The Ukraine Scandal and the Donald Trump Impeachment Trial – Free Speech TV

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Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with David Marples, a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, specializing in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.

Parnas is a Russian born US citizen who was arrested last year along with another colleague Igor Fruman as they attempted to leave the country on one-way tickets.

Parnas says he along with Giuliani carried out much of the sordid plan to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for US military aid.

That plan and the attempt to cover it up is at the heart of the two articles of impeachment against Trump that the House passed.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has yet to complete his first year in office is plagued by more political problems than the Trump scandal.

Ukraines Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk offered to resign on Friday after his private criticism of the president became public. Zelensky has reportedly refused to accept the resignation.

Rising Up with Sonali is a radio and television show that brings progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience.

Rising Up With Sonali was built on the foundation of Sonali Kolhatkar's earlier show, Uprising, which became the longest-running drive-time radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles hosted by a woman. RUS airs on Free Speech TV every weekday.

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David Marples Donald Trump Free Speech TV impeachment Impeachment Trial Joe Biden Lev Parnas Military Aid Oleksi Honcharuk Rising Up with Sonali Rudy Giuliani Sonali Kolhatkar Ukraine United States University of Alberta Volodymyr Zelensky

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The Ukraine Scandal and the Donald Trump Impeachment Trial - Free Speech TV

Cries of censorship in Sudan as media outlets linked to old regime closed – Middle East Eye

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The closure in Sudan earlier this month of four media outlets believed to have been connected to former ruler Omar al-Bashir's government has attracted international criticism following a period of praise regarding improvements that had been made over the freedom of the press.

The decision to close the Al-Sudani and Al-Ray Al-Am newspapers, as well as the satellite channels of Ashrooq and Teeba, over alleged corruption and financing by the National Congress Party (NCP), Bashir's former ruling party, has also caused controversy within the country.

Sudan seizes assets of Omar al-Bashir's former ruling party

The four media outlets were closed on 8 January as part of a broader effort to dismantle the NCP and all its affiliated entities.

In November, the country's transitional authorities announced a law to dissolve the NCP, which also allowed for the party's assets to be seized.

The committee that ordered the closure of the media outlets said the aim was to examine their bank accounts and establish whether they were still being financed by members of the former government.

Other institutions affected included the Holy Quran society, which was closed down over similar allegations, and the International University of Africa, based in Khartoum, which was ordered to be audited.

Taha Othman, a member of the sovereign council legal committee, said the Ministry of Religious Affairs would now manage the Holy Quran society.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) all condemned the decision to close the media outlets.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the new Sudanese governments sudden closure of four media outlets that supported the former regime and asks it to show concern for the fate of their more than 200 journalists," RSF said in a press release.

"Instead of closing media outlets, the authorities should make sure the Sudanese media comply with a code of ethics.

Sudan is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in RSFs 2019 World Press Freedom Index.

In a statement on its official website, the IFJ said: In a new move to curb press freedom, the Sudanese government announced the seizure of four independent media houses, including two newspapers and TV-channels.

"Their offices have been occupied by security forces and all employees have been ordered to leave

The CPJ called on Sudanese authorities to revise the decision.

Sudanese authorities should end the suspension of these newspapers and TV stations and ensure that press freedom does not become collateral damage during a sensitive moment, it said.

All four media outlets and the Holy Quran society have denied receiving money from the NCP.

Wagdi Salih, spokesman for theAnti-Corruption Committee, which has been tasked with dismantling the NCP and its affiliated entities, defending the decision to close down the media outlets.

Salih accused them of receiving illegal finance, money laundering and looting public funds, among other financial crimes.

'Its a big joke that the supporters of the old regime are now crying for the freedom of press and expression that they oppressed everyday through the 30 years of their ruling'

-Wagdi Salih, Anti-Corruption Committee

He told Middle East Eye that the decision to close the outlets had nothing to do with the freedom of the press or freedom of expression in the country.

We are tracking the illegal ownership of these institutions, not their editorial policies or what they wrote, Salih stressed.

Its a big joke that the supporters of the old regime are now crying for the freedom of press and expression that they oppressed everyday through the 30 years of their ruling.

Salih said the committee had hard evidence and information they had received from the security organs and other institutions concerned proving that the outlets had basically been established and financed by the former ruling party.

Our aim and mandate asis to return the looted money to the nation because its one of the main demands of the revolution so we wont abandon our task...We will press on to dismantle all institutions that looted the money of the Sudanese people, regardless of them working in the media or any other area.

In a news conference last week, Rashid Saeed, the undersecretary of the Sudanese ministry of information, said that Ashrooq had been established by money paid following an order from Bashir.

He also said that the transitional government had suspended the media outlets under the law authorising authorities to seize the assets and funds of the former regime, and not because of their editorial line.

They spent millions of euros to establish this channel with public money, also for the Teeba channel, the former president himself has admitted in front of the court that he paid for them from public money, said Saeed.

For example, for the Holy Quran society, we found that it owns a gold mining site, this is clear corruption that we would never tolerate."

Inside Sudan, journalists and pro-democracy protesters were split over the closure, with some supporting the transitional government's committee tasked with the dismantling of the former ruling party, while others opposed the action, arguing the decision went against the message of the revolution.

Diya Aldin Bilal, the chief editor of Al-Sudani, one of the newspapers that was closed down, accused the transitional government of silencing the voices of journalists and any opposition, adding that they are practising the same attitude of the old regime.

Sudan opens Darfur crimes probe against former Bashir officials

Addressing a news conference in Khartoum earlier this month, Bilal denied any links with or the financing of his newspaper with the old regime.

We have nothing to do with the old regime's money or political positions, but the current government is practicing the same oppression against the media, he said.

Unfortunately, the Sudanese politicians are changing their views according to their political position and the government of the Forces ofFreedom and Change has changed its slogans and the principles that they claimed that they had come to defend when they came to the power.

However, Khalid Fathi, the secretary general of the Sudanese Journalist Network, welcomed the decision, saying its aim was to fight corruption and to control the assets of NCP, and had nothing to do with freedom of expression.

We have to take these outlets case by case, as for example with Teeba the authorities have received complaints from Nigeria and Ethiopia that this channel is broadcasting hate discourse in local languages in these countries," he told MEE.

"For Ashrooq and Al-Ray Al-Am it is known that they have been financed by the former ruling party, the controversy is now about the ownership of Al-Sudani, and that can be easily checked by the general auditor.

This moveis for fighting corruption and is actually supporting transparency and the rule of law.

"But the committee dismantling the old regime's institutions is supposed to be cautious and needs to double check the information it receives, especially about the media houses, because this issue is sensitive and can be linked to freedom of expression.

Sudanese political analyst Magdi el-Gizouli, a scholar at the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) think tank, believes that the transitional government should be focusing on more pressing threats to democracy in Sudan, rather than the banning of newspapers.

The real threats to democracy in Sudan are not the newspapers, but the security organs, the army leaders and the militias, they are all now on the top of the government following the compromise made between the civilians and the military, he said.

The reformation of the security sector is the priority, not the media.

I wonder how the new rulers, who were freedom fighters resisting the former regime, are now trusting the security organs which were part of the old regime, and receive their reports regarding the assets and investments of the former ruling party from them.

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Cries of censorship in Sudan as media outlets linked to old regime closed - Middle East Eye

Study: North Korea, China, and Russia top internet censorship charts – The Next Web

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A new study published by Comparitech.com, a site that compares privacy tools, ranks countries on how much they exercise internet censorship. The study says North Korea takes the crown, while China is on the second spot followed by Russia, Iran, andTurkmenistan.

The website has taken a total of 10 factors into account:

[Read:Internet partially restored in Kashmir after 165 days social media still blocked ]

North Korea scores a whopping 10 out of 10 on this scored card with China scoring 9. Russia, Turkmenistan, and Iran scored 7 in this survey. Internet censorship is a huge issue across the world as more and more countries are trying to stifle or control online content one way or another.

Governments are also recognizing that more and more users are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to overcome the countrys internet restriction to access content or post on social media sites.

Unfortunately, the study doesnt include internet shutdowns, which is a major problem in countries like India with relatively lighter internet restrictions. However, legislators are trying to fight authority and minimize internet blocks. Recently, the countrys apex court ruled that the internet is a part of the basic right of freedom of speech.

You can check the study here and you can check out the full spreadsheet with data from all countries here.

Read next: Filipino billionaire denies endorsing Bitcoin 'scam'

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Study: North Korea, China, and Russia top internet censorship charts - The Next Web

Aichi Triennale Exhibition Will Be Restaged in Taiwan Following Censorship Controversy – Artforum

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More than six months after an exhibition organized as part of the Aichi Triennale in Japan was shuttered following political and violent threats, the Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art in Taiwan announced that it would host the show in its studio space in the spring.

Following the opening of the exhibition After Freedom of Expression?, which focused on the history of censorship in Japan, in August, the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Nagoya received numerous death threats by phone, email, and over fax over its inclusion of a comfort woman statuea monument that commemorates Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese troops during World War IItitled Statue of Peace.

While the organizers of the exhibition cited the safety of museum staff and visitors as the reason for the closure, the participating artists and others opposed to the decision condemned the move as censorshipthe topic of comfort women remains a sensitive issue for Japan. Many expressed concern over the number of local lawmakers, including Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura, who spoke out against the exhibition. The Cultural Affairs Agency, which previously pledged to provide 78 million yen in financial support to the triennial, later declared that it would not pay.

The controversy prompted more than a dozen artists, including Tania Bruguera, Pia Camil, Minouk Lim, Pedro Reyes, and Javier Tellez, to sign a letter addressed to the shows organizers, which read: We consider it an ethical obligation to stand by the exhibiting artists voices and their work being exhibited. Freedom of expression is an unalienable right that needs to be defended independently of any context.

While artistic director Daisuke Tsuda publicly apologized to the artists whose works were in the exhibition and for the strong sense of indignation and disappointment felt by the artists who ultimately withdrew works from the triennial in protest, he also defended the action and said that the exhibition drew threats beyond our expectations.

A government-appointed review board led by Toshio Yamanashi, director of the National Museum of Art, in Osaka later found that the closure and removal of the sculpture by Kim Seo-kyung and Kim Eun-sung was justified. It concluded that Tsuda deviated from the concept of the show by incorporating several new works when it apparently was only supposed to feature pieces that had previously been censored by the state. It also stated that Tsuda failed to effectively communicate with curators, administrators, and others involved in the festival, which was held from August 1 to October 14.

While the exhibition briefly reopened in October, it was only on view for a few days and visitors had to enter a lottery in order to see it.

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Aichi Triennale Exhibition Will Be Restaged in Taiwan Following Censorship Controversy - Artforum

Censorship On and By Social Media Platforms – Legal Reader

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Social media platforms have the obligation to permit equal access to all perspectives. And, people, as well as companies, should be free to air out their views regarding a particular matter.

The Internet is an ideal platform for sharing and exchanging ideas. People and organizations use social media platforms for various things such as debate forums, disseminating values, and social media censorship among other things.

Censor political speech

As the presidential elections approach, there are frequent and urgent calls for government regulations which proscribe social media platforms from censoring political speech. The majority of these calls presume that government regulations will not encroach on the First Amendments rights of the platforms as they are only platforms and not publishers.

However, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, private social media platforms can systematize the speech on their platforms as they have similar First Amendment rights to private publishers. Hence, any government regulation which prohibits the authority of a platform to censor speech will indeed lead to viewpoint censorship thereby violating the First Amendment rights of the platform.

Usual government regulations

The censorship powers of social media platforms are not beyond the reach of government regulations. The government should consider adopting due process regulations which necessitate that platforms implement clear rules regarding the speech that they ought not to allow on the platform and protect against the arbitrary execution of these rules on users. In comparison to regulations which forbid platforms censoring authority, due process regulations can withstand First Amendment challenges because they do not inhibit platforms from controlling the viewpoints that people express on these platforms.

Do they have the right to censor?

The First Amendment provides exemplary protection which inhibits the government from limiting your right to manifest your viewpoint(s). Apart from controlling government regulations, it also protects against various types of censorship, for example, forms of compelled speech and speech restrictions set in grants conditions. So, platforms have the right to censor.

Due process regulations are different

Despite the ability of the First Amendment to limit government censorship, the government can still address the dangers of biased platforms. Due process regulations are different as they do require platforms to modify their message, hence their ability to withstand First Amendment difficulties. Furthermore, due process regulations address most of the concerns that people raise. And, these regulations enable users to know the rules earlier so that they can develop content that complies with these rules.

Kinds of censorship

As aforementioned, there are various kinds of censorship that the First Amendment protects against. Coming up with an essay on a political topic can be challenging. But, with professional assistance from Essay Kitchen, drafting an outstanding and impeccable article will not be an issue.

What can we do?

Social media platforms have the obligation to permit equal access to all perspectives. And, people, as well as companies, should be free to air out their views regarding a particular matter. Furthermore, the First Amendment protects against the intervention of the government in limiting your ability to express your thoughts and opinions. Hence, people should say no to government regulations that censor social media. The government should not control what people say and how they say it.

In conclusion, there should be no restrictions on how people choose to express their views and share their ideas. The First Amendment aids in limiting government censorship and people should embrace it.

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Censorship On and By Social Media Platforms - Legal Reader

Internet Censorship In Africa Is A Trend In Africa – What To Expect In 2020 – WeeTracker Media

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In 2019, deliberate internet censorship cost African economies a collective USD 2.16 Bn. The shutdowns, mostly orchestrated by governments, have been on for many years.

Though such restrictions have been going on for many years, last year was the worst year in terms of amount of money foregone. So, for 2020, what should African businesses and individuals expect?

Internet shutdowns are becoming a trend in Africa. Period. The Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns in 2019 report finds that most internet shutdowns occur in response to protests or civil unrest surrounding elections.

Usually, these web and social media blackouts occur when governments want to restrict the spread of information and maintain their power grip. This does not not only toy with citizens freedom of expression, but also with their right to information.

The first major internet shutdown in Africa for last year is proof that the reports findings are correct. In Zimbabwe, the administration of Emmerson Mnangagwa executed a web blackout to quell protests arising from the ridiculous hike in fuel prices. It marked the first time for such to happen in the Southern African nation, which made Zimbabweans clamor for the return of their former leader Robert Mugabe.

A similar event occurred in Sudan, where the government shutdown the internet for weeks. The intention was to smother the protests against the generals who seized power after Omar al-Bashir was ousted by military forces in April.

These series of disturbing events occurred after Sudan-wide demonstrations against his rule. After shutting down the internet to curb malpractice during national exams in June 2019, Ethiopia went on to sustain the blackout due to failed military coup attempts.

The examples are endless, but the trend is certain. Whats more, the report by Top10VPN says that there is little to suggest that internet shutdowns will stop in 2020. This comes in spite of their negative impact on the global economy, human rights and the democratic processes.

Simon Migliano, Head of Research at Top10VPN, told WeeTracker that internet shutdowns have become a popular strategy across Africa during times of political unrest. This seems to be undeterred by condemnation by the United Nations and human rights organizations around the world.

Given that the rate of internet shutdowns has been increasing over the last three years, we have every reason to expect that there will be more in Africa this year, particularly in regions like Ethiopia and Sudan where elections are on the horizon, he said.

Simons predictions are not implausible, because truly, there are a couple of elections to be held in Africa this year. Also, some of these polls are being held in countries where internet censorship has occurred in the past. These include Chad, Mauritius, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Egypt and Liberia.

Peaceful and fair elections are encouraged across the continent, but theres a likeliness that internet censorship will occur in these countries. Togo is likely to join the crop, as it prepares to hold the first African presidential election of the year on February 22nd. Factors that will make for an internet censorship in the West African country are numerous.

The current president, Faure Gnassingb, has been in power since 2005, after the death of his father. His regime is to be extended as hes to be the only candidate on the ballot. Faures father seized control of the small country in 1967. Protests upon protests have registered displeasure over the seemingly dynastic rule of the Gnassingbs.

The internet may ultimately not shutdown in Togo, but the other promising crop of countries on the continent make us beg to differ. The nations aforementioned are known for civil unrest, long-ruling presidents and military shakedowns. Take Sudan for instance, where their last internet censorship led and resulted in to military open-fire on the nations citizens.

African businesses are actually better off expecting internet censorship this year and put things in place to enable them cope. Businesses that only exist online or on social media wont be able to operate at all during a shutdown.

According to Simon, those that have physical locations or provide services should be aware of alternative ways to communicate with suppliers, employees and existing or future customers.

On the signs of an internet shutdown, Simon said that any election or authority-related protest or form of unrest can be seen as a precursor to an internet shutdown. The reality is that unless a business operates completely offline, an internet shutdown will undoubtedly have some negative impact on their ability to successfully function, he says.

All businesses can really do is ensure that they have a means of staying connected and, where possible, find alternative methods of carrying out activities that would usually be done online.

A 2017 report by CIPESA on internet censorship revealed that the impact of being dumped offline is not a binary issue. The survey titled Calculating The Economic Impact Of Internet Disruptions In Sub-Saharan Africa, said that even after internet access is restored, the impact of a cut-off continues to resonate.

Economic losses caused by an internet disruption persist far beyond the days on which the shutdown occurs, because network disruptions unsettle supply chains and have systemic effects that harm efficiency throughout the economy, the report noted.

Internet disruptions, however short-lived, undermine economic growth, disrupt the delivery of critical services, erode business confidence, and raise a countrys risk profile.

Theres not exactly many options available when a business is disrupted by internet censorship. Simon explains: For many people, its just the old-fashioned way: telephone or fax! If an affected business is close to a region where internet remains available, then its a case of travelling there to conduct the most urgent matters via laptop and mobile internet before returning home. Of course, thats not an option for many. This is why internet shutdowns are so damaging.

Featured Image: New York Times

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Internet Censorship In Africa Is A Trend In Africa - What To Expect In 2020 - WeeTracker Media

The spy who fell off my family tree and nearly got away – The Jewish News of Northern California

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In 1939, the notorious German-born spy Julius Silber vanished.

The double agent, known as the spy who was never caught, had passed secrets to Germany during World War I while embedded in a British censorship bureau. Then he humiliated Britains MI5 by outing himself in his 1932 autobiography, The Invisible Weapons. The Nazis rewarded his service by annulling his citizenship because he was Jewish, something Silber had kept under wraps.

Silber himself had no direct descendants, but he has distant relatives. I am one of them.

With enemies on both sides of the Channel, Silber crossed the Atlantic at the end of 1933 and became a U.S. citizen the following year. He traveled back and forth to Europe from 1934 until at least 1937, writing articles on European politics for American newspapers. On Jan. 17, 1939, the week before he turned 60, Silber was scheduled to address a womens group in Rockville Centre, Long Island. Then he disappeared. No more lecture announcements in newspaper archives. No more citations on ships manifests. No listing in the Social Security Death Index.

Biographer Ronald Seth believed Silber died of failing health in Germany in 1939, but I was suspicious. The Germans kept good records, and there were none.

My search for answers led me to London this past fall, where I met with Katie Figulla, the great-granddaughter of Silbers older sister, Malafka Silber Asch, and Figullas mother, Lesley.

Katie had found me through Ancestry.com and reached out, looking for information about her great-grandmother and her own Jewish roots.

Did you know about [Malafkas] infamous brother, Julius Silber, who spied for Germany during WWI, working undercover in England? I asked her by email before our meeting.

No I did not! Katie replied.

When we met in my hotel lobby in London, Katie shouted Cousin! as she and her mother came over to hug me. Her mother carried an envelope with copies of family photos, including one of Uncle Jules, a distinguished-looking man with a goatee, and another of Malafka, who died at Theresienstadt in 1943 at age 75, a month after she was deported from Berlin.

She was murdered, Lesley Figulla said.

Like Woody Allens Zelig, Julius Silber changed his identity when it suited him and began calling himself Jules, J. C. Silber or Jules Crawford Silber. The name Crawford may have come from a British biscuit tin, not from his Jewish parents. Born in 1879 in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), Silber left home as a teenager. He arrived in South Africa in 1896 with plans to study medicine, but the Boer War disrupted his studies. Skilled at languages, he learned to speak English even better than my native tongue, he wrote, and became thoroughly conversant with the language of the Boers as well as with that of the Zulus.

As an interpreter for the British in South Africa, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and in India, he emulated the mannerisms of British colonialists. He hunted and hiked, enjoyed club life and smoked fine tobacco. Did the Brits know he was Jewish? Unlikely.

In 1903, Silber left South Africa and settled in New York, where he succeeded in making a comfortable fortune, according to his autobiography. One thing he left out was his engagement to Ida Richardson Hood, a curator at New Yorks American Museum of Natural History and the daughter of a Confederate general. Silber jilted Ida, according to her nephew, James Bagg.

Nobody in my family ever mentioned anything about Jules having been Jewish, so it either was unknown or was considered unimportant, Bagg wrote in an email. But his devotion to his native Germany was all the stranger in light of his background.

That devotion took root in 1914, when war broke out. Although Silber had created a new life in New York, he was overcome by twinges of patriotism for his fatherland. Taking advantage of his knowledge of British customs, he decided to help Germany by serving as a double agent in England. However, without a passport, the German-born Silber couldnt sail from New York. Instead, he traveled to Montreal, where he boarded a cargo ship bound for England. Masquerading as a French Canadian, he embedded himself in the British postal services censorship bureau in London and later in Liverpool.

With no training as a spy, Silber developed an ingenious technique for passing military secrets to the Germans. Using an already stamped window envelope addressed and mailed to himself, he would open the envelope, write an innocuous-seeming letter, address it to a person on the British suspect list and enclose microfilm with strategic information. Then he would reseal the envelope and mark it Passed by the Censor.

Silbers envelope escapades were never discovered, although he had several narrow escapes. Required to register for the draft, he used his medical knowledge to fabricate a heart ailment and avoid conscription.

After the war, without a passport and suffering from a heart disease which grew rapidly worse, Silber wrote that he was unable to leave England. Then by a stroke of luck, Belgium sought to increase tourism by issuing weekend passes to British visitors who had no passports. In May 1925, Silber boarded a ferry to Ostend and took a train to the Dutch border. After receiving a passport at the German Legation in The Hague, he was on his way to Berlin. At last I was at home, he wrote at the end of his autobiography.

But he wasnt home for long. In December 1933, after Hitler came into power, Silber sailed for New York. Six years later, he disappeared.

With no resolution on the fate of Cousin Julius, I put his story on a back burner until I received Katies email last year. Not only was she unaware of Julius, but she did not know that her great-grandmother Malafka had died in the camps. Katies 85-year-old father, Frederick Figulla, hadnt shared this information with his daughter until she told him what I had uncovered.

Malafkas only daughter, Kthe Asch, left Germany for England in 1938 in order to marry her fianc, Hugo Henry Figulla, with whom she shared a young son. The Nuremberg laws prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and Hugo Henry was not Jewish. They had left 3-year-old Frederick in the care of family friends, expecting to return soon, but the war, sadly, resulted in a long separation from their son.

Frederick didnt recall meeting Uncle Julius, but he knew of his espionage activities. When Katie and her mother asked about Silbers disappearance in 1939, Frederick was adamant.

Julius did not disappear, he told them.

So, I asked, what happened?

He committed suicide, Katie said. He killed himself in 1939. In Lisbon.

Lisbon? I shouted. Coincidentally, we happened to be flying there the next day. Maybe I can find some answers. It would be a satisfying ending to a story that began when an L.A. second cousin I found, Amy-Hannah Broersma, first put me onto Silbers bizarre story five years ago.

Good luck! said the concierge of my hotel, who provided me with historical background. During World War II, when Portugal was a neutral country, Lisbon swarmed with spies on both sides. Finding a record of Silbers arrival would be next to impossible. Finding a record of his death? I could try. She directed me to Lisbons civil records bureau.

Arriving, I interrupted a clerk to ask for information.

Take a number, she said. After an hours wait, I left. Later I learned the bureau had no wartime records, and I emailed the city archives.

Im still waiting for a response, and the elusive spy continues to haunt me. But in the process, my world and my family have grown.

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The spy who fell off my family tree and nearly got away - The Jewish News of Northern California

Nepal: Information Technology Bill threatens freedom of expression – Amnesty International

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Nepals parliament must amend the Information Technology Bill (IT Bill) to bring into line with international standards and ensure that the law is not used to criminalize the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression, Amnesty International said today.

Provoking widespread criticism from Nepals civil society, the proposed IT Bill would empower the government to arbitrarily censor content online, including on social media, and punish offenders with up to five years imprisonment and a fine of 1.5 million Nepali rupees (approximately 13,000 USD).

The IT Bill is one of three proposed pieces of legislation that use vague and overbroad clauses to unduly restrict the right to freedom of expression. The bills have been proposed against the backdrop of intensifying attacks on free expression in the country.

Nepal was once envied by people across the region for its openness towards critical views and opinions. That reputation is now at risk as the government continues to crack down on what people say, write and even sing. The IT Bill and all other legislation must be amended and brought into line with international law and standards to guarantee peoples right to freedom of expression, said Biraj Patnaik, South Asia Director at Amnesty International.

In 2019, laws like the Electronic Transactions Act 2006 were used to arbitrarily detain journalists for publishing stories which criticized the government or others who posted critical comments online. In April, journalist Arjun Giri was charged under the Act for reporting on financial fraud. In June, comedian Pranesh Gautam was arrested for posting a satirical film review on YouTube. In October, musical artists Durgesh Thapa and Samir Ghishing popularly known as VTEN, were arrested for the content of their songs.

Nepal was once envied by people across the region for its openness towards critical views and opinions. That reputation is now at risk as the government continues to crack down on what people say, write and even sing

Several provisions in the IT Bill do not meet international human rights law and standards. For example, section 94 of the bill vaguely criminalizes people who post content on social media if it is deemed to be against national unity, self-respect, national interest, relationship between federal units.

Other provisions of the IT Bill, which are open to very wide interpretation, could also be abused to stifle critical opinions, satire, public dialogue, and public commentary. For example, the bill prohibits teasing, deceiving, demotivating, and demeaning.

Section 88 of the bill also restricts the publishing of such content through use of any electronic medium, which could include news sites, blogs and even emails.

Section 115 of the bill envisions an Information Technology Court in each of the seven provinces around the country, with the mandate to deal with all issues under the bill, including criminal liability. As the bill authorizes the government to appoint the members of the court bypassing judicial council, this poses serious concerns on the influence of the executive over these courts, the independence of the judiciary and fair trails guarantee in such courts.

Under international human rights law, states are permitted to limit the right to freedom of expression, but these limitations must be set forth in law in a precise manner, and be necessary and proportionate to a legitimate aim, as stipulated in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Nepal is a party.

If passed in its current form, the provisions in the IT Bill further risk creating a chilling effect, and will ultimately give rise to censorship and self-censorship online where people will no longer be able to share their feelings or debate ideas freely and without fear of repression, said Biraj Patnaik.

In 2019, the government of Nepal proposed a series of bills in parliament with provisions criminalizing acts that should be protected under the right to freedom of expression, and give the authorities excessive powers to impose harsh sentences for vaguely worded offences.

In February 2019, the Information Technology Bill was proposed in the house of representatives.

In May 2019, the government registered the Media Council Bill in the upper house of parliament with provisions that would muzzle freedom of expression through printed and online media. Under Section 18, the Council will have the power to impose fines of up to one million rupees (approximately 9,000 USD) if a journalist is found guilty of libel or defamation, which is also punishable under the criminal code. According to international human rights standards, defamation should be treated as a matter for civil litigation, not criminal.

The Mass Communication Bill, also drafted in 2019, includes provision of even harsher sentencing and fines to journalists with up to 15 years of imprisonment if found guilty of publishing or broadcasting contents deemed to be against sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity, as per section 59 of the draft bill.

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Nepal: Information Technology Bill threatens freedom of expression - Amnesty International

Some people in China help the party police the internet – The Economist

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Citizen censors focus on smut, misleading ads and political gossip

THE INTERNET is the spiritual home of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. So Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, described it in 2016. He said he expected citizens to help keep the place tidy. Many have taken up the challenge. In December netizens reported 12.2m pieces of inappropriate content to the authoritiesfour times as many as in the same month of 2015. The surge does not indicate that the internet in China is becoming more unruly. Rather, censorship is becoming more bottom-up.

Officials have been mobilising people to join the fight in this drawn-out war, as a magazine editor called it in a speech in September to Shanghais first group of city-appointed volunteer censors. Internet governance requires that every netizen take part, an official told the gathering. It was arranged by the citys cyber-administration during its first propaganda month promoting citizen censorship. The 140 people there swore to report any online disorder.

Some netizens, it seems, are as enthusiastic about the task as online scolds in the West are about denouncing heresy on Twitter. Rongbin Han of the University of Georgia says this suggests that the popular image of a shadowy state versus a resistant citizenry is oversimplified. Oversight of cyberspace has become highly decentralised. Private internet firms have long played a big role in censoring content they and their users produce. Increasingly, ordinary citizens are joining in.

Officials want them to look out for harmful content relating to several broad categories. The partys priorities are, in order: political, terrorist and pornographic. Of the material reported by the public, data released by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the central governments internet watchdog, suggest that most is either political or pornographic. In March 2017, pornography was the biggest category of citizen-flagged content (47%). Politics came second (27%). Official figures from June that year show the order reversed, with political content comprising 42% and smut 38%.

No examples are given of offensive items. But officials define the political type very broadly, as including anything deemed to threaten Chinas national security or interests such as political rumour. No tittle-tattle about Mr Xi and his colleagues, in other words.

Since June 2017 the CAC has stopped providing a breakdown of reported content by type in its monthly reports. But some provincial governments still do. In Tibet, for instance, 45% of content reported to the regional cyber-administration in December was political and only 19% pornographic. An additional 16% of it involved Tibet-related conventions. This term is not defined but probably covers material challenging the partys way of running Tibetan affairs. Local officials say that preventing the spread of counter-propaganda from the Dalai Lama is a priority.

Why do citizens play along? Some people are genuinely worried about vulgarity, pseudoscience and the peddling of unsafe products. An official survey last year of more than 200,000 netizens found that dishonest advertising, rumour and pornography were the most frequently encountered types of problematic content. But some netizens are simply anxious to impress. In 2015 the Communist Youth League began requiring each university to organise a group of volunteer censors. Would-be members of the league, or the party, have an incentive to sign up. Weibo, a Twitter-like service, has a team of 2,000 volunteer supervisors (in addition to its army of in-house censors). They can earn rewards for reporting harmful material. In October they found 3.8m examples.

The partys efforts may be working. In 2019 Freedom House, an American think-tank, lowered Chinas internet-freedom score to 10% free, down from 15% when Mr Xi took power in 2012. Controls keep tightening. Information-technology rules, which took effect on December 1st, oblige new subscribers to mobile-phone services not only to prove their identities, as has long been required, but also to have their faces scanned. That, presumably, will make it easier for police to catch the people who post the bad stuff online.

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Some people in China help the party police the internet"

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Some people in China help the party police the internet - The Economist

Web needs an element of censorship as some of it is bordering on pornography: Niki Walia – IWMBuzz

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Niki Walia, who entertained in TV shows Astitva Ek Prem Kahani and Dil Sambhal Jaa Zara, is now exploring the web world. After being part of Puncchbeat, Niki is now part of Nakuul Mehta and Anya Singh starrer web series Never Kiss Your Best Friend on ZEE5.

In conversation with IWMBuzz.com, Niki spoke about her new series, co-star Nakuul Mehta and more.

How was your experience working for Never Kiss Your Best Friend?

It has been an awesome experience to work with such legendary actors. This entire shoot was more like a big fat party rather than working, we were working for grueling long hours but it was just awesome. Captain of the ship Arif, hats off to him, a special mention to him, he is such a young lad but he is so amazing. I have loved the production Niraj, Sarita, Yukti, Naina everybody. It was a treat, this entire shoot was a treat.

Tell us about your bond with co-star Nakuul Mehta?

Nakuul and I have known each other socially and weve met at Sanjay Kapoors house for dinner along with his wife Jankee. I think both of them are an absolutely adorable couple. Nakuul, in particular, is not just a dedicated actor but he is also someone who believes a lot in self-growth and is so involved with personal growth. He reads he travels, he explores, hes into theatre, and he makes sure the atmosphere on the set is perfect. He is a breath of fresh air in todays generation of actors and I genuinely believe that he is an all-rounder. Its a very rare quality that you get in people today that come to work and arent cribbing, complaining or bitching or forever finding fault with either the production department or the direction department.

In this new generation of actors, he is the first guy I have come across after a very long time who also believes in the same things. Our work ethics are very similar. He is ever so courteous, a thorough gentleman, he is adorable, I just love Nakuul and Jankee. I am so happy I met Nakuul it was amazing working together.

What is your take on the digital medium which is flourishing nowadays?

Web gives one more room to experiment. The roles are more interesting and diverse rather than the linear that exists on television.

Do you think the web needs censorship?

I believe there should be an element of censorship as some of it is bordering on pornography and its unnecessary in the stories.

Any other projects you are working on?

After Never Kiss Your Best Friend, I also have How To Kill Your Husband, Guilty, Tuesdays and Fridays, as well as Puncch Beat Season 2 and 3 coming up. And there a few others but its too early to talk about them right now.

Which is your preferred medium to work?

I am not choosing work according to medium but rather what excites and challenges me.

Any final message

I would want the audience to binge-watch Never Kiss Your Best Friend on ZEE5 as it is an amazing series.

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Web needs an element of censorship as some of it is bordering on pornography: Niki Walia - IWMBuzz

ASC20 Finals to be Held in Shenzhen, Tasks Include Quantum Computing Simulation and AI Language Exam – HPCwire

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BEIJING, Jan. 21, 2020 The 2020 ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge (ASC20) announced the tasks for the new season: using supercomputers to simulate Quantum circuit and training AI models to take English test. These tasks can be unprecedented challenges for the 300+ ASC teams from around the world. From April 25 to 29, 2020, top 20 finalists will fiercely compete at SUSTech in Shenzhen, China.

ASC20 set up Quantum Computing tasks for the first time. Teams are going to use the QuEST (Quantum Exact Simulation Toolkit) running on supercomputers to simulate 30 qubits in two cases: quantum random circuits (random.c), and quantum fast Fourier transform circuits (GHZ_QFT.c). Quantum computing is a disruptive technology, considered to be the next generation high performance computing. However the R&D of quantum computers is lagging behind due to the unique properties of quantum. It adds extra difficulties for scientists to use real quantum computers to solve some of the most pressing problems such as particle physics modeling, cryptography, genetic engineering, and quantum machine learning. From this perspective, the quantum computing task presented in the ASC20 challenge, hopefully, will inspire new algorithms and architectures in this field.

The other task revealed is Language Exam Challenge. Teams will take on the challenge to train AI models on an English Cloze Test dataset, vying to achieve the highest test scores. The dataset covers multiple levels of English language tests in China, including the college entrance examination, College English Test Band 4 and Band 6, and others. Teaching the machines to understand human language is one of the most elusive and long-standing challenges in the field of AI. The ASC20 AI task signifies such a challenge, by using human-oriented problems to evaluate the performance of neural networks.

Wang Endong, ASC Challenge initiator, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chief Scientist at Inspur Group, said that through these tasks, students from all over the world get to access and learn the most cutting-edge computing technologies. ASC strives to foster supercomputing & AI talents of global vision, inspiring technical innovation.

Dr. Lu Chun, Vice President of SUSTech host of the ASC20 Finals, commented that supercomputers are important infrastructure for scientific innovation and economic development. SUSTech makes focused efforts on developing supercomputing and hosting ASC20, hoping to drive the training of supercomputing talent, international exchange and cooperation, as well as inter discipline development at SUSTech.

Furthermore, during January 15-16, 2020, the ASC20 organizing committee held a competition training camp in Beijing to help student teams prepare for the ongoing competition. HPC and AI experts from the State Key Laboratory of High-end Server and Storage Technology, Inspur, Intel, NVIDIA, Mellanox, Peng Cheng Laboratory and the Institute of Acoustics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences gathered to provide on-site coaching and guidance. Previous ASC winning teams also shared their successful experiences.

About ASC

The ASC Student Supercomputer Challenge is the worlds largest student supercomputer competition, sponsored and organized by Asia Supercomputer Community in China and supported by Asian, European, and American experts and institutions. The main objectives of ASC are to encourage exchange and training of young supercomputing talent from different countries, improve supercomputing applications and R&D capacity, boost the development of supercomputing, and promote technical and industrial innovation. The annual ASC Supercomputer Challenge was first held in 2012 and has since attracted over 8,500 undergraduates from all over the world. Learn more ASC athttps://www.asc-events.org/.

Source: ASC

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ASC20 Finals to be Held in Shenzhen, Tasks Include Quantum Computing Simulation and AI Language Exam - HPCwire

AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs Tapped for European Weather-Predicting Supercomputer – Tom’s Hardware

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After recently pulling off a big win in the Archer 2 Supercomputer installed in Edinburgh, AMD this week announced another big supercomputer contract,. This time it's to build the weather-predicting BullSequana XH2000 with Atos. The supercomputer will be installed for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) research center and 24/7 operational weather service in Bologna, Italy.

Atos has multiple XH2000 supercomputers already, but the one in question will be built on AMD Epyc 7742 processors, which is a 64-core 128-thread chip with a 225W TDP.

Exactly how many chips will be installed wasn't detailed, but we do know that each individual XH2000 42U cabinet will be able to house up to 32 compute blades. These are liquid-cooled 1U blades each capable of housing three compute nodes that can support a wide variety of platforms, including AMD's Epyc chips as well as Intel's Xeon and Nvidia's Volta V100. On the modular platform, this means that the total systems can be configured exactly to the customer's liking.

This new solution will optimize ECMWF's current workflow to enable it to deliver vastly improved numerical weather predictions," Sophie Proust, Atos Group CTO, said in a statement. "Most importantly though, this is a long-term collaboration, one in which we will work closely with ECMWF to explore new technologies in order to be prepared for next-generation applications.

Assembly of the XH2000 installation in Bologna will commence this year with the aim of starting its service life in 2021. It will be accessible to researchers from more than 30 countries, and the goal is running higher-resolution weather predictions of 10km.

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AMD Epyc 7742 CPUs Tapped for European Weather-Predicting Supercomputer - Tom's Hardware

Supercomputer forecasts Liverpool’s chances of winning Premier League title – Daily Star

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Liverpool have forged a 13-point lead in the Premier League this season having gone on an astounding run of form under Jurgen Klopp.

The Reds havent lost in over a year of league football and have two games in hand over second-placed Manchester City.

Despite failing to win the top flight in almost 30 years, Liverpool have a 98 per cent chance of doing so over the next few months.

The experts at fivethirtyeight have crunched the numbers to rate the chances of Klopps side coming out on top having missed out by a point last season, and they are nothing sort of conclusive.

The Merseyside outfit have been tipped to claim 100 points over the course of the season to match Citys record total from the 2017-18 campaign, having only failed to win once in their first 21 fixtures.

In terms of the rest of the table, Leicester will hang on to third as Chelsea grab the final Champions League qualifying spot.

Manchester United will finish a place above Tottenham in fifth while Mikel Artetas Arsenal sit in the bottom half of the table in 11th.

Fivethirtyeight got their predictions from simulating the remaining fixtures 20,000 times, with Norwich, Bournemouth and Aston Villa facing the drop.

Liverpool boss Klopp hasnt won a league title since his Bundesliga triumph with Borussia Dortmund back in 2012, and remains cautious over his chances this time around.

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He said of United ahead of their meeting at Anfield: As a fellow manager it is easy to see the progress they make, although others on the outside are often not so quick to recognise.

They have recruited some exceptional players and the evolution of their squad makes them one of the strongest in Europe, I would say.

Look at their talent from the 'keeper through to the forwards. They have world-class talent in that team and a squad full of match-winners. Big investment has resulted in a very strong group.

Of course, looking to build something takes time. We know this ourselves. But they build with outstanding results and performances as a foundation.

Their win this week in the FA Cup against Wolves was yet more evidence of how dangerous they are.

United compete in four competitions still this says a lot about their quality.

They remain with much to fight for in the league, a semi-final second leg to come in the Carabao Cup, into the fourth round of the FA Cup and the knockout stages in Europe.

You cannot compete as they do in these competitions if they are not an outstanding football team.

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Supercomputer forecasts Liverpool's chances of winning Premier League title - Daily Star

Scientists Combine AI With Biology to Create Xenobots, the World’s First ‘Living Robots’ – EcoWatch

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Formosa's plastics plant is seen dominating the landscape in Point Comfort, Texas. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Diane Wilson is seen with volunteers before their meeting across the street from Formosa's Point Comfort manufacturing plant. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Within 10 minutes she collected an estimated 300 of the little plastic pellets. Wilson says she will save them as evidence, along with any additional material the group collects, to present to the official and yet-to-be-selected monitor.

Wilson received the waiver forms from Formosa a day after the deadline. The group planned to set out by foot on Jan. 18, which would allow them to cover more ground on their next monitoring trip. They hope to check all of the facility's 14 outtakes where nurdles could be still be escaping. Any nurdles discharged on or after Jan. 15 in the area immediately surrounding the plant would be in violation of the court settlement.

Ronnie Hamrick picks up a mixture of new and legacy nurdles near Formosa's Point Comfort plant. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Ronnie Hamrick holds a few of the countless nurdles that litter the banks of Cox Creek near Formosa's Point Comfort facility. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Lawsuit Against Formosas Planned Louisiana Plant

On that same afternoon, Wilson learned that conservation and community groups in Louisiana had sued the Trump administration, challenging federal environmental permits for Formosa's planned $9.4 billion plastics complex in St. James Parish.

The news made Wilson smile. "I hope they win. The best way to stop the company from polluting is not to let them build another plant," she told me.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court against the Army Corps of Engineers, accusing the Corps of failing to disclose environmental damage and public health risks and failing to adequately consider environmental damage from the proposed plastics plant. Wilson had met some of the Louisiana-based activists last year when a group of them had traveled to Point Comfort and protested with her outside Formosa's plastics plant that had begun operations in 1983. Among them was Sharon Lavigne, founder of the community group Rise St. James, who lives just over a mile and a half from the proposed plastics complex in Louisiana.

Back then, Wilson offered them encouragement in their fight. A few months after winning her own case last June, she gave them boxes of nurdles she had used in her case against Formosa. The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups in the Louisiana lawsuit, transported the nurdles to St. James. The hope was that these plastic pellets would help environmental advocates there convince Louisiana regulators to deny Formosa's request for air permits required for building its proposed St. James plastics complex that would also produce nurdles. On Jan. 6, Formosa received those permits, but it still has a few more steps before receiving full approval for the plant.

Anne Rolfes, founder of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, holding up a bag of nurdles discharged from Formosa's Point Comfort, Texas plant, at a protest against the company's proposed St. James plant in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on Dec. 10, 2019. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Construction underway to expand Formosa's Point Comfort plant. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Silhouette of Formosa's Point Comfort Plant looming over the rural landscape. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

From the Gulf Coast toEurope

Just a day after Wilson found apparently new nurdles in Point Comfort, the Plastic Soup Foundation, an advocacy group based in Amsterdam, took legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution in Europe. On behalf of the group, environmental lawyers submitted an enforcement request to a Dutch environmental protection agency, which is responsible for regulating the cleanup of nurdles polluting waterways in the Netherlands.

The foundation is the first organization in Europe to take legal steps to stop plastic pellet pollution. It cites in its enforcement request to regulators Wilson's victory in obtaining a "zero discharge" promise from Formosa and is seeking a similar result against Ducor Petrochemicals, the Rotterdam plastic producer. Its goal is to prod regulators into forcing Ducor to remove tens of millions of plastic pellets from the banks immediately surrounding its petrochemical plant.

Detail of a warning sign near the Point Comfort Formosa plant. The waterways near the plant are polluted by numerous industrial facilities in the area. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

Nurdles on Cox Creek's bank on Jan. 15. Wilson hopes her and her colleagues' work of the past four years will help prevent the building of more plastics plants, including the proposed Formosa plant in St. James Parish. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

A sign noting the entrance to the Formosa Wetlands Walkway at Port Lavaca Beach. The San Antonio Estuary Waterkeeper describes the messaging as an example of greenwashing. Julie Dermansky / DeSmogBlog

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Scientists Combine AI With Biology to Create Xenobots, the World's First 'Living Robots' - EcoWatch

New, detailed pictures of planets, moons, and comets are neither photos nor animations theyre made using data from 50 years of NASA missions -…

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captionA snapshot of the American Natural History Museums Worlds Beyond Earth immersive theater experience.sourceD. Finnin/ AMNH

For many years, there were only two ways for astronomers to see distant worlds in our solar system: Either they used a powerful telescope, or they sent spacecraft into the inky blackness to get up close and personal.

But a third option is emerging to offer unprecedented detail and accuracy: data visualization.

At the American Museum of Natural History, a new planetarium show reveals images of Saturns moon Titan, the 67P comet, and the lunar surface, all generated using data collected during 50 years of space missions.

Were not making anything up here, Carter Emmart, director of astrovisualization for that show, said at a press conference. The height, color, and shapes we see come from actual measurements. You get to see these beautiful objects as they actually are, to the best of our abilities.

Carter and his team relied on data gathered by robotic probes, telescopes, and supercomputer simulations from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration since the 1970s.

Were taking numbers and turning that into a picture, he told Business Insider. Weve created a 3D world that lives in the computer and can be shown on screen.

Take a look at some of the most impressive visuals from the show,Worlds Beyond Earth, which opened Tuesday.

Other planetariums, like Chicagos Adler Planetarium, also utilize data visualization, relying on research about planetary orbits, surface maps, and the location of spacecraft to create accurate imagery. But the Hayden Planetarium in New York displays the most comprehensive color palette.

In 1971, Falcon carried astronauts David Scott and Jim Irwin, along with the first Lunar Roving Vehicle, down to the moon. That so-called moon buggy helped Scott and Irwin explore a much wider swath of the lunar surface.

Spacecraft are extensions of ourselves: our eyes, ears, and nose, the shows curator, Denton Ebel, told Business Insider.

The red planet was once akin to Earth, with plentiful water and active volcanoes. But the planets core cooled just 500 million years after Mars formation. That cooling, according to museum scientists, caused the decay of Mars magnetic field, which protected the planet from solar winds. Without it, Mars lost its atmosphere.

According to Ebel, Magellan revealed that Venus was also once like Earth but now has a surface hot enough to melt lead.

Venus is a hellscape, really, Ebel said, because it, too, lacks a magnetic field. Without that protection, solar winds stripped away any water.

Cassini discovered that Saturns moon Enceladus sprays plumes of water into space. That told scientists that the moon has an ocean of liquid water under its icy surface.

Titan boasts a thick atmosphere and weather. But its too cold to hold liquid water; its lakes and rain are made of liquid methane.

Saturns rings bubble with moonlets: house-sized baby moons that form as space dust coalesces. Ebel said the process by which these moonlets were born parallels how all eight planets in our solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

Planets formed within this disk which resembled Saturns rings as did moons, comets, and asteroids. Then eight planets (along with dwarf planet Pluto) grew as they incorporated more material.

In 1979, NASAs Voyager I mission took snapshots of Io, revealing the moon to be the most volcanically active object in the solar system. Some of Ios volcanoes spew lava dozens of miles into the sky; its surface is peppered by lakes of lava.

Ebels group used data from NASAs Galileo mission to glean insight into Jupiters magnetic field.

The largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter has hot, liquid, metallic hydrogen churning around its rocky core. That generates a powerful magnetic field.

One of Jupiters moons, Ganymede, also has such a field.

The comet, called 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is only a few kilometers across, but it contains frozen water, dust, and amino acids the basic chemical building blocks of life.

When comets collided with planets and moons earlier in the solar systems history, some delivered life-giving chemicals like phosphorus.

It took Rosetta 10 years to reach 67P, enter its orbit, and send a lander down to the surface.

He added that production work on the Worlds Beyond Earth show lasted a full year so that the team could make damn sure that every bit of space that were putting up there on the screen is accurate to the best of our knowledge.

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New, detailed pictures of planets, moons, and comets are neither photos nor animations theyre made using data from 50 years of NASA missions -...

What Nihilism Is Not – The MIT Press Reader

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In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it's necessary to distinguish it from pessimism, cynicism, and apathy.

By: Nolen Gertz

Nihilism, not unlike time (according to Augustine) or porn (according to the U.S. Supreme Court), is one of those concepts that we are all pretty sure we know the meaning of unless someone asks us to define it. Nihil means nothing. -ism means ideology. Yet when we try to combine these terms, the combination seems to immediately refute itself, as the idea that nihilism is the ideology of nothing appears to be nonsensical. To say that this means that someone believes in nothing is not really much more helpful, as believing in something suggests there is something to be believed in, but if that something is nothing, then there is not something to be believed in, in which case believing in nothing is again a self-refuting idea.

It is easy therefore to fall into the trap of thinking Everything is nihilism! which of course leads to thinking Nothing is nihilism! Thus in order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it is necessary to distinguish it from concepts that are often associated with it but are nevertheless different, concepts such as pessimism, cynicism, and apathy.

If optimism is hopefulness, then pessimism is hopelessness. To be a pessimist is to say, Whats the point? Pessimism is often likened to a Glass is half empty way of seeing the world, but since its only half empty this scenario might still be too hopeful for a pessimist. A better scenario might be that, if a pessimist fell in a well, and someone offered to rescue him, hed likely respond, Why bother? In the well, out of the well, were all going to die anyway. In other words, pessimism is dark and depressing. But it is not nihilism.

If a pessimist fell in a well, and someone offered to rescue him, hed likely respond, Why bother? In the well, out of the well, were all going to die anyway.

In fact, we might even go so far as to say that pessimism is the opposite of nihilism. Like nihilism, pessimism could be seen as arising from despair. The fact of our death, the frustration of our desires, the unintended consequences of our actions, the tweets of our political leaders, any or all of these could lead us to either nihilism or pessimism. However, where these two roads diverge is over the question of whether we dwell on our despair or hide from it.

To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist. But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea. Indeed you could yourself be a nihilist and have no idea. Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it. This difference was illustrated by Woody Allen in his movie Annie Hall (1977) when his alter ego Alvy Singer has the following exchange with a couple he stops on the street for advice:

ALVY (He moves up the sidewalk to a young trendy-looking couple, arms wrapped around each other): You-you look like a really happy couple. Uh, uh are you?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yeah.

ALVY: Yeah! So h-h-how do you account for it?

YOUNG WOMAN: Uh, Im very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

YOUNG MAN: And Im exactly the same way.

ALVY: I see. Well, thats very interesting. So youve managed to work out something, huh?

YOUNG MAN: Right.

Alvy Singer is a pessimist. The man and woman are nihilists.

What is most illuminating about this scene is that it shows how a pessimist can reveal the identity of a nihilist, just as it might be argued that the pessimism of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer helped reveal to Nietzsche his own nihilism. Before they are confronted by Alvy, they are just a happily shallow and happily empty couple. However, when he asks them to explain their happiness, they are no longer shallow and empty; they are instead forced to awaken from their reverie and to become self-aware. It is not that they are happy that reveals their nihilism; rather it is their attempt to explain to a pessimist why they are happy that reveals their nihilism. On the surface, they are soul mates who have found each other. But surface is all that they are. The attempt to go any deeper reveals that there is nothing deeper. And it is precisely a pessimist who, when confronted with such a happy couple, would ask the Why? that reveals their nothingness.

If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism. To see the glass as half full is to think that we should be happy with what we have rather than focusing on what is missing. But being happy with what we have can also be a way of remaining complacent, of ignoring what is missing so as to avoid having to seek change. Similarly, to believe that everything will work out in the end, that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, is to believe that life is teleological, that there is some goal or purpose whether God or Justice operating invisibly behind what we experience.

It is by believing in the existence of superhuman goals and superhuman purposes that we lose sight of human goals and human purposes. Likewise, when we elevate someone like Martin Luther King Jr. to the status of a saint or a prophet, we see him as more than a mere mortal, thus freeing ourselves from the responsibility of trying to emulate him since we simply have to be hopeful that someone like him will come again. If optimism leads us to be complacent, leads us to wait for something good to happen, or for someone else to make something good happen, then optimism leads us to do nothing. In other words, it is not pessimism but optimism that is similar to nihilism.

In Ancient Greece, a Cynic was someone who lived like a dog (the Greek kynikos means doglike), or, to be more precise, was someone who lived by the Cynic philosophy of staying true to nature rather than conforming to what that person saw as social artifice. Today, a cynic is similarly someone who looks down on society and sees it as fake, though not because the cynic sees society as unnatural, but because the cynic sees the people who make up society as fake. To be cynical is to assume the worst of people, to think that morality is mere pretense, and to suppose that even when people seem to be helping others they are really only trying to help themselves. Believing in only self-interest, the cynic appears to others to believe in nothing. Consequently, cynicism can appear to be nihilism. But it is not nihilism.

A cynic can even enjoy life. In particular, a cynic can take pleasure in mocking those who claim that altruism exists, or that politicians are self-sacrificing public servants, and especially finds laughable the idea that we should try to see the good in people.

Cynicism, like pessimism, is about negativity. However, whereas pessimism is about despair, about the feeling that life is pointless in the face of death, cynicism is instead much more about disdain than despair. A cynic wouldnt say that life is pointless but would just say that what people claim about life is pointless. A cynic can even enjoy life. In particular, a cynic can take pleasure in mocking those who claim that altruism exists, or that politicians are self-sacrificing public servants, and especially finds laughable the idea that we should try to see the good in people.

Pessimists are not nihilists because pessimists embrace rather than evade despair. Cynics are not nihilists because cynics embrace rather than evade mendacity. A key part of evading despair is the willingness to believe, to believe that people can be good, that goodness is rewarded, and that such rewards can exist even if we do not experience them. But to a cynic such a willingness to believe is a willingness to be naive, to be gullible, and to be manipulated. The cynic mocks such beliefs not because the cynic claims to know that such beliefs are necessarily false, but because the cynic is aware of the danger represented by people who claim to know that such beliefs are necessarily true.

A skeptic waits for evidence before passing judgment. A cynic, however, does not trust evidence because the cynic does not trust that anyone is capable of providing evidence objectively.

A skeptic waits for evidence before passing judgment. A cynic, however, does not trust evidence because the cynic does not trust that anyone is capable of providing evidence objectively. The cynic would prefer to remain dubious than risk being duped, and thus the cynic sees those who do take such risks as dupes. For this reason the cynic is able to reveal the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of cynicism, much like how the pessimist reveals the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of pessimism.

Perhaps the best example of the revelatory abilities of a cynic is the argument between Thrasymachus and Socrates in the opening book of Platos Republic. Thrasymachus is first introduced as mocking Socrates for questioning others about the definition of justice and then demands that he be paid in order to tell them what justice truly is. Once appeased, Thrasymachus defines justice as a trick invented by the strong in order to take advantage of the weak, as a way for the strong to seize power by manipulating society into believing that obedience is justice. Thrasymachus further argues that whenever possible people do what is unjust, except when they are too afraid of being caught and punished, and thus Thrasymachus concludes that injustice is better than justice.

When Socrates attempts to refute this definition by likening political leaders to doctors, to those who have power but use it to help others rather than to help themselves, Thrasymachus does not accept the refutation like the others do, but instead refutes Socratess refutation. Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of being naive and argues that Socrates is like a sheep who thinks the shepherd who protects and feeds the sheep does so because the shepherd is good rather than realizing that the shepherd is fattening them for the slaughter. Socrates is never able to truly convince Thrasymachus that his definition of justice is wrong, and indeed Thrasymachuss cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the Republic trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachuss cynicism that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism.

Here we can see that nihilism is actually much more closely related to idealism than to cynicism. The cynic presents himself or herself as a realist, as someone who cares about actions, not intentions, who focuses on what people do rather than on what people hope to achieve, who remembers the failed promises of the past in order to avoid being swept up in the not-yet-failed promises about the future. The idealist, however, rejects cynicism as hopelessly negative. By focusing on intentions, on hopes, and on the future, the idealist is able to provide a positive vision to oppose the negativity of the cynic. But in rejecting cynicism, does the idealist also reject reality?

Nihilism is actually much more closely related to idealism than to cynicism.

The idealist, as we saw with Socrates, is not able to challenge the cynics view of reality and instead is forced to construct an alternate reality, a reality of ideas. These ideas may form a coherent logical story about reality, but that in no way guarantees that the ideas are anything more than just a story. As the idealist focuses more and more on how reality ought to be, the idealist becomes less and less concerned with how reality is. The utopian views of the idealist may be more compelling than the dystopian views of the cynic, but dystopian views are at least focused on this world, whereas utopian views are, by definition, focused on a world that does not exist. It is for this reason that to use other-worldly idealism to refute this-worldly cynicism is to engage in nihilism.

Along with pessimism and cynicism, nihilism is also frequently associated with apathy. To be apathetic is to be without pathos, to be without feeling, to be without desire. While we are all occasionally given choices that do not particularly sway us one way or another (Do you want to eat Italian or Chinese?), such disinterestedness is what someone who is apathetic feels all the time. To be apathetic is thus to be seen as not caring about anything. The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing. In other words, apathy is seen as nihilism. But apathy is not nihilism.

The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing.

Apathy can be an attitude (I dont care about that) or a character trait (I dont care about anything). However, in either case the apathetic individual is expressing a personal feeling (or, to be more precise, feelinglessness) and is not making a claim about how everyone should feel (or, again, not feel). The apathetic individual understands perfectly well that other people feel differently insofar as they feel anything at all. And because the apathetic individual feels nothing, the apathetic individual does not feel any desire to convince others that they should similarly feel nothing. Others may care, but the apathetic individual does not, and because they do not care, the apathetic individual does not care that others care.

Yet apathy is still often seen as an affront, as an insult, as a rebuke by those who do care. For example, in MTVs Daria (19972002) a show about a highly apathetic high schooler Daria Morgendorffer and her friend Jane Lane have the following conversation:

DARIA: Tragedy hits the school and everyone thinks of me. A popular guy died, and now Im popular because Im the misery chick. But Im not miserable. Im just not like them.

JANE: It really makes you think.

DARIA: Funny. Thanks a lot.

JANE: No! Thats why they want to talk to you. When they say, Youre always unhappy, Daria, what they mean is, You think, Daria. I can tell because you dont smile. Now this guy died and it makes me think and that hurts my little head and makes me stop smiling. So, tell me how you cope with thinking all the time, Daria, until I can get back to my normal vegetable state.

DARIA: Okay. So why have you been avoiding me?

JANE: Because Ive been trying not to think.

The apathetic individual can thus, like the pessimist and the cynic, reveal the nihilism of others, though, unlike the pessimist and the cynic, the apathetic individual does this without actually trying to. Whereas the pessimist and the cynic challenge others to explain their lack of either pessimism or cynicism, the apathetic individual is instead the one who is challenged, challenged by others to explain his or her lack of pathos. In trying to get the apathetic individual to care, the person who does care is forced to explain why he or she cares, an explanation which can reveal just how meaningful (or meaningless) is the reason the person has for caring.

The apathetic individual doesnt care. However, not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings. Its just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing. And indeed it is because the nihilist is able to have such strong feelings, strong feelings for something that is nothing, that the nihilist is not and cannot be apathetic. Nihilists can have sympathy, empathy, and antipathy, but they cannot have apathy.

Not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings.

Nietzsche tried to demonstrate the feelings at work in nihilism in his argument against what he called the morality of pity. The morality of pity holds that it is good to feel pity for those who are in need, and it is especially good to be moved by such pity to help those who are in need. But, according to Nietzsche, what is often motivating the desire to help is how we are able to see ourselves thanks to how we see others in need, in particular how we see ourselves as capable of helping, as powerful enough to help.

The morality of pity is for Nietzsche not about helping others, but about elevating oneself by reducing others, by reducing others to their neediness, to a neediness that we do not have and that reveals how much we do have by contrast. Pity is nihilistic insofar as it allows us to evade reality, such as by allowing us to feel that we are better than we are, and that we are better than those in need. Consequently, we are able to avoid recognizing that we have perhaps only had better luck or have been more privileged.

The morality of pity drives us to feel pity and to feel good for feeling pity. Having such feelings is worse than feeling nothing, for if we feel good when we feel pity, then we are motivated only to help the individuals we feel pity for rather than to help end the systemic injustices that create such pitiful situations in the first place. Whereas apathy may help us to avoid being blinded by our emotions and to see situations of injustice more clearly, pity is instead more likely to motivate us to perpetuate injustice by perpetuating the conditions that allow us to help the needy, that allow us to see ourselves as good for helping those we see only as needy.

This is not to suggest, however, that we should try to achieve apathy, that we should try to will ourselves to feel nothing. Popular versions of Stoicism and of Buddhism advocate for calmness, for detachment, for trying to not feel what we feel. To force oneself to become apathetic is nihilistic, as to do so is to evade our feelings rather than to confront them. There is thus an important difference between being apathetic and becoming apathetic, between being indifferent because that is how one responds to the world and becoming indifferent because we want to be liberated from our feelings and attachments. Similarly, to become detached, not because of Stoicism or Buddhism, but because of hipsterism, is still to try to detach oneself from oneself, from life, from reality. So pursuing irony can be just as nihilistic as pursuing apatheia or nirvana.

Nolen Gertz is Assistant Professor of Applied Philosophy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and author of Nihilism, from which this article is excerpted.

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What Nihilism Is Not - The MIT Press Reader

Avenue 5’s Zach Woods and Rebecca Front on nihilism and pet peeves – The A.V. Club

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Why does every waiter act like they needs to explain how menus work now? Theyre menus. Appetizers up top, desserts at the bottom. We get it. That topic and more are covered in our interview with Avenue 5's Zach Woods and Rebecca Front, above. On Armando Iannuccis new farce, premiering this weekend on HBO, the pair play against each other as a nihilist customer service representative and a busybody passenger, both of whom are now stuck on what amounts to a damaged cruise ship languishing in space. Its a great premise for the two to play with, especially since theyre both veterans of the Iannucci-verse. In the clip above, the pair talk about their relationship with Arm, as Woods calls him, and well as who theyd ultimately find themselves becoming if they were trapped with strangers for the foreseeable future.

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Avenue 5's Zach Woods and Rebecca Front on nihilism and pet peeves - The A.V. Club

Sea Girls face the slippery slope of nihilism on ‘Ready For More’ – Vanyaland

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This may have just gotten lost in our Christmas shuffle, but we could have sworn Sea Girls had a show planned in Allston last month, one that apparently dropped off the calendar before we had a chance to swing down the holiday lights off Harvard Avenue. Were bummed about that, but quickly put at ease as the UK alt-rock band continue to provide a steady stream of radio-ready anthems, this time coming correct with the electric Ready For More.

The new track follows Septembers Violet and serves as a taste of Sea Girls forthcoming LP Under Exit Lights, set for release March 6 via Polydor.

Ready For More is the bad apple of the EP, says Sea Girls singer Henry Camamile. It looks and sounds sweet, but its basically staring into this abyss of nihilistic behavior and being scared that I couldnt change it. This song practically embraces the slippery slope I was on.

Sea Girls, named by its members after a misheard Nick Cave lyric, are poised for a wild 2020 breakout. Ready For More? You fucking bet.

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Sea Girls face the slippery slope of nihilism on 'Ready For More' - Vanyaland

How Broadways Jagged Little Pill tries to reinvent the jukebox musical – Vox.com

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Broadway seems to get a new jukebox musical every few months: There are ersatz Chers and Tina Turners and Carole Kings and Jersey Boys all over Times Square. Still, there was something a little shocking about the very idea of Jagged Little Pill, the new jukebox musical based on Alanis Morissettes seminal 1994 album that premiered on Broadway in December. Jukebox musicals, surely, were for nostalgic baby boomers with tourist money to burn. They can be well executed, but traditionally they are painfully sincere hagiographies that wedge their songs into their subjects lives with much, too much, literalism. So what was Alanis, the poster girl for Gen Xs ironic nihilism, doing on Broadway?

Then Jagged Little Pill opened in Boston in 2018, and the rumors began: As jukebox musicals go, the early buzz whispered, Jagged Little Pill was actually not that bad. It had some astonishing performances. It had fixed the jukebox musical.

Part of what made Jagged Little Pill so exciting, according to those early out-of-town reviews, was that it eschewed the traditional biographical jukebox musical plot (And then they said I shouldnt be myself, but I was! And then I won a thousand Grammys! is usually how you can summarize a typical plot.)

Instead, first-time playwright Diablo Codys book tells the story of a suburban family caught in contemporary malaise. Perfect mother Mary Jane (Elizabeth Stanley) is drowning under the weight of keeping up appearances, and shes become dependent on opioids. Shes also struggling to connect to her daughter Frankie (Celia Rose Gooding), a committed activist who sings to Mary Jane that shes frustrated by your apathy. But both Mary Jane and Frankie have to reconsider their understanding of each other after Frankies classmate Bella (Kathryn Gallagher) is raped at a party.

Its still rare and unusual for a jukebox musical to have an original plot not focused on the artist themselves, so for many critics, Codys involvement was already an enormous step forward for the genre. But after the show moved to New York and was met with initial raves, a counternarrative began. For some critics, Codys book was the shows weak link that let down Morissettes music, a shaky and contrived mess of confusion and occasional silliness.

One month after the shows Broadway debut, the conversation about whether Jagged Little Pill is worth swallowing has calmed down a little. So Vox culture writers Constance Grady and Aja Romano decided to take this time to talk through Jagged Little Pill and the problems of the jukebox musical. What makes them work, what makes them not and is this particular musical any good or not?

Constance: In the month and change that Jagged Little Pill has been out, weve had time for a rough consensus on the show to develop among critics, and it goes a little something like this: The performances are brilliant, but the book is overstuffed at best and a shapeless mess at worst. Where you fall on the musical overall seems to depend upon which aspect of the show youre willing to give the most weight to.

Ill put my cards on the table. I think Jagged Little Pill is a mess, and I love it with my whole heart. I had a blast at this show. I laughed, I cried, I cheered. I have only a glancing acquaintance with Alaniss original album (I was slightly too young and way too uncool to listen to Jagged Little Pill very much in the 90s), but the music is so undeniable, and the young cast so strong, that it was easy for me to let myself get swept away by everything that was happening onstage.

Like, try to sit there while Lauren Pattens heartbroken Jo absolutely shreds You Oughta Know and not start screaming with catharsis. You cant! Its physically impossible! Thats why the show has to stop dead for a standing ovation every night as soon as shes finished.

On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that this show suffers from the standard jukebox musical problem of forcing its characters into position to sing a particular song. And because this particular example is trying to do so much at once, giving every single character a disconnected subplot of their own, it doesnt quite have time to pay off the tensions its songs set up.

You Oughta Know is a bit of a case study in this problem. An Alanis musical absolutely has to have someone sing You Oughta Know, because its one of her best and biggest hits. To set up the song, the show puts together a love triangle, so we see Frankie become torn between her girlfriend Jo and new kid Phoenix. But at the same time, the main concerns of Jagged Little Pill as a play are Mary Janes opioid addiction and the ripple effects from Bellas rape, and it really doesnt have time to make the love triangle feel like anything more than an afterthought.

The aims of this show as a jukebox musical and the aims of this show as an original musical are at odds, and as a result, its center of gravity is warped. This giant showstopper of a number is embedded in the slightest and weakest arc of the show. And the only conclusion Jo gets after the heartbreak and rage of You Oughta Know is half a verse in the finale, which is a pretty weak conclusion.

Having said all that, I actually think that as far as this genre goes, Diablo Codys much-maligned book is pretty solid. If nothing else, Cody managed to people the cast with characters who all have different personalities, but who all believably feel like they are the kind of person who would break into an Alanis Morissette song if given the chance. Thats such a monumental achievement for a jukebox musical that I have to give her props for it.

Aja, where do you fall on Jagged Little Pill? Does the critical consensus feel correct to you? And do you love it in spite of the structure or hate it because of it?

Aja: Ill be very upfront and say that I grew up with an unshakeable, nay, zealous, faith in the thoroughly integrated book musical, whose songs evolve organically from the book and the characters. So the last two decades of musical theater have been pretty fraught for me, because I deeply resent the rise of the jukebox musical. Its a regression in form! Its everything Broadway aspired for decades to evolve beyond, now wrapped in a fancy marketing package as a cheap trick to get people into theaters! Its cheating, Constance!

So, with all that said, I really do appreciate the spirit of Jagged Little Pill. Its aims are pure, its ambitions are to become a real musical, and Im mostly in its corner. The creative team understands that you just shouldnt treat Morissettes music like that in any other pop biopic. Most jukebox musical scores are light even if the subjects are serious, but Alaniss music is raw emotion. Its the classic Gen X mix of depression and angst, infused with societal malaise and a touch of addiction.

Even its upbeat moments veer into neurotic, manic, difficult. JLP really couldnt ever be a jukebox musical in that sense, because whos actually gonna play Alanis on a jukebox? You play Alanis while screaming into your pillow at 3 am over a dirty breakup. You play Alanis while eye-rolling at each other about how ironically self-aware youre being about playing Alanis a move the musical itself parodies, in a scene meant purely to lampoon the cultural reaction to Ironic.

But the fact that Im talking about how a musical is breaking the fourth wall to answer the longstanding cultural perceptions about one of its songs is part of the inherent problems you run into with musicals like this one. You have to work much harder to create characters the audience cares about as much as the songs themselves, and especially to get those characters to fit the situations prescribed by those songs.

You Oughta Know is one of the most glaring examples of this, because this song is meant to be the shows climactic showstopper, but it just doesnt fit. You Oughta Know is full of the kind of deep bitterness that results from a relationship thats lasted years, not the uncertain, relatively new relationship its assigned to onstage.

Lauren Patten acts the hell out of Jo who I read as emphatically nonbinary, FWIW and she also gets one of the shows other big numbers, One Hand In My Pocket. But her role is frustrating, because even though shes one of the most compelling actors onstage, shes working hard to fill a very thinly written part. Remember, Jo is the strongest leg in that ultimately weak love triangle Constance mentioned, and the character seems to have been created just to deliver strong (low-key queer) anthems, not to do much of anything else.

We barely get glimpses of her life outside their relationship with Frankie, and we really dont even understand that relationship before it starts falling apart. Ultimately, the contrast between these giant, overly emotive songs and such an underwritten part just highlights just how lacking so much of the book is. (Next time, just make the whole musical about the misfit genderqueer kid! Done!)

Diablo Codys book is overstuffed with too many social issues and too many characters, and its really obvious that much of this bloat is about finding ways to shoehorn in all the Alanis songs you know, whether or not they make sense and fit the plot or its characters.

Head Over Feet bizarrely gets split between two couples at once, as an attempt to give our main character, Mary Jane (Elizabeth Stanley), some backstory with her husband. Only this random nostalgia break abruptly happens in the middle of a bitter couples therapy session, where its placement makes no sense. Similarly, turning Ironic into a purely throwaway meta-number seems like a wasted opportunity, but thats what happens when youre trying to match characters to songs instead of letting songs grow out of character.

Additionally, Tom Kitt of the Pulitzer-winning Next to Normal did the orchestrations and arrangements for JLP, and I felt like Next to Normal heavily influenced this show in spirit without influencing its approach to characterization and story structure so I felt the ghostly imprint of a much better show about family dysfunction bleeding through at every turn.

Even so, theres a lot to like about JLP. The staging and choreography, together with the additional music by Glen Ballard (Morissettes co-writer and Jagged Little Pills original album producer) and Kitt are all fantastic and full of pulsing energy and heart. Even though the characters are all little more than ciphers, Mary Jane in particular is the classic unlikeable Diablo Cody protagonist. Shes really hard to take until she becomes almost heartbreakingly vulnerable, and Elizabeth Stanley really nails that performance.

I wasnt as moved as other audience members were by the scene where Uninvited invites us into the darkness in her head, but boy did I appreciate it as a way of drawing out that songs complex, layered meanings, and as a way of elevating the jukebox musical itself. If we have to have jukebox musicals, and it seems we must, Id rather have a dozen Jagged Little Pills that dont quite work than a dozen blander, frothier musicals that do.

Constance: I absolutely agree on Jagged Little Pills massive ambitions, and I think youre correct, Aja, that they are both its saving grace and one of its biggest problems. We can see this basic paradox not only formally but also thematically, because whoa, boy, does this musical have ambitions of handling a lot of different social and political themes. And it honestly only really has space for maaaaaaaaybe one and a half of them.

Most obviously, this is a musical about the opioid addiction crisis. Frankies mom Mary Jane is addicted to pills, and over the course of the show, we delve into Mary Janes addiction, its roots, and all the ways its begun to warp her ostensibly perfect suburban mom life. That plotline works nicely, I think: Smiling in particular, in which we see a disoriented and alienated Mary Jane going backwards through her days routine, really succeeds at making Alaniss music feel fresh and new and character-based, is staged in an inventive and effective way, and is also genuinely moving.

Weve also got the date rape plotline, which I would say is handled in a way that feels basically fine. Sure, some of the protest scenes are a little cringe-inducingly earnest, and yes, songs like Predator and No get extremely literal interpretations (Predator can more or less survive it; No cant). Still, Codys book gets nicely nuanced in the way she talks through the concerns here, especially when it comes to who believes whom and why. The plotline plays into Mary Janes addiction story in a thoughtful way. And Kathryn Gallagher gives a really grounded, smart performance as Bella throughout this subplot.

And then, sort of stuffed into the corners of the play, weve got Frankies political activism, and that just does not work at all. This plotline seems to want to cover basically all the progressive causes du jour, including climate change and, in a very bizarrely weighted moment, school gun violence.

Theres also the barely-sketched-in subplot of Frankies angst as a black girl adopted by a very white family, plus the sexual politics of her queer love triangle between Jo and Phoenix. Those issues are just kind of there. They take up space, they inspire some extremely energetic rage-dancing but theres no room for the show to explore them as fully as they deserve. It begins to feel as though its just going through a checklist of issues for the wokeness street cred, rather than caring about those issues for their own sake.

Aja: And that is, wait for it, the ultimate irony of Jagged Little Pill: The show doesnt care enough about any of the issues its cycling through to make them meaningful when the whole point of the Jagged Little Pill album is the terror of caring too much.

Alaniss album was an instant legend in part because it captured the zeitgeist of a generation that had turned toward ironic detachment to cope with the lack of control they felt over the world and their own lives. Alaniss songs explicitly voiced the terror and anxiety of letting yourself care for anything at the end of a century in a culture increasingly veering towards nihilism. Her lyrics embraced her own neuroses and the power of her own bitterness in ways that also enhanced and amplified her hesitant, constantly-deflected shows of genuine affection and positive emotion. They made us feel how hard it is to love and care for anything.

And look, everyone knows that a suburban nuclear family is always a deceptively idyllic allegory for larger societal disquiet, right? Thats the trope. But when we look at the vast pantheon of stories that use this trope, too often suburban malaise itself is treated as the problem and not a symptom of something larger.

I think thats the basic mistake Cody makes here: She treats most of her characters like theyve been inducted by default into the national suburban burnout epidemic, and thats the reason theyre all in individually self-absorbed hazes that keep them from connecting to each other or even listening to each other half the time. (On that front, I also think her storyline is strangely non-critical of the male members of our family, who both are actively dismissive of the pain of the women in their lives until they magically arent anymore, in ways that arent really fully examined or dealt with.)

These characters are performing their default identities, both individual and collective, and hitting their trope marks so they can get into position to sing their big Alanis number: the angry adopted child rebelling through feminism; the overworked absent dad who resents his depressed wife for not making him feel loved; the all-American jock who implodes under the pressure of getting into a top school by going to a dangerous high school party. It all feels perfunctory. But a cast full of characters truly inspired by Alanis Morissette would be fighting with themselves every step of the way about where they wanted to go, and why, and why theyre even this invested when its clear nothing matters at all.

Jagged Little Pill, the album, isnt about characters performing simulacrums of humanity while being stuck in a bucolic modern hell: Its about characters loudly and angrily trying to fight through that malaise to something better and more authentic. But here the characters struggles collectively feel far more performative than sincere. In a musical full of fight songs, theres very little fight at all.

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How Broadways Jagged Little Pill tries to reinvent the jukebox musical - Vox.com

Revealed: The fight to stop Samuel Beckett winning the Nobel prize – The Irish Times

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Fifty years after Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature, newly opened archives reveal the serious doubts the Nobel committee had about giving the award to an author they felt held a bottomless contempt for the human condition.

Announcing that the Irishman had won the laureateship in 1969, the Swedish Academy praised his writing, which in new forms for the novel and drama in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.

But with Nobel archives being made public only after five decades, documents have now revealed there were major disagreements within the Swedish Academy over the choice of the Waiting for Godot author. According to Svenska Dagbladet, the split was between Beckett and French writer Andr Malraux, with other nominations including Simone de Beauvoir, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Graham Greene.

Four members of the committee supported Beckett and two backed Malraux, with the primary objections to Beckett coming from the Nobel committees chairman, Anders sterling, who had campaigned against the playwright for years. sterling questioned whether writing of a demonstratively negative or nihilistic nature like Becketts corresponded to the intention laid out in Alfred Nobels will, to reward the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.

While sterling acknowledged the possibility that behind Becketts depressing motives might lie a secret defence of humanity, but in the eyes of most readers, he said, it remains an artistically staged ghost poetry, characterised by a bottomless contempt for the human condition.

But Becketts main supporter on the committee, Karl Ragnar Gierow, felt that Becketts black vision was not the expression of animosity and nihilism. Beckett, he argued, portrays humanity as we have all seen it, at the moment of its most severe violation, and searches for the depths of degradation because, even there, there is the possibility of rehabilitation.

Beckett was rejected for the prize a year earlier, in 1968, but a year later his champions won out. sterling did not give the speech presenting him with the award. That was done by Gierow, who expanded on the arguments he made to the committee, saying that Becketts work goes to the depths because it is only there that pessimistic thought and poetry can work their miracles. What does one get when a negative is printed? A positive, a clarification, with black proving to be the light of day, the parts in deepest shade those which reflect the light source.

Beckett himself accepted the prize, but he did not come to Stockholm to receive it, or give the traditional winners lecture. And the division among the jury remained secret for half a century unlike today, when the split over the decision to award the 2019 prize to the Austrian writer Peter Handke prompted the boycott of the ceremony by Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and further resignations. Guardian

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Revealed: The fight to stop Samuel Beckett winning the Nobel prize - The Irish Times