most things is good. Its important to decentralize power. In politics, its important to give power to the people to preserve freedom from government oppression. In business, its important so that employees are not exploited by their employers, like corporations. Regarding the Force, its to teach those lessons lessons of inclusivity and self-determination.

At nine years old, Rhett Wilkinson wrote stories about Han Solo & Princess Leia's son Ben Solo, so he's waiting for Disney to pay up! Rhett is the owner of Hero's Journey Content and author of "'Star Wars' Is Still Intact: Re-finding Yourself in the Age of Trump." His work has been seen in USA TODAY, ESPN & the Pew Forum. He also was a screenwriter for the theatrical production "Before Your Time" and is a survivor of abuse. Reach him on Twitter @rhettrites.

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A Novelization Revelation and the Force - That Hashtag Show

Movies for the End Times – The Daily Evergreen

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What better way to ignore the world possibly crumbling around us then doing some research on different apocalypses

With so much of the news cycle devoted to the coronavirus, it can feel like were living through our very own apocalypse. Its a scary time to be alive, and the fact is, a lot of our lives have become incredibly uncertain and uprooted as a direct result of the virus, quarantining and socially distancing ourselves. Obviously, its all to protect the members of our society who need it most, but that doesnt stop the whole situation from being chaotic, and even a little frightening.

Something that helps for me (and it seems counterintuitive), is watching a movie about the apocalypse, whether its about nuclear war, an alien invasion or a zombie plague. Somehow, it puts things into perspective and reminds me that, no matter how bad things are right now, at least Im not John Cusack in 2012 (Never watch that movie sober). With that said, lets look at some of the hits.

MadMax series (1979-2015) directed by George Miller

The four films in the Mad Max franchise are some of the best movies about the leather-clad, biker gang end of the world ever made. In the future, nuclear war and oil shortages have created anarchic wastelands, where gangs of violent criminals control the desert, driving over-the-top cars and fighting for gas. Mel Gibson (before he went off the deep end) shines as Max Rockatansky, a former cop who drives a V8 hot rod around the desert, fighting for justice, eating dog food and generally being extremely Australian. Tom Hardy takes over the role for Mad Max: Fury Road, which besides being one of the best shot and directed movies of the 2010s, has a guy playing a flaming guitar on a truck made entirely of amps. Really, thats all I should need to say.

Available on Amazon Prime & Netflix.

Childrenof Men (2006) directed by Alfonso Cuaron

This is one of those rare films where, and Im not ashamed to say it, I cry every time. Its a grim portrayal of the near-future, where humanity has lost the ability to have children. Clive Owen plays a depressed government worker who has to escort a pregnant refugee girl to safety, through warring gangs and government oppression, to give birth to the first child in two decades. Children of Men is by turns immensely sad, crushingly prescient and surprisingly hopeful, with a depiction of totalitarian England that feels incredibly possible.

Available on Amazon Prime.

10Cloverfield Lane (2016) directed by Dan Trachtenberg

Weve all got that weird prepper uncle whos probably building a bomb shelter in his backyard right now. This is a movie about what happens when it comes time to use the shelter. John Goodman shines as a sociopathic conspiracy theorist, who brings two unsuspecting young adults into his survival bunker, after an unknown disaster strikes the US. As the movie continues, and the intensely claustrophobic atmosphere amps up to 11, Goodmans character slips closer and closer to the edge. No spoilers, but theres a scene with a vat of acid that made me physically slip into the fetal position. Watch this one if you dont plan on sleeping any time soon.

Available on Amazon Prime.

I Am Legend (2007) directed by Francis Lawrence

A classic of apocalypse sci-fi horror, this stars Will Smith as New Yorks only survivor of a plague that turned everyone else into bloodthirsty, sun-fearing zombies. AND HES GOT A DOG!!! Atmospherically, seeing Smith run around a completely empty New York, succumbing to the effects of loneliness and fear is unlike any other performance, and he really taps into the existential ennui of being the last guy around when everyone else is gone. The ending leaves something to be desired, but overall, this is a must-watch.

Available on Amazon Prime.

Dredd (2012) directed by Pete Travis

Take a break from leather biker gangs and psychopaths in bomb shelters and enjoy one of the coolest action movies ever made, starring Hollywoods scowliest actor: Karl Urban. Dredd is essentially a 90-minute shootout, and it kicks ridiculous amounts of ass. Future America is an irradiated wasteland, except for Mega-City One, a giant urban sprawl stretching over the entire East Coast. Crime runs rampant here, and the only lawmen are authoritarian Judges, like Urbans Dredd. When a drug dealer locks down an apartment building, the only thing thatll stop her is you guessed it a ridiculous amount of guns and ammo. Its like if the shootout scene from Heat was an entire movie, and I can find nothing wrong with it. I am the law!

Available on Amazon Prime.

28 Days Later (2002) directed by Danny Boyle

Im saving one of the best for last, because this zombie movie, directed by the mind behind Trainspotting is one of the best of the genre. Its lo-fi, its genuinely disturbing and its one of the most realistic depictions of post-apocalypse England out there. Cillian Murphy plays a coma patient who wakes up after a zombie plague has wiped out most of the population. He finds survivors, but thats nowhere near the end of the story, that features a power-mad army leader, an adopted family and of course, lots and lots of the undead. Plus, Godspeed You! Black Emperor contributed the soundtrack, which makes this an automatic classic, no matter which way you slice it.

Available on Amazon Prime and Hulu.

Honorable Mentions:

The Rover (2014) directed by David Michod

Twelve Monkeys (1995) directed by Terry Gilliam

The Road (2009) directed by John Hillcoat

Escape From New York (1981) directed by John Carpenter

The Book of Eli (2010) directed by the Hughes Brothers

Shaun of the Dead (2004) directed by Edgar Wright

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Movies for the End Times - The Daily Evergreen

Hello world! How is the Lockdown? Kashmir – Daily Times

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The post, Hello world! How is the Lockdown? Kashmir, appeared on different social media platforms right after various countries of the world started to announce lockdowns as a precautionary measure to combat the COVID-19 outbreak. It was a reminder from the oppressed valley of Kashmir, now enteringtheninth month of the lockdown, after Indias unilateral move of abrogating the special status of the occupied Kashmir on August 5, 2019. On October 30, India practically split the state of Kashmir in two union territories-Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh-takingthem under direct control of the central government in Delhi. The move waswidely criticised by different countries and even the United Nations, but India was deaf to all the hue and cry.It imposed a strict curfew with an information blackout in the occupied Kashmir.

The coronavirus has offered a chance to the world to realise that Kashmiris are not the children of a lesser god

The valley of Kashmir has a long history of witnessing restrictions, curfews and lockdowns,especially in the last three decades. India has used different draconian laws, like the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA), Public Safety Act (PSA), to suppress the voices of Kashmiris. Kashmiris have been resisting the Indian occupation for the last 72 years, and their resistance has transformed in many ways. The youth of the Kashmir has now become the new face of the resistance movement and is using social media platforms, along with other techniques, to unveil the real face of the Indian state to the world. India, afraid of that, has imposed restrictions on the oppressed territorythat is witnessing an information blackout with no access to internet, mobiles and even print media. 2G was partially resumed after six months, andthe valley is still compelled to use 2G.

The coronavirus has offered a chance to the world to realise that Kashmiris are not the children of a lesser god and that they also have the right to exercise their right to self-determination and other basic human rights. This is the time for the world to realise the suffering of 70 million people living in an open prison in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. International organisations, especially the UN, must play its part to end the miseries of the people living under the oppression of India.

Cries of the mothers of Kashmir might be better understood by mothers all over the world now when they are afraid for their children because of an invisible virus. Maybe it could be the point for the world to understand what it means to have mass graves in Kashmir. Maybe the world could comprehend what it means to have a complete shutdown, students not able to go to schools, and Ph.D. scholars like Raafi Butt,Mannan Waniand Sabzar Sofi losing their lives at the hands of Indias occupational forces. Maybe the world could realise the pain of half-widows, waiting for several years for their husbands to return home. Maybe the world could grasp the pain of the father who because of the inhumane curfew is unable to earn enough to feed his children

It is the time for the world to fight against the common threat to humanity:coronavirus. I am sure that the combined efforts of humanity would defeat this temporary pandemic, but I doubt if the world would realise its duty towards the permanent pandemic faced by humanity: injustice. It must be debated and realised by the so-called superpowers of the world that injustice anywhere is the threat to justice everywhere.If the world failsto comprehend its duty, it would have to face more severe pandemics than this virus as it is the law of the nature that injustice cannot prevail for a long time.

The campaign started by Kashmiris in the form of a short but a meaningful phrase should be taken seriously, and the government of India must be compelled to release the JRL and other political leaders jailed on false accusations, as their lives are at stake due to the pandemic. Countries throughout the world are granting bails to political and general prisoners during the pandemic.Secretary General of UN Antonio Guterres has called for a global ceasefire. India should listen and release political prisoners as the first gesture of international cooperation regarding Kashmir.

Humanity is facing the most severe global health crisis of its time. Only global cooperation can help us fight this pandemic. The guidelines by the World Health Organisation and self-curfew must be imposed to slowthe spread of this virus down and eventually defeating it.

The writer is an MPhil graduate in International Relations. Currently visiting lecturer at COMSATs, Islamabad

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I was an AmeriCorps Member in West Virginia. The Benefits and Limitations of National Service. – TIME

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In a cavernous ballroom at the Hilton Hotel Philadelphia in 2009 when I was twenty-one years old, I sat at a round table with the others whose name tags had also been stamped with the double green dots meaning we were headed for central AppalachiaWest Virginia, western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina.

There were tuna wraps and miniature bags of chips, then slides projected on a wall-sized screen told us all the things we couldnt do now that we were Volunteers in Service to America (better known as VISTAs): work another job, advocate for any political cause or candidate, get drunk in public, etc. We encourage you to remember, said a skirt-suited woman, that even on your off hours, you are now a representative of the United States government.

I exchanged smirks with another outspoken nose-ringed white girl sitting next to me. From the summer I had already spent at the nonprofit for which I would be working in southeastern West Virginia, I knew that the economic realities of modern central Appalachia could not be easily fixed by anything I could offer. The problems there were largely the result of centuries of corporations often based elsewhere systematically extracting the regions wealth and natural resources. Yet I still believed in real altruism, in service, and that the work I was off to do would accomplish that lofty mission.

From todays vantage point, I can see why I believed thisthe Jewish moral seriousness of my childhood, the Quaker empathy of my small collegebut I no longer do. My time as a VISTA was many thingsawakening, grueling, joyful, dark, life alteringbut I do not believe anymore that it was service, meaning work done for others, or acts contributing to the public good. I was neither skilled enough nor mature enough nor knowledgeable enough about the context of the work to perform it with real efficacy. This is a problem greater than me and intrinsic to the structure of VISTA itself. VISTAs tend to be young, white, and unskilledthe only requirement to apply is that you be at least 18 years old and a citizen of the United States (or national or asylum seeker) without a criminal record.

On the morning of our last day at the Hilton Hotel, they gave us grey polo shirts with the insignia of an A with a star and two stripes on the sleeve, and they told us to raise our right hands and to swear. I will get things done for America, we said. Faced with apathy, I will take action. Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground. I will carry this commitment with me, this year and beyond. I am an AmeriCorps member, and I will get things done. I looked at the other pierced girl, to see how I should respond, but she was gone. I raised my hand and I swore.

We know VISTA as one of the many arms of AmeriCorps, the governmental organization which connects thousands of mostly young or underemployed Americans with meaningful work in exchange for job experience, a modest living stipend, health insurance and a lump sum to use towards future education or loan repayment, effectively indistinguishable from other similar AmeriCorps programs. But it did not begin this way. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty and signed into law the Economic Opportunity Act to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty in this Nation. Johnson located this paradox in three main placesmigrant worker communities, big-city slums, and the hill towns of Appalachiaand its solution in peoplevolunteers. By the 1970s, several thousand volunteers were working in poor communities all over America; President Clintons 1993 National Community Service Trust Act created AmeriCorps, an expanded umbrella organization for dozens of domestic service opportunities, and VISTA took shelter there.

It was my job as a VISTA in Pocahontas County to work at a nonprofit that offered local teenaged girls a different picture of themselves than the ones that were readily available in that place where just 8% of the population is between the ages of 18-24.

Half of Pocahontas County is Monongahela National Forest. Eight major rivers have their headwaters here, and more than one million tourists visit each year to camp and hike, fish and ski. Snowshoe Mountain ski resort is here, on land that was logged in the first half of the twentieth century, then left to burn. It is the birthplace of Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck, and hosts Allegheny Echoes, a local annual Bluegrass and Old Time music institute to which people from all over America travel to study under local teachers. At its heyday in the mid 1970s, it was home to over two hundred Back to the Landers, and it hosted the 1980 and 2005 Rainbow Gatherings. This is not coal country. Instead, its main exports are timber and people.

Being a VISTA created a divide between the kind of life I lived and the kind of life everyone else in Pocahontas County lived. Where most people worked reasonable hours, working often just enough to get by, then spending their leisure time playing music, hiking, and relaxing with their families, I worked Sundays and nights. Though I didnt always feel connected to the term VISTA, I quickly learned that whether I felt like one or not, in Pocahontas County I was identified that way. In a community where peoples work was, by and large, unyoked from their identity, I was always, always Emma the VISTA.

VISTA is partly modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, the New Deal initiative that trained millions of unemployed Americans in such useful tasks as fighting fires, planting trees and building campgrounds. These days, most VISTAs are employed doing less tangible workrunning youth programs or senior centers or YMCA programs, offering education or services, assisting an existing cultural or environmental nonprofit in many of the aspects of their daily functioning, as I did.

I came to understand that I was linked to a history and legacy of the VISTA program that is illustrious, complicated, and fraught, particularly in Appalachia. VISTA is a program specifically designed to fight poverty; only organizations in places the government deems sufficiently poor receive VISTA workers. By the time I arrived, Pocahontas County and the neighboring counties had seen more than 250 people serve as VISTAs in their communities over the course of 40 years. To wear the AmeriCorps seal that says VISTA is like wearing a name tag that says, hello, Im here to fight your poverty.

If poverty alleviation is its goal, VISTA may not be very effective. According to the most recent USDA data, which defines a U.S. county as persistently poor if twenty percent or more of its population has lived in poverty for the past 30 years, 353 American counties currently fit the bill, 301 of those are rural, and 55 are in West Virginia, including all three of the counties served by the non-profit which employed me. Much has changed since Johnson declared war on poverty, but little is profoundly improved.

I think its important to note, says Samantha Jo Warfield of the National Corporation for Community Service which houses AmeriCorps that VISTAs mission, is to strengthen organizations that alleviate poverty. No one entity government or philanthropic can eliminate poverty alone. What national service brings to the table is people power and VISTAs unique scope in that space is to support organizations working to address the issues of poverty by providing human capital a VISTA.

Warfield also notes that in the five years the CNCS has published a list of their top AmeriCorps-member producing states, West Virginia has never dropped below the top five, meaning more West Virginians are signing up to become AmeriCorps members than in other states. I suspect many of them are choosing to serve in their home state.

There is also the matter of the fact that VISTA pays its members a wage that is calculated, on purpose, to put them at the poverty line, which is both ideologically and pragmatically misguided. Ignoring the fact that some who sign up for VISTA may have access to family wealth or may already be poor, this presumes that manufacturing circumstances of poverty supposedly parallel to that experienced by the people VISTAs are supposed to serve will make the quality of their service better. I was paid about $800 per month in 2009, though I was lucky because my rent in Pocahontas County was $150 per month and the local DHHS office was so used to the ebb and flow of service volunteers arriving and leaving that getting on food stamps was as easy as showing up and saying the word VISTA. But friends of mine who served as VISTAs in Philadelphia or Atlanta or New York City during the same time were paid only minimally more and either denied access to food stamps by the bureaucracy of a big city or shamed by those involved in VISTA for wanting to access a program designed for the truly poor. The CNCS states that today however, it would pay a VISTA in West Virginia their lowest pay tier of $12,490 and a VISTA in Manhattan approximately $20,600 (75% of VISTA members earn less than $14,000 per year).

I am not the first to question the efficacy and workings of VISTA. Even before there were VISTAs, there were Appalachian Volunteers (AVs), a similar volunteer corps that came together organically when students from Berea College in Berea, Kentucky volunteered to go repair a one room school in Harlan County, Kentucky. Soon college students and young people from around the northeast had gotten word of the opportunities to work against poverty in Appalachia and began showing up.

Sometimes I wonder about the real value of [AV/VISTA] in places like Fonde [Kentucky], wrote one corps member there in 1966. Were supplying candles when the house needs to be wired for electricity.

Some AV/VISTAs and other mountain activists including Harry Caudill, author of Night Comes to the Cumberlands, felt it was the duty of any true anti-poverty volunteer corps to inform people living in Appalachian communities that their struggles were larger than they could see, the result of exploitation and absentee ownership, and to, as Caudill put it, set in motion a revolutionary change of thought. But many were also constantly wary of the charge of being labeled outside agitators (as has already happened in several counties in Kentucky and West Virginia) which weighed heavily on their minds. One AV/VISTA staff coordinator called the position an obvious paradox of trying to end poverty without disturbing the present situation.

There are so many problems were not the solution to, wrote the same doubting VISTA in 1966. We by-passed the big problems . . . and threw a lot of time, money and effort into little things that dont amount to no more than memories of good times spent together.

I do have a lot of memories of good times spent together in Pocahontas County and that may be the point. Serving as a VISTA in Pocahontas County rewired my brain and remapped the path of my life. I was radicalized there, pushed from my modest intellectual ambitions into the intense contradictions of living under late stage capitalism in a place America prefers to forget exists. It was in Pocahontas County as a VISTA member that I began to see how one form of oppression connects to another, the ways that poor white people and poor black people are pitted against each other in an environment of unnecessary scarcity, the way the same thing happens between poor women and poor men, poor straight people and poor queer people, and the ways that it is in the best interests of those in power to try to keep us all on alcohol or pills, sick or depressed, so we stay numb to these truths.

Hamlet of Beard, WV, in 2016.

Courtesy of Emma Copley Eisenberg.

We are told this is true: service only works if we all look alike when we do it, if we are bound by certain rules. If we are selfless; that is, if we have no self. But what if it could be the opposite?

Its a tricky thing, this word, service. It covers all manner of sins. It is a slippery, adult thing to live and work and play in a community of people who you care about both in idea and in practice, to be an authentically good member of community that is not your own, to fall down as a person and grow yourself up in front of people at the same time as it is your actual job to help those people get stronger.

In the real story of service, there is no telling who gave what to whom or why or if it was proper or right to give it. In the real story of service, sometimes what you can give is nothing and what you can get is your life. Sometimes the needy onein fact, not platitudeis you.

I served best, I think, when I served truest, when I drank and played Bluegrass music with a group of twenty-something local men who worked construction which lead to some poor choices on my part but a lot of conversations about work and god and queerness and violence and the past and when I drove teenaged girls around and around those switchbacks blasting Rihanna and getting a flat tire we all had to figure out how to fix.

But was it for them or was it for me? It may be that national service programs like VISTA are not effectively for the communities they purport to help, but rather that they are for those who serve: to employ us, to radicalize us, to wake us up. We had basketball games in the elementary school gym in Nellis, wrote John D. Rockefeller IV, who after being raised in New York City served as a VISTA in Emmons, West Virginia in his twenties. I was on the team because I was still young enough then to play. We had baseball games. We never won a single game in two yearsIt was exhilarating. I was rebornlike I had finally found my soul.

This may be alright, necessary even, as an investment America is making in educating and equipping young people and educating us in the meaning of service. But a single VISTA costs the government about $22,000; at around eight thousand active annual VISTA members, thats about $176 million per year, money that could be spent on changing systemic policies that affect the rural poor or creating opportunities for those central Appalachians impacted and then discarded by the coal, timber, and fracking industries.

But then, always, what if its bothwhat if it was for me and it was for others. According to the CNCS, in 2017, VISTA members generated $158 million in cash donations and an additional $49 million in in-kind services for their organizations.

What if we could have a government program that acknowledged that it is both ways, a program that made possible sufficient funding for national service opportunities and for poverty alleviation initiatives with proven results? Thats a corps Id like to serve in.

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I was an AmeriCorps Member in West Virginia. The Benefits and Limitations of National Service. - TIME

COVID-19 and Our Coming Clash with China – The Bulwark

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Its sometimes hard to disentangle them, but there are several different debates about China and the coronavirus knotted together. Some of these debates are very important; others much less so:

(1) Look for the Made In China label. First, and most prominently, theres the debate about whether it is appropriatehistorically, politically, prudentiallyto refer to the cause of the pandemic as the Chinese coronavirus or the Wuhan flu or other similar names. Does the name matter all that much? The people most exercised about this question are those who want to score political points, or who enjoy slipping into their accustomed culture-war roles of (on one side) political-correctness scolds and (on the other side) politically incorrect goads. Sadly, what happens on Twitter doesnt stay on Twitter, because the president and his state media allies have used the debate for deflection.

As a historical matter, it is true that our forebears did assign a national-origin label to the 1918-19 pandemicits still sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu even though there is reason to believe it originated in Kansasand there are many other diseases that have been given names based on geography. But as a prudential matter, what value is there in labeling the current pandemic as Chinese? President Trumps talk-radio and MAGA world supporters seem to think that reminding the American people of the threat that China poses to the United States is worthwhile. And indeed, it might be useful to the president as a matter of domestic politics. But as my friend Mike Mazza has pointed out, this is precisely what the Chinese government wants. This nomenclature blame-game will help the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) position itself as the defender of the Chinese diaspora, especially if the press continues to report on East Asian Americans anecdotal accounts of being stigmatized.

(2) Bats for brunch. For all the talk about bats, pangolins, and Chinas wildlife markets, we do not yet know for certain how SARS-CoV-2 made the jump from animals into humans. If Chinese eating practices and sanitary conditions do indeed increase the risk of zoonotic diseases that could turn into global pandemics, then they should certainly be reformed. But thats a debate to be had after the worst of this pandemic has passed, and after researchers have learned more about the coronavirus and its origins. (It is worth noting that Western dietary habits are also sometimes blamed for endangering the worldin particular, beef production, which climate-change researchers associate with greenhouse gas production and, in some countries, deforestation.)

(3) The weapon theory. Did China create the coronavirus in a lab and release it on purpose or by accident? If youll permit me to use a technical term, this notion is what we in the political science community call hot garbage. (The same goes for the even more bizarre theory some Chinese propagandists were circulating that the coronavirus originated as an American weapon.)

(4) Clear as mud. Should we blame the Chinese government for its lack of transparency? Yes. We have little reason to trust Chinas statistical reporting after the Chinese governments early deliberate suppression of the reports of the outbreak. The physicians who initially reported the outbreak reportedly received a gag-order and were instructed to destroy the samples. Even when officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited China in early January, they were not shown the full picture. Given the Chinese regimes dishonesty, can we believe them when they report that they have flattened the curve? And the recent moves Beijing has taken to silence critics by disappearing them, and now to kick American reporters out of the country, only make things worse.

(5) Was China competent in its handling of the outbreak? Forget what President Trump has saidas Jim Swift has documented here on The Bulwark, Trump spent several weeks praising China and its president Xi Jinping for how their handling of the crisis before he pivoted to talking about a China virus. Surely many Chinese doctors worked extraordinarily hard and made tremendous sacrifices to save lives. But we will likely never have enough information to judge fully how well China handled the outbreak. Had China acted three weeks earlier, according to at least one analysis, the number of COVID-19 infections would have been reduced by 95 percent. Even one week earlier action would have reduced the number of the cases by 66 percent. Chinese authoritarianism may have made it easier for the regime to enforce quarantine measures in Wuhan, but the regimes lack of transparency and trustworthiness likely slowed its response time and contributed to the rapid global spread of the disease.

Podcast March 30 2020

On today's Bulwark Podcast, Adam J. White joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss his recent Bulwark item "Trump vs. the Gov...

Lets take a step back. How does the coronavirus crisis fit into the broader geopolitical struggle between the United States and China?

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China began slowly to adopt a series of economic reformscreating a socialist market economythat led some observers to hope that political liberalization might someday follow, in the belief that competitive markets and liberal democracy have a kind of natural affinity. Major liberalizing reforms never came. Still, even as late as 2010, some analysts believed the United States and China could join together in a grand alliance for world stability.

But Xi Jinping, Chinas presidentalthough dictator would now be a more apt termsees his countrys relationship with the United States as fundamentally one of conflict: economic, political, and perhaps military.

Between 2000 and 2018, Chinas share of global trade rose from 1.2 percent to 34 percent. During the same period of time, Chinas share of U.S. imports rose from 8.2 percent to 22 percent, and its share of U.S. exports rose from 2.1 percent to 7.2 percent. Virtually every other country in the world has experienced similar increases in the Chinese share of their economies. Initially, these increases looked good because they resulted in reduced global prices for goods and they lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty.

American businesses love China. Many of them produce goods or at least parts there and import them to the United States or sell them directly to the rest of the world. And many American businesses, from such industries as agriculture and entertainment, export U.S.-produced goods to China.

There is, however, a price to pay for that: It makes America craven about criticizing China. Recall how, less than six months ago, the NBA rushed to apologize for offending the Chinese Communist Party after the manager of the Houston Rockets spoke in support of the Hong Kong protests. Think about it this way: All these American businesses heavily invested in China are helping to finance the regimes oppression of the Chinese people and the concentration camps Xi has created for perhaps a million ethnic Uighurs. The global economy has financed the CCPs hold on power for decades. Indeed, the United States helped to facilitate Chinas membership in the World Trade Organization in hopes of more responsible domestic and international behavior by China. It never came.

The COVID-19 outbreak has opened the worlds eyes to some of the problems of the authoritarian Chinese regime. But China has a large share of just about every countrys economy and trade and controls a large portion of the global supply chain. In the midst of this public health crisis, China controls one-fifth of U.S. medical imports and four-fifths of antibiotics imports. There is a reason that China is sending aid everywhere that there is an outbreak: They fear the backlash.

They should.

China poses a threat to the world. This outbreak is just one dimension of that threat, and it is not the greatest one. The greatest threat is Chinas ascension to global hegemony and ruling the world the way they rule China. This pandemic is just a preview of what that world might look like.

Once this episode is past us, American policymakers need to have a serious discussion with the U.S. private sector about the threat that the CCP by nature poses to the entire world through corruption, incompetence, and malice, a threat we are getting a small dose of. American consumers, as well as foreign consumers, should also ask themselves if cheaper goods are worth the horror we are going through, or even something far worse.

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COVID-19 and Our Coming Clash with China - The Bulwark

The Winds of Change of 2020: Now is the time to act collectively – Daily Maverick

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Sixty years ago on 3 February 1960, three months before the Sharpeville massacre, the UK Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, after spending a month travelling through Africa, delivered the famous Winds of Change speech in Cape Town. Back then, we were still the Union of South Africa and not a republic as yet.

Macmillan said that it was quite significant that he was visiting the Union in its 50th year, its golden anniversary the Union having been formed in 1910. He remarked that: In the 50 years of their nationhood, the people of South Africa have built a strong economy founded upon a healthy agriculture and thriving, and resilient industries. During my visit, I have been able to see something of your mining industry, on which the prosperity of the country is so firmly based. I have seen your Iron and Steel Corporation and the skyscrapers of Johannesburg, standing where 70 years ago there was nothing but the open veld. I have seen, too, the fine cities of Pretoria and Bloemfontein.

Nowhere does he mention seeing the poverty-stricken locations in which the great majority lived. Nowhere does he mention that the progress he noted was gained through the severe oppression of a majority by a minority. He does, however, hint that Britain does not approve of apartheid South Africas policies.

However, at the core of Macmillans speech is his observation of a greater phenomenon occurring throughout Africa. He states that we have seen the awakening of national consciousness in peoples who have for centuries lived in dependence upon some other Power the most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it takes different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through this continent and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

More poignantly, Macmillan states: What is now on trial is much more than our military strength or our diplomatic and administrative skill. It is our way of life. In recognition of the differences Macmillan perceives between South Africa and the UK , with many in the UK calling for a boycott of South Africa, he concludes his speech by saying: I hope indeed, I am confident that in another 50 years we shall look back on the differences that exist between us now as matters of historical interest, for as time passes and one generation yields to another, human problems change and fade. Let us remember these truths.

However, more than three decades after Macmillans speech showed that one generation did not yield to another, if yielding means giving way to demands and pressure. The apartheid government did not yield in the aftermath of the Sharpeville massacre. Instead, it doubled down by banning liberation political parties and banishing its leaders. It did not yield after children as young as 12 years old, inspired by the independence of Mozambique in 1975, in the next year demanded equal education and the end to apartheid instead, they again responded to peaceful protest with bullets. Hundreds died.

They tightened the screws of apartheid until the very end; even after the release of Nelson Mandela, many in their ranks were found to be sowing seeds of civil war among the people.

The apartheid government did not yield to change as Macmillan had invited them to do. They had instead been overwhelmed by the undeniable force of the great majority of the people of South Africa and their supporters from all over the world who formed the anti-apartheid movement. Despite the apartheid governments efforts to hold on to power, the winds of change overturned the wagons of the racist laager and on 10 December 1996, a new country with a new Constitution defined by the values of human dignity, equality and freedom, was signed into life at Sharpeville.

1960 was a decisive turning point in South African history. Shortly after the Winds of Change speech came the Sharpeville massacre which led to the launching of the armed struggle against apartheid. It would take another 36 years, with countless deaths and years in prison, and in exile, before South Africa rid itself of apartheid. And the battle to end the practices and thought patterns of apartheid, and to make the Constitution live for all our people, still continues.

Today, our country and the world finds itself at yet another decisive turning point. The winds of change are blowing from Cape to Copenhagen. We are all facing another wind of unmitigated destruction that gives us the opportunity to bring about abundant change for the better.

A pervasive virus infiltrates all our lives across racial, gender, sexual orientation and class lines. From peasants to kings. Its a problem that poses such a threat to the world that we finally understand how interconnected we are. What happens in a home in Sandton affects what happens in a shack in Alex. What happens in China affects the income of a taxi driver in South Africa who will have fewer customers because of the lockdown that has been imposed in an effort to contain Covid-19.

What is on trial is our way of life. The inequality in the world is on trial. Covid-19 has fundamentally shifted the world during its brief presence in our lives. Author Kenan Malik writes for The Guardian that: the severity of our current crisis is indicated by the extreme uncertainty as to how or when it will end It is now inevitable that we will enter a deep global recession, a breakdown of labour markets and the evaporation of consumer spending. Small businesses are shedding employees at a frightening speed.

We are spending our days tracking infection and death rates rising at a concerning speed. But it is worth remembering that in this darkness we can find regeneration as we have before. South Africa will not be spared the hardships that will follow in the aftermath of this virus, but what we have been seemingly spared is an unreliable, fickle and corrupt president.

For the first time in a long time, we are fighting the issue and not fighting our president a battle we have unfortunately grown only too accustomed to. It is refreshing to have decisive, thorough and vigorous leadership. In a crisis, a country needs a Czar, a person that will be the source of reliable information and which the other branches of government can support and not fight.

The unity in government is a welcome break from the in-fighting that was becoming the status-quo and I hope it holds for the sake of the people because in the end, we all want a country.

Covid-19 is testing our democracy and our way of life. It is testing our unequal society. At this moment, our country is haemorrhaging and to stop the bleeding we need to act collectively otherwise we will not have a country. At this moment, some of us who are better off in this moment bear more responsibility to help those who are most vulnerable. The realisation of an equal society costs. It costs courage and sacrifice. It costs unwavering commitment and conviction much like it did in 1960. If it was not hard, there would be no need for heroes.

The turbulent winds of change are indeed blowing throughout the world. Our global consciousness is awakening. If we do not use this moment as a springboard or a bridge to elevate to a better place, then our democracy will ossify.

It would be the ultimate tragedy if humanity does not once again prevail, if we do not change for the better after all that has been revealed to us and if we do not sustain our sense of unity beyond this crisis. Our country has myriad problems that need our urgent attention, but first, lets deal with this immediate threat so that we can live to fight another day. DM

Lwando Xaso is an attorney and a writer exploring the interaction between race, gender, history and popular culture.@including_society

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The Winds of Change of 2020: Now is the time to act collectively - Daily Maverick

Celebrating womanhood through music – The Herald

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The Herald

Elliot Ziwira Senior WriterMusic is neither provocative nor defeatist, for it tells a tale in many ways through its evocation of the sensuous neurons; it appeals to the heart.

Since time immemorial women have managed to keep their heads above the rising tornadoes of their existence through song.

They have made it possible for their feelings to be discernible, even to a society that seemed to be impenetrable as a product of their realisation that a story does not die because it is not told, but dies if it is told to deaf ears; the heart listens.

In the book Women Musicians of Zimbabwe: A Celebration of Womens Struggle for Voice and Artistic Expression: 1930s-2013 (2013) Joyce Jenje Makwenda captures more than 75 years of the musical expression of womens travails.

The 1930s belonged to Laina Mattaka and Evelyn Juba, who were reported as the pioneers of township jazz music by the African Daily News.

Their music was a fusion of negro spirituals, gospel and traditional music.

The 1940s and 50s saw the rise of Reni Nyamundanda and the De Black Evening Follies, Faith Dauti with the Milton Brothers and the Gay Gaieties and Dorothy Masuka. Dorothy Masuka rode on the crest of a new wave of expansion and investment in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which created opportunities for entertainment.

Township music suffered a temporary glitch in the 1960s and 70s which saw new genres of music dominating.

Susan Chenjerai and Susan Mapfumo rose to prominence around this period.

The liberation struggle inspired songstresses like The Two Singing Nuns, the Chataika Sisters, who sang mostly gospel songs with their brother, Jordan, and Virginia Sillah.

As the flame of Independence illuminated the airwaves in 1980, more opportunities opened up for musical expression and women rose to the occasion.

Traditional instruments like the mbira and ngoma were on a rebound with the likes of Beaulah Dyoko, Stella Chiweshe, Elizabeth Ncube, Francisca Muchena, Irene Chigamba, Taruwona Mushore and Chiwoniso Maraire taking mbira music to the international stage.

In the 1980s, the appreciation for gospel music grew as Shuvai Wutawunashe made her mark.

Busi Ncube and Rozalla Miller, the Queen of Rave, of the Everyone is Free fame became household names.

Township jazz made a rebound around this period and its flame continues to glow in the hands of Prudence Katomeni-Mbofana, Dudu Manhenga, Patience Musa, Rute Mbangwa, Nomsa Mhlanga and Hope Masike.

Jenje Makwenda reiterates how Independence, which Zimbabweans will be celebrating for the 40th time on April 18, 2020, revolutionised the airwaves to create space for local artistes.

She notes how urban grooves popularised by Memory Zaranyika, Plaxedes Wenyika, Betty Makaya, Pauline Gundidza, Portia Njazi aka Tia, Tambudzayi Hwaramba and Kudzai Sevenzo, benefited from the Governments 75 percent local content directive to local stations.

She cites Selmor Mtukudzi, one of the beneficiaries of the initiative: The 75 percent introduced by Government meant that we could get to listen to my music, people would get to hear of me, even though I hadnt recorded, then it gave me hope that in the event that I want to record and do something, I would have a listener-ship, because then our music was not played much. We used to hear musicians like Beyonce and everyone else, but ours was not played.

Although Governments directive is commendable, and society has been forthcoming in giving an ear to womens plight highlighted through music, a lot still needs to be done for that musical appreciation to be fully articulated.

The music industry still remains the preserve of men to a great extent because of stereotypical inclinations steeped in patriarchal societies.

Women musicians do not only suffer financial barricades, but are considered morally bankrupt.

A woman may rise to the apex before she marries, but once matrimony comes, her decline also becomes inevitable.

The challenges that come with wifehood and motherhood may be baneful to her career and as a result the suffering and oppression of her ilk will continue unabated, as the voice that should come to the defence of their toil is stifled.

Laina Gumboreshumba, whose musical career started at an early age and is working on a PhD in Music at Rhodes University, says: I think the demands of a musical career and the demands of marriage for a woman as expected by the husband and the society at large clash As a result many men are not comfortable with their wives tackling the heavy schedule and working odd hours.

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Celebrating womanhood through music - The Herald

West Reaping the Whirlwind for Policy of Kowtowing to China – Breitbart

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Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said the West is reaping the whirlwind for a policy of kowtowing to China and allowing supply chains to become dependant on the communist country.

There are a whole range of problems with China that grow and grow the more we feed it, the MP told Maajid Nawaz on LBC on Sunday.

[Kowtowing] is what the West has essentially been doing now for some time, and now were beginning to reap the whirlwind, he said, pointing not just to the present crisis with the Chinese coronavirus, but with the Chinese Communist Partys unchallenged persecution of Christians and Muslim Uyghurs, the oppression of Tibet, and territory-grabbing in the South China Sea.

Sir Iain said that China largely dismisses criticismbecause they know the West is not going to do anything about it because the West is so desperate. Our telephones, our computers, even the plastic bottles that dispense the hand wash low and high technology are now completely locked into China.

Sir Iain told Nawaz: I question the lack of diversity and this dependence we have on China. Is it not time to have this as a wake-up call and say, Im sorry, but we should have some strategic production, absolutely, in the West.'

Alluding to the ongoing security concerns of allowing Chinese firm Huawei to build Britains 5G network, he continued: Our telecoms stuff is nearly being taken over by them. These are strategic issues. Lets stop trying to shrug and say, We dont want to say anything because were worried about what China will do, and start saying, Its not good enough.'

Despite Chinas cover-up of the coronavirus in the early weeks of the pandemic, Europe now finds itself purchasing vast quantities of medical equipment from the very country that spawned the contagion.

Media reports that the United Kingdom, for example, is queuing up behind Italy, Russia, Mongolia, and Serbia for ventilators, with the British in need of 30,000 more to cope with the peak of the pandemic, expected in coming weeks.

There is also the issue that many of the masks and tests European countries have bought from China are faulty, despite being EU-certified in some cases.

At the report that Britain was buying ventilators from China, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said with incredulity: I hear that the UK government are buying ventilators from China, yes China. Can this be true?

Writing in theMail on Sunday, Sir Iain said that whilst the British establishment is ready to discuss altering the very fabric of how Britons live and work over coronavirus, The moment anyone mentions China, people shift uncomfortably in their seats and shake their heads. Yet I believe it is vital that we start to discuss how dependent we have become on this totalitarian state.

As a result of Beijings cover-up and delay, global health experts are convinced the rest of the world had insufficient time to prepare for the pandemic, which means the effect of the outbreak has most likely been worse, Sir Iain continued.

The brutal truth is that China seems to flout the normal rules of behaviour in every area of life from healthcare to trade and from currency manipulation to internal repression.For too long, nations have lamely kow-towed to China in the desperate hope of winning trade deals.

But once we get clear of this terrible pandemic, it is imperative that we all rethink that relationship and put it on a much more balanced and honest basis.

Sir Iain is not the only person to call for a reckoning on China over coronavirus, with reports that the highest levels of the British government are enraged by the disinformation campaign waged by communist China, with calls for relations to be reassessed after the worst of the pandemic is over.

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West Reaping the Whirlwind for Policy of Kowtowing to China - Breitbart

Why India Needs Aggressive Social Safeguarding Measures To Protect Marginalised In The Time Of Corona – Outlook India

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The Socio-economic vulnerabilities of the marginalized are spiralling out of control by the imprudent Social Distancing measures. Prime Minister Narendra Modis sudden announcement of a 21-day nationwide lockdown has taken a serious toll on the vulnerable sections of the society. Disturbing visuals of the exodus of migrant workers from the metro cities to their home states caught the BJP government off guard. The Modi government had barely thought through the impact of a national lockdown equipped with strict social distancing measures. While the social distancing measures are effective ways to slow the community transmission of coronavirus pandemic, it is also meant to put large sections of the working class at greater risk. As the chores across the country, "If we dont die of the coronavirus, we will die of hunger" already started growing among the poor migrant labourers and unstable contract workers amidst safe distancing policies, the whole idea of social distance may fall through without adequately addressing the livelihood concerns of the have nots of the state. Indias exponential slowdown of the growth has been creating adverse impacts on the per capita incomes of the weaker sections of the society. Hence, a phase-wise roll out of cluster based isolation at an early stage would have prepared Indias poor and destitute to cope with national lockdown effects. The consequences of drastic actions by the Modi government substantially generated social vulnerabilities and gave birth to ethical concerns that reinforce the process of otherness on the economically marginal classes. Now there is a growing need for social safeguarding to secure the livelihoods.

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Social Vulnerabilities

As social distancing has become a global buzzword in the wake of Coronavirus pandemic, the privileged rich and upper middle class communities are responding to it seamlessly whereas many marginalised groups are susceptible to potential harm. On March 24 evening, immediately after the Prime Ministers announcement of 21-day national lockdown, brought migrant workers, and contract workers in the metro cities and farmers, poor groceryowners, in the rural areas to a standstill. The painful transition of market economy in the developing countries like India has experienced steep emergence of new proletariats in the large informal sectors. They largely live on the sharp debt trap, that daily engulf them in socio-economic uncertainties. With the growth of rentier capitalism in Indias post reform era, a shrinking of Salariat class and the massive growth of Informal sector workforce today constitute a large number of fragile labor force in the country. The post national shutdown has sent shockwaves to them and revealed their vulnerabilities wide in the open. The hardest hit among all are the interstate migrant laborers and contract workers of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha. They found themselves literally jobless overnight and stranded at various locations of the country. These migrant workers today are in immediate need of a national safety net and integrated social protection system. Governments economic relief package is too late and too little armed with short-sighted planning and no innovative ideas so far to deal with long-term livelihood crises may meet with large scale hunger deaths in the rural areas. Hence, it is the moral duty of the government to protect the social vulnerabilities looming out of the social distancing measures.

Ethical Concerns

Amid the disturbing visuals of police beating poor migrant workers, and small traders, there are significant ethical concerns such as harm in forms of physical and mental pains that might form as vulnerability. As police get their quarantine powers from their executive bosses, its firm orders with arbitrary use of force to enforce Public Good at the cost of human dignity and individual rights may further push the poor to the margins. Stringent police actions also as a major disrupting force for the working class and make their livelihood suffer overwhelmingly during the lockdown. The moral marker of the gap followed in Social Distancing may potentially amplify the socio economic gaps between the privileged class and marginalized sections. Needless to say, before this Covid outbreak distance used to be largely a state of mind, but the epithet social has added a physical process of social-cultural disassociation.

Brookings Economist Richard Reeves, In his book, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, claimed "members of the upper middle class are doing very well and should be asked to contribute a greater share to the common good. This requires them first to look in the mirror and see that they are not the victims of inequality, but the victors." He identifies income and wealth as a crucial dimension which virtually segregates top 20% with the rest 80%. Reevess prophecy is truer than ever in the global outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic. The Mass exodus of migrant workers from the metro cities to their home states is clearly reflexive of deeply rooted income segregation structure of India.

Distanced by Class-caste model

Maintaining distance is historically entrenched in various forms of normative isolations by the upper caste groups in the Hindu social order. It goes back to the centuries old untouchable practices against the lower caste communities of the Indian subcontinent. Also, the sexual agency of Hindu women has had been historically suppressed. These archaic trajectories will manifold as well as embolden the gaps between the upper and lower caste groups in the public sphere. On the other, upper class and upper middle class perennially act selfishly and hoard as well as do panic buying since wealth is concentrated in their pockets. There is a consistency in the behaviours of privileged upper class which is directly linked with their social positioning and greed that automatically puts marginalized at the bottom and aggravate the economic gulf. Hence, the distancing models enforced by the govt will intensify double edged exclusion and work as major disrupter in their livelihood amid the India shutdown. In fact, Indian State and societys credibility has historically been lessened through the unfolding of epistemic violence and long drawn prejudice in dealing with marginal groups. At a time like this harm caused by social distance without social safeguards will have spill over effects.

Reinforcing otherness

Finally, while privileged locations of upper class and upper castes create a safety net around them, daily wage earners are otherised by the harsh social distancing provisions in the absence of adequate social safeguards. Social locations of the marginalized classes results in more oppression and exploitation without intersecting endeavours and understanding of the nature of continuous process of otheration. Therefore, The deep seated apathy towards the marginal sections hit hard by the widespread Covid-19 outbreak in India and will reproduce otherness as well as accelerate the process of othering. Even, amid the self-quarantines, the empowered sections experiences are prioritised by the institutional dispensations. The rerunning of the Ramayana confirms the behavioural dynamics of the government while unwavering vigilance of police on street vendors, poor laborers affirm the case in point. Traditionally unequal societies widened up the hierarchies and produced asymmetrical social relations. Multilayered matrix of domination augment their sufferings.

Governments knee jerk reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in ever growing indifference towards the plural specificities of vulnerability. Political elites opportunism in subtle promotion of social cleavages reinforce subtly the process of othering. The underpinning cheer over the thrashing of working class by the police is testament of privileged sensibilities of class and caste entitlements. Thus, this is a grave reminder to the social safeguarding measures for the sustainable livelihood of the marginal castes and classes.

(Subhajit Naskar is an Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations in Jadavpur University. He has completed integrated MPhil/PhD from the Centre for South Asian Studies of School of International Studies (SIS) at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

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Why India Needs Aggressive Social Safeguarding Measures To Protect Marginalised In The Time Of Corona - Outlook India

This region is ill prepared for the tsunami that is coming – Arab News

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Just as the coronavirus is more dangerous to people with underlying medical conditions, the Middle East and North Africa faces a crisis caused not by the coronavirus alone, but also by their already existing economic, social and political fragility. Combined with the new reality sweeping the world, they form a perfect storm that threatens the region in ways that are more dangerous than anything it has faced for decades.

Throughout the region it is hard to find a single country that one can honestly say is strong enough to face what is about to happen. Country after country has been struggling for years with fundamental challenges; civil wars in Iraq, Syria and Libya, major debt crises in Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere, overburdened budgets and great poverty in Egypt and Morocco, countries that depend on foreign aid, tourism and investments, such as Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt even oil-rich economies are facing budget constraints as oil prices collapse because of over supply and slowing economic activity.

In the face of this storm, governments throughout the region have some immediate concerns, many of which carry within them the seeds of deeper challenges to come soon if this global crisis persists.

Thousands of Arabs seek medical care in Europe, the US and elsewhere every year because healthcare systems in almost all Arab countries are weak, and incapable of handling a pandemic. These fragile healthcare systems will be put under enormous additional pressure as more cases of COVID-19 are diagnosed. Combined with travel bans preventing anyone from leaving their own countries, and increasing difficulty in procuring medical equipment and medicines as supply chains stall, this is a real ticking bomb.

Another pressing issue will be how the region copes with inevitable shortages of food and medical supplies. Much of the region, if not all, depends heavily on imported goods, not only in the medical sector but also food and basic necessities. This dependency will be increasingly difficult to overcome as the global supply chain comes under intensified pressure and is interrupted, in some parts at least, for the foreseeable future. The lack of any long-term food security will be exposed and there will be major shortages.

The old traditional ways of obtaining hard currency and help in financing government budgets foreign aid, international loans, tourism, foreign direct investment, transfers and remittances from expats, or even exporting labor to other countries will no longer work. As countries around the world close their borders, take their own strict economic measures, increase their own debt and set their own economic incentive packaging to minimize the impact of the crises on their own people and labor forces, it will be more difficult for developing countries to find help.

All resources need to be focused on these efforts to prevent a temporary health crisis from becoming a major economic, social, and political tsunami that will overwhelm governments in the region.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

There is a weak underlying foundation to much of the regions political and economic systems, with oppression, corruption, top-down decision making and lack of freedom of information and debate all serving to deny both governments and societies the proper tools to address weaknesses in the system and reach consensus on how to tackle these challenges in a unified manner. This lack of the proper tools of governance means that as economic and social pressure builds, the chances of uprisings will increase, exposing the region to another potential cycle of revolts and chaos.

The regions top priority at the moment, in the face of these challenges, is to do anything it can to stop the spread of COVID-19. All resources need to be focused on these efforts to prevent a temporary health crisis from becoming a major economic, social, and political tsunami that will overwhelm governments in the region.

The second priority is to strengthen social safety nets for the most vulnerable in society; those who have no financial capacity to withstand even a short-term disruption to their incomes. This should include a combination of fiscal policy tools as recommended by the International Monetary Fund, such as a mix of targeted policies on hard-hit sectors and populations, including tax relief, government fees and cash transfers, and reprioritizing spending within the existing fiscal budgets, tight as they may be.

Historical evidence suggests that developing countries with much less global connectivity, such as those in the Arab world, tend to feel the full impact of such global crises a little later than more globalized economies. With that in mind, the Arab world is well advised to scale up its combined response to the pandemic much more quickly than it is doing now. The full force of this storm is yet to come.

The only real protection only from the disease and from its consequences is to reduce the level of its penetration and spread. The region will simply not be able to protect itself from the cascading wave of political, economic, and social earthquake that is coming, if it fails in doing this.

* Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced InternationalStudies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm OxfordAnalytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the WorldBank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

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This region is ill prepared for the tsunami that is coming - Arab News

Canadian Sikhs Demand Action Following Attack on Sikhs in Kabul – Sikh Siyasat News

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March 26, 2020| By Sikh Siyasat Bureau

Surrey/Brampton: The British Columbia Gurdwaras Council (BCGC) and Ontario Gurdwaras Committee (OGC) are very concerned over the recent attack and mass incident of violence that occurred at Gurdwara Guru Har Rai Sahib in Kabul, Afghanistan. This attack has resulted in the murder of dozens of Sikhs from an already very vulnerable and marginalized minority community in Afghanistan and again shows the need for Canada and the world to step in and protect minority communities in Afghanistan that have been continuous targets of oppression, intimidation, and murder for almost 3 decades.

Reports have been coming in regarding a gunman firing on Sikh worshippers inside the Gurdwara. About 150-200 Sikhs were trapped inside the Gurdwara Sahib at the time of the attack which later the Islamic State claimed responsibility for. The Islamic State has targeted Sikhs and other religious minorities before in Afghanistan. In June of 2018 the Islamic State carried out a bombing targeting the Sikh community where 19 Sikhs were killed and dozens injured. After this recent attack and the ongoing persecution of Sikhs within India, the question of religious freedom and the safety/security of the Sikh community internationally is in the minds of Sikhs across the world.

Images of Sikhs killed in attack on Gurdwara Sahib in Kabul

The threat Afghan Sikhs face is all too real and we need to work with the Government of Canada to have the marginalized minority community of Afghan Sikhs resettled in Canada before more are killed. The Canadian Sikh community is prepared to cover the costs related to resettlement and to ensure a successful integration into Canada through resources, education, and a sense of community said Amarjit Singh Mann, Spokesperson of the OGC.

For many years now, Gurdwaras across Canada along with other organizations including the Manmeet Singh Bhullar Foundation have been actively lobbying the Government of Canada to quickly process the refugee claims of Afghan Sikhs so that they may come to Canada and live their lives in peace. Although a dozen or so families have been resettled, more needs to be done as the Sikh community of Canada has repeatedly made this request but the process is proving to be slow and inefficient especially when the preservation of lives is concerned.

Moninder Singh, Spokesperson for the BCGC, stated Sikhs have long been targeted with violence, oppression, and intimidation in India and we are seeing the plight of our community in countries like Afghanistan deteriorating steadily over several decades. The number of Sikhs in Afghanistan continues to dwindle due to these types of attacks and daily harassment and intimidation forcing Sikh families who have lived in Afghanistan for hundreds of years to rethink their future and flee as refugees. As a proclaimed leader in furthering the cause of human rights in the world, we again call upon the Government of Canada to expedite the refugee claims process of Afghan Sikhs so horrendous acts of violence like this can be avoided.

The BCGC and OGC ask that the Government of Canada strongly condemn this attack on the Sikh community in Afghanistan and ask the same from their international partners as the ongoing murder, oppression, and forced migration of Afghan Sikhs over the last several decades is a crisis that must be dealt with urgently. We urge all federal political parties to see this as a joint humanitarian issue and all jointly move it to the immediate resettlement of Afghan Sikhs to Canada and the Sikh community is prepared to work with you every step of the way.

Related Topics: Attack on Sikh Gurdwara Sahib in Kabul (Afghanistan), Gurdwaras in Ontario, Ontario Gurdwaras Committee, Ontario Gurudwara Committee, Sikh Diaspora, Sikh News Afghanistan, Sikh News Canada, Sikhs in Afghanistan, Sikhs in Canada

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Canadian Sikhs Demand Action Following Attack on Sikhs in Kabul - Sikh Siyasat News

Letters March, 26: No one is more important than the other – Edmonton Sun

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Do you have something to say? Send us a letter by clicking here!THINKING OF YOU

As a senior, I am writing to encourage our seniors to know that they are loved and not forgotten. Not being able to get out or see family and friends is very hard. Every day we need to be thankful for so many blessings. We have time, so lets pray for each other, our first responders, service people, government, doctors, nurses, care workers, cashiers, grocers, truckers, pastors, news people and so many more doing so much to look after all of us. Lets be the encouragers for the younger people to let them know its okay, we will get through this if we all do our part. To everyone else out there, lets not only wash our hands but let us wash our hearts to think of others instead of complaining. No one is more important than the other. Lets all pray for comfort, peace and healing and realize we are so blessed to be living in such a great country as Canada.

B. ALEXANDER

(Thanks for sharing the positivity.)

Thank you Andrew Scheer for refusing to give the Trudeau government emergency taxing and spending authority which would have amounted to taxation without representation, an affront to our very democracy. Shame on Trudeau for incorporating this into the $82 billion COVID-19 relief Bill, as well as the Bloc Party that was ready to agree. I cannot imagine anything scarier than giving Trudeau/Morneau the ability for uncontrolled taxation and fettered discretion to spend. Canada is already buried under a mountain of debt a Direct result of Trudeaus reckless spending? How we ever dig out of the huge fiscal mess after COVID-19 is a big question on Canadian minds, without any answers.

Larry Comeau

(Thankfully, the process worked, and the opposition was able to hold the governments feet to the fire.)

With his failed attempt to subvert our democracy and legislate dictatorial powers for himself, Trudeau has only continued his legacy of failure on every issue. He is the classic weak leader, frozen by indecision and indifference, then finally over reacting. Will this weakness of Justin Trudeau now plunge our nation into years of anarchy, oppression and poverty?

Iain G. Foulds

(It certainly was a stumble.)

Re: Fourth horseman. I like your response to Al Willeys letter. Too bad we couldnt have that horseman committed before he does more damage.

MURAY McANDREWS

(Only time will tell.)

Re: Notley reiterates call for UCP to ban evictions days before rent payments due. And, of course, Rachel Notley and her NDP have a far better plan than that of Premier (Jason) Kenney and the UCP provincial government. Just like all the great plans she had for the province during the NDP reign for four very long years.

DONALD K. MUNROE

(Shes trying to help Albertans during a time of great stress. Cant fault that.)

Sign of the times for the grocery stores: You touch it, you buy it! Please leave our precious young ones at home or youll go broke.

RICK RHEU BOTTOM

(We all need to stop that horrible habit.)

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Letters March, 26: No one is more important than the other - Edmonton Sun

Paul van Dyk teams up with Kinetica on new collab ‘First Contact’ – We Rave You

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Are you currently having to stay at home? Well you should. Do you also like trance? Well you also should. In which case, two bits of good news courtesy of trance legend Paul Van Dyk. Hes not only just released a banging new tune, First Contact, and is also keeping us entertained through lock-down with a series of live streams.

First up, the track in question. First Contactis a collaboration with Belfast-based producer Kinetica. If youre one of those trance-heads who likes it upfliting, euphoric, and throughly old-school, youll love this one. Few do it like quite PvD and this is no exception. A fine peak-hour track, that gives us a bit of joy in these tricky times. Just a shame theres no clubs open to hear it live in! Or is there

Because like many producers and DJs at the moment, Paul van Dyk is currently hosting a series of regular live streams from his home studio. Entitled PC Music Night, the first couple were also a collab, with fellow Berliner Chris Bekker, however the latest episode was a solo show due to the new rules on meeting up with friends that have also come into play in Germany. You can re-watch previous episodes however, and Paul seems to be making a regular series out of this, so keep an eye on his Facebook page for more info.

You can also listen to First Contact in full below.

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Paul van Dyk teams up with Kinetica on new collab 'First Contact' - We Rave You

Niko J. Kallianiotis captures Pennsylvania and the faded American dream – Creative Review

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When photographer Niko J. Kallianiotis started travelling across the state of Pennsylvania it was a way to familiarise and assimilate himself with the USA, even though hed already been living in the country for more than 20 years. Kallianoitis was born in Greece and spent his formative years in Athens, but has lived in the USA for all of his adult life. It was initially through his father that he was first introduced to American life.

My father moved to this country, specifically New York City, in the late 70s for his postgraduate studies. His professional career led him to the Keystone State, Pennsylvania, which was only my second experience in the country after New York, explains Kallianoitis. Recently Ive been pondering and its left me feeling conflicted about my initial and current perception of the American dream. Whose dream have I been concentrating on, Americas faded dream or my own?

This exploration has created America in a Trance, an ongoing series capturing the northern Pennsylvania landscape where the American dream is so often typified. According to Kallianiotis, Pennsylvania was once a prosperous and vibrant region where small town values and sustainable small businesses thrived under American industry and provided a place where European immigrants crossed the Atlantic for a better future.

Kallianiotis initial perception of the USA was based on what he was exposed to while living in Athens, which was a glamorous picture of Hollywood life that danced between fiction and reality. When he actually arrived, the photographer at first felt alienated and it was a steep learning curve. The transition from Athens to New York City to Pennsylvania proved to be an invaluable experience, an education about America and its traditions, values, but also its concerns, notes Kallianiotis.

The photographers creative process was fairly straightforward and the series is built up from a collection of day trips and longer-term stints. The only specific plan in place was in what direction in Pennsylvania I would drive: north, south, east or west, explains the photographer. In the three full years Ive worked on America in a Trance, rarely have I researched a place. It was important for me to learn firsthand, leaving preconceived ideas behind.

The images capture daily, humdrum life in the state, with lush green trees being offset by the grey and red industrial buildings that share the landscape. While there are a few characters appearing in shot, like a topless man sunbathing on his porch and a woman in an all-green outfit waiting at a bus stop, it was a semi-conscious decision to keep the images relatively crowd free. Most of the locations were desolate and therefore naturally represented the loneliness and alienation, says Kallianiotis. When people do appear, its mostly from afar which offers a change of pace in the series and also heightens that sense of distance.

Though theres a lack of people in the images, Kallianioitis was keen to engage with the residents of these places and was soon privy to the history of these small towns and the people who created them. There is an immense sense of pride people express when they speak about the prosperous days, of what those places used to be, says the photographer. This pride still holds strong in their local values, regardless of their current economic and social issues.

In America in a Trance, Kallianiotis wants the viewer to take a journey into the land, and to start a conversation. The images in this project are first and foremost a personal visual anthology, but unavoidably they have become social and political references, especially when Pennsylvania and other former industrial regions often appear in the political forefront, he says.

There are many perceptions, and misconceptions, about these places and they are mostly shaped from afar. I hope these images inspire the viewer to visit these areas to try and understand the issues and values, even if those beliefs differ from theirs.

nikokallianiotis.com; damianieditore.com

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Niko J. Kallianiotis captures Pennsylvania and the faded American dream - Creative Review