Independent Directors Have To Fulfill These Criteria From December 2019 – Inc42 Media

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The new guidelines are issued under Companies (Accounts) Amendment rules 2019

IICA to conduct self-assessment test for independent directors

The move ensures the competence of the director

The ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) on October 22, issued a notification stating that the board of directors will now be liable to provide the details of the independent directors (hired during the year) integrity, expertise and experience to the shareholders.

The new notification is a part of Companies (Accounts) Amendment rules 2019, which will be effective from December 1, 2019.

An independent director is one of the members of the board of directors, who do not have any stake in the company. The director is expected to guide and mentor the company to improve corporate credibility and governance standards by working as a watchdog and help in managing risk.

Moreover, MCA also clarified that that independent directors will have to pass a self-assessment test to prove their competence. IICA has also been authorised to maintain a list of candidates, who are eligible to become independent directors. Through this, the ministry wants to ensure that the independent directors are up to the task to protect the interests of the minority shareholders.

The test will be conducted by the Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), which is a part of MCA.It will evaluate the directors based on their knowledge of the Companies Act, securities law, basic accountancy and other subjects that are required for the individual to perform as an independent director.

A separate notification called Companies (Appointment and Qualification of Directors) Fifth Amendment rules, 2019 states that anyone willing to become independent director should apply for inclusion of their name within three months of the new rules coming into force or before getting hired as one.

After getting their names included in the list, the individual will have one year to pass the self-assessment test. However, the individuals, who have been working for over 10 years as directors or at any key managerial position in a company with INR 10 Cr or more paid-up capital, do not need to take the test.

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Independent Directors Have To Fulfill These Criteria From December 2019 - Inc42 Media

10 Bizarre Festivals in Asia You Need to Experience | TheTravel – TheTravel

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Whenyou thinkof cultural festivals, Rio's Carnival or New Orleans' Mardi Gras immediately come to mind, while their Asian counterparts sometimes aren't as popular. From water parties to mud fights, penance to monkey feasts, here are ten of some of the strangest, most bizarre festivals that you can experience on your trip to the continent.

RELATED: 10 Best Yoga Destinations in India

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The ancient Hindu festival, known also as the 'Festival of Spring' or 'Festival of Colors' celebrates the arrival of Spring in India, Nepal and increasingly elsewhere on account of the Indian diaspora, even in some parts of the United States.

The festival which lasts a night and a day celebrates the arrival of spring, end to winter and hopes for a good harvest. The event is split into two major parts, occurring annually around March. On the first day, the evening of Purnima (Full Moon Day) bonfires are lit. In contrast, the following day is a vibrant free-for-all of color from clothes to sprays. Both locals and tourists alike celebrate the day of smiles, fun, and festivities, a must see for any fun seeking traveler.

Sumo wrestling but not as you know it! This bizarre festival involves two sumo wrestlers facing off but with a twist, both contestants have a baby in each arm and are not fighting one another but instead attempting to make their opponents baby cry via growls, the making of faces and the yelling of "nake" meaning cry. If both babies cry the louder one attains victory, and if a baby laughs the judge intervenes wearing an ogre mask, putting a quick stop to it.

The tradition is over 400 years old and is believed to be good for the babies health and also drives out evil spirits. As the Japanese proverb goes, "Naku ko wa sodastu," or, "Crying babies grow fast." The festival takes place each April primarily at Sensoji Temple, Tokyo, but similar events happen all over Japan at different times throughout the year.

This festival located 200 kilometers south of Seoul is a literal mud-fest. Over the space of two weeks, both locals and tourists participate in a range of mud-based activities, including mud wrestling, races, and baths. However mud is not all as the event also hosts a number of live entertainment events with some of South Korea's most famous K-Pop stars attending.

RELATED: 10 Of The Best Things To Do in South Korea

The event was first held in 1998, and by 2007 over two million people visited to re-live their childhood playing around in the mud, to benefit from the mud's benefits on the skin, or perhaps a mixture of both.

Bali is known for the preservation of its rich cultural traditions. One odd example is Omed-Omedan which translates to "The Kissing Festival." The festival is celebrated on the New Year and notably takes place the day after Nyepi, or, "Day of Silence" where locals refuse electricity, fire, travelling andalmost every form of entertainment to reflect on their lives.

The mood of the following morning is similarly pensive and reserved. However, when the event begins the streets are chaotic as crowds of men and women between 17 to 30 are divided into two massive groups. A male and female are chosen to kiss and do it alongside the chanting of the crowd and pouring of water on them. Many attend the event hoping to find love. It is known unofficially as a meeting place for singles, and thereis no shortage of couples whose relationships started there with a kiss in front of the town.

On April 13th, the traditional Thai New Year, major streets are closed off transforming the city into a massive water park or arena as the entire population, young and old take to the streets with water guns, buckets of water, and any other device they can imagine with the sole intention of soaking one another.

The entire day however in notjust a water-fest. Early in the morning locals clean their homes and visit temples, offering food to the monks, praying, pouring water on statues and to the young and old alike to symbolically wash away the past year and start anew. Songkran roughly translates to "astrological passage," indicating the transformation and right after this, the town likewise changes drastically as the water fights begin.

Perhaps the worlds most hardcore display of vegetarianism, local participants known as "Ma Song" display their respect for both God and animals alike by nine days of abstinence from meat and skewing of objects like swords, knives etc through various parts of their bodies. Participants are said to be possessed by spiritual powers which explains how they endure the pain as they move closer to spiritual enlightenment. They are described as being in a trance as they achieve religious submission.

The event is celebrated throughout the entire country, but is at its height in Phuket and at the temples where these rituals take place. During the nine day event, restaurants indicate they are selling "Jeh" food (food for participants) by flying a yellow flag at the establishment. Avoid the area if you can't go without meat for a few days.

To mark the lunar new year, over 200,000 sky lanterns called tindngs are released into the night sky. Locals write their hopes and aspirations on the lantern as they release them, sending them on their way to God. Historically these lanterns were used by remote local tribes to indicate threats from raiders. Similarly, prior to the lanterns' release, a firework display is held, the "beehive of fireworks" which symbolically wards off disease and evil.

RELATED: 10 Impressive & Unique Attractions That Will Make You Want to Plan A Trip to Taiwan

Both events are known together as "fireworks in the south, sky lanterns in the north" and the event typically occurs over two to three weekends in February. The location of the event alternates between Shifden and Pingxi town so one should research the details prior. Tourists are encouraged to participate and lanterns are readily for sale for those interested.

Lopburi Thais have a long history of monkey worship.The tale of the divine prince, Rama, is said to have been helped in saving his wife from a demon bythe monkey king, Hanuman. The sentiment remains strong today and is a regular draw for tourists.

Each year monkeys are celebrated at Phra Prang Sam Yot Temple on the last Sunday of November. Locals initially dress and dance in monkey costumes before over 500 Macaque monkeys are released to feast on over two tonnes of food, from meat to fruit and even ice cream.

An annual street party on the third Sunday of January, Ati-Atihan takes place over nine days and celebrates immigration and acceptance in the country. Malay immigrants show their gratitude to local Ati people by decorating their bodies with soot and costumes of African origin and celebrate with feasts, dancing, and drumming.

The event is legally titled The Mother of All Philippine Festivals and is recognized by both local Christians and non-Christians alike. Note that to anyone interested in joining in that you need only remember the simple chorus chant, "Hala Bira," to merge in with the group and enjoy the festivities.

Celebrated by Tamil and Malayali communities, Thaipusam celebrates the Hindu God of War, Murugan. Many involved wear kavadis, a semicircular canopy that they carry and often attach objects through their bodies with metal bars as a form of penance. As they see it, bodily harm promotes spiritual growth.

The origin of the name comes from both the name of the month, Thai, and the star, Pusam, which is at its highest point during the festival. For those interested in the event,it is always common in other countries with a high Tamil communityincluding India, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

NEXT: 10 Food Festivals Around The World Every Foodie Needs To Attend

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President has first ever smart thought; calls for own impeachment – Los Angeles Loyolan

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By-Line: Thanking Wokebama

On Oct. 15, Ronald Dump changed history by finally coming up with something logicaland even smartto tweet out to the public. Despite the tweets grammatical mistakes, the overall message was nevertheless able to be deciphered: Dump is now calling for his own impeachment. Listen up, because the president has said something woke. Finally.

While such a profound and brilliant thought was never expected to form in Dumps head, something seems to have finally clicked for him. Maybe he decided to quickly hop onto the impeachment bandwagon because it seemed thats what everyone else was doing (and Dump sure does like gaining approval from the masses). I mean, hey if Dumps running for reelection on a platform promising his own impeachment, even I may get on board.

More likely, Dumps inspiration for the lovely tweet could have been that Wokebama came to him in a dream and awakened within him a spiritual enlightenment, a conversion, a coming home and recognition of the difference between good and bad. Dumps eyes were opened and he was so moved by Wokebamas goodness that he began petitioning for his own impeachment.

Or, perhaps, Dumps tweet didn't occur because he was saying something smart. Maybe he was threatened to say it by Pike Mence, whose time is running out to claim a moment of fame. Maybe Dump thinks that impeachment means nothing more than the multitude of peach mint thins that have arrived in his mailbox over the last month (theyre very tasty). Or perhaps Dump just saw that the word impeach was trending on Twitter and decided to throw it into his tweet to appear hip and cool. I mean, I guess it worked.

Whats next? Now that Dump has said something smart, I feel as though anythingliterally anythingis possible. In the bright and glorious future, I foresee Dump testifying against himself in court. Once he is found guilty, he then asks the judge to lengthen his jail sentence to two lives in prison rather than just one. He doesnt know what this means, but he feels it is the right thing to do.

While in prison, he spends his time learning simple phrases such as rape is bad and racism is hurtful. He willingly goes to therapy and does his best to avoid insulting the counselor. Using giant colored crayons, he writes personal letters of remorse to every person in the United States of America and in Latin America, and in predominantly Islamic countries. At the end of each letter he draws a rainbow and people of all races and genders holding hands. He signs his name incorrectly most of the timedespite writing millions of letters, spelling is still hard for himbut his counselor applauds his effort anyway. The U.S. moves on, propelled forward by a black, queer female president, and all is well.

If it is possible for Dump to say something smart, then all of this is possible, too.

The Bluff is a humorous and satirical section published in the Loyolan. All quotes attributed to real figures are completely fabricated; persons otherwise mentioned are completely fictional.

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President has first ever smart thought; calls for own impeachment - Los Angeles Loyolan

Hey, John MacArthur. You have a culture. It’s called white (Christian) patriarchy. – Patheos

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Dear John,

So I imagine youve been caught by surprise at the popularity/notoriety of that little audio clip released last week. I mean, it wasnt as though you werent expressing something you havent said, in one form or another, for decades now.

More people than I can count have already taken to Twitter and the blogosphere to call you out for disrespecting Beth Moore, and rightly so. But Moore said shes ready to move on, and besides, Im guessing the whole women preaching is biblical argument is something youve closed yourself off to long ago. Thats a shame, but more on that later.

Instead, I thought we should focus on something else you said in this clip. You know, that thing about culture: We cant let the culture exegete the Bible. You added a footnote of sorts, to clarify. It went something like this:

When the Southern Baptists met in June, they passed resolution 9, and they said intersectionality and critical theory are useful tools in interpreting the Bible, that was a watershed moment for that entire movement, because if culture has the right to interpret the Bible they will interpret the bible and liberalism will take over.

Your great fear, it seems, is people who are allowing the culture to interpret the Scripture.

Here is the thing, John. There is no such thing as culture. There are cultures. And weve all got them. Or were all enmeshed in them. Were all enculturated, if you will.

The tricky thing about cultures, thoughcultural systems, cultural values, however you want to put itis that theyre largely invisible to us when were inside those cultures. When youre comfortably ensconced within a culture, its really hard to see your culture for what it isinstead, it tends to take the appearance of generic, standard, normal, common-sense reality. Of Truth.

I can understand how you might not have the eyes to see this. After all, youre celebrating 50 years of ministry50 years of being at the center of the culture you helped createa culture in which you have more than comfortably ensconced yourself. An empire, really. So allow me to sketch the contours of that culture for you.

Lets call it white (Christian) patriarchy. The parenthetical is optional, but as a Christian myself, Im making a bit of a normative claim here, suggesting that when Christianity becomes enmeshed in white patriarchy, it becomes something else entirely. But lets not let that distract us for the moment.

What does white (Christian) patriarchy look like? Well, for Paige Patterson it involves cowboy hats and an office filled with big-game hunting trophies. And, of course, a ruthless display of power. For Mark Driscoll it looked a bit more hip, in a 1990s sort of way, more crude perhaps, but the ruthless power was the same. For the likes of Doug Wilson or Doug Phillips, its always been a bit more quirkymore of a caricature, really. Then theres the kinder, gentler version, at least on the surfacethe James Dobson and John Piper varieties. But there, too, the power dynamics are largely the same. Power over women, children, church members, and the community. A chain of command, with (white Christian) men at the top.

While specific manifestations may vary (clean-shaven vs. neatly-trimmed beards, hunting vs. rock climbing, fine Scotch vs. craft brews), some things remain consistent. White (Christian) patriarchy always entails men patting each others backs, sharing stages, endorsing each others teachings, blurbing each others books, and calling one another brother in Christ. (I imagine it feels good to call someone a brother in Christ. It probably feels even better to be called brother in Christ. But this language, too, conveys power. For good and ill.)

What does white (Christian) patriarchy feel like? For those at the top, I imagine its a pretty heady experience, but I dont actually know for sure. But for those caught beneath, it can be a harrowing existence. I do know, because Ive run up against it myself from time to time. More importantly, Ive listened to other peoples stories. You knowstories like those that cause a university and seminary to lose accreditation because of a pervasive climate of fear, intimidation, bullying, and uncertainty.

Ive listened to stories, too, first only whisperedstories of violence against women, stories long swept under the rug. When you run an educational institution, though, accreditors care about these things, too, it turns out.

Ive also listened to the voices of Christians who are not white. For these Christians, the whiteness of white (Christian) patriarchy is unmistakable.

With all this in mind, lets take another look at this now infamous clip. Here we have you and two brothers, dressed in suits and ties, sitting authoritatively in dignified leather chairs, on a stage, between three ferns, before an audience of (predominantly) other white men. To an outside observer, you seem secure in the knowledge that you command the stage. That you are entitled to command.

To my mind, the most striking feature in all of this is the chuckling. No, the guffawing really. It expresses such comfort, such a high level of confidence that all those in the room share your views on the subject. On all subjects. Thats power.

Its also a sign that theres a coherent culture at work here. When this audio was leaked to those outside of this culture, most people didnt find it funny. Most people found it disturbing. Shocking, even. Again, another sign of the often unspoken yet highly distinctive cultural values at play in white (Christian) patriarchy.

And then we get to Beth Moore.

Go home.

Its a memorable line, to be sure, and yes, it is condescending and degrading to Beth Moore, and by extension to all women. To be honest, its also degrading to the home. So much for focusing on the family and all that. The smug tone here makes it clear that the home is for losers. Or for second-class citizens, at the very least.

And then theres the supreme certainty: There is no case that can be made biblically for a woman preacher. Period, paragraph, end of discussion.

You know, you could have stopped there. It seems an appropriate place to stop, end of discussion and all. But you were all having too much fun. So we have the benefit of learning more about this culture of yours.

At this point, Phil chimes in. The problem with Beth Moore is that shes narcissistic. She likes to preach herself rather than preach Christ, apparently. Which is funny, because Beth Moore may be many things, but a narcissist doesnt really seem to be one of them. At this point Im starting to sense that there may be a bit of projection going on here. Also more on that later.

But first, an interlude. Turns out Voddie Baucham was supposed to be there. In some ways its too bad he wasnt, since I would have had to spend more time explaining that yes, this is still primarily about white Christian patriarchy. But he wasnt there. Why? Because, well, hes weakhe wanted to rest. Again, the smug laughter reveals shared cultural values. Men are strong. The men on the stage (who in this case happen to be white) are the strongest. Bullying keeps lesser men in their lesser places. Or at least threatens as much. All in good fun, of course. So much fun.

And then, back to back-slapping: And by the way, dude, you killed itThat sermon [More applause.] Ok, Ive really been wanting to say this to you white evangelical men for a while. What is with this dude thing? I mean, we even have The Dudes Guide to Manhood. Granted, I dont hang out with surfers or spend time at our local skate park, but as far as I know white evangelical men (of all ages) are the only ones still using this term in public discourse. To use your own terminology, Id call this a cultural cue.

But lets keep our focus on matters of substance. Next up we have another dig at Beth Moore that plays up all the stereotypes: Just because you have the skill to sell jewelry on the TV sales channel doesnt meanthere are people that have certain hawking skillsthat doesnt qualify you to preach.

Lets unpack this just a bit, shall we? In your world, it seems quite clear that anything associated with femininity is fair game for ridicule. The home, jewelry, consumerism. But really, hasnt evangelicalism itself become little more than a sanctified consumer culture? In the end, doesnt it all come down to selling things? More on that later, too.

The primary effort for feminism is not equality. They dont want equality. Thats why 99% of plumbers are men. They dont want equal power to be a plumber. They want to be senators, preachers, congressmen, president, the power structure of a university, they want power and not equality. And this is the highest location they can ascend to that power in the evangelical church and overturn what is clearly scripture. I think this is feminism going to church.

Ah, its all becoming clear now. For you, it is all about power. Because its your power youre thinking about. When youve enjoyed that power for so long, it must be a frightful prospect to imagine what it would be like to be stripped of it. Just ask some of the women in your own community.

And all this brings you to your point about culture, and how absolutely absurd you find the notion proposed by certain Southern Baptist leaders, the idea that biblical translation committees should include more than just white men, that maybe it would be a good idea for a Latino, African American, and a woman to serve on translation committees. Here, your incredulity is unmistaken: Translation of the Bible? How about someone who knows Greek and Hebrew? [More chuckles, more applause; both are easy to come by with this audience]. But no, this is a serious matter: This is not a minor issue. When you literally overturn the clear teaching of scripture to empower people who want power, you have given up biblical authority. This is not a small issue.

OK, lets be serious then.

First off, lets examine this not small, not minor assumption that you make here. Did you know that there are African Americans and Latinxs and, yes, women, who know Greek and Hebrew? White men did not invent Hebrew or Greek, it turns out. Nor are they the only ones whove mastered it. Who knew?

Actually, a lot of people know that. Because this isnt a new thing, really. I can understand, though, how you might have missed this fact, because youve worked so hard to maintain exclusive (masculine) religious authority. As have your brothers who have come before you. And then youve written the histories to make it seem like men have always held exclusive religious authority. But they havent.

Im a historian by training, and I spent ten years researching the history of female biblical interpreters. My favorite was Kate Bushnell, and I wrote a book about her. In some ways, shes a lot like you. When the fundamentalist/modernist controversy came around, she identified as a staunch fundamentalist. She believed every word of the Scriptures was sacred, inspired, and inviolable. Oh, and she taught herself Hebrew and Greek. But with this expertise, she began to notice gendered patterns of mistranslations. That is to say, English translations of the Scriptures (first the KJV, then the Revised Version) routinely translated the same Greek or Hebrew word one way when it applied to a man (strength or courage, for example), and another way entirely when it applied to a woman (in this case, virtuous.) Dedicating decades of her life to a close examination of the Scriptures, Bushnell eventually published an extensive critique of traditional translations and interpretations. It was a solid piece of scholarshipeven the reviewer at Moody agreed.

Bushnell had a few theories about why so many examples of male bias had worked their way into translations of the Scriptures over the centuries. Sometimes she allowed for a more innocuous explanationevery person, no matter how admirable their intentions, has the tendency to pull ever-so-slightly in their own favor when it comes to interpreting texts. The problem, then, comes when a certain group of people defend their right to be the exclusive interpreters of the Scriptures. Other times, however, she entertained a more conspiratorial notion. In pursuing and maintaining their own power, men were allied with the devil. Either way.

Did I mention, by the way, that it was white Christian men who drove Bushnell to embark on her theological project? You see Bushnell, like so many other enterprising white Christian women of the late 19th century, was a social reformer. She worked primarily with prostitutes, and with victims of sexual violence more generally. You might think of her as a precursor to modern-day antitrafficking activists. But, time and again, she ran into meneminently respectable, white Christian men, pastors and preachersmen very much like yourselfwho showed no sympathy towards fallen women. Men who believed such women were beyond redemption. Men who tacitly condonedor even perpetratedacts of horrific violence against women. Against white women, and especially against women of color. Ultimately, she concluded that the crime must be the fruit of the theology. And so it was.

What was foundational to Bushnells entire project was her understanding of power. After a careful study of the Scriptures, she concluded that the bulk of evidence establishing men as authorities in the household, and in the church, could be traced not to the Greek Testament, but rather to English translations. Moreover, it became clear to her that no Christian man would ever seek such exaltation. Jesus himself emptied himself, became human, suffered, and died. Why, then, would men who claimed to follow Jesus seek to assert power over others? Such men who sought power over others did so in exact proportion to the sinfulness of their own hearts, she surmised.

I wonder if youve heard of Bushnell before. A number of women (and some men) have worked to keep her teachings alive. But for the most part shes been lost to history, as have so many other female biblical interpreters, before and since. This, too, was no accident. Bushnell recognized that men had claimed for themselves the right to teach theology. It was men who assumed for themselves unusual and unique spiritual enlightenment, who granted themselves a thousand-and-one privileges and prerogatives over women, effectively giving free reign to their own egotism under cover of headship. It was men who, through the outworkings of masculine egotism, had left us with a whole fossilized system of theology, a system that made one half of the human family some resplendent glory, and gave that half the power to teach theology and the love of God to the other halfnot because of a mans moral or spiritual character, but because of his physical bodysolely because he is a male! The only way to keep women from repudiating utterly such theology, Bushnell understood, was by reserving to men the right to study, translate, and interpret the Scriptures.

I dont know about you, but to me this doesnt sound like a very legitimate hermeneutic.

You can learn more about Bushnell by reading my book. Come to think of it, I have another book that you might find interesting. Its called Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. I think it really will help you understand this whole culture of white (Christian) patriarchy. In fact, youre in the book. So are a lot of your friends. Its not out quite yet, but it is available for preorder. (I know you dont like women hawking jewelry, but I know white Christian men love to hawk each others books, so Im going to assume book-hawking is ok.)

Sincerely,

Kristin Du Mez

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Hey, John MacArthur. You have a culture. It's called white (Christian) patriarchy. - Patheos

Tagore and Caste – The Statesman

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Our real problem in India is not political. It is social. This is a condition not only prevailing in India, but among all nations. Therefore, political freedom does not give us freedom when our mind is not free. ~ Tagore in Nationalism in India.

In his dance drama Chandalika, Tagore etches the character of Prakriti, a socially ostracized woman, belonging to the lowest class of society. Inspired by Shardulakarna Avadana, the play clearly reveals Tagores attitude towards caste. In fact, through his play, he lampoons the austere Brahmin taboo on interacting with or touching outcastes. In the dance drama, conditioned by the oppressive society, the central female protagonist Chandalika believed in being socially inferior (belonging to the lowest stratum), so much so, that she was convinced of defiling other castes by mere touch or contact. Such a conviction forced her to desist from giving water to the thirsty monk who comes her way. She duly reminds him of her social status as an untouchable, and apologizes for her inability to provide drinking water from the well.

Notwithstanding Prakritis inhibition, the Bhikshu insists and drinks water from her, underlining the fundamental spiritual unity of all human beings ~ reminding her not to humiliate herself as: self-humiliation is a sin, worse than selfmurder. Empowered by this experience and realization, Prakriti managed to disentangle herself from her absurd social entrapments, feeling a deep sense of bliss and enlightenment. However, this true awakening of the self, as the play unravels, also contributed to her obsessive attachment towards the monk. Later in the dance drama, she even vindicates her nascent conviction to her reprimanding mother, who admonishes her, reminding her of her low social status: Once did he cup his hands, to take the water from mine. Such an only little water, yet the water grew to fathomless, boundless sea. In it flowed all the seven seas in one, and my caste was drowned, and my birth washed clean.

Through the character and experience of Prakriti, Tagore also alludes to the tale of Janaki bathing in the water drawn by Guhak, during the initiation stage of her forest migr. Sensitized to her own existence as any other human being, irrespective of caste, colour and creed, Prakriti discovers her true self. The rest of the play focuses on the struggle between the sensual and the spiritual, underlining the deep spiritual unity of all human individuals. Prakritis self journey in the dance drama is juxtaposed with her conscious negation of her socially forced class and caste, along with her recognition of herself as a confident woman, proud of her own being. By exploring the theme of untouchability in his play, Tagore was also perhaps endorsing Mahatma Gandhis pro-Harijan campaign in the 1930s.

At the request of Gandhi, he had contributed the poem The Sacred Touch for the Harijan volume 1, no 7 (25th March 1933). The poem explores an anecdote in the life of Saint Ramananda (1400-80), which leads to a deeper realization of humanism, love and inclusivity, as he drew Bhajan the outcast to his heart out of spiritual ecstasy and communion.

Though it is not feasible to accumulate all instances from Tagores literary works within the premises of this brief analysis, one obvious example that perhaps would come to the readers mind is Tagores sympathetic portrayal of the character of Panchu in his novel Ghare Baire (The Home and the World). As a representative character of the impoverished struggling peasants of contemporary Bengal, Panchu is bereft of a voice in the narrative, being depicted as an oppressed, weak and extremely vulnerable character ~ entirely at the mercy of the warring zamindars ~ an inordinate victim of the then oppressive zamindari system.

Tagore not only denounced class and caste divisions, but he skeptically scrutinized the construction of the nation on narrow parochial lines. I am not against one nation in particular, but against the general idea of all nations. What is the Nation? Tagore asks in his famous essay on Nationalism in India. He clarifies it even further, It is the aspect of a whole people as an organized power. This organization incessantly keeps up the insistence of the population on becoming strong and efficient. But this strenuous effort after strength and efficacy drains mans energy from his higher nature where he is self-sacrificing and creative. Tagores raison dtre is potent too: For thereby mans power of sacrifice is diverted from his ultimate object, which is moral, to the maintenance of this organization, which is mechanical. What accounts for the immense danger, according to the poet, lies in the false sense or illusion of conviction and fulfillment: yet in this he feels all the satisfaction of moral exaltation and therefore becomes supremely dangerous to humanity. In Tagores persuasive argument, he asserts the development of the complete moral personality.

Tagores refined sensibility is perhaps rooted in his enlightened family background, which fostered his internationalism at a very young age. Besides coming under the influence of the reformer Raja Rammohan Roy, Rabindranath himself, was deeply conversant with the Upanishads. The reformist Brahmo Samaj that had strong reservations against Hindu orthodox rituals and polytheism perhaps sowed the seeds of an intense spiritual bonding and altruism. As a humanist, Tagore perceived the insular agenda associated with nationalism, especially in the context of India. He flagrantly criticized it for being the root of all problems of the country: Nationalism is a great menace. It is the particular thing which for years has been at the bottom of Indias troubles. Though he passed away in 1941, years before Indias political independence, Tagore had misgivings about the nation being driven in the wrong direction, especially when the concept of political freedom is dissociated from ethical and spiritual liberty: Therefore political freedom does not give us freedom when our mind is not free. An automobile does not create freedom of movement, because it is a mere machine. When I myself am free I can use the automobile for the purpose of my freedom. He espouses, moral and spiritual freedom as the ultimate goal of human life. The impediments that need to be overcome, have been referred to as huge eddies by Tagore: In the so-called free countries the majority of the people are not free; they are driven by the minority to a goal which is not even known to them. This becomes possible only because people do not acknowledge moral and spiritual freedom as their object. They create huge eddies with their passions, and they feel dizzily inebriated with the mere velocity of their whirling movement, taking that to be freedom. But the doom which is waiting to overtake them is as certain as death-for mans truth is moral truth and his emancipation is in the spiritual life.

This moral and spiritual resilience, according to Tagore, is deeply rooted in Indias identity as a nation and the concept of nationhood. In Nationalism in India*, he points out that unlike other continents, India has tolerated difference of races from the first, and that spirit of toleration has acted all through her historyFor India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of maintaining their own differences. Tagore fiercely resisted the division of Bengal in 1905, but ironically the country was partitioned at the time of Independence. According to his ideological prescription, plurality and diversity lie at the root of a dynamic and vibrant India. In the countrys history, perhaps there has never been a greater need than in the present sociopolitical scenario to espouse and re-celebrate the cause of plurality ~ discarding regressive parochial visions of petty nationalism/s for a larger moral and spiritual cause. Instead of thrusting majoritarinism, the polity should devise effective means to permanently ensure peaceful continuity of plurality leaving no opportunity for any religious community or insular social divisions to dominate the land in the future.

The writer is the Dean of Arts, St Xaviers College, Kolkata.

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Tagore and Caste - The Statesman

One Cure for Malnutrition of the Soul – The New York Times

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One sibling in my family was nearly destroyed by religion. The clergy in our diocese committed a monstrous crime, the scourge of sexual abuse known to many Catholic communities. Another sibling was made whole by religion, after losing a son to murder and finding that no one but God could salve her wounds. There are no clean lines in our clan.

On the trail, I repeatedly heard the term deep walking. My fellow pilgrims were an odd assortment of spiritual stragglers of a certain age. But there were also many young people. And for the young, as I heard it described, a pilgrimage is a way to do religion.

At a Benedictine monastery in a tiny village in northern France, it was strangely moving to eat dinner in utter silence among a handful of men whove shed all material comforts to engage in rigorous daily aerobics of the soul. I missed Wi-Fi, Twitter, emails and endless digital updates, until I didnt.

At a stopover in Laon, a city of shimmering stone 300 feet above the plains of Picardy in France, I tried to fathom the power of miracles. About 80 percent of Americans believe in them. As a pilgrim, I had to dampen down my doubts, to try to see things in another dimension. Miracles are not contrary to nature, as St. Augustine wrote, but only contrary to what we know about nature.

I was less moved by one of the high shrines of atheism, in Langres, the hometown of the Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot. The town is just one step short of being Diderot Disneyland, which only the French could pull off. But after deep immersion in his beautiful, busy mind, I still felt a bit empty. Religion is story, a narrative about a force much greater than us, enigmatic by nature. Atheism has trouble telling a story.

In the Swiss Alps, a permanent prayer started to honor Maurice, said to be the first black saint, has been recited day after day, year after year, century after century by a rotating band of monks known as the Sleepless Ones. The martyred Maurice, who was from North Africa, is revered. His modern comeback has much to do with the vibrancy and growth of Christianity in Africa at a time when Christianity in Europe is dying off. If present trends hold, within 20 years Africa will have more Catholics than the Continent.

At Great St. Bernard Pass, the high point of the Via Francigena, at 8,114 feet, I was fascinated by a priest of 40 years who still struggled with his faith. Doubts are allowed by God, said this man who introduced himself as Father John of Flavigny, a onetime medical student. Its a bit like training for sports. If you only ride a bicycle with the wind at your back, thats not going to help you. You need to ride your bike against the wind.

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One Cure for Malnutrition of the Soul - The New York Times

‘The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself & Challenged the Modern World to Reform’ Book Review – National Review

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Detail of a portrait of Pope Pius VI, 1775, by Pompeo Botoni (National Gallery of Ireland/via Wikipedia)The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself & Challenged the Modern World to Reform, by George Weigel (Basic Books, 336 pp., $30)

In his essay The Six Ages of the Church, the great English Catholic historian Christopher Dawson dissented from the three-fold division of history in the Christian era into ancient, medieval, and modern. Instead, he proposed, perhaps based on a line of John Henry Newman, that Christian history is composed of roughly 300- to 400-year periods. Each age begins in crisis but also with intense spiritual activity and a new sense of mission to evangelize the world. It then has a period of achievement in which the Church seems to have conquered the world and is able to create a Christian culture and new forms of life and art and thought. Each age ends with decay and pressure from without and within.

It doesnt mention Dawson, but George Weigels new book, The Irony of Modern Catholic History, might be considered a history of Dawsons Sixth Age of the Church. The perky subtitle, How the Church Rediscovered Itself and Challenged the Modern World to Reform, might sound like Catholic triumphalism, but the past-tense formulations are significant. Rediscovered implies truths covered over during the period before. Challenged hints at the possibility that the contemporary Catholic Church has entered a phase of decline and decay.

Weigels history is a drama divided into five acts in which the Church deals with modernity, that multi-faceted transformation of societies that included political, social, technological, and cultural changes. Conventional histories portray a stupid and stubborn Catholic Church standing athwart history yelling Stop to all of it. This is a partial truth. Weigel presents the story as Catholicisms journey from reaction to a stance that was more coherent, less defensive, and more influential in shaping the course of world affairs. As with all Weigels writing, this story is well told richly illustrated with lively anecdotes, cogent summaries of complex ideas, and revealing quotations.

Weigel begins, as Dawsons Sixth Age does, with the French Revolution, which smashed the inherited wealth and privilege of a Church that had lost its Counter-Reformation fervor and had settled into a desultory intellectual life characterized by a leadership with a dulled imagination and by clergy and monastics more interested in sinecures than in the care of souls. Altars had become less important than the thrones that made service at them very comfortable.

Weigel somewhat flattens the picture here. As the historian Ulrich Lehners book The Catholic Enlightenment (2016) showed, alongside the cynics and sloths, serious Catholic intellectuals of the period attempted to do justice to Catholic tradition and modern understanding. But the Revolutions violence and Napoleons kidnapping of Popes Pius VI (177599) and Pius VII (180023) caused a papal reaction that was stern yet successful. By Pius VIIs death, the papacy, thought in 1800 to be finished, seemed like a moral authority supported by popular sentiment and respect.

In Gregory XVI (183146) and Pius IX (184678) we see a magnification of this reaction and the beginning of the modern papacy, with its pilgrimages to Rome and personal devotion to the pope. Both popes took largely reactionary political positions but also made strides in presenting the Churchs human side. Gregory condemned Catholic Poles for revolting against their Russian overlords but also condemned slavery and the slave trade. Pius, whose initial instinct was to find a modus vivendi with the new world, was mugged by the revolutions of 1848. His papal documents, especially the 1864 encyclical Quanta Cura and its appendix, the Syllabus of Errors, pushed back hard, though not always wisely, against modernity. His rejection of the omnicompetent state seemed attended by a notion of an omnicompetent papacy, something perhaps encouraged by the First Vatican Councils declaration of papal infallibility and supreme and universal Church jurisdiction. This emphasis on and teaching about papal authority did, however, keep the transnational and universal understanding of the Church at the forefront.

Leo XIII (18781903), one of Weigels heroes, gingerly explored modernity with new energy and changes in emphasis. He encouraged study of the Bible in original languages with (some) modern methods. He promoted Thomas Aquinass texts and, particularly, Aquinass understanding that true freedom needed to be grounded in the truth of the human being as opposed to mere will. He encouraged Catholics to think on the new things, as he titled his groundbreaking 1891 encyclical (Rerum Novarum), with sophistication. Thus modern Catholic social teaching began with an emphasis on justice as more than freedom of contract but also with a declaration of limits on the powers of government.

While it had hitches (Pius Xs iron-fisted pontificate), Leos revolution largely succeeded, leading to the next dramatic act: the Second Vatican Council (196265). Weigel argues for its necessity despite the lack of a burning doctrinal issue or Church crisis to call it forth and its success. The 16 documents it produced are orthodox, filled with a new kind of evangelical fervor, and largely successful, in his view, at proposing Catholic faith in ways both traditional and modern, teaching Catholic dogmas without a dogmatic manner. The Councils winsome focus on Christ himself proposed to answer the human search for freedom and truth that modernity claimed to seek. It made a case for religious freedom on distinctly Catholic grounds and for a principled pluralism in public life.

Even on Weigels telling, however, one might question Vatican IIs success. First, the Pastoral Constitution on the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), the most direct attempt to address the modern situation, was, as Weigel acknowledges, a mixed success at best. In addition to latching onto the notion of global overpopulation and other myths, it depicted a modern world that was already passing away in 1965. Second, the Council documents as a whole didnt have a key to reading them. Without concrete doctrines to be believed or anathematized, their beautiful but sometimes imprecise language came to seem a charter for radical liturgical, doctrinal, and moral changes made in the name of an amorphous spirit of the Council. There was no key proposed until 1985s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops a bit late. These points might make one ask whether the Council itself was timed right. Ten years later, the assembled bishops might have judged the modern world more soberly and left less textual ambiguity.

Weigels next two acts can thus be read as either a fulfillment or a partial correction of the somewhat nave Vatican II embrace of modernity. John Paul II and Benedict XVI are the heroes of this period. The pair, through their papal and personal writings and speeches, made clear in the fourth act that the good things of modernity could be enjoyed only if a healthy public culture sustained political and economic life, reason was grounded in metaphysical reality, and freedom was treated not as the ability to choose anything but as the duty to choose the good. The irony was that, long seen as the enemy of modernity, the Church was proposing a way to save it.

The fifth act (our own), in which an Evangelical Catholicism stands as a public witness to truth (without uniting altar and throne), Weigel labels Catholicism Converting Modernity. But he ends, ironically, somewhat mournfully. The Church, now with the intellectual wherewithal to provide this public witness, is mired in 1) yet more revelations of sexual-abuse cover-ups and 2) in a papacy that even Weigel (who in his writings rarely criticizes Francis directly) admits seems to be encouraging both confusion and the deconstruction of doctrine that is still pervasive in Catholic life.

We might take a different view, then, of this fifth act. Perhaps it is more properly seen as the final act of Dawsons Sixth Age. In addition to the decay Weigel chronicles, the Catholic Churchs influence in world affairs now pales compared with what it was in 1948, when Jacques Maritain helped draft the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, or in the 1980s, when John Paul challenged the Soviet Union. The 1980s perhaps also marked the end of a midcentury Catholic revival in literature and the arts.

Catholics might be not in a Franciscan stall, a pause in the advancing conversion of modernity, but rather in the death throes of an age that reached its apogee in the middle of the last century. Catholicism in a Seventh Age will no doubt learn from this ages engagement with and critique of modernity, but it may also operate in a different way. It may return to earlier models of more-traditional liturgy, more-exact conciliar speech, and a view of the Church in which the popes are important but not the main protagonists. Of necessity, it may also see the Church step back temporarily from the public role it assumed in this age until it better orders its own house. Conversion, like judgment, begins with the house of God (1 Peter 4:17).

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'The Irony of Modern Catholic History: How the Church Rediscovered Itself & Challenged the Modern World to Reform' Book Review - National Review

Who is Kalki Bhagwan Who Once Predicted Death of Organised Religions and Now Faces I-T Heat? – News18

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Bengaluru: He calls himself Kalki, the 10th and the last Avatar of Lord Vishnu. His followers call him Kalki Bhagwan. He has several ashrams and lakhs of devotees.

After almost a decade of him keeping a low profile, the spotlight is back on this self-proclaimed godman from Tamil Nadu. The Income Tax department has raided his ashrams in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

According to an official statement, they have seized unaccounted cash worth over Rs 45 crore in Indian currency, another Rs 15 crore in foreign currencies and 88kg gold. Being hailed as one of the biggest tax raids in recent times, the unofficial figures are said to be much higher.

Some say the I-T department has seized documents detailing his properties all over, including abroad. He may or may not be a godman with divine powers, but he is certainly a man with a remarkable business acumen.

The Kalki was popular during the 1990s and early 2000s in south India. Strangely, his popularity started declining after that and there was not much talk about him.

In Indias overcrowded godmen market, Kalki perhaps lost the power to stay ahead of other new-age gurus. In the last 10 years, he had confined himself to his circle of followers and did not expand much.

However, the I-T department did not forget him. The recent raid and the ongoing investigation into the enormous wealth he has accumulated over the years have now turned the godman into a big economic offender raising several questions over claims of him being a Bhagwan.

Born as V Vijayakumar, the 70-year-old became a godman in the 1990s. In the mid-1980s, with the help of Sri Hari Khoday, a liquor baron from Karnataka, he had set up a residential school in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.

The school was an informal one loosely based on philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurthys Valley School concept. Before that, he was a clerk at the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC). In the early 1980s, he and his friend Shankar had briefly worked at the Valley School, Bengaluru, in the administration department. The school management had thrown out the duo in 1984 for undisclosed reasons.

In early 1990s, the students of his new school claimed that they had seen or experienced several miracles at the school and it became a big news within no time.

After the so-called miracle, Kalki shut his school and set up an ashram. Soon it grew into a mammoth spiritual centre spread over 50 acres. A 2002 media report claims that his ashram was worth over Rs 300 crore then. Between 1995 and 2010, he grew in stature as well as economically, attracting tens of thousands of new followers every year.

His wife Padmavathi started claiming that she too has divine powers and devotees call her Bhagwathi. His children claim that they also have divine powers like their parents. According to a former devotee from Bengaluru, it is a family business and no outsider has any say in the affairs of their ashrams.

Even though he claims that he is spiritual, Kalki preaches materialism. He tells his followers to enjoy life to the fullest and he sees nothing wrong in the material pleasures of life.

Like followers of many other godmen, his devotees believe that Kalki can cure anything from cancer to kidney failure through his miracles. Unlike others, he rarely gives darshan. Sometimes only once in six months.

He offers an enlightenment course to devotees for a fee and lakhs of people are said to have attended it. He once called himself a spiritual supermarket saying that he can show Jesus to a Christian, Rama to a Hindu and so on.

However, controversies are not new to him. During the height of his popularity, some people had alleged that Kalki was keeping their children at his ashram against their will, though nothing much had come out of it.

There were also some I-T-related charges, but all that was given a quick and quiet burial. A police officer from Karnataka who had received complaints against Kalki in the early 2000s said that in most cases, complaints were withdrawn or the children came out in public telling that they were staying at the ashram out of their own will.

His wealth was quite visible even during those years, but the taxmen did not bother much, he said.

In 2002, Kalki had famously predicted that all organised religions would die between 2005 and 2012 and only his sect will thrive. It is an irony that he has been proved wrong and the opposite is now happening.

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Who is Kalki Bhagwan Who Once Predicted Death of Organised Religions and Now Faces I-T Heat? - News18

Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty – The New Yorker

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On a Sunday night in June, the twenty-nine-year-old astrologer Aliza Kelly was preparing to broadcast an Astrology 101 live stream from her apartment, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A glittering SpectroLED light panel made the living room feel like a tiny movie set. My manager took me to get these lights at B&H, she said.

A windowsill was lined with gifts from clientsan illustrated zodiac, a white orchid. Kelly sat cross-legged on a taupe ottoman, wearing cat eyeliner and large hoop earrings, greeting people and waving as they appeared in the online chat room. That is one of my favorite things, as a Leo and as a personbuilding community, she said. It was a little before eight-thirty, and some of the fifty-two participantswho had paid between $19.99 and $39.99 eachwere typing hellos; one woman, in Europe, had set her alarm for 2:30 A.M., to log in. Once the class started, Kelly clicked through a slide deck about ancient Babylonia; William Lilly, the English Merlin, who was consulted by both sides during the English Civil War; and the signs of the zodiac. To explain the traits of Aries, she put up a picture of Mariah Carey (She loves getting presents). For Pisces, she had Rihanna and Steve Jobs. My main favorite thing is to talk about the signs as celebrities, she said. Because these are modern-day mythological figures. In ancient Greece, if you said Athena, everyone knew, Oh, thats what Athena is like.

Kellys schedule is typical for a millennial astrologer. She writes books (on zodiac-themed cocktails); does events (at the private club Soho House); offers individual chart readings (a hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour); hosts a podcast (Stars Like Us); makes memes (for lolz); manages a virtual coven called the Constellation Club, with membership levels that cost from five dollars to two hundred; and has worked as a consultant for the astrology app Sanctuary. She also writes an advice column for Cosmopolitan, and hosts an occasional Cosmo video series in which she guesses celebrities signs based on their answers to twelve questions. According to the editor-in-chief, Jessica Pels, who has expanded the magazines print coverage of astrology to nine pages in every issue, seventy-four per cent of Cosmo readers report that they are obsessed with astrology; seventy-two per cent check their horoscope every day.

Astrology is currently enjoying a broad cultural acceptance that hasnt been seen since the nineteen-seventies. The shift began with the advent of the personal computer, accelerated with the Internet, and has reached new speeds through social media. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center poll, almost thirty per cent of Americans believe in astrology. But, as the scholar Nicholas Campion, the author of Astrology and Popular Religion in the Modern West, has argued, the number of people who know their sun sign, consult their horoscope, or read about the sign of their romantic partner is much higher. New spirituality is the new norm, the trend-forecasting company WGSN declared two years ago, when it announced a report on millennials and spirituality that tracked such trends as full-moon parties and alternative therapies. Last year, the Times, in a piece entitled How Astrology Took Over the Internet, heralded astrologys return as a compelling content business as much as a traditional spiritual practice. The Atlantic proclaimed, Astrology is a meme. As a meme, its life cycle has been unusually long. My account, it was meant to be a fun thing for me to do on the side while I was a production assistant, Courtney Perkins, who runs the Instagram account Not All Geminis, which has more than five hundred thousand followers, said. Then it blew up and now its likeI dont know. I didnt mean for this to be... life.

In its penetration into our shared lexicon, astrology is a little like psychoanalysis once was. At mid-century, you might have heard talk of id, ego, or superego at a party; now its common to hear someone explain herself by way of sun, moon, and rising signs. Its not just that you hear it. Its whos saying it: people who arent kooks or climate-change deniers, who see no contradiction between using astrology and believing in science. The change is fuelling a new generation of practitioners. Fifteen years ago, astrology conferences were the gray-streaked province of, as one astrologer told me, white ladies in muumuus decorated with stars. Kay Taylor, the education director of the Organization for Professional Astrology, said that those who came of age in the seventies were worried about the future of the profession. Now, she said, all of a sudden theres this new crop. In the past year, the membership of the Association for Young Astrologers has doubled.

The corporate world has taken note of the publics appetite. Last year, the astrologer Rebecca Gordon partnered with the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur to produce a zodiac-themed event where customers could use their Venus signs to, in Gordons words, find their personal styles. This spring, Amazon sent out shopping horoscopes to its Prime Insider subscribers. Astrology is also being used to help launch businesses. This summer, the forty-six-year-old siblings Ophira and Tali Edut, known as the AstroTwins, started Astropreneurs Summer Camp, a seven-week Web-based course. Participants analyzed their birth charts to determine whether they were Influencers, Experts, or Mavens/Messengers, and got advice on how to tailor their professional plans accordingly.

The popularity of astrology is often explained as the result of the decline of organized religion and the rise of economic precariousness, and as one aspect of a larger turn to New Age modalities. Then, theres the matter of political panic. In times of crisis, it is often said, people search for something to believe in. The first newspaper astrology column was commissioned in August, 1930, in the aftermath of the stock-market crash, for the British tabloid the Sunday Express. The occasion was Princess Margarets birth. What the Stars Foretell for the New Princess was so popularand such a terrific distractionthat the paper made it a regular feature. After the financial collapse in 2008, Gordon, who runs a popular online astrology school, received calls from Wall Street bankers. All of those structures that people had relied upon, 401(k)s and everything, started to fall apart, she said. Thats how a lot of people get into it. Theyre, like, Whats going on in my life? Nothing makes sense. Ten years later, more than retirement plans have fallen apart. I think the 2016 election changed everything, Colin Bedell, an astrologer whose online handle is Queer Cosmos, told me. People were just, like, we need to come to some spiritual school of thought. As Kelly put it, In the Obama years, people liked astrology. In the Trump years, people need it.

The idea at the heart of astrology is that the pattern of a persons lifeor character, or naturecorresponds to the planetary pattern at the moment of his birth, the historian Benson Bobrick writes in his 2005 book, The Fated Sky. Such an idea is as old as the world is oldthat all things bear the imprint of the moment they are born. Western astrology had its origins in ancient Mesopotamia, and spread throughout Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Islamic world. Astrology helped people decide when to plant crops and go to war, and was used to predict a persons fate and interpret his character. Would he have good luck with money? Would he ascend the throne? (When the astrologer Theogenes cast Augustus chart, Bobrick writes, the astrologer reportedly gasped and threw himself at his feet.)

According to Bobrick, Theodore Roosevelt kept his birth chart on a table in his drawing room, and Charles de Gaulle and Franois Mitterrand sought advice from astrologers. (Astrology has also been used to intentionally mislead political enemies. In 1942 and 1943, the Allies distributed a fake astrology magazine called Der Zenit, which, among other things, endeavored to disguise the Allied ambush of German U-boat operations.) Ronald Reagans chief of staff said that Reagan consulted an astrologer before virtually every major move and decision, including the timing of his relection announcement, military actions in Grenada and Libya, and disarmament negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev.

For some adherents, astrology can explain everything from earthquakes (Saturn crossing the south node) to the rise of social media (an increase in Cesarean sections has led to an increase in births between 9 A.M. and 5 P.M., and thus a rise in the number of suns in the tenth house, which governs reputation and prestige). But what attracts most people to astrology today has more to do with psychology. Psychological astrology, influenced by Carl Jung, treated the birth charta diagram that shows the individuals relation to the cosmos at birthas the representation of the psyche and used it to talk about such things as purpose, potential, and self-actualization. Its hard to understand the deep appeal of astrological practice without having or observing an individual chart reading, an experience whose closest analogue is therapy. But unlike therapy, where a client might spend months or even years uncovering the roots of a symptom, astrology promises to get to answers more quickly. Despite common misconceptions, an astrologer is not a fortune-teller. In a chart reading, she doesnt predict the future; she describes the client to herself.

Watch The Backstory:Christine Smallwood on how millennials are fuelling a resurgence of astrology.

The power of description can be great. Couching characteristics in the language of astrology seems to make it easier for many people to hear, or admit, unpleasant things about their personalitiesand to accept those traits in others. (The friend who comes over and never leaves? She cant help it. Shes a Taurus.) Most astrologers say that its important not to use your sign to excuse bad behavior. Still, as the AstroTwins have written, astrology is kind of like the peanut butter that you slip the heartworm pill in before giving it to your Golden Retriever. You can tell someone, Youre such a spotlight hog! and they kind of want to slap you. But if you say, Youre a Leo. You need to be the center of attention, theyre like, Yeah baby, thats me.

For centuries, drawing an astrological chart required some familiarity with astronomy and geometry. Today, a chart can be generated instantly, and for free, on the Internet. Astrology is ubiquitous on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and in downloadable workshops, classes, and Webinars. A new frontier has opened with mobile apps.

In July, I was ushered into a glass-enclosed conference room on the sixth floor of a building in Tribeca to meet with Banu Guler, the thirty-one-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of the astrology app Co-Star, whose Web site promises to allow irrationality to invade our techno-rationalist ways of living. Guler is a casting directors idea of a tech executive. She is a vegan who used to design punk zines and was a bike messenger until she got into a gnarly car wreck. She has cropped hair, a septum piercing, and a tattoo of Medea on the back of one leg. Why Medea? I asked. Witchcraft, she explained. A copy of Liz Greenes Relating: An Astrological Guide to Living with Others on a Small Planet lay between us. Guler hasnt read it, but its been on her Goodreads list forever.

The market for astrology apps has changed dramatically in the past few years. In 2015, when Aliza Kelly was raising money for a short-lived astrology dating app called Align, she was mocked by prospective investors. (Literally, this one guy wrote, I usually wish people well, and in your case I dont, because youre defying science and the Enlightenment era, she told me.) Now venture capitalists, excited by a report from IBISWorld which found that Americans spend $2.2 billion annually on mystical services (including palmistry, tarot reading, etc.), are funnelling money into the area. Co-Star is backed by six million dollars. Since its launch, in 2017, it has been downloaded six million times. Eighty per cent of users are female, and their average age is twenty-four.

Co-Star has competitors. Theres the Pattern, an app whose creepily accurate psychological and compatibility analyses are generated by birth charts but are delivered free of any astrological references. (The actor Channing Tatum recently had a meltdown on social mediaHow do you know what you know about me, Pattern?after his pattern, apparently, hit too close to home.) The doyenne of popular astrology, Susan Miller, employs an assistant, four editors, and eight engineers to produce her books, calendars, Web site (it has eleven million views annually), and app, which caters to those who find the forty-thousand-word forecasts on her site insufficient. (Miller was an early Internet presence, and her style is at once maternal and optimistically pragmatic. At a recent event in Macys flagship store, in Herald Square, she told the audience, Freezing your eggs is expensive, but I want every girl here who doesnt have a baby to do it!) Sanctuary offers free daily horoscopes and, for twenty dollars a month, a fifteen-minute text exchange with an astrologer. One person I interviewed compared it to a psychic 900 hotline for the DM era. The most informative app is Vices Astro Guide, which the company imagines as a tool not just for self-care but for cosmic wellness.

Co-Stars daily horoscopes appear under categories that are only slightly incomprehensible, such as Mood Facilitating Responsibility or Identity Enhancing Emotional Stability. The app generates content by pulling and recombining phrases that have been coded to correspond to astronomical phenomena. Currently, the company employs four people to write these bits of languagetwo poets, an editor, and an astrologer. The app sometimes generates nonsenseYou will have a bit of luck relating to your natural sense of self-control, it told me recentlyand can be blunt to the point of rudeness. Users like to screenshot and post Co-Stars push notifications, activities that help explain why the company doesnt spend anything on advertising. Dont even try to make yourself understood today. Its not worth it is a typical example of the tone. Guler relishes it. Its not, like, Go sit and journal and write four sentences about the world you wish to see, she said, leaning across the table. Its, like, Go take a fucking cold shower.

On the day we met, Guler, like everyone in her office, was wearing all black. This happens, she said, not infrequently. (Whether it happens more frequently when journalists are visiting, she did not say.) Guler first realized that astrology could be a business when she went to a party for a friends newborn with a birth chart as a gift, and everyone at the party wanted one for her baby, too.

When Guler was a child, her mother used to do readings from the grounds in her thick Turkish coffee. It was, Guler said, a way to have conversations about feelings that would otherwise be difficult. The sludge, for lack of a better word, forms shapes, she said. Its, like, Theres this divot or valley herewhats going on with you? Something bad? Today, she said, anxietys up, depression is up, loneliness is up. But, with astrology, you can use this language to walk into a room and be, like, Im going through my Saturn return. Im reckoning with restrictions and limits and boundaries right now.

On the one hand, Guler said, todays problems are bound up with the rise of technology: Were really operating from this place that technology is doing something weird to our brains. On the other hand, she said, technology will be the antidote, by teaching us to speak about ourselves. Co-Star currently allows you to find friends and read their astrological profiles, and its future plans call for more social features. Co-Star, like all tech companies, dreams of bringing people togetherto spend more time, presumably, on the app itself.

In The Stars Down to Earth, Theodor Adornos 1953 critique of a newspapers sun-sign column, he argued that astrology appealed to persons who do not any longer feel that they are the self-determining subjects of their fate. The mid-century citizen had been primed to accept magical thinking by systems of fascistic opaqueness and inscrutability. Its easy to name our own opaque and inscrutable systemssurveillance capitalism, a byzantine health-insurance systembut to say that we are no longer the self-determining subjects of our fate is also to recognize the many ways that our lives are governed by circumstances outside our control. We know that our genetic codes predispose us to certain diseases, and that the income bracket we are born into can determine our future. Fate is another word for circumstance.

On a hot Tuesday night this summer, two dozen students of astrology gathered in a stuffy back room of the Open Center, in midtown Manhattan, to discuss a partial lunar eclipse and the birth chart of Jeffrey Epstein, who had recently been arrested on charges of sex trafficking. Anne Ortelee and Mark Wolz, astrologers who have been leading the class in various locations for twelve years, sat up front. Ortelee, talking fast, mixing jargon and dry jokes in a manner not unlike that of a sportscaster calling a game, pointed to the details of the chart. Epstein had his sun in Aquarius and his moon in Aries, so he was used to having his way. Venus, which rules love, money, and pleasure, and Mars, which rules action, desire, and war, were in Pisces, suggesting trouble with boundaries and addictive tendencies. She said that his Mercury-Uranus-Venus-Mars configuration represented sex with young childrenMercury is young children, Mars is sex.

Some of the students were studying to pass accreditation exams; others were simply interested in deepening their knowledge. A few had been coming to the class for years. A young man in the front row with deep-set eyes and a faint mustache noted that the arrangement of Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus could indicate a sudden and unexpected death. Ortelee, who wore a flowered dress and held a sweating cup of iced coffee, nodded. This is not a guy whos going to live long in prison, she said. A woman in a red dress raised her hand to point out the connection between the July eclipses (there were two) and the astrology of October, 2018, when Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice. Kavanaugh was also an evil Aquarius, she said, to general murmurs.

Some teachers use students birth charts in classes, but because a chart is personalLooking at your chart is kind of like looking at you naked, the student with the mustache told meOrtelee prefers to use the charts of notable figures. Astrologers have been doing so for a long time. In 1552, Luca Gaurico, a court adviser to Catherine de Mdici, published a book of horoscopes about Popes, cardinals, princes, and other famous men. Similar books followed, featuring analyses of Erasmus, Albrecht Drer, and Henry VIII. More recently, Ortelees class had studied the charts of Tucker Carlson and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who lit up the Internet this spring when a staffer confirmed her birth time (one of the three pieces of data, along with date and location, that are needed to calculate a birth chart). In another class this summer at the Open Center, I listened as the students discussed the birth chart of Boris Johnson. Does anybody see why he has the hair that he has? a woman in tortoiseshell glasses asked. In September, the class turned its attention to Capitol Hill. On Instagram, Ortelee pointed out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump only minutes before Mercury was sextiling Jupiter, promising information and news that we should all pay attention to.

Its a commonplace to say that in uncertain times people crave certainty. But what astrology offers isnt certaintyits distance. Just as a person may find it easier to accept things about herself when she decides she was born that way, astrology makes it possible to see world events from a less reactive position. It posits that history is not a linear story of upward progress but instead moves in cycles, and that historical actorsthe ones running amok all around usare archetypes. Alarming, yes; villainous, perhaps; but familiar, legible.

Ortelee later explained to me that people pop up in the news because the movements of the planets through the sky, known as transits, are activating their charts. This can work on many levels. When the Titanic happened, there was a big Neptune transit, and when the Titanic movie came out, years later, there was a huge Neptune transit, she said. You heard Celine Dion everywhere. And now theres a mini Neptune transit, so theres a Carpool Karaoke with Dion and James Corden singing the Titanic song in the fountains in the Bellagio.

Others see astrology as having the power not just to explain the political situation but also to change it. Chani Nicholas uses astrology as a tool for social justice and radical action. To be a human is to suffer, she said when we met. I dont think we should fight that. But we also cant dwell there. Nicholass work includes readings about what a new moon in Scorpio means for the #MeToo movement, and the import of Saturns position for the future of DACA. Im interested in helping people get to the core of their purpose and then to use that to be of service in the world, as quickly as possible, she said.

I met Nicholas, who is in her forties, in July, when she was visiting Brooklyn from Los Angeles. She had arranged for a private tour of the exhibition Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art Fifty Years After Stonewall, at the Brooklyn Museum, with her friend Tourmaline, who had short films in the show, and two of the exhibits curators. While the curators talked, footage of the transgender activist Sylvia Rivera flashed on a video screen. Nicholas pulled up Riveras chart. At the moment of Riveras birth, the sunwhich, Nicholas said, represents the essential selfwas at the same degree as Uranus, the planet of disruption, which, she said, will tear this whole thing down. But all this, Nicholas went on, was happening in the sign of Cancer, which signifies home and nurturing. How do we care for people radically? she asked, explaining how the chart was relevant.

Nicholas has a million online readers. She now rarely books private chart readings, because the demand was overwhelming. Her business is based on selling downloadable workshops, and she curates free monthly Spotify playlists for each sign. In January, she will publish her first book, You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance. Back in 2012, Nicholas was one of the organizers of the first Queer Astrology Conference. When you queer something, you try to see it outside cultural norms, she said. She uses astrology to talk not just about sexuality and gender but also about race, class, and climate.

Nicholas believes that astrology appeals because it gives context to people and to world events. Like religion, it says that there is something beyond material existence, but it doesnt teach dogma, or prescribe action. Many astrologers I interviewed expressed concern that astrology can be misused to generate fear or to extort, but mostly, Nicholas said, its a way of framing the thing were in. As humans, she said, we need rhythm. We need ritual. We need timing.

I absolutely love astrology, Alex Dimitrov said. But its a gateway drug to the real magic, which is poetry.

On a Friday night in July, I had dinner at the Odeon, in Tribeca, with Dimitrov and Dorothea Lasky, who run the Twitter account Astro Poets, which they launched in November of 2016, just after Trumps election. Ten weeks later, they got some negative feedback because of a joke about yoga, and Lasky called Dimitrov at three in the morning and said that she wanted to delete the account. I was, like, Excuse me? Dimitrov remembered. He took a sip of ros. Dimitrov, who is dark and compact, was wearing fitted jeans and a Def Leppard shirt. That was Aries behavior, he said. The feed now has five hundred thousand followers.

Dimitrov and Lasky think of the signs formally, as poetic constraints, and imagine them interacting like characters in a novel. On their Twitter feed, in addition to the horoscopes, lists, and pop-culture references that populate all astrology social media, they quote poets they admire. The night before, someone had texted Dimitrov a line by Eileen MylesIt is summer, I love you, I am surrounded by snowand he had tweeted it. Honestly, its the Sagittarius mantra, he said. (Dimitrov, like Myles, is a Sagittarius.)

The Astro Poets horoscopes employ exquisite images, turning sharply from low to high, from humor to pain or grief. Heres the horoscope they tweeted about Pisces for the week of August 4th: A wind is a little reminder. Reminder of what, you ask. The rain. The rain! Dont ask them what it means. Lasky, resplendent in sparkling eye makeup and a crocheted necklace, said that the whole point of a poem is its supposed to be your friend, and youre supposed to commingle with it. On the first episode of the Astro Poets podcast, which dbuted in August, she explained that astrology is also a friendsomething that can witness your life and help make sense of it.

Still, those who turn to astrology for clarity will be bemused by the Astro Poets. Some of their most passionate readers long for plainer speaking, or at least for someone to put their poetry into prose. We have these translators, Lasky said. There was one translator who was an Aquarius, Mimias soon as I would write a tweet, Mimi had an alert and would translate it for people. But Mimi, after a few years, has retired, and everyone is really sad.

A few weeks later, I met the Astro Poets at Enchantments, a store in the East Village, where the poet Alice Notley used to shop. Dimitrov, Lasky, and I picked out herbs and figurines and candles. Then we went to Canal Street to have our aura photographs taken. (Laskys and Dimitrovs auras seemed to match, like two halves of a blue-and-purple rainbow.) The plan was for us to do a very positive spell on the Brooklyn Bridge. But it was more than ninety degrees, and we wandered for a long time looking for the pedestrian walkway, and eventually settled on a bench in the shade under the bridge. Lasky lit the candles, and we all silently meditated on our intentions for this article. A pigeon hopped tentatively nearer.

One way to cope with uncertainty is to demand certainty. Another is to learn to dwell in uncertainty, to find solace and even beauty in what is, and must be, unknown. Dimitrov and Laskys new book is called Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac, but for a long time they toyed with putting the word mystery or magic in the title. Those ideas are so important to us, Dimitrov said. As Samuel Reynolds, who began researching astrology in the nineteen-eighties in order to disprove it and is now on the board of the International Society for Astrological Research, told me, To talk about the planets literally having some measure of effect on you brings up all kinds of questions that I dont think astrology is prepared to answer. Instead, Reynolds said, astrology is symbolic and spirituala literary language whose truth can neither be validated nor invalidated by empirical science.

For some people, the complex system itself is a source of pleasure: theres math involved, rules to master, vocabulary to memorize. For others, it permits a play of interpretation. As the planets transit, they move into different signs, picking up different meanings. In one context, Uranus indicates sudden death; in another, revolutionary energy. There are myriad combinations for storytelling. At the Odeon, Lasky said that when poetry transitswhen it moves from meaning to meaningit doesnt let go of what came before. She started to explain the Greek root of the word metaphor (to carry across), when Dimitrov broke in.

Its about negative capability, he said. To endure doubt is ultimately the only thing you can do in lifeto not strive for meaning or answers, and to endure the state youre in.

An earlier version of this piece misstated the title of the Astro Poets new book.

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Astrology in the Age of Uncertainty - The New Yorker

‘To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit’: Blake’s Visionary Imagination – The New York Review of Books

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TateWilliam Blake: Beatrice Addressing Dante from the Car, 18241827

The Blake exhibition at Tate Britain, the first major exhibition in nearly twenty years, shows 300 of his prints and paintings, with manuscripts and printed books, gathered from galleries and libraries across the world. There have been other, smaller Blake shows with particular emphases, but this one sets out bravely to guide us through the whole range of his ideas, his art and his working life. A lot to see, a lot to take in. To corral this, the curators have imposed a chronological arrangement, setting Blakes work in the context of the French Revolution, the spread of industry and the growing British empire, and devoting rooms to his patrons and his career as an engraver to show how he scraped a living until the relative freedom of his final years.

This is, of course, exactly the kind of crisp, rational, time-bound framework that Blake himself railed against so passionately. Yet, on the whole, it works well. Far from being dwarfed by the vast Tate rooms, within these controlling boxes Blakes shining art explodes with energy, sometimes mystical, sometimes rippling with anger, sometimes leaping with delight.

The tone is set by the small print of Albion Rose (1793). Also known as Glad Day, this is the first thing we see, blazing against a rich blue wall. The slender figure balanced on a crag, arms spread wide, with wild rays of color bursting behind him, has often been adopted as an emblem of freedom, creativity, and resistance to constraint. Rightly so, as Blake was a rebel from the start. His parents, successful shopkeepers in Londons Soho district, recognized his talent and paid for drawing classes and for his apprenticeship to the engraver James Basire. When Blake entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1779, aged twenty-two, he drew diligently and, harboring ambitions to become a famous history painter, exhibited his historical, biblical, and literary drawingsseveral of which are shown hereat the Royal Academy in the early 1780s.

Increasingly, though, Blake rejected the academic teaching, preferring the Gothic mode of artists like Henry Fuseli and James Barry, and spurning the idealizing tenets of the Academys then-president, Joshua Reynolds. Years later, in 1809, Blake would annotate Reynoldss Discourses with disdain. Where Reynolds wrote that the disposition to abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind, Blake responded in the margin, To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.

Yet Blakes particulars were not those of daily life, but of a visionary imagination. In another marginal note, he wrote, The man who never in his mind and thoughts traveld to heaven is no artist. His difficulties with the Academy were related to his dislike of the rational, empirical trend of Enlightenment thought as a whole, as he made clear in his epic poem Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion:

I turn my eyes to the Schools & Universities of EuropeAnd there behold the Loom of Locke whose Woof rages direWashd by the Water-wheels of Newton. Black the clothIn heavy wreathes folds over every Nation; cruel WorksOf many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannicMoving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden: whichWheel within Wheel in freedom revolve in harmony & peace.

In this show, Blakes famous depiction of Newton, enclosing the world in the arc of his dividers, is included in a room devoted to twelve of his frescoes, as he called them, believing that his complex technique copied the method of painting on damp plaster of the great Renaissance artists. These experimental monotypes have a painterly quality, sharpened by pen and ink detail, and are slightly larger than his designs for the illuminated books. Seen on this scale, Newton has a beauty and strength lost in the countless reproductions. All the great physicists rippling muscles are stilled by his intense concentration, while the rock on which he sits glows with rich encrustations in the depths of the sea, the sea urchins at its base swept by an invisible wave.

The Tate curators, Martin Myrone and Amy Concannon, argue that Blake the artist has been ignored in recent years in favor of Blake the poet. Yet the two are surely indivisible. After he invented his complex process of relief etchingits technique still unknowntext and image flow together, each reinterpreting the other. In the prophetic books, with their mix of historical characters and beings from his own mythology, the pages speak as one, visually and verbally. The tiny pages of the Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794), Blakes first attempt to integrate text and image, mounted here so that one can see both sides of each page are almost dreamlike in their intensity.

The Tate show emphasizes particular works, and it is awe-inspiring to see the evolution of the illuminated books from America: A Prophecy (1793) and his Continental Prophecies series, to the epic poem Milton (18041818) and his last book, Jerusalem (18041820). Blakes radical politics first came to the fore in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), in which Satan is the voice of imagination and desire, and Eternal Delight defies the shackles of Reason. But the illuminated books could never be produced in enough numbers to make a profit, and by 1790 Blake was making his living as an engraver, in particular working for the radical printer Joseph Johnson. The influence of two of Johnsons authors can be felt in Blakes poem Visions of the Daughters of Albion(1793). One was Mary Wollstonecraft, whose Original Stories he illustrated in 1796, and whose anger in Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) echoes in the tirade against sexual oppression delivered by Blakes heroine Oothoon. The second was the denunciation of slavery in John Gabriel Stedmans Narrative(1796), for which Blake was already engraving illustrations.

It is perhaps in relation to this image that the Tate has put a Content Warning outside the entrance, acknowledging that The art of William Blake contains strong and sometimes challenging imagery, including some depictions of violence and suffering. As Blake knew, though, the suffering and violence are also within us. His Ghost of a Flea (circa 18191820), harked back to a vision hed had nearly thirty years earlier of a foul apparition rushing at him in his home, which filled him with terror. When he painted his ghost, he made it tiny, with scaly green and gold skin, an acorn cup in its hand to hold blood, and its tongue flickering out of its mouth. The specter was, he said, the soul of a murderer trapped in a tiny body, yet although its power was diminished it still remained ferociously menacing.

The Tate exhibitions biographical slant sometimes genuinely deepens our understanding of Blake, as in the stress on the part played by his wife, Catherine, in printing and coloring the texts and images, including the vibrant illustrations to Bunyans Pilgrims Progress. (In 1996 the series was de-accessioned by its then home, the Frick, because of Catherines involvement, and now, sequestered in a private collection, it is rarely seenbut its among my personal favorites of Blakes works.)

The biographical approach works less well, visually, in the spaces allotted to Blakes friendships and quarrels with patrons (in a crowded show, the room dedicated to his sponsors William Hayley and the Countess of Egremont were virtually empty on my visits, as viewers flitted through, giving this section only a quick glance). We meet Blake next in a different guise, winning acclaim for his 1808 designs for Robert Blairs The Grave (shown here with his drawings set alongside Schiavonettis engravings in four fine editions). But he still felt undervalued as an artist. Disgruntled that he had not been asked to engrave the Blair designs himself, and raging at the Royal Academys poor display of his watercolors, in May 1809 he defiantly organized his own exhibition above his brothers shop at their Soho family home, 28 Broad Street.

Ten years ago, in 2009, in a small display (also curated by Martin Myrone), the Tate reunited nine of the original sixteen paintings of this exhibition. This time they have chosen to reconstruct the room itself, with its bare floorboards and pale light through the windows. Its now a common curatorial stroke to evoke a place, to set artists in their time: in 2015, in a fascinating exhibition concentrating on Blakes technical craft, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford recreated Blakes cramped London studio in Lambeth. But there, as here, I found the effect oddly blank, like a stage-set without an actor, lacking the intensity and messiness of Blakes life. At the Tate, another problem is that the central paintingsThe Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth (circa 1805) and The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan (circa 18051809)hardly show Blake at his most inspired. Painted at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, they supposedly glorified Britains leaders, yet the portrayal of a haloed, gowned Pitt and a near-naked Nelson, posed surrounded by biblical monsters, seemed to many more like satire than tribute. Blake, however, saw these works as inspirational public art. And at the Tate, we can see the wild reach of his ambition through the use of huge screens, where slow-moving projections trace the details of digitally enlarged versions, illustrating his dream of a national commission for murals a hundred feet high.

There were no sales from that 1809 show, and in the sole review, in the Examiner, the journalist Robert Hunt called the artist an unfortunate lunatic, whose works had been hailed as sallies of genius only by deluded supporters. Today, we recognize that genius. In the later rooms, the Tate pays tribute to the soaring creativity of Blakes last decade, when he was in his sixties. At last, Blake could work with real freedom, supported by the artist John Linnell and the younger group including Samuel Palmer and John Varley, the first artistic brotherhood in England, known as The Ancients for their interest in archaism and their idealized vision of the past. Among these young friends, in addition to making sumptuous new editions of the illustrated books, and producing lyrical woodcuts for Virgils Georgics (1821) and powerful engravings of The Book of Job (1826), Blake painted the glorious watercolors to illustrate an edition of Dantes Divine Comedy. With their sculptural forms and sweeping washes, these carry us to Blakes own imagined Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, swimming with color and light.

In these years, too, Blake finally completed his Jerusalem, produced between 1804 and 1820, charting the fall of Albion, and indeed all enlightened civilization. In the final room, the books pages, laid out in a long glass case, lead the Tate visitors back to the outside world. But the last work we see, by the door, is an impression of The Ancient of Days (originally the 1794 frontispiece for Europe) that Blake was coloring just before his death in 1827. This bearded proto-Newton measuring the universe is the fiery, crouching opposite of the dancing youth of Albion Day. Blakes art is full of motionverses spiral across the page, wraiths swirl and specters stoop, heroes and seekers stretch their arms high, children caper and monsters prowl, lightning crackles and flames blaze upward. Even in The Ancient of Days a winda breath of elemental lifesweeps the white beard and hair of the sage across the blood-red sun. Reason, Blake tells us, will always try to control imagination, but in his own glorious work there is no doubt which wins.

William Blake is on view at the Tate through February 2, 2020.

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'To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit': Blake's Visionary Imagination - The New York Review of Books

The Great Flood and What It Tells Us – The Epoch Times

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Perhaps no mythif myth it beis more relevant today than the myth of the Great Flood that nearly destroyed humanity at some unknown point in the past.

We colloquially use the term myth, of course, to refer to things that never happened in an historical sense, though in the case of the Flood, there is some doubt because it seems that virtually all cultures and races have some recollection of this event: the ancient Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese, Aboriginals, Andean, and many more. Indeed, the only culture that I am aware of that does not have a Flood myth is, ironically given its current location near tectonic plates, the Japanese.

The point is that the testimony of mankind from earliest times, and so nearer that point of origin, is more telling than scientists, usually for ideological reasons, trying to discredit the story.

The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal (668 B.C.627 B.C.) whose greatest achievement (according to himself) was the library at Nineveh, which was found and excavated in the 19thcentury, wrote that he made himself master of all types of writing, includingthe dark Akkadian language which is difficult to rightly use; and then he adds, I took my pleasure in reading stones inscribed before the flood.

This seems an astonishing remark and a highly credible one, too: He knew how to read the language before the Flood. Certainly, something of an extraordinary and catastrophic nature occurred which indelibly marked the memory of mankindso that even 2,700 years ago it was a source of awe and wonder to King Ashurbanipal.

And, incidentally, it was the discovery of this library that led to the recovery of the specific Babylonian Flood myth.

There are, then, various versions of this Flood story from across the world, which differ in all sorts of ways, but my favorite is the biblical one of Noah and his ark. It is instructive to compare it with the wonderfuland seemingly olderversion that was uncovered at Nineveh.

What is significant to me is what the popular theologian of the 20thcentury J.B. Phillips once termed the ring of truth. This idea is difficult to quantify, but it centers round the idea of plausibility. If we look at the Babylonian myth, for example, in Epic of Gilgamesh, the Great Flood ends with its hero, Utnapishtim, being rewarded by the gods with immortality.

The story with Noah ends quite differently, for there are some highly discordant notes. First, that he gets drunk, and as a result of it one of his sons, Ham, gets cursed; Noah does live a long time, but he, too, dies eventuallythere is no reprieve from death. The contrast, then, is that the Babylonian myth does end like a fairy story, whereas the biblical account seems to contain as most biblical stories doa kind of gritty realism that recalls something that actually happened. In the context of a worldwide flood killing virtually everybody, why recall the fact that somebody got drunk afterwards? Unless it actually happened, it appears inconsequential. So this mythical story is the one we should mine for meaning.

Why, then, is this story more relevant today than virtually any other myth? Two words might point to some sort of answer: Extinction Rebellion. As I write this now, London is being besieged by activists seeking to virtually shut the city down for a fortnight with protests. It claims to have a presence in 72 countries and some 200,000 supporters, including some well-known public figures. And its message is that unless we reverse climate change, billionsif not the whole planetwill die.

How we will die is almost certainly going to be the result of floods and flooding, as the ice caps melt and all that released water raises the sea level. Radical action is needed, they claim.

What is less understood by the population at large, however, is firstly that some of their extreme claims for this cataclysm arent actually founded in science itself. Which is ironical, since most scientists dont believe in the Great Flood, and some dont believe in the next one!

Second, the prime agents of this movement are possibly as much motivated by their anti-capitalist agenda, as they are by the impending disaster. Put simply, they want to overturn the governments of the world. Their Declaration of Rebellionstates that The wilful complicity displayed by our government has shattered meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favour of short-term gain and private profits. The rank and file may well not hold these anti-capitalist views, but the leaders do.

Setting these points aside, however, what else is important about this myth for today? The first thing, I think, is truly to realize what its historicity actually means for us now. The nature of the Great Flood and how it happened we cannot tell for certain now, but given its nearly universal acceptance by ancient cultures, that it happened and that most of humanity was wiped out I think we can be sure of.

The thing to understand here is its discontinuity and disruptive nature. Jesus exactly understood this: In those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand. (Matthew 24:3839). One day, its all bright and sunny, but the next is total devastation.

We in the West have gotten used to a philosophy from the Enlightenment, which preaches endless human progress and possibilities that nothing can or will stop. Today this is manifested in the Silicon Valley mindset whereby artificial intelligence (AI) is going to solve all our problems, and whatever problems we have here anyway, no need to fret as Elon Musk is going to help us all settle on Marsas if, of course, we wouldnt scramble that planet, too!

But suddenly, we understand, the idea of Great Flood and the fear of an upcoming flood upsets the status quo and changes all that. The myththe facts of the mythwarn us against such complacency, and warn us to walk with humility, not arrogance or hubris, before God or, if we arent monotheistic, the gods and invisible forces that are above us.

Secondly, we need to grasp that Extinction Rebellion and the science of the status quo are really two sides of the same coin, although they appear diametrically opposed. Whereas the latter can only conceive of an existence of plenty that runs on forever, in which science cures cancer, and people live to 150 years old, and so on, the former see that the whole world order needs changing and that this second flood cataclysm needs to be prevented.

The latter is hopelessly complacent and smug, the former desperate and earnest. How are they two-sides of the same coin? They are two sides of the same coin because at root they both embrace the same philosophy: The complacents think nothing and no one can interrupt their progress, whereas the rebels believe they have the power to prevent the second flood through their own political machinations first and foremost, and possibly with some science second (new greener technologies). In short, mankind is entirely able to control the situation; both are saying this, one passively, one actively.

It seems we will, at all costs, avoid thinking about the will of the gods, or God, if you prefer. Recently, Warren Buffetts friend Charlie Munger captured this sentiment exactly when he said: A great nation will, in due time, be ruined our turn is bound to come. But I dont like thinking about it too much. Yes, we dont like thinking about it too much.

The final thought, then, about the Great Flood that engulfed the world all that time ago is to ask, why? Humans didnt will it or want it, and only onewith his familyanticipated it. Why did God destroy the world? This, too, is a highly unpalatable thought.

In Genesis 6:5, we learn that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. My point here isnt to try to institute some facile moral crusade, but to ask, in the age of social media and mass communication on a scale barely conceived of in the past, how do human beings seem to you?

There are many, many people doing very good things to help others, but if one takes a snapshot of the world as it is, I think the word evil would appropriately describe it. As Pink Floyd commented on being down and out in their 70s album Dark Side of the Moon: Theres a lot of it about!

Why, as I write this, Turkey has just invaded Syria and attacked the Kurds; doubtless for its own good reasons, but the reality seems to be that the world is constantly throwing up aggressions of one sort or another, if not here, then there and elsewhere, too.

In some sense, the Flood myth captures for us now that sense thatas with that other great topic, Armageddonwe can be distracted from our own personal evil and divert all our attention onto the big cause that is the problem, which at the same time avoids our own responsibility for the state of the world.

For the myth of the Great Flood reminds us that we are not in control, and that there is a higher power, and we are answerable to it. Indeed, it seems as if freedom of the will is of a paramount importance in the spiritual cosmos beyond where we can legitimately probe. Noah warned the earth of what was coming, but they didnt believe himeating, drinking, and marrying were clearly much more enjoyable than considering the destiny of mankind. They freely chose to ignore the warnings, and then Noah entered the ark.

Where does this leave us? Is the warning from Extinction Rebellion and the pro-climate change scientists really a message from the gods or God, or is it a false prophecy? I dont know, but there is another great myth relevant here: Jonah preached to Nineveh and the city repented, and so God didnt destroy it. The hearts of the leaders and the people turned in a different direction from the evil they had been pursuing. If that were to happen, then perhaps a new and spiritual energy might turn the tide, and instead of some socialistic commune of oligarchs telling us what to do, we might all cooperate as free peoples for the common good. And that just might make the difference.

All biblical quotes are from the New American Standard version of the Bible.

James Sale is an English businessman whose company, Motivational Maps Ltd., operates in 14 countries. He is the author of over 40 books on management and education from major international publishers including Macmillan, Pearson, and Routledge. As a poet, he won First Prize in The Society of Classical Poets 2017 competition and recently spoke at the groups first symposium held at New Yorks Princeton Club.

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The Great Flood and What It Tells Us - The Epoch Times

How Africans held off German colonialists with spears and arrows for two years during the Maji Maji rebellion – Face2Face Africa

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A surprisingly powerful yet false narrative that supports white supremacy is that black people have never or rarely fought back against violent invasions by whites.

These claims of docility go far back to the pseudoscientific adventure of scientific racism of European enlightenment. Unfortunately, it is not hard to see black people parroting these talking points as did Kanye West in 2018.

The Maji Maji rebellion in the early 20th century should be one of the points of education for white and black people. The rebellion was a push back against German colonial rule in East Africa.

At the so-called Partitioning of Africa at the Berlin Conference in 1884, Europeans arrogated the right to divide sub-Saharan African lands among themselves.

African lands and resources were supposed to be the panacea to European economic and political problems. Great Britain, for instance at that time, had a growing deficit in the balance of trade.

The area of Tanganyika or modern-day Tanzania was entrusted to Germany. This was in addition to the areas that are now Rwanda and Burundi.

Immediately, the Germans set to work plundering. Over the course of their occupation, the Germans forced the locals to cultivate over 100,000 acres of sisal for European factories.

There were over two million coffee trees and over 200,000 rubber trees too. From East African lands, Germany profited immensely via the threat of their guns.

Tanganyika proved a successful commercial project for the Germans, thus, they felt they had to explore other crops to grow. They decided on cotton in 1905.

This was the immediate cause of the Maji Maji rebellion as tribesmen and women insisted they were not going to further kowtow to the Germans.

German commercial interests had hurt their way of life apart from dispossessing them of their lands. German colonisation also came with the undignified treatment of the locals.

The chief mastermind of German occupation in Africa, Karl Peters, was referred to by the locals in Tanganyika as Mikono wa Damu, meaning Man with Blood on his Hands.

Hence, fighting against an order to grow cotton was the proverbial last stand for the locals.

The locals, set in their faith, turned to a charismatic spiritualist, Kinjeketile Ngwale. People from different towns and tribes came together to fight the Germans, united by their hope of self-determination.

Ngwale, to help out the people of Tanganyika against the Germans, gave them holy water called maji ya uzima (water of life). The war gets its name from maji, Kiswahili for water.

The people believed the water made them invincible. Once applied to the body, the bullets from the enemy would drop off without harming them. Another legend says the water had the power to turn bullets into water.

There were, however, guidelines from Ngwale. The people were to wait for his signal for the uprising to start. However, they became too impatient and decided to revolt in their own way: uprooting cotton.

Powered by this weapon, the different tribes conducted attacks in various towns, burning houses and killing government officials and business people.

The Germans fought back with their guns but the sheer numbers of the locals overwhelmed the colonialists. For close to a year, the German authority in East Africa were not finding headway against the people of Tanganyika.

But this also gave a false basis of belief in the holy water the locals had secured from Ngwale. However, the war began to turn, it brought a realisation of the truth.

Gustaf Adolf von Guten, German East African governor, got a reinforcement of over 1,000 soldiers. A little beyond the first year of the war, the writing was on the wall.

By 1907, the people of Tanganyika had been defeated. Some of the different tribes that joined the rebellion coalition were actually pacified by the colonial authorities into laying down their arms.

They thought they had been fighting with spiritual help but the locals had been pushing back against the Germans all by their simple human selves and their spears.

A belief in something outside of themselves had spurred them on, anyway.

But it would seem this is a story of all Africans and people of African descent. Reclaiming our own is a matter of self-belief and the lessons of Maji Maji should serve us well.

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How Africans held off German colonialists with spears and arrows for two years during the Maji Maji rebellion - Face2Face Africa

The Eurozone Civil War Has Several Bay Of PIGS Moments – Seeking Alpha

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(Source: YouTube, caption and editing by the Author)

Stepping back from the action, one can discern a civil war breaking out in the Eurozone; as it marches on from a confederacy of nation states to one unified nation. The struggle is becoming much more bitter and impassioned. The ECB and Mario Draghi are playing much more than just cameo roles. As usual, in fighting the last war, the ECB is losing the next one. It does however understand that this funny thing called NIRP is the center of gravity of the conflict. Unfortunately, on the battlefield, the fog of war obscures the real threat of NIRP from view. All that the ECB sees is the finger of NIRP. It hasnt yet seen what the finger is pointing at, although this is becoming clearer through the fog.

(Source: Bloomberg, caption by the Author)

The last report noted the growing resistance, from a core of monetarist fanatics, to the MMT agenda in the Eurozone. It would appear that they have already had their Bay of Pigs moment. If these true believers had hoped that their spiritual homeland would come to their support, then they were sorely mistaken. The Central Bank of Central Banks aka the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has recently disabused and then abandoned them on the beach.

(Source: BIS, caption by the Author)

(Source: BIS, caption by the Author)

The BIS recently deployed its global resources to publish two significant reports in support of Unconventional Monetary Policy Tools (UMPT). The reports find that UMPT is justified and has worked. They also find that the risks from it are worthwhile and can be managed. Finally, the reports conclude that UMPT can only work effectively when supported by fiscal policy and structural reform. These final caveats are the perfect synthesis of UMPT thesis into MMT.

The symbolism of the adoption of the acronym UMPT is also a sublime support of and nudge toward MMT. In Mr Markets and global Joe Publics eyes and minds, the two acronyms will become synonymous and interchangeable over time. It is notable that the BIS authors of this black propaganda are from the Fed and the ECB. The conspiracy can therefore be seen as global, and the Fed will get there (to NIRP and MMT that is) in the end also. The BIS has been captured.

With the global forces of central banking allied against them, the European monetarist dissenters will be overwhelmed. Christine Lagarde can avail herself of the timely reinforcement by the BIS and repel the invaders on the beaches of the Eurozone. She can also rely upon the sustained support of her old firm. Her replacement at the IMF was swift to join the reinforcement exercise; opining that the global economy now faces synchronized slowdown in the major economies that drive it.

It was also noticeable that the IMF blames China and not its principal founding members, from Europe and North America, for the trade frictions that have triggered the slowdown. The symmetry in the blame attributing, resonates strongly with BISs authors of the MMT supporting documents. The Old Order is pulling together on this one.

Stepping back, one wonders if the BIS and IMF, along with Lagarde, had not been planning this synchronized verbal intervention all along. If the Eurozones Crypto-Monetarists are now in trouble, then China is really in for it!

To sharpen the sense of threat, in order to justify its continued monetary stimulus, the ECBs staffers focused attention on the banking sector, with the results of their latest Sensitivity Analysis of Liquidity Risk. According to the central bank, half of the regions banks would fail in the event of another financial crisis. This would be triggered by their loss of access to commercial funding.

Former ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet tried to broker peace negotiations between the warring internal factions, with some talk of reconciliation. He sees the harm being done to the ECBs image and credible commitment as being more important than who is right and wrong about NIRP and QE.

(Source: ECB, caption by the Author)

ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos is feeling conciliatory. He created some common ground for discussion and reconciliation; with his view that although inflation expectations are not de-anchoring, there is an elevated risk that they might do. He sees evidence of the negative externality impacts of further easing. He also states that there is no agreement to continue easing automatically at this point in time. His tactics allow his Dovish faction to pause and consolidate their gains, whilst the data and the global environment create opportunities for them to advance further in the future.

Governing Council member Pablo Hernandez de Cos is less conciliatory than his fellow Spaniard. This probably reflects the fact that Spain has an economy that is deteriorating swiftly. For him, the rebels interpretation of the events of the last Governing Council meeting amounts to a total misrepresentation. He sees no sign that the ECB has reached the reversal rate, where monetary policy easing is doing more harm than good.

Rather more ominously, de Cos looks beyond the death of the banking system from further NIRP. He notes that the banks are losing their utility and importance, in the struggle to transmit monetary policy from the ECB to the real Eurozone economy. Whilst lamenting this fact, from a monetary policy perspective, he sees no reason or need to save them, however. Evidently, the banks will join the abandoned monetarist rebels on the beach if de Cos has his way.

Rehnfeld has gone into crisis fire-fighting mode. The monetarist rebels placed a leak with the FT, which alleges that Draghi went rogue at the last Governing Council meeting. An investigation, should it occur, which proves the allegations of a breach in protocols and procedures would be the equivalent of impeachment for Draghi. It would also put the whole monetary policy making process on trial and destroy the ECBs credibility and independence. It is no wonder that Peter Praet is so concerned.

Rehnfeld did not however unequivocally deny the allegations; he simply said that they are greatly exaggerated. He has made it clear that Lagardes first order of business is to clear the mess up. It is now her mess and she must take ownership of it. Should she not do so, Rehnfeld may then take further steps to make her own it. He backs Lagarde to bring everyone together again. Of the contentious issue of Draghis alleged rogue policy making, he carefully says that it is in general better to be safe than sorry. This axiom covers his own support for Draghis package of measures. It does not however cover the decision making process that forced it through. The question is at what price to her own agenda Lagarde is now willing to compromise with the rebels. There is no way that she can simply pick up things where Draghi left off and blindly carry on with his package of easing measures.

(Source: UPI, caption and editing by the Author)

Rehnfelds equivocation is a smoking gun. The monetarist rebels have the initiative, despite being abandoned by the BIS and IMF. The problem is however, that their initiative ultimately destroys the ECB if they take it to its conclusion. It will be interesting to see just how pathologically motivated they are. It is more likely that they are just raising the stakes in order to get greater concessions. They will certainly have got Lagardes attention. The last thing she wants is an investigation of the ECB under Draghi, from which she will be the victim of the halo. Further NIRP and QE therefore look like being stalled and watered down. Draghis stimulus package is now stillborn and monetary policy is currently ineffective. The economic situation in the Eurozone will therefore need to deteriorate, in order to give Lagarde the initiative to press ahead with Draghis package again.

(Account by the ECB, caption by George Orwell)

The release of what was semantically purported to be the minutes of the last Governing Council meeting only added to the controversy. The Account refers very clearly to the significance of Executive Board member Benoit Coeure and Chief Economist Philip Lane. Their significance is clear in leading not only the agenda of the meeting but also the summary of discussions that are officially transcribed as the Account. In effect, one is reading the version of the meeting that Draghi chaired and Coeure and Lane then managed and recorded. It is an Account of a gang of three.

The Account states very clearly that

all members agreed that a further easing of the monetary policy stance was warranted to support the return to sustained convergence to the Governing Councils inflation aim.

Things then start to slip in writing. Things get recorded as generic generalizations. For example:

Members expressed broad agreement with most of the monetary policy proposals made by Mr Lane in his introduction as part of a comprehensive package.

And then, things slip a little further with:

Most members saw a package, i.e. a combination of instruments with significant complementarities and synergies, on the whole as the appropriate approach in a situation where individual policy measures were facing some limitations and the impact of each measure on its own was uncertain and difficult to assess.

Slippage in relation to dissent is recorded thus:

At the same time, a number of reservations were expressed about individual elements of the proposed policy package. Although the rationale for a comprehensive package was widely shared, members assessed the case for specific elements differently, with some measures seen as substitutes rather than complements, giving rise to trade-offs between elements of the package, for instance between the liquidity-providing measures and the proposed two-tier system.

And so-on and so-forth in this general recollection, which emphasizes agreement and de-emphasizes argument.

The real issue in relation to Draghi allegedly going rogue was recorded thus:

In summary, the President concluded that all members agreed on the need to act in response to the continued shortfall of inflation with respect to the Governing Councils aim and that a clear majority of members supported the proposed measures, which complemented and reinforced one another, as a powerful package to provide substantial monetary stimulus, ensuring very favourable financial conditions and supporting the euro area economic expansion, the ongoing build-up of domestic price pressures and the sustained convergence of inflation to the Governing Councils medium-term inflation aim. Accordingly, the Governing Council reiterated the need for a highly accommodative stance of monetary policy for a prolonged period of time and that it continued to stand ready to adjust all of its instruments, as appropriate, to ensure that inflation moved towards its aim in a sustained manner, in line with its commitment to symmetry.

Draghi, Lane, and Coeure have not lied. They have simply not stated the objective truth. In a classic case of Behavioral Economics, they have come up with totally different subjective answers to the questions that the dissenters asked. Said answers confirm the bias that the gang of three had, before going into the meeting to allegedly debate a consensus policy response. The lacking consensus policy response then became a simple majority vote. What they have written up is their subjective Account of what transpired.

Official minutes from the Committee that advises the Governing Council on monetary policy must have been recorded by a secretary. This committee is where the alleged dissenting advice originated. The minutes must also have been approved by all members present. They exist somewhere, unless they have been deleted. There is a gap, between the Account and these Monetary Policy Advisory Committee minutes, that allows those with an agenda of their own room to advance it. As Churchill noted, history is kind to those who write it.

One may call this Account a Noble Lie. The monetarist insurgents have the burden of proving that the Noble Lie is deliberate perjury. The onus is on them to provide evidence, audible and/or visual, to prove that the Account is a deliberate fabrication rather than a generalization of a majority decision making process. They could start by asking for the minutes of the committee that advises the Governing Council on monetary policy to be made public, since they allege that this committee said no to more QE. Thus far, there is no whistle-blower only a leak to the FT. If they cannot do this, then everything they say is hearsay. The damage to the ECB has been done however. There may be legal grounds for an investigation, since its own corporate governance structure and policies have not been followed.

Nobody will ever believe the Account of any ECB Governing Council meeting from this point on-wards until the matter is fully addressed. The negative impact on guidance and hence monetary policy is significant.

Sabine Lautenschlaegers resignation from the Executive Board is clearly not just in relation to the monetary policy decision of the Governing Council. She is more corporate governance Martyr than monetary policy Resignator.

(Source: Bloomberg, caption and editing by the Author)

Lautenschlaeger is recording her own vote of no confidence in the ECBs corporate governance structure. The inference is that Mario Draghi has egregiously suborned the institution to his own personal monetary policy agenda. This implied accusation is massive.

Since the ECBs credibility is indelibly tarnished, only a root-trunk-branch-and-leaf review and recommendations can fully restore the faith. Official minutes rather than an Account would be good for starters. Publicly available recordings and stenographer transcripts may be needed at all ECB meetings from now on. The ECB appears to be an irrational actor that has been led by an irrational leader. The checks and balances must be seen again and be seen to be working. An irrational (even if well-intentioned) central bank is a direct threat to the stability and unity of the Eurozone and its currency.

The ECB is a broken institution that is now at risk of failing just when the Eurozone needs a strong cohesive central bank.

If Lagarde kicks this can of worms under the carpet, her own credibility and legitimacy will suffer. She already has previous form with Bernard Tapie, so she cant afford to be seen as anything other than straight by the book. The acquittal of Tapie in July, had given her appointment some timely breathing space which has now been abruptly terminated. Conspiracy theorists will claim that the acquittal had something to do with her ECB candidacy. In these current times of deceit, such theories will find fertile ground in the imagination.

The actions of Lagardes fellow countryman Francois Villeroy de Galhau suggest that French patriotism takes precedence over corporate governance from his perspective. Since he was resistant to more QE, at the last Governing Council meeting, he believes that he is the right man to be a spokesman for the monetarist rebels. Putting France before monetarism will not however endear him to the rebels. Aux contraire, he will infuriate them and widen the Franco-German division.

Opining rather too swiftly and much too subjectively, Villeroy said that the ECB has already turned the page on this corporate governance faux pas and is continuing to operate as if nothing is wrong. French credibility is therefore irreparably tarnished in relation to (1) credible commitment to independent central banking, (2) objective monetary policy making and (3) corporate governance best practice. The repercussions and unintended consequences, from this litany of French decline and fall, will come back to haunt the ECB and the Eurozone in due course.

A truly independent individual will be needed to perform this authors suggested ECB review. This person simply does not exist in the Eurozone today in these times of Populism. All the big names are compromised by their national agendas, whatever they may be. This governance issue will extend to undermining the ECBs credibility as an institution. Its ability to respond and the power of its monetary policy responses have been undermined and diminished, respectively. This is something that a central bank does not need when it is faced with a recession and trade wars.

(Source ECB: caption and editing by the Author)

Despite the controversy that he has caused, Mario Draghi remains as defiant and inflammatory as ever. His behavior inflames the emotive old passions and hatreds, which lie at the core of the current schism developing within the Eurozone. The Jesuits recently inducted him into their pantheon of greats, whilst the Northern European Reformists looked on askance. His humble acceptance speech conflated the European Enlightenment tryptic of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity with his own modus operandi of Policymaking, Responsibility and Uncertainty. The discourse of this MO proselytized the case for MMT, by calling for a Eurozone crusade in the name of the combined religions of monetary and fiscal policy. He is going out swinging, apparently without a care for whom he may take down with him.

A successful MMT campaign will move the Eurozone from its current Federal status to a Unitary Nation State. One should therefore equate the current political skirmish in the Eurozone with the Civil War between the Confederates and Unionists in North America. NIRP equates with the Abolishment of Slavery through its current destruction of usury. Just to be clear, a victory for the Union will make everyone a slave of the state however.

(Source: ECB, caption by the Author)

Draghi was also careful to say thank you to the BIS for swiftly coming to his support. He also thanked the European Courts for giving him legal precedent to do QE.

(Source: ECB, caption by the Author)

Having legally derived his legitimacy, he then went on to conclude that this devolved his political legitimacy; to be a dependent civil servant, rather than an independent central banker. He failed to observe that this political legitimacy is now under threat all over the Eurozone from Populists. He also failed to note that the ECB is a significant driver of the reaction by the Populists.

After presenting himself like Uriah Heep, as a humble civil servant, Draghi promoted the virility of his strategy by dispensing with the fig leaf of central bank independence. For him, independence has only been a badge, to be flashed when it was useful to help promote the hijacking of corporate governance that he thinks he has successfully pulled off. MMT is dependent upon the symbiosis of fiscal and monetary policy. Draghis obituary may note that he did whatever it took for MMT; his last act being the conflation of monetary and fiscal policy with the corresponding loss of central bank independence.

In summation, Draghis acceptance speech resembled the case for the defense against the monetarist plaintiffs in a future a legal drama. It may yet come to that, despite French attempts to sweep him under the carpet into posterity.

(Source: New York Times, caption by the Author)

So much for Draghis legacy then. The real reminder of how fragile his hopes are, for deeper fiscal integration to bend QE bond buying rules, came from Germany. At the current pace of ECB bond buying, the central bank has one more year left of German bond buying before it cant buy any more. As the Germany economy weakens, the need to buy more Bunds increases. Unfortunately, since buying limits are based on the size of a countrys GDP, the potential QE Bund buying declines as the German economy weakens.

A situation calling for more QE therefore is faced with the real prospects of less QE and then no QE at all. If the situation is bad for Germany, it is fatal for Eurozone nations with larger fiscal deficits and weak growth. The ECB is already maxed-out on how much it can buy of these nations debts. In effect, the Capital Key bomb for them has already exploded and they are dying in slow motion. This ticking Capital Key bomb thus gets louder by the day; as does the panic for those who wish to change it.

For the likes of Germany, the fuse on the bomb needs to be lengthened, by slowing the QE buying rate, if it cannot be changed by writing new Capital Key rules. Currently, the Germans do not wish to have new rules written.

For those nations who are already dead, only new rules can resurrect them back to life. If there are no new rules forthcoming, then these nations will simply break them; and then live in Eurozone and IMF debt purgatory, until another sovereign debt crisis enforces a resolution. One could say that they are already there. As we shall see later, the Italians have an axe to grind in this regard.

(Source: Amazon, caption by the Author)

Draghis legacy thus lies in the balance. Lagardes fate is tied to his legacy, unless she can change the dynamic. At least one of her opponents has thrown her a line.

After much initial acclaim, monetarist rebel-rouser Robert Holzmann has turned out to be a little disappointing. The initial disappointment should not however detract from admiration of his negotiating skills and cunning. Conciliation and reconciliation are ostensibly on his agenda. But they come at a price.

Whilst slating Draghi and his policy for being wrong, Holzmann extended the olive branch of peace to Lagarde. The offer came with a threat, in the reminder that there are other Governing Council members who also feel the same way as he does. This olive branch included glowing praise of her political skills in balancing all the conflicting views at the IMF. He then offered a compromise of adopting a temporary 1.5% inflation target. This would avert further massive easing, but still leave some room for a little more; since Eurozone inflation is still well below 1.5% and still falling. In relation to the ECBs governance failure, he positively opined that I (Holzmann) expect that Lagarde will start a process in the ECB that more strongly integrates national central banks.

Ostensibly, all Lagarde has to do now therefore is throw Draghi under the bus and meet Holzmann halfway on the inflation target and the governance issues. In order to preserve her reputation and avoid a deeper scrutiny of the governance failure, this is a generous offer. It does however make her Holzmanns sock-puppet and captive; positions that she may not wish to assume.

As the Holy War raged at the ECB level, secular Eurozone finance ministers opened a second front at the political level. Nations with room to fiscally stimulate i.e. Germany and Holland were implored to do so by those who lack said room. If these calls are not reciprocated in good faith with alacrity, then those without said room will then move to break Stability Pact limits and threaten the stability of the Eurozone. This next stage would then be conflict escalation.

The Germans and the Dutch could argue by presenting their own supporting evidence that the escalation has already begun. This evidential escalation is however criminal. EU auditors have recently found that 4 billion Euros of central budget disbursement was misappropriated and misaccounted for at the national level. The prospect of fraudulent fiscal practice to avoid Stability Pact rules is therefore real and ongoing.

Fortunately, all involved in the current budget skirmish were under strict instructions not to escalate yet. At the eleventh hour, therefore, a compromise in support of a notional common budget was made. This agreement is symbolic and without teeth. It lacks any practical reference to size and also how the common funds will be spent. Escalation of the crisis will therefore be needed for these important issues to be agreed upon. All those concerned can now go away and start escalating, in order to force further debate and agreement . or not!

Once again, crisis is the only way of getting peoples attention and getting things done in Europe. The Eurozone economy therefore has to be sacrificed for this alleged greater good in the long run.

The Spanish were the first to start the escalation process post-summit. This probably reflects the fact that their economy is in free-fall. It should also be remembered that Spain currently has an acting government only. Any escalation should therefore be put into the context of this weak political situation. The acting government tried to escalate by stealth. GDP expectations were lowered slightly for this year and slightly more for next year. Having caused no alarm there, the acting government then tried to sneak in the escalation. The fiscal deficit as a percentage of GDP was radically raised for 2020, by much more than the GDP rate was lowered. Clearly, the acting government intends to spend more. The big question is will the EU allow this, given that Spain is already pushing fiscal spending limits? A draft plan of this intended sneaky increase in spending was also submitted to the EU. Spain and Mr Market await the EUs response.

(Source: Bloomberg, caption by the Author)

Italys attempts at escalation were as equally comedic as Spains. Whilst it has a government of sorts, the Italian coalition couldnt agree on the contents of the draft budget that it submitted to the EU. The draft is fiscally deficit prone; with a combination of a cancelled VAT hike, tax cuts for the workers (voters!) and infrastructure spending. All elements cover the voter bases of the coalition parties which cannot agree in principle on it.

(Source: theconversation, caption by FIFA)

The amusement at Italys comedic attempts at escalation soon turned into shrieks of derision and cries of foul play. Italian Paolo Gentiloni rotates off the bench onto the field to play as EU Commissioner on economics. Some would say that he is already in an offside position. Rather than play offside, however, he simply wishes to move the linesmen so that he appears onside. His first call is for a redefinition of fiscal rules. This should then be followed by a fiscal expansion in all those who have room. Presumably, those who suddenly find that they have room from the redefinition will not be slow shooting.

Slovakia also began the escalation process. Interestingly, this escalation will see the country abandoning its commitment to balanced budgets. Germany should take note. A fellow Black Zero traveler is getting off the bus. Slovakia is sending the message that Black Zero is over. This small Eurozone nation will soon be held up, as the precedent that Germany should be following, by those with fiscal stimulus intentions in mind.

(Source: the Author)

The last report noted Mario Draghis heavy reliance upon the small Eurozone nations to get his package the majority vote it needed in the Governing Council. The obvious quid pro quo is that the ECB makes its balance sheet available to keep deficit costs manageable for these nations. Blurring this line on deficit financing thus fulfills the prophecy of MMT in the Eurozone. The escalation should thus be understood as the road to MMT. This blurring also fulfills Draghis belief stated earlier, that he was a humble civil servant.

(Source: isutrecht, editing by the Author)

It is clear that the Dutch expect things to escalate. It is also clear that they think that Christine Lagarde will just be Draghi in designer drag for monetary policy. They have therefore begun preparing to resist the fallout from more QE, NIRP and Capital Key rule bending/breaking. Their first preparations are to plug the dikes in the Dutch banking system from bursting with ECB liquidity flooding. The Dutch central bank hopes to plug the first systemic leak by raising capital adequacy requirements against mortgage assets.

Dutch Governing Council member Klaas Knot also put Lagarde on notice that there will be no sweeping under the carpet of the dissent from the last meeting. Knot had been criticized by former ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet. Praet would only say that Knots public dissent was inappropriate, rather than illegal or even inaccurate.

Evidently, Praet does not wish to risk perjuring himself by upholding an egregious corporate governance failure of the ECB President; that was allowed by the custodians of governance (ex-Sabine Lautenschlaeger) best practice on the Executive Board.

Doing a Draghi, Knot turned the outgoing Presidents mendacity on itself; by concluding that there is in fact a unanimous ECB consensus to do a full monetary policy framework review. Framing the corporate governance issue, Knot opined that the way that a Governing Council decision is communicated should be an extension of the way that decision was made. He is now confidently positioned for a conversation that will take place under Ms. Lagarde. It is advisable for her not to disappoint him.

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The Eurozone Civil War Has Several Bay Of PIGS Moments - Seeking Alpha

Meditation is a potent stress reliever and more – CapeGazette.com

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Q. Does meditating have any real health benefits?

Meditation definitely reduces stress. And too much stress is bad for your health.

There is some research that indicates meditation may help with: allergies, anxiety, asthma, binge eating, cancer, depression, fatigue, heart disease, high blood pressure, pain, sleep difficulties and substance abuse.

I started meditating in 1976, when Dr. Herbert Benson published his book, The Relaxation Response. The techniques he advocated work. In the years since, I've found that, when I forget to meditate, I get a stress buildup. As soon as I meditate, I feel better. And the effects of the meditation carry through the day.

I studied Zen Buddhist meditation, which involves many of the same techniques that Dr. Benson wrote about. Zen meditation is more structured and its purpose is to bring spiritual enlightenment, not just relaxation.

Is there a difference between meditation and prayer? Many sources define prayer as a form of meditation. There are similarities between the two. I would explain it this way: it's possible for an atheist to meditate.

Meditation is classified as a mind-body practice in complementary and alternative medicine. Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years.There are many types of meditation. Most of them originated in ancient spiritual traditions.

How does it work?

If you pay close attention to your mind, you'll find that it has a mind of its own. All day long, the mind brings up thoughts you didn't ask for. Much of your thinking is as involuntary as breathing or circulation. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff your mind regurgitates is negative.

I'm such a failure ... When am I gonna catch a break? ... Everyone is against me ... What's the point of anything? Etc., etc., etc.

Where do these thoughts come from? Years of experiences and the collective consciousness of humankind. They're all stored away just waiting to show their ugly faces. They usually surface when your body/mind is under a lot of stress. When you meditate, you clear away this stress-intensifying garbage.

The primary benefits of meditation are immediate relaxation and a better understanding of how your body, mind and spirit work together so you can handle stressful situations. Over time, you will gain greater peace for yourself and those around you.

I have learned a lot from studying Zen and Eckhart Tolle, a German philosopher who advocates many of the teachings of Zen. In Tolle's book, The Power of Now, he explains that meditation can help you stay in the moment, which is a potent stress-reliever.

The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be, Tolle writes.

Past and future are mental constructs. If you dwell upon the past, you can fall into the abyss of guilt, regret, resentment, and many other negative feelings. If you concentrate on the future, you can build up overwhelming obstacles that will make you fearful.

Tolle points out that we are all capable of dealing with the present moment, but no one can rectify imagined mistakes of the past or the projected challenges of a future. Neither the past nor the future exists. Accepting this reality gives you an amazing high.

[More about meditation in our next column.]

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Meditation is a potent stress reliever and more - CapeGazette.com

Bezos says space industry stalwarts will help Blue Origin build moon lander – Spaceflight Now

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Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, speaks Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington. Credit: Stephen Clark/Spaceflight Now

Blue Origin has partnered with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build elements of the companys human-rated lunar lander, and Draper will lead development of the landers avionics and guidance systems, with an aim to be ready to land a crew on the moon by 2024, company founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday.

In the first major update on the companys lander program since May, Bezos said Blue Origin has assembled a national team of aerospace contractors to develop, build and fly the three-stage spacecraft, which is based on Blue Origins previous work on the Blue Moon landing system.

Blue Origin is the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin is building the ascent stage, Northrop Grumman is building the transfer element and Draper is doing the GNC (guidance, navigation and control), Bezos said Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress in Washington. We could not ask for better partners. Blue Origin, in addition to being the prime, is going to build the descent element.

Blue Origin is competing for a NASA contract to develop a crewed lunar lander, or Human Landing System, for the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the surface of the moon by the end of 2024.

During his presentation Tuesday, Bezos emphasized that bold ambitions in space require the support of an industry, and not individual companies.

This is a national team for a national priority, said Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon and Blue Origin. I could not be more excited to be doing it with these partners. This is the kind of thing thats so ambitious that it needs to be done with partners. This is the only way to get back to the moon fast, and this time were not going back to the moon to visit, were going back to the moon to stay.

The three-element landers descent stage will be powered by Blue Origins throttleable BE-7 engine, which burns super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants. The Northrop Grumman-made transfer vehicle will also use the BE-7 engine, Bezos said.

While Blue Origin did not confirm plans to use NASAs planned Gateway station in lunar orbit, the inclusion of a transfer module indicates the company intends to use the the mini-space station as a staging base for landing missions. Under NASAs approach, astronauts will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida inside an Orion crew capsule on top of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, then dock with the Gateway and board their moon lander.

The transfer module would guide the lander from the Gateways high lunar orbit closer to the moon, where the landing module will begin a powered descent to the surface.

Bezos did not discuss the propulsion system for the reusable ascent module, made by Lockheed Martin, where astronauts will ride during the lunar landing and the launch off of the moon. Lockheed Martin will leads crewed flight operations and training for the lander, and a company spokesperson said the ascent module will incorporate technology Lockheed Martin has developed for the Orion crew capsule.

The reusable ascent module element will be capable of multiple trips to and from the moon.

Lockheed Martin has been honored to help NASA explore space for more than 50 years, providing deep space robotic missions, planetary landers, space shuttle heritage and the Orion exploration spacecraft,said Rick Ambrose, executive vice president for Lockheed Martins space business.We value Blue Origins thoughtful approach to developing human-rated flight systems, and are thrilled to be part of a national team with this mix of innovation and experience. We look forward to safely and sustainably returning our nation to the surface of the moon by 2024.

Lockheed Martin is, as far as I know, the only company that actually lands on the surface of Mars, Bezos said. They are unbelievably competent in space. They are experts in life support systems, so to have their expertise on the ascent element is a really big deal.

Northrop Grumman, through its predecessorGrumman Aircraft Engineering Corp., built the Apollo lunar module that performed six successful landings on the moon with astronauts from 1969 through 1972.

We are one step closer to meeting NASAs goal to get the first American woman and the next American man to the surface of the moon by 2024, said Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grummans space systems division. This team brings the best technical and program talent together in the industry to deliver on NASAs ambitious timeline.

Draper is doing the guidance and control, an incredibly complex job for landing on the moon, especially when you want to do a precision landing. Of course, they did that for the original Apollo program way back, but today it will be done in a completely new way, Bezos said.

The Draper guidance system will use computer vision to perform precision landings on the moon using landmarks for navigation, according to Bezos.

When the nation needs precision guidance, it calls on Draper,said Kaigham Gabriel, president and CEO of Draper. We guided Apollo to the moon and back nearly 50 years ago. Were ready to do it again with the Blue Origin team for Artemis.

Bezos also updated test achievements on the new BE-7 engine destined to fly on the lunar lander. The engine, which produces up to 10,000 pounds of thrust, has logged 13 minutes of run time since June, with a longest continuing firing of three minutes.

NASAs deadline for industry proposals for the Human Landing System is Nov. 1. The landers will be developed, owned and operated commercially. NASA plans to select up to four companies for study contracts late this year or in early 2020, then down-select to two contractor teams in late 2020 to proceed with full development of a human-rated lander. Agency officials will later decide which of the two development teams will attempt the first landing in 2024, followed by a second landing mission in 2025.

In the interest of rapid development, NASA has also relaxed requirements for the early human-rated lunar landers to be reusable. NASA eventually wants to reuse landers on missions ferrying astronauts between the moons surface and the Gateway space station in lunar orbit, where the spacecraft could be refueled for multiple landings.

NASA is not planning to conduct an unpiloted demonstration of the lander without astronauts on-board before committing a human crew to a descent to the moon, and the agency will not require the initial set of commercial landers to be based at the Gateway.

NASA has limited the time for companies to submit their proposals to one month.

Thirty days, said Marshall Smith, NASAs director of human lunar exploration programs, during a presentation to a NASA Academies advisory board last month. We know its crazy, but so is 2024, I suppose. So were all working very fast.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

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Bezos says space industry stalwarts will help Blue Origin build moon lander - Spaceflight Now

Army astronaut to military medical students: You will solve the health issues of extended space flight – ArmyTimes.com

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Army Col. Drew Morgans list of accomplishments is extensive: graduate of West Point and member of the schools title-winning parachute team; ER doctor; battalion surgeon for 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne), where he maintained his flight, dive and airborne qualifications; deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa; husband; father ... and NASA astronaut currently aboard the International Space Station.

Yet Morgan, who was hurtling through space at 17,150 miles per hour Wednesday and completed a harrowing 7-hour space walk earlier this month, choked up at the beginning of a live link with students from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Maryland, where he is an alumnus.

Its such an honor to be with you. I have tears in my eyes, Morgan said, holding up a pennant bearing the USUHS logo. The Uniformed Services University is a center of excellence for military medicine, and Im so proud to be a part of your team.

Morgan has been in space since July 20, when he, Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano blasted off from Kazakhstan in a Soyuz MS spacecraft. Like all astronauts on the ISS, Morgan is a jack-of-all-trades, conducting spacewalks, working on robotics, repairing the stations systems and managing research.

But on Wednesday, he took time out to discuss what its like to be in space with soon-to-be military physicians.

Commissioned in 1998, Morgans spent several tours overseas, deploying with special operations forces to Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries. On those deployments, he used his skills as an emergency medical doctor to set bones, stitch wounds and save lives. In space, however, he uses his hands to install refrigerator-sized batteries on the outside of the space station, run experiments and occasionally deals with bumps, bruises and other minor ailments that affect astronauts.

An additional duty is crew medical officer, so when there is a physician on board, obviously Im a natural choice for that," he said.

When hes not conducting long space walks, Morgan largely is doing research, with more than 300 experiments on the ISS, including biological and human studies that have a goal of facilitating medical breakthroughs and understanding the effects of long-duration space travel.

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This past summer, the ISS acquired a biological 3D printer a BioFabrication Facility, or BFF to print human tissue from adult human cells and tissue-derived proteins, with an aim to eventual fabricate complex tissues, like organs, in space where gravity isnt a factor in supporting tissue shapes.

He and his fellow space travelers also are working on experiments using novel protein crystals that show potential for developing cancer medications and medications to fight Alzheimers and Parkinsons, he said.

Theres a lot of relevance for military medicine, Morgan told the students. When we grow tissues in culture on Earth we are required to use a scaffold. With [this] we are able to potentially grow structures we wouldnt be able to do on earth, it has some real potential and applications.

In earlier interviews, Morgan said his interest in space began as a child in Texas, where he saw the space shuttle fly overhead. In fourth grade, he was required to write a letter to a famous Texan; he chose Apollo astronaut Alan Bean, who actually wrote him back, and the seed was planted.

On Wednesday, he told the military medical students he wanted first to be a soldier. Then, while at the U.S. Military Academy, he decided to become a doctor. Finally, after serving with and caring for soldiers, he revisited his childhood dream to become an astronaut. He began training for his current flight since 2013.

Many of the experiments Morgan works on aboard the ISS focus on developing technologies and solutions for longer space missions, including NASAs Artemis program to put the first woman and another man on the Moon by 2024, as well as extended exploration of the lunar surface and eventually, sending astronauts to Mars.

Morgan said it would be doctors in this room who will help guide the medical research and health care needed to care for those future space travelers.

The room you are sitting in is filled with people who are going to help us tackle some of these problems of how we deal with surgical emergencies far away. Is this something well do robotically with remote guidance or is this something that well have a crew member trained ... so they could comfortably perform a surgical operation? I dont know that we know how we are going to deal with that yet, he said.

Since arriving at the ISS, Morgan has conducted three spacewalks, including one on Oct. 6 with fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch, during which he lost some material on the palm of his glove a potential threat to his protective space suits integrity. His tether became snarled on the ISS as he returned after a long day to the airlock, and the pair installed a battery that later was found to be broken.

Morgan said he relies heavily on his special operations training, first during his NASA training, and now, when potentially life-threatening problems occur.

Out-of-the-box thinking is one of the hallmarks of special operations always being the thought leader, on the cutting edge of how to solve problems under ambiguous circumstances with limited resources, Morgan said. [In Special Forces training], humans are more important than hardware. The emphasis is put on our people and developing them. Its something NASA does well and it was part of my operational skill set.

In the audience on Wednesday were two of Morgans former Army medics, Army 2nd Lt. Steve Radloff and Army Master Sgt. Daniel Morissette. Radloff is a 4th year medical student at USUHS; Morissette is in the schools Enlisted to Medical Degree Preparatory Program, hoping attend USUHS next year.

Radloff asked what lessons Morgan learned on crisis management on board the ISS, but Morgan was so excited to hear from him that he forgot the question.

You are some of the finest examples of medical professionals I have ever encountered," he said to his former medics. The greatest honor of my life was serving alongside you guys and many medics just like you. It warms my heart to see you so successful there.

Morissette later said Morgans heartfelt reply to Radloff was just one example of his humility.

Hes always been supportive of me, of what I was trying to achieve, regardless of what he had going on. When I was applying for this program, he was in the midst of his train-up for his launch, and he made time [to help me], Morissette said.

With his wife, Stacey, and four children at home, Morgan has, and will, miss many events while in space: anniversaries, sports games, school achievements, holidays. On Wednesday, Navy Ensign Ted Johnson reminded him he also will miss the Army-Navy football game on Dec. 14.

Good afternoon, Col. Morgan, my name is Ensign Ted Johnson, USU Class of 22, Naval Academy Class of 18, Go Navy, Beat Army, Johnson said.

Not likely, Morgan retorted.

Morgan and Parmitano are scheduled to make five spacewalks in November to repair the ISSs Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, cosmic-ray detector. All space walks can be watched live on NASA TV.

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Army astronaut to military medical students: You will solve the health issues of extended space flight - ArmyTimes.com

Virgin Galactic is set to trade on the NYSE on Monday as the first space tourism stock – CNBC

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VSS Unity First Powered Flight, April 5, 2018

Virgin Galactic

Private space tourism is about to go public.

Shareholders approved Virgin Galactic's merger with one of Chamath Palihapitiya's ventures on Wednesday, according to SEC filings, setting up the space tourism company to list directly on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Virgin Galactic will become the first human spaceflight company to trade on public markets.

The merger was announced in July, with Palihapitiya's Social Capital Hedosophia taking a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic. The merger gives the combined company a valuation of $1.5 billion, with Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson retaining a 51% controlling stake.

Palihapitiya's company already trades on the NYSE, under the ticker IPOA. The filing said the company expects the merger with Virgin to close on Friday. After the closing, the shares will trade under the ticker symbol SPCE at the NYSE on Monday.

Branson hinted to CNBC in an interview last week that Virgin Galactic's public debut was coming soon. "It's not long now," he said during the company's unveiling of its spacewear collection with Under Armour.

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft can carry six passengers and two pilots to the edge of space. The spaceship is dropped from a jet-powered aircraft and fires a rocket motor, reaching over three times the speed of sound as it climbs though Earth's atmosphere. The spacecraft and its passengers then float weightless for a few minutes, before gliding back down to land on Earth much like a traditional aircraft.

A ticket for a Virgin Galactic flight goes for about $250,000 per person, and the company has a list of 603 customers waiting to fly.

Special purpose vehicles, known as SPACs, raise capital to buy an existing company. In Social Capital Hedosophia's case, Palihapitiya's SPAC is buying just under half of the company to help it enter the public market. Palihapitiya is founder of Social Capital and had been an early executive at Facebook.

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Virgin Galactic is set to trade on the NYSE on Monday as the first space tourism stock - CNBC

Now You Can Buy The Worlds First Spaceship Stock – Forbes

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Rumor has it, pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio are taking a trip to outer space...

It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but have you heard of Virgin Galactic? Founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, the company has built the worlds first spaceship.

Let me be clear...

Its not just an idea. Its not just a concept. Its not just a glorified airplane.

Its a real, working SPACESHIP tested and approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Last December, this spaceship completed a successful test flight with two astronauts and a passenger on board. It blasted to the edge of earths atmosphere, 51.4 miles up then safely landed just outside Orlando, Florida.

Now, the company is preparing to launch the first commercial space flight in history, which is expected to take off as soon as 2020.

For the first time, civilians will have a chance to shuttle around in outer space.

The good news is you can be one of the first investors to buy the worlds first spaceship stock. And as Ill explain its an investment opportunity you should take seriously, just like these three I told you about before.

Virgin Galactic is an ultra-luxury tourism company, for now...

Virgin Galactic has already sold out its first batch of 600 flight tickets for a hefty fare of $250,000 collecting over $80 million. Another 1,500+ rich folks are on the waiting list.

As I mentioned before, the first passengers include celebrities like pop star Justin Bieber and actor Leonardo DiCaprio

Which led investors to label Virgin Galactic an ultra-luxury tourism company. Ive heard folks compare it to companies renting 300-foot-long yachts or private islands.

But make no mistake, Virgin Galactics ships are much more than a playground for rich people. Thats just step one in its plan to disrupt the space industry.

Space tourism is just a testing ground

Virgin Galactic has a unique business model that will let it earn hundreds of millions of dollars right out of the gate.

As a testing ground, it will sell its space flights to very rich folks as an expensive vacation.

And believe it or not, theres a huge market for this service.

The company says it needs to fly only 1,000 people a year to be a viable business. As I mentioned, there are already 1,500 on its waitlist and the company has barely marketed the concept at all.

If Virgin Galactic pulls this off, it will rake in $250 million in its first year as a public company. Thats 2X more than Amazon and Apple earned in their first years combined, as you can see below

RiskHedge

While the company rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars by pleasing ultra-rich folks, it will quietly start preparing for the next phase of space travel.

Virgin Galactic is coming to disrupt dreaded long-haul flights

Virgin Galactic sees an opportunity to disrupt long-haul travel by flying folks through outer space.

These flights can potentially get you from, say, New York to Tokyo in two hours as opposed to the 14 hours it takes today. And the company is making great strides toward it.

Virgin Galactic has recently joined forces with Boeing, the worlds largest plane-maker. They are developing a commercial spaceship that will travel at 5X the speed of sound 7X faster than todays commercial planes.

Within a decade, space travel will be a $23 billion industry and threaten airlines, according to UBS. And Virgin Galactic is positioned to be the unquestioned leader in this space.

Virgin Galactic is quietly tapping into an $800 billion industry

Air travel is an $800 billion a year industry. UBS estimates the space industry will be worth $805 billion by 2030. And space travel is just a tiny part of it.

Virgin Galactic is planning to use its spaceships to conduct science experiments, launch small satellites, and bring other cargo to space.

The possibilities are endless.

For example, president of Virgin Galactic Will Whitehorn thinks we could put computer servers powering the internet in space quite easily.

You see whats happening?

Most investors dismiss Virgin Galactics space flights as a gimmick. But the company is actually an up-and-coming space giant.

How to buy the worlds first commercial space stock

Earlier this year, Virgin Galactic announced it would merge with Social Capital Hedosophia (IPOA), a publicly traded shell company. The company will buy a 49% stake in Virgin Galactic.

That makes Social Capital Hedosophia the first publicly traded space stock available to the public.

I have to warn you, though.

The upside of this company is limitless. You would be buying into the very early stage of the company as well as the commercial space industry.

Social Capital Hedosophia is worth a little shy of a billion today, and its going after an $800 billion industry. Theres plenty of room for the company to grow 10X or more.

It could be like investing in Boeing right after it rolled the first Boeing 707 out of the hangar in 1957 a moment that changed aviation for good.

That said, Virgin Galactic has a very small margin for error. Any accident threatening human lives could send Virgin Galactic stock plunging down.

My recommendation: Put a small position in this stock, just like I did a couple of months ago. Make it small enough that big a drop in its price wouldnt hurt you badly.

Get our report"The Great Disruptors:3 Breakthrough Stocks Set to Double Your Money".These stocks will hand you 100% gains as they disrupt whole industries.Get your free copy here.

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Now You Can Buy The Worlds First Spaceship Stock - Forbes

Rocket Lab Aims for the Moon and Beyond with New Photon Satellite Platform – Space.com

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WASHINGTON Rocket Lab is shooting for the moon. Literally.

The small-satellite launch startup announced today (Oct. 21) that its new Photon satellite platform will be able to fly small spacecraft on deep-space missions to the moon and beyond. The plan will combine Rocket Lab's workhorse Electron rocket with Photon, a vehicle designed to provide end-to-end spaceflight services for customer payloads.

The move, Rocket Lab says, will allow the company to go beyond low Earth orbit (LEO) and bring "medium, geostationary, and lunar orbiters within reach for small satellites," according to a statement. To reach the moon, the company will add what it calls a "bulk maneuver stage" to the Electron-Photon combo to allow lunar flyby and moon-orbiting missions.

Video: Watch Rocket Lab Launch Its Highest Flight Ever!More: Rocket Lab Gearing Up for 1st Launches from US Soil in Early 2020

NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, and Rocket Lab sees small satellites playing a major role in that effort.

"Small satellites will play a crucial role in science and exploration, as well as providing communications and navigation infrastructure to support returning humans to the moon," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in the statement. "In the same way we opened access to LEO for smallsats,RocketLabis poised to become the dedicated ride to the Moon and beyond for small satellites."

Rocket Lab unveiled the Photon satellite platform in April at the 35th Space Symposiumin Colorado Springs, Colorado. The vehicle is an evolution of the company's "kick stage," a single-engine craft used to deliver payloads into their final circular orbits around Earth, and is expected carry payloads of up to 375 lbs. (170 kilograms) for up to five years, Rocket Lab has said.

The first Photon mission could fly by late 2020, company representatives said today.

The company's 57-foot-tall (17 meters) Electron booster made its launch debut in 2017 and is designed to launch payloads of up to 500 lbs. (227 kg) into low Earth orbit for $5 million per flight. To date, the company has launched nine missions, including its highest mission yet, which lifted off last week.

That mission, called "As The Crow Flies," lifted off from Rocket Lab's Launch Site 1 on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula on Oct. 17 local time. It delivered a small satellite called Palisade into an orbit 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) above Earth for customer Astro Digital.

Meanwhile, Rocket Lab is busy building its second launchpad, called Launch Site 2, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The company is also aims to eventually reuse the first stage of its Electron boosters. To do that, it is developing a method to have the booster parachute back to Earth and catch it in mid-air with a helicopter.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Rocket Lab Aims for the Moon and Beyond with New Photon Satellite Platform - Space.com

Here’s What China’s Yutu 2 Rover Found on the Far Side of the Moon (Photos) – Space.com

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The China Lunar Exploration Program has released a photo from the Yutu 2 moon rover that reveals the likely nature of a previously unidentified material.

The rover part of the Chang'e 4 mission, which in January completed the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon made the discovery in July. Earlier reports on the few published details captured widespread interest.

The photo taken by Yutu 2's main camera shows the center of a crater containing material that is colored differently than its surroundings and that contains bright spots. The image was released by Our Space, a Chinese-language science-outreach publication, via its Weibo social media account on Oct. 8.

Related: Chang'e 4 in Pictures: China's Mission to the Moon's Far Side

A desaturated, high-contrast version of the material viewed by Yutu 2.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP/NASA/GSFC/Dan Moriarty)

While gaining the attention of the Yutu 2 team, the material does not appear altogether mysterious, as claimed by Chinese media.

Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, told Space.com that the new image reinforces the previous suggestion that the material is broadly similar in nature to a sample of impact glass found during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Sample 70019, collected by astronaut and trained geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, is made of dark, broken fragments of minerals cemented together and black, shiny glass. Impact melt glass can be created or modified through high-speed meteor impacts on a planetary surface.

Dan Moriarty, NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has analyzed and processed the image, seeking clues as to its precise nature. While this compressed image lacks a lot of the useful information a raw image would contain, Moriarty said he could gain insights by adjusting parameters.

Yutu 2 looks back over tracks made from the Change 4 lander in July.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP)

"The shape of the fragments appears fairly similar to other materials in the area. What this tells us is that this material has a similar history as the surrounding material," Moriarty said. "It was broken up and fractured by impacts on the lunar surface, just like the surrounding soil.

"I think the most reliable information here is that the material is relatively dark. It appears to have brighter material embedded within the larger, darker regions, although there is a chance that is light glinting off a smooth surface," Moriarty told Space.com, adding that the material is likely heterogeneous in composition.

The image also gives an idea of the origin of the substance. Moriarty said the material may have been excavated by the crater-forming impact or it may be a breccia, containing highlands crust, glass, impactor material and basalts from the volcanic "seas" known as mare. "But we're definitely looking at a rock," Moriarty concluded.

Related: Moon Master: An Easy Quiz for Lunatics

China's Yutu 2 moon rover captured this image from the edge of the small crater.

(Image credit: CNSA/CLEP )

Yutu 2 has been making its way west from the Chang'e 4 landing site, which is situated within the roughly 110-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Von Krmn Crater. On July 28, during Lunar Day 8 of the mission, the rover came across a crater about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter containing a material deemed to have an unusual color and luster.

The initial discovery was made by a Yutu 2 drive team member checking images from the rover's main camera. The drive team consulted lunar scientists, resulting in the decision to postpone plans to have Yutu 2 continue west and instead order the rover to check out the strange material.

Our Space, which announced the findings on Aug. 17, used the term "" ("jiao zhuang wu"), which can be translated as "gel-like." This description sparked wide interest and speculation among lunar scientists.

The first images of the crater and its contents came from an obstacle-avoidance camera. These images did not, however, have a high resolution, and they included colored shapes likely related to Yutu 2's science instruments, further obscuring the material.

Yutu 2 made a number of approaches to the material to analyze it using the rover's Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their makeup.

The small adjustments in orientation and roving tested the rover and its team, with the danger that Yutu 2 could fall into and become stuck in the crater. The movement of the sun across the sky also altered shadowing and affected results.

A second set of measurements, taken in August, was apparently more successful than the first, but results from VNIS have not been announced.

Yutu 2 has driven a total of 950 feet (289 m) across 10 lunar days. Yutu 2 and the Chang'e 4 lander power down to hibernate during the roughly two-week-long lunar nights, when temperatures can drop to as low as minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 190 degrees Celsius).

Sunrise over the landing site in Von Krmn Crater occurred Oct. 21; Yutu 2 will wake for Lunar Day 11 on Oct. 22, and the lander will do so about 24 hours later.

Follow Andrew Jones at @AJ_FI. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

Link:

Here's What China's Yutu 2 Rover Found on the Far Side of the Moon (Photos) - Space.com