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Carleton to Host Science Caf on the Evolution of Land Animals and the Paleontology of Nova Scotia – Carleton Newsroom

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

As part of Carleton UniversitysScience Cafseries, Hillary Maddin, professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, will presentPaleontology of Nova Scotia: The Evolution of Early Land Animals.

When: Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019, at 6:30 p.m.Where: Sunnyside Branch of the Ottawa Public Library, 1049 Bank Street, OttawaInfo: This event is free and open to the public.

Media are invited to attend the event.

The invasion of land by vertebrate animals creatures with backbones was a turning point in the evolutionary history of life on Earth.

Unfortunately, the fossil record of this great event is patchy at best. However, Nova Scotia is one of the only places on the globe to shed light on this pivotal time. There, the worlds first reptiles and ancestors of our own lineage evolved and established the current patterns of animal diversity we see today.

In this presentation, Maddin will discuss historical fossils and the many new discoveries made by her team over the past five years of field expeditions exploring the record of the Carboniferous period of Nova Scotia.

The Science Caf series is organized by theFaculty of Scienceat Carleton University to discuss relevant issues facing our society and how science can help solve real-world problems. Meet some of Carletons award-winning faculty members and graduate students as they share their excitement about science with the community.

Media Contact

Steven ReidMedia Relations OfficerCarleton University613-520-2600, ext. 8718613-265-6613Steven_Reid3@Carleton.ca

Carleton Newsroom:https://newsroom.carleton.ca/Follow us on Twitter:www.twitter.com/CunewsroomNeed an expert?Go to:www.carleton.ca/newsroom/experts

Friday, October 4, 2019 in Media AdvisoriesShare: Twitter, Facebook

Evolution of business models in the era of privacy by design – Livemint

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

BENGALURU :The right to privacy became a talking point in India two years ago when the Supreme Court upheld the overall validity of Aadhaar while disallowing its mandatory linking to services other than government benefits or subsidies. Last year, a committee headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna proposed a data protection bill, which is still under consultation with multiple stakeholders.

As hundreds of millions of Indians come online with budget smartphones and the worlds lowest mobile data rates, Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to data as the new gold" at the recent Howdy Modi event in Houston. US President Donald Trump, on his part, hailed Indian Americans for helping revolutionize technology to improve lives around the world.

And Google CEO Sundar Pichai pitched in by acknowledging concerns over privacy while pointing out the need to balance that with the benefits of a shared internet.

The big question is, Whose data is it, anyway? What if tech companies were forced to compensate customers for using their data to derive profits?

Entrepreneurs and investors are thinking of new paradigms beyond government regulation.

Tim Berners-Lee, for example, wants to restore the original intent of his creationthe World Wide Web, which he feels big tech companies have taken over. His startup Inrupt is creating virtual personal online data stores (PODs) where users can create, manage and secure" their data. They can then trade their data for services.

In India, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has created a new entity called account aggregator", backed by technocrat Nandan Nilekani who was also behind Aadhaar and UPI. Approved account aggregators will act as intermediaries between companies seeking customer data and institutions like banks that can provide the data.

Aggregators will take consent of customers on what data can be shared for how long and for what purpose. The framework will make it easier for customers and small businesses to access their financial data from multiple sources for things like access to credit.

Currently, although tech companies routinely take a users consent to access their datasuch as identity or location, before providing a product or service, its so convoluted that most people have to acquiesce blindly. Companies harvest all the data they can and use it in ways that customers cant even imagine. New frameworks aim to hand control back to users.

Entrepreneurs and investors are also thinking of ways in which privacy can evolve from just ticking the boxes for compliance.

Privacy 2.0 should focus on trust," says Govind Shivkumar, principal at Omidyar Network India. If consumers begin to trust some players more than others, companies will want that as a differentiating factor and competitive advantage."

This would make privacy a strategic priority instead of a compliance headache.

The trust-based framework would eventually evolve into Privacy 3.0 where it would be embedded into businesses.

An Omidyar Network India and Monitor Deloitte India paper that Shivkumar helped prepare sees the emergence of new business models, including personal data stores like Tim Berners-Lee envisages, tools for users to manage their preferences, and so on.

There would also be new B2B (business-to-business) models such as privacy services for enterprises, some of which could be artificial intelligence-led. Privacy certification agencies would come up to close the loop.

Were looking at investment opportunities in startups across all three levels of privacy, from compliance to trust and Privacy 3.0 models," says Shivkumar.

Our notion of privacy is rooted in individuals control over what they share and how they manage their lives on digital platforms," adds Sushant Kumar of Omidyar Network India, who works on responsible tech investments."

What complicates it is that technologies are fast-evolving, especially with the application of AI in virtually every sphere. Technology should be publicly managed," says Anupam Guha, assistant professor at Centre for Policy Studies, IIT Bombay. But it cant be a simplistic state-controlled thing because you cant trust the state."

His view is that public or community-led models, which are pro-people rather than pro-corporate or pro-state, can form. If you want to forestall the problems were seeing with monopolies, privacy or job losses from automation, you can choose to incentivise models that produce better results for the common man."

Proclaiming that data is the new oil" or new gold" suggests wealth creation. The question is for whom wealth is being created. Public discourse is veering towards a consumer-centric view.

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Evolution of business models in the era of privacy by design - Livemint

Watch Foals discuss the visual evolution of their career – NME Live

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Dating right back to the 'Antidotes' days

Foalshave discussed the inspiration behind their changing visual aesthetic throughout the years. Check out the video below.

TheYannis Philippakis-fronted band, who are gearing up to releaseEverything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 2 later this month, sat down with BBC Radio 1 to break down the visual evolution from their debut album, Antidotes, right up to the present day.

Talking about working with illustrator Tinhead on their first LPs artwork,drummer Jack Bevan explains that the collaboration came about after meeting the artist on a Foundation course at Oxford Brookes University.

Philippakis goes on to describe him as a real character who was given a list of words by the frontman on which to base his designs. We worked with him a bit again on [second album] Total Life Forever and then he carried on doing T-shirts for us, he adds.

Yannis and Jack talk through Foals' visual evolution, from the illustrations behind debut album 'Antidotes' to the botanical themes of latest release 'Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost'

Posted by BBC Sounds onTuesday, October 1, 2019

Speaking of the Total Life Forever cover art, the band explain how they swam deep to the bottom of a London swimming pool in order to bag the final shot. It was terrifying cause it was so deep it was black, basically, Bevan recalls.

After running through the ideas behind their following albums, Foals touch on the video for 2019s In Degrees and the wider Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost theme.

Foals at the Mercury Prize 2019 (Credit: Getty)

We wanted a kind of contrasting but complementary image for the second part, which has its own kind of feel to it, saysPhilippakis of their upcoming LPs cover. But I think were just sort of attracted to foliage and things that are fertile and growing, and it just seems to suit the music well.

At the end of the clip, Philippakis describes the sound of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 2 stating that its more of a rock album and contains some proper bangers.

The album is released on October 18, following on fromPart 1which came out back in March.

In other news, Philippakis spoke toNMElast month about his run-in with a knifewhich left him unable to play guitar during the bands performance at the Mercury Prize 2019 ceremony.

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Watch Foals discuss the visual evolution of their career - NME Live

Fred P to release new Black Jazz Consortium album, Evolution Of Light – FACT

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

The 12-track album is inspired by Brazilian music and culture.

Deep house legendFred P is releasing his first full-length Black Jazz Consortium album since 2013 on his own Perpetual Sound label next month.

Evolution of Light is a direct response to New York City native Fred Peterkins first album as Black Jazz Consortium, RE:Actions Of Light, released over a decade ago. Its inspired by the music and culture of Brazil, and includes collaborations with Brazilian musicians on several tracks.

There has been a lot of growth since my first album, Peterkin says. I wanted to answer with a follow up that is honest, and along the way Brazil became a focus, so here we are.

Evolution of Light is released on November 8 on 3LP vinyl and digital formats. Check the tracklist and artwork below, and pre-order it at Bandcamp. Revisit Fred Ps 2015 FACT mix here.

Tracklist:

01. More Blessings (Feat. Leonardo Peretti Reibnitz & Trovao Rocha)02. Another Path (Feat. Trovao Rocham, Leonardo Peretti & Leo Vieira)03. Sacred Sun (Feat. Bruna Elisabetsky)04. A Century Of Love05. Soul People For Life (Feat. Slikk Tim & Gal Aner)06. Salvador (Feat. Slikk Tim & Bruno Elisabetsky)07. Brisbane (Feat. Slikk Tim)08. Energies Collide (Feat. Ceri B) 05:1809. Focus (Feat. Reno Ka)10. Love Alliance (Feat. Gary Gritness)11. Paradise Essential (Feat. Slikk Tim)12. Resonate (Feat. Christina Wheeler)

Read next: Deep Inside September 2019s must-hear house and techno

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Fred P to release new Black Jazz Consortium album, Evolution Of Light - FACT

Midco to Deploy Evolution Digitals Android TV-powered Set-top – Multichannel News

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

NEW ORLEANS - Centennial, Colorado-based cable video tech provider Evolution Digital used the Cable-Tec Expo event today to announce its latest customer win, the deployment of its eStream 4K set-top in Midcontinent Communications new IPTV service, which is slated to debut early next year.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Midco will deploy the Android TV-powered eStream 4K devices, along with a TiVo user interface, giving users of the managed network service access to OTT apps in the Google Play Store. The cable operator will also use Evolution Digitals Device Manager (eDM), a software platform that provides management, control, monitoring and analytics of devices, as well as the ability to deploy software, firmware and security updates to customer devices.

In July, it was reported that Buckeye Broadband and MaxxSouth, two cable operators owned by Toledo, Ohio-based Block Communications, have deployed app-based video services powered by Evolution Digitals full IP-based platform.

This followed a similar deployment by Missouris Vast Broadband, which Evolution announced in June.

As Android TV is becoming pay-TV providers chosen ecosystem, Evolution Digital provides the necessary ongoing elements that come with building, certifying and maintaining Android TV in-production, while helping operators, like Midco, build a strong foundation for current and future innovation to outcompete in the market for many years to come, said Marc Cohen, executive VP of sales and marketing for Evolution Digital, in a statement.

Added Bill Chatwell, Midcos director of video systems: As we begin to make a major migration to cloud-based video, we trust Evolution Digitals expertise to help lead us in to the future of streaming, providing our customers an unparalleled TV service at scale.

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Midco to Deploy Evolution Digitals Android TV-powered Set-top - Multichannel News

The evolution of Anna and Elsa, from Frozen to Frozen II – SYFY WIRE

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

One of the most remarkable things about the original Frozen is how it represented part of a sea change for Disney's films in terms of their depiction of love. While the movie isn't completely devoid of romance, it turns some of the classic tropes of Disney's own films on their heads. The movie openly questions the logic of falling in love and marrying someone you just met, the core plot element of many of its forebears. In doing so, it creates space to tell a story about another kind of love not romantic love, but the deep familial love between two sisters, Anna and Elsa. It's a story about women saving each other and themselves, not relying on a prince to do it.

Recently, SYFY WIRE FANGRRLS went behind the scenes at Disney Animation Studios to preview some of the things we'll see in the upcoming sequel. Amid all the special effects demonstrations, character designs, and previews of songs, it was still Anna and Elsa that stood out as the heart of this new film.

Potential spoiler warnings for FROZEN II within!

According to co-director and co-writer Jennifer Lee, who also wrote and co-directed the first film, this relationship was at the forefront of her mind, even during a 2016 research trip to Norway and Iceland, which inspired the eventual story. "We realized on this trip that Anna is your perfect fairy-tale character. She's an ordinary hero, not magical. She's optimistic. Whereas Elsa is the perfect mythic character. Mythic characters are magical. They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. In fact, the mythic characters often meet a tragic fate, and we realized we had two stories going together, mythic story and a fairy-tale story. In the mythic aspect of it, the fear of that tragic fate is something that Anna's been worrying about and thus protects her sister from."

Preserving the relationship between Anna and Elsa, while still showing how it evolved, was of primary importance to Hyun-Min Lee, animation supervisor for Anna. "In this film, we really tried to keep our focus on making sure that they stay true to who they were in the first film. But also, we wanted to show everybody who they're maturing into as they go into this new journey," Lee said.

"So, in this film, there is a little bit of a role reversal between the two. In the first film, Anna used to be the fearless one, forging ahead. 'I'm just going to go save my sister. Go ahead. I don't care!' And this time Elsa is the one being called into the unknown. And Anna is a little bit more worried and nervous for her sister's safety. And the big difference with the first film is that Anna is not alone anymore."

This change in Anna is signified even in her costumes, explained Griselda Sastrawinata-Lemay, visual development artist for the film. "In Frozen II, we started with Anna's costume with the new Arendelle icon, which signifies the fall season," she said. "In her travel costume, we did so many iterations, and exploration, because we grow as the story grows. And designing for Anna is a little bit tricky, because we decided that Elsa will always be in a light value and color, so she looks like ice. It's challenging to find a color that would be brilliant enough, and strong enough when they're next to each other. The chosen outfit is actually number 122."

As for Elsa, her costume design was greatly inspired by the change her character went through in the first movie, says Visual Development Artist Brittney Lee, who talked about how Elsa's costumes were restrictive and dark in the early parts of the first movie, but that's changed now. "Elsa can be a little bit more glamorous. She's also not restricted so much by real-world materials," Lee explained.

"Once 'Let It Go' happened, we sort of, um, basically set the precedent that she can make her own clothes out of ice. So from that point on, we have more freedom with her to use more ethereal materials, so she gets some tulles, and some silks and that, that's meant to support who she is as the Snow Queen."

It's not all just about fashion styles, either; even Elsa's movements in the new movie are different. Wayne Unten, Elsa's animation supervisor, discussed a major change to how she casts spells, drawing on modern dance as an inspiration for her movements to make them more graceful. "Her fingers, for example, when she's casting the magic, there's a nice flow to them. Instead of, like, a claw type of thing. We did something like that in the first film. But that was only, really, to illustrate a point that ... Remember in the first film, Hans says don't be the monster that they fear you are," Unten said. "And, you know, she was kind of doing kind of like a monster-type claw. So we stayed away from that."

It became very clear that these characters mean as much to the people working on them as they do to the audiences that connected to them when the original movie was released. Becky Bresee, one of the heads of animation and a self-described lifetime fairy tale fan, summed it up early on in the conversation: "When the first Frozen story turned into a sister story, that's when it really spoke to me in a different way. Now I was not only working on it for myself, I was working on a very personal level for my sisters, as well as more so for my daughters. SoFrozen II goes even further for me personally, and I'm so excited for the world to see it, and to revisit our characters all over again."

Frozen II hits theaters November 22.

The evolution of Anna and Elsa, from Frozen to Frozen II - SYFY WIRE

Shedding Genes Helped Whales and Dolphins Evolve for Life at Sea – Smithsonian.com

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

About 50 million years ago, ancestors of the modern whale transitioned from land to sea, undergoing remarkable transformations in the process. They gained collapsible lungs, thick layers of blubber and blood that stores more oxygen. But they also shed many traits that were critical for terrestrial life, such as genes involved with sleep, blood clotting and DNA repair, a new study published in the journal Science Advances suggests.

Researchers compared the active genes found in modern cetaceans, which include whales, dolphins and porpoises, with those of other mammals such as their closest living relatives, the hippo family. They identified 85 genes that became inactive when cetaceans became fully aquatic, 62 of which had not been reported before, reports Veronique Greenwood at the New York Times.

Previous studies found that the genes that enabled hair growth, sweat and hind limbs had been lost in cetaceans. But the new findings go even further to describe the genetic reasons behind such major physiological, behavioral and anatomical changes.

There have been a lot of studies like this, but this has probably been the most comprehensive in terms of the number of genes, Michael McGowen, research scientist and curator of marine mammals at Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study, tells Smithsonian magazine.

Some of the inactive genes that Hiller and his team identified simply became obsolete in a marine environment. These neutral losses include a gene that produces saliva. Other losses seem to be driven by the necessity of adapting to a new aquatic lifestyle.

Blood clotting, for example, may seem like an advantageous mechanism in mammals. Yet, when cetaceans dive, their blood vessels constrict and nitrogen bubbles make the blood clot more easily, restricting the flow of much-needed oxygen in the bloodstream. Ridding the body of clotting genes makes diving less dangerous.

Though they are air-breathing mammals, whales and dolphins often go for long periods of time without taking in fresh oxygen. This behavior can cause DNA damage that may result in the formation of tumors and other maladies. The enzyme that repairs this type of DNA can be faulty enough to cause serious harm. Because cetaceans undergo frequent DNA damage, researchers suspect that this enzyme was eventually ditched in favor of less harmful restorative enzymes.

We think that by losing the sloppiest protein involved, you probably increase the fidelity of DNA repair, Hiller tells Tina Hesman Saey at Science News.

Additionally, modern cetaceans are missing four genes related to the production of melatonin, a sleep hormone. Unlike most aquatic creatures, at least half of a cetaceans brain is alert at all times to signal when to surface for a breath of air. Melatonin can put the body into a deeper restive state, which is dangerous for whales and dolphins who can sink or drown during long stretches of inactivity.

While evolutionary scientists commonly accept that underutilized genes tend to disappear or become inactive during the evolutionary process, this study suggests that genes potentially dangerous to a new lifestyle can also be abandoned or become non-functional.

"We found new evidence that loss of genes during evolution can sometimes be beneficial, which supports previous results from our lab suggesting that gene loss is an important evolutionary mechanism, says Hiller in a statement.

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Shedding Genes Helped Whales and Dolphins Evolve for Life at Sea - Smithsonian.com

Federal election 2019: Where do the parties stand on taxes and deficits? – The Globe and Mail

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Big, broad-based tax cuts are at the core of both the Liberal and Conservative campaign platforms in 2019.

Both parties are also offering voters a buffet of boutique tax breaks, which they highlight on the campaign trail in an effort to woo key slices of the electorate.

The two platforms, should either be implemented, would shave billions annually from federal revenues, raising questions as to how each party will make their numbers work.

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The NDP and Greens also face questions about their numbers, but from a different perspective. They each take a pass on big tax cuts in favour of major new spending, which would be paid for in part by large tax increases using methods that are untested in Canada, such as an annual wealth tax on the countrys richest citizens.

Here, The Globe and Mail takes a closer look at where the parties stand on tax.

Canadas federal parties are presenting their ideas on how much tax to collect and in what ways in order to pay for their budget priorities.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Under Justin Trudeaus Liberal government, Ottawa ran deficits every year. Those deficits increase the size of the federal debt, which stood at $685-billion as of the end of March.

But when federal finances are measured as a percentage of the economy, the federal debt is below the historical average, as are federal spending and tax revenues.

Based on the past 52 years for which there is public Finance Department data, the average size of federal revenues is 16.3 per cent of GDP. That figure was 15 per cent in 2018-19 and was below 15 per cent for the previous decade.

Federal program spending averaged 15.3 per cent historically and stood at 14.6 per cent in 2018-19.

The debt-to-GDP ratio has averaged 38.1 per cent over those 52 years. It now stands at 30.9 per cent, after falling from a peak of 66.8 per cent in 1994-95, which was when concern from international rating agencies over Canadas indebtedness led to the deficit-fighting budgets of the mid-1990s. The Parliamentary Budget Office has said federal finances are currently sustainable for the long term, but provincial finances are not.

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The federal government climbed out of deficit in 1997-98 when it posted its first surplus in 28 years. Ottawa then ran 11 consecutive years of surpluses, before falling back into deficit in 2008-09 at the time of a global financial crisis. Ottawa has been in the red since. (The Conservative government recorded a small surplus for 2014-15, but the Liberal government later approved an accounting change that retroactively turned that year into a small deficit.)

Liberal leader Justin Trudeau campaigns in Montreal on Oct. 3, 2019.

Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press

A Liberal government would increase the basic personal amount of income an individual can earn before paying any tax to $15,000 up from $13,229. This will save the average family nearly $600 a year, according to the Liberals. While an increase to the basic personal amount would normally benefit all taxpayers, the Liberal promise would start to phase out this tax break for those with incomes above $150,605 and it would be fully phased out for those with income above $214,557.

After the broad-based tax cut, the second-largest item in the platform is a 10 per cent increase to Old Age Security payments for all seniors 75 and over. That will cost $1.6-billion in the first year, rising to $2.5-billion in the fourth year. The third-largest item is increased funding for health care, followed by more than $1-billion a year to increase the Canada Child Benefit for parents with children under the age of one, providing families with up to $1,000 more.

Some of the other specific demographics that stand to benefit from Liberal platform pledges include first-time homebuyers in Canadas largest cities, campers and Canadians looking to buy a used electric vehicle.

The four-year Liberal platform adds up to $56.9-billion in new spending and tax cuts. To pay for this, the platform identifies $25.4-billion in new revenue, including an internal spending review and tax increases aimed at large companies and high-wealth individuals through a new tax on luxury items priced over $100,000.

The $31.5-billion shortfall between those two numbers would mean larger deficits over that period than previously projected. The Liberal platform offers no timeline for balancing the books. Instead, the party says the federal debt-to-GDP is already low at 30.9 per cent of GDP and the platform pledges would keep that ratio on a slight downward trend.

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Economists generally agree that small deficits are not a major concern. Yet allowing the deficit to reach as high as $27-billion when the economy is relatively healthy raises questions as to what a Liberal government would do if as many expect the global economy soon takes a turn for the worse.

Independent costing of some Liberal promises by the Parliamentary Budget Officer also point to vulnerabilities in the partys numbers. For instance, the PBO says there is little doubt that the proposed broad-based tax cut would reduce federal revenues by over $5-billion a year.

Yet the PBO notes there is a high degree of uncertainty as to whether some of the partys revenue-raising plans will produce the extra money the party expects.

Former PBO Kevin Page and his team at the University of Ottawas Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy are reviewing all costed platforms based on whether they demonstrate reasonable fiscal management and economic assumptions. The IFSD rated the Liberal platform with an overall score of good.

However, former Finance Department officials Peter DeVries and Scott Clark reviewed the Liberal platform and found several instances that appear to underestimate spending or overestimate savings. As a result, they conclude the partys pledge to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio is not credible.

The debt ratio is heading north, not south, Mr. Clark told The Globe.

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Conservative leader Andrew Scheer at a campaign event in Upper Kingsclear, N.B., on Oct. 3, 2019.

The Canadian Press

Calling it the universal tax cut, a Conservative government would reduce the rate on income earned below $47,630 from 15 per cent to 13.75 per cent. This would save an average two-income family more than $850 a year, according to the party.

The tax cut is similar in size to the one proposed by the Liberal Party. In 2024-25, the Conservative tax cut is slightly more generous and would lower federal revenues by $6.1-billion. The Liberal partys tax cut would cost $5.8-billion that year. There are slight differences in terms of who would benefit. The Conservative plan does not include a restriction from having the tax cut apply to high-income earners.

After announcing the universal tax cut early in the campaign, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer followed that up by announcing several other targeted tax breaks. These measures include tax breaks for public-transit users, removing the GST from home-heating costs, tax breaks for parents who have children enrolled in arts and sports programs, increasing the age credit for seniors and a credit for home renovations that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The Conservative platform also pledges to reverse several tax changes adopted by the Liberal government that affect incorporated small businesses. The Conservatives would lower taxes for business owners who have over $1-million in passive investments such as stocks and bonds that are not related to the business.

The Conservative Party says it can implement all of these tax cuts while still balancing the budget within five years. The party has not yet released its costed platform. To date, the only spending cuts Mr. Scheer has announced include a 25 per cent reduction in foreign-aid spending, a general review of spending on corporate subsidies and withdrawing from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The later move would save $9-million a year, according to the PBO.

The party says all of its promises have been independently costed by the PBO, but it has yet to release a full platform showing how it will balance the books.

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University of Calgary economist and tax expert Jack Mintz said the Conservatives across-the-board tax cut is better tax policy than the Liberal one. While the impact of the Liberal tax cut is fully realized once an individuals income climbs above $15,000, the Conservative tax cut provides an incentive for people to work more and pay less tax right up to $47,630, which he said is good for productivity.

He also said allowing higher income earners to also benefit from the Conservative tax cut helps address concerns that Canadas high taxes make it harder for businesses to attract top talent. However, Mr. Mintz said hes no fan of targeted tax credits from any party.

I dont like any boutique tax credits, so I dont like the Conservatives arts and sports one and I dont like the camping one that the Liberals have, he said.

Numerous government and academic reports have questioned the effectiveness of tax credits in areas such as fitness programs or public transit in terms of encouraging changes in behaviour.

NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on the campaign trail in Toronto on Oct. 3, 2019.

Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press

Promising a new deal for tax fairness, the NDP says the false tax cuts promised by the Liberals and Conservatives will lead to service cuts that force people to pay more and receive less. The NDP campaign rejects tax cuts and advocates for tax increases, including a three-percentage-point hike to the corporate tax rate, raising taxes on capital gains, increasing the top marginal tax rate and imposing a 1 per cent tax on wealth over $20-million. The party has released a 109-page platform, but it did not include a breakdown of how much each promise would cost or how the platform would affect Ottawas bottom line.

The NDP promises some targeted tax breaks, including doubling the Home Buyers Tax Credit to $1,500, creating a new tax credit that encourages postsecondary graduates to work in rural northern communities, and increasing the value of the Caregiver Tax Credit and the Volunteer Firefighters Tax Credit.

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The NDP has not released a fully costed platform and has only approved the release of four PBO reports on specific NDP promises. As a result, it is not clear how the party proposed to pay for its campaign promises.

One major source of proposed new revenue is a wealth tax. The PBO has reviewed this proposal and estimates it would raise over $6-billion a year in revenue by 2022, growing to nearly $10-billion a year by the end of the decade.

However, the PBO cautioned that its revenue estimate has high uncertainty because a large behavioural response is expected, meaning high-wealth individuals would take accounting measures to avoid their exposure to the tax.

The party has not released a fully costed platform and it has only released independent PBO reports for a handful of its campaign promises. The partys uncosted platform says we will manage debt and deficits responsibly and moving to balance when prudent.

Further, while the idea of a wealth tax is championed by some, the policy has a poor track record internationally.

A 2018 article published by the International Monetary Fund noted the number of OECD countries with an active wealth tax fell to four from 12 between 1985 and 2007. The authors noted wealth taxes are of limited effectiveness because they are prone to lobbying and exemptions.

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Furthermore, the rich have proved adept avoiding or evading taxes by placing their wealth abroad in low tax jurisdictions, they noted.

The Green Party platform does not propose any changes to personal tax rates.

The Green Party would increase the corporate tax rate from 15 per cent to 21 per cent, which it says would raise more than $14-billion a year. The party also proposes a surtax on bank profits.

The Green Party would enrich the tax credit for volunteer firefighters and create a tax credit for renovating heritage buildings. Various education-related tax credits, including RESPs, would be replaced with a program of free postsecondary tuition.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May campaigns in Victoria on Oct. 3, 2019.

CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press

The Green Partys costed platform proposes an immediate and dramatic increase in government spending and taxation. In the first year, the party proposes a 21.5 per cent increase in federal spending, a $74-billion hike. Tax revenues would increase by about the same amount by the third year of the platform.

Some of the platforms largest tax hikes include raising the corporate tax rate from 15 per cent to 21 per cent, applying tax to 100 per cent of capital gains up from 50 per cent; a 0.5 per cent tax on financial transactions; and a 1 per cent tax on net wealth above $20-million.

In its analysis, the PBO cautioned the expected revenue from some of the tax increases are highly uncertain, in part because the ideas fall out of the mainstream of public economics. For instance, the PBO noted the plan to raise over $15-billion a year from a financial transactions tax has not been tried in an open economy before.

The Green Party acknowledges its platform, if implemented, would have a dramatic negative effect on Canadas resource-based economy. The platform predicts companies that own fossil fuel assets will need to rapidly write them down to near-zero values. This will have immediate effects on the overall values of many Canadian institutional investors and banks, and on the balance sheets and income statements of provincial governments.

The University of Ottawas Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy released a critical review of the Green platform. In a written report, the IFSD gave the platform an overall assessment of fail, for lacking realistic economic and fiscal assumptions and for not displaying responsible fiscal management.

The Green Party then released a revised costing document, which the IFSD reassessed with an overall grade of pass, though it continued to mark the platform as a fail in terms of responsible fiscal management.

Canadian federal election guide: What you need to know before Oct. 21

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Pharmacare: What the main federal parties are promising

Where the parties stand on housing reform, and the risks of their pledges

Who are the key campaign staff behind the scenes?

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Federal election 2019: Where do the parties stand on taxes and deficits? - The Globe and Mail

MIER: Malaysias GDP must reach 8pc to achieve Shared Prosperity Vision – Malay Mail

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Kamal said Malaysia needs to divert its resources and invest in the structural change of long to medium-term growth. Picture by Yusof Mat Isa

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 3 Malaysia hasto reacheconomic growth of 8.0 per cent in order to attainthe Shared Prosperity Vision 2030, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) said.

Its chairman, Tan Sri Kamal Salih said according to his calculations, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has to be somewhere between 6.0and8.0per cent and it could notbe at between 4.0 and5.0per cent.

It is not enough, it will be a slow rise. In the meantime, other countries will jump over us.To achieve over 6.0per cent, we have to do a leapfrog strategy and focuson key sectors, he told Bernama in an interview.

Kamal Salih said Malaysia has to be wary of anomalies that are happening outside of the country and not be complacent the moment oil prices go up, as it generates momentary boost of income.

He saidinstead, Malaysia needs to divert its resources and invest in the structural change of long to medium-term growth.

We may spend a lot more money, we may even try to restructure the debt, but eventually we must continue to expand in infrastructure, new industries, technology, agriculture, to produce more food and train more skilled people, as all these are already in place, he said.

Kamal Salih said the elements of the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030was already incorporated in Vision 2020, under previous predecessors.

He said however, the last regime had become more greedy, as the whole setup ofwhats in it for meand not for the country attitude had taken root.

We lack that kind of mentality and people do the simpler things, they followthe line of least resistance, and stay in a comfort zone, as they dont know how to venture, and they fear of failure.

Whereas entrepreneurship, technology, investment, innovation, all are experimental, you just need to keep at it, if you fail you rise, failure is a lesson, instead you just give up, he said.

Kamal Salih said some Malaysians have given up onthe country, and they went overseas and thrived.

This trust deficit in government is a big thing, and the younger generation couldnt care less, asthey will do their things and hope that theycan be successful, he said.

Kamal Salih said the early period of the New Economic Policy (NEP) produced quite of a lot of good people, both in Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera.

They have been successful, they are what that have kept this economy afloat. But there is an increasing number of those who havegiven up, and wait for more handouts from the government, and the government not having enoughmoney to hand out.

When the government had the money to hand out, it handedout to cronies, and it isnot spread out enough, not inclusive enough, he added.

Kamal Salih said the country also needs to pare down itsover-reliance on foreign investment as it is the reason why Malaysia cannotindustrialise faster.

In fact, we have gone through the process of de-industrialisationfor the last 20 years, he said.

He said Malaysia has also shifted to servicesand hasbecome a consuming country instead ofa producing country, while it stillproduces in the traditional areas of resource-based economy.

Although diversified, we are stillin palm oil andrubber industries butno longer as the leading producers asThailand and Indonesia have taken over the roles.

We are also depended very much on our oil and gas. When oil prices go down, we get into trouble, he said,adding that the funds that the governmentraisedfrom taxes weremainly used for operations.

Moving forward, Kamal Salih said weshouldpromote local inventors andresearch and development, as well ascommercialiseinnovations from universities.

We areweak in commercialisation. When people have ideas, the bureaucracy tends to be an obstacle, he added. Bernama

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MIER: Malaysias GDP must reach 8pc to achieve Shared Prosperity Vision - Malay Mail

Half of Yangtze provinces are water stressed – chinadialogue

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Shortages of water in theYangtze river basinare largely the result of industry and a focus on development(Image: Alamy)

The Yangtze river basin is often thought of as having plenty of water. One of Chinas mother rivers, the Yangtze accounts for more than a third of all the water flowing through Chinese rivers.

But the latest report from China Water Riskfinds thatprovincesthe Yangtze runs through are facing water stress especially those downstream.

Thirst on the banks of the Yangtze

The report shows that six of the 11 provinces on the Yangtze river economic belt (YREB) are water stressed. Those six provinces account for one-third of Chinas population and GDP. Shanghai andJiangsu are facing extremely high baseline water stress, with agriculture, industry and services consuming 90% or more of usable water in an average year, according to data from the World Resources Institute quoted in the report. The other four provinces Anhui, Zhejiang, Hubei and Sichuan are facing high levels of water stress, consuming 40% or more of usable water in an average year.

These provinces lie on the Yangtze and have a network of other rivers to rely on. So why the water stress?

Water shortages in the YREB are mainly due to pollution, explained Peng Yingdeng, a researcher with the State Urban Pollution Control Technology Institute. There is plenty of water, but a significant portion is contaminated by industrial effluent and the dumping or poor handling of pollutants.

In Shanghai,where water stress is extremely high,the share of surface water monitoring sections registering water quality Grade V+ (unusable for any purposes) was 18%as of July 2017. That figure is generallyunder 6% elsewhere in the YREB. The problem may be due to how Shanghai uses its water. According to the report, industry accounts for 60% of the citys total water consumption, the highest in the YREB, and emissions of wastewater per head are also highest.

The Yangtze: from development to conservation

Three years ago, the government decidedtoshift management of theYangtze from developmentto conservation. In early 2016, speaking at a meeting in Chongqing on growth in the YREB, President Xi Jinping called for joint efforts to protect, not develop.

Government ministries followed up with plans and targets, settinga 2020 cap for total water consumption in the YREB. An environmental protection strategy published early this year also set requirements for water quality: by the end of 2020, 85% of sections of the river managed by central government must reach good quality (Grade III or above), with no more than 2% of these sections to be of unusable quality (below Grade V).

The Yangtze wasseen as a resource by provinces so development along its banks was encouraged butthis approach is being replaced with efforts toprotectthe river,tacklewater pollution and restorethe environment. For example, in 1999 Jiangsu published an overarching strategy for development and utilisation up to 2020, designed to ensure reasonable and effective use of the resources of the Yangtze riverbank to serve development of the province into the new century. But in June this year, in response to the call for more protection, the province published anaction planto put protection and restoration before development.

Complex causes

Relieving water stress along the Yangtze wont be easy because the causes are complex. Water quality issues arise primarily from industrial emissions, with 52.3% of polluted water traceable back to industry, according to a bulletin from the Yangtze Water Resources Commission. Industrial pollution is worst in Hubei and Jiangxi. Peng Yingdeng found that the two provinces accounted for almost 50% of a total 1,300 cases during a crackdown on hazardous waste last year. Most of these were due to illegal and unsafe handling of toxic waste by local chemical plants, which directly or indirectly resulted in pollution of water downstream.

Inefficient use of water is exacerbating the crisis. Despite efforts to shift China towards aservice-based economy, it still lags behind developed nations, with both agriculture and industry using huge quantities of water. World Bank data from 2013 shows China used 1,340 cubic metres of water per US$10,000 of GDP. Thats better than other countries at a comparable level of development, such as Russia and Thailand (2,953 and 7,099 cubic metres respectively), but far off the developed-nation figure of 367 cubic metres. Provinces along the Yangtze have set 2020 water intensity targets, but as the report points out, the 2017 figures the latest available indicate that none will be met.

An inability to fully treat polluted water is also a problem. Six per cent of cities and towns in the YREB do not treat wastewater, even though together they produce as much as the Philippines. Reuseis also low. Jiangsu is the only province to reuse more than 10% of its waste water, and seven provinces use less than 5%.

Where will the river flow?

China is pushing ahead with a Yangtze River Protection Law, due to be submitted to the National Peoples Congress Standing Committee by the end of the year. Peng Yingdeng saysthis will provide legislative backing for river protection, strengthen coordination between upstream and downstream regions, and encourage intensified efforts where necessary. It will also put in placemechanisms to ensure protection is sustained.

But management remains achallenge. Peng pointed out a few signs of progress on the water quality and consumption targets set by ministries but noteddifficulties. Eighty per cent of the targets may be within reach, but less-developed provinces where infrastructure and government capacities are lacking may hold others back. There will be no quick fixes.

Peng thinks the biggest problem facing the YREBis an overall weakness of governance.Failings in hard and soft infrastructure cannot be solved overnight. Fundamental changes will take 5-10 years, he said.

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Half of Yangtze provinces are water stressed - chinadialogue

Defying gravity – The News International

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Defying gravity

At this critical juncture of national development, the only way forward is to migrate from its natural resource driven low-value economy to a strong knowledge economy.

This has been realized by Prime Minister Imran Khan who set up a National Task Force that he himself chairs and of which I happen to be the vice chairman. After its first historic meeting last January at which a number of important decisions were taken, the task force has rapidly formulated a number of important projects ranging from agriculture to nanotechnology, from artificial intelligence to engineering sciences, from blended education to technological parks. Some Rs200 billion worth of projects are currently under approval, with some already approved.

To build a strong knowledge economy, we must strengthen the dynamic interplay between the major pillars on which the edifice must stand. These are education, science, technology, innovation, industry, and enabling government policies. All of these thrive on merit-based competiveness on the efficiency of interaction between them. The magic of rapid socio-economic development starts to happen through the dynamic interplay between research, invention, innovation, and commercial production geared to meet the national needs and challenges.

Policies on education, science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship are all intricately interrelated. Entrepreneurship, its growth, survival and competitiveness is dependent on innovation. In a developing country such as Pakistan, we need to adopt the process of incremental innovation. This involves sourcing, absorbing, adapting and diffusing already available international technologies and related available knowledge.

In this process private industry and businesses must play a key role, as incremental innovation depends on the absorptive capacity of firms. Only firms with advanced human skills and prior relevant accumulated knowledge are able to successfully convert external knowledge into incremental innovations. Through this process they are able to recognize the value of new information, assimilate and absorb it and then apply it for commercial benefits.

The World Economic Forum has categorized the developmental stages of economies across countries in three distinct categories: one, factor-based economies, where the production and services sector largely depend on low-cost labour and natural resource based inputs. Innovation contributes less than five percent in such factor-based economies. Pakistan, alas, has been trapped in this lowest rung of the ladder for the last seven decades because of myopic national leadership.

Two, efficiency-driven economies which require modern machinery, better technical and managerial skills and promotion of a culture of firm level learning, and three, innovation and knowledge-driven economies; These last two categories need heavy investment in human resource development, training of a critical number of scientists and engineers, promotion of firm level R&D and lifelong learning practices. Innovation contributes at least 30 percent to the economies of countries at this level.

The global innovation landscape is constantly shifting, depending on the leadership and its realization of the importance of knowledge, research and innovation in the process of socioeconomic development. In our own lives we have seen the emergence of Germany, Japan, Singapore, Korea and more recently China as economic powers. The path to progress has involved massive investments in education, particularly higher education, the acquisition and adaption of cutting edge foreign technologies for the production of high valued goods and services. This has led to the progressive evolution of some countries from resource-based to knowledge-based economies. This process has been catalyzed by public-private partnerships and by offering liberal public incentives for partnerships between local and international firms.

In Pakistan, public research funding should be linked not only to advancement of basic and strategic research but a certain proportion should be set aside for applied industrial research. This should include funding for design and development of prototypes and for stimulating R&D in private enterprises. Industrial clusters under CPEC can trigger rapid development. Chinese companies partnering with Pakistani firms in these industrial clusters should be offered incentives linked to efficient production, value addition, and process and product innovation and for growth in productivity. Incentives for skill development courses for industrial workers and for hiring high quality engineers should be given priority.

The agriculture sector in Pakistan supports two-thirds of the rural population and remains the largest income and employment generating sector of economy but accounts for only about 22 percent of total GDP. Despite the huge potential, Pakistan has not been able to exploit its immense agriculture sector. This has been largely due to incompetent and corrupt leadership which was responsible for under- investment in human resource development and agriculture research.

We should learn from China, whose agriculture reform programme lifted millions out of poverty and generated enough income for investment in industrial innovations. The programme began in the early 1980s for developing non-farm opportunities involving provision of a flexible, demand driven packages of services. This was not just making available the technology but also information, technical assistance, marketing support including developing supply networks and supply chains.

The agricultural development programme initiated by their Ministry of Science & Technology in 1986, was termed the Spark Programme (derived from the Chinese proverb a single spark can start a prairie fire). It was intended to help transfer managerial and technological knowledge from more advanced sectors to rural enterprises in order to support continued growth and development in non-state rural enterprises.

Other fast-emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, energy storage systems, new materials including nanotechnology, industrial biotechnology, and next generation genomics, will have a huge disruptive impact on industry in the next decade. Pakistan must invest massively in these areas if it ever wishes to stand with dignity in the comity of nations.

In a country in which there is hardly any eminent scientist or engineer in parliament, this involves our being able to defy gravity to emerge as a powerful nation. This is what we must do.

The writer is the former chairman of the HEC, and president of the

Network of Academies of Science of OIC Countries (NASIC).

Email: [emailprotected]

At this critical juncture of national development, the only way forward is to migrate from its natural resource driven low-value economy to a strong knowledge economy.

In a country in which there is hardly any eminent scientist or engineer in parliament, this involves our being able to defy gravity to emerge as a powerful nation. This is what we must do.

The writer is the former chairman of the HEC, and president of the

Network of Academies of Science of OIC Countries (NASIC).

Email: [emailprotected]

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Defying gravity - The News International

The Real Texas | by Annette Gordon-Reed – The New York Review of Books

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

by Larry McMurtry, with an introduction by Diana Ossana

Liveright, 204 pp., $16.95 (paper)

by Lawrence Wright

Knopf, 349 pp., $27.95

by Monica Muoz Martinez

Harvard University Press, 387 pp., $35.00

by Stephen Harrigan

University of Texas Press, 925 pp., $35.00

by Lucas A. Powe Jr.

University of California Press, 310 pp., $85.00; $34.95 (paper)

Andrew J. Torget begins his 2015 book Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 18001850 with the story of five people whose journey into what was then northern New Spain effectively captures the origins of what would become the largest of the contiguous states of the American Union. In 1819 Marian, Richard, and Tivi escaped from slavery on a plantation in Louisiana, hoping to find freedom in Spanish territory. The following year, James Kirkham, the man who claimed ownership of them, went looking for the escapees, and on his way encountered another Anglo-American, Moses Austin. Austin, a Connecticut-born Missouri transplant, would gain a place in history for getting the first land grant from Spanish authorities to begin settling American families in Texasthe name the Spanish had given the region that they had fought to take from the Comanches for over a century. Austins task was not just to convince whites to move to Texas. He also had to encourage the Spanish governmentto endorse the enslavement of men and women like Marian, Richard, and Tivi, since American farmers would not abandon the United States if they also had to abandon the labor system that made their cotton fields so profitable. Austin died in 1821, before his project could begin in earnest, but his son Stephen F. Austin would take up his dreams of colonization and become famous as a founding father of the Lone Star State.

So three driving forcescotton, slavery, and empire had brought the enslaved, an enslaver, and a colonizer into Texas, to coexist (or not) with the Native Americans and Mexicans who were already there. Their convergence in this place, and their differing and clashing interests, reveal what early Texas was truly about. It explains why the state, even before it was a state, was seen as a problemor an opportunity, depending on ones view of the expansion of slaveryfrom the moment it became clear that its future might lie within the United States of America. The whites who had come to Texas before Austins venturemost with enslaved people in towexpected to create farms and plantations to grow cotton, and they were convinced this could not be done without enslaved labor. According to Torget, Austin argued forcefully to legislators that opening northeastern Mexico to American colonization depended on ensuring that slavery remain legal in Texas.

The Mexican government abolished slavery in 1829 but turned a blind eye to the institution in Texas. Eventually, as their numbers grew, the anxious Anglo settlers wanted firmer assurances of their rights as slaveholders, and sought independence. The short-lived Republic of Texas they created in 1836 provided as much protection for slavery as possible. Texass 1845 annexation by the United States was controversial in some parts of the country precisely because everyone knew the Republic had been constituted as a slaveholders republic and was full of people who were enthusiastic about chattel slavery. Bringing Texas into the Union would upset the balance of power between the Northern free states and Southern slave states.

Its very likely that when most people in the United Statesand in the worldthink about Texas, they do not think of the foundational forces described above. Thanks to Hollywood, the conflict with the Comancheswhich continued for decades after New Spain became Mexico, and after the Republic of Texas became the State of Texasmay come to mind. Certainly, cowboys and cattle ranchers in possession of vast acres have taken their place as figures emblematic of the state. And then, of course, there is oil. Spindletop, the phenomenal 1901 gusher that produced more than 100,000 barrels of oil over a nine-day period, and other spectacular strikes at the Sour Lake, Humble, and Batson-Old fields, made Texas the worlds leading producer of oil for years. This created another stereotype to go along with the cowboy and the prosperous cattle rancher: the vulgar nouveau riche Texas millionaire prone to bragging about being in the oil bidness.

Giant, the classic movie based on Edna Ferbers novel of the same name, brought the cattle ranch and the oil field together, burning those images of Texas into the minds of millions. All of the books under review mention the film. It presents the cattle rancher, and those affiliated with cattle operations, as the original, authentic Texans, who had their way of life disrupted by an oil boom that transformed everyones relationship to the land. Although the movie ends on a hopeful note, a sense of loss runs through it. Larry McMurtrys depiction of Texas, in his collection of essays In a Narrow Graverecently reissued for its fiftieth anniversaryhas much in common with the film. Nostalgia for a lost Texasa Texas based on the ways of cattle ranchingpermeates both. And both proceed as if the states history with slave-based agriculture did not exist, or should have no real bearing on the way the state is perceived.

McMurtry was raised in a family steeped in the West Texas lore of the cowboy and the range. The books final essay, Take My Saddle from the Wall: A Valediction, makes the point plainly:

I realize that in closing with the McMurtrys I may only succeed in twisting a final, awkward knot into this uneven braid, for they bespeak the regionindeed, are eloquent of itand I am quite as often split in my feelings about them as I am in my feelings about Texas. They pertain, of course, both to the Old Texas and the New, but I choose them here particularly because of another pertinence. All of them gave such religious allegiance as they had to give to that god I mentioned in my introduction: the god whose principal myth was the myth of the Cowboy, the ground of whose divinity was the Range.

McMurtry is also an acclaimed screenwriter, and has himself contributed to the Hollywood version of Texas. His first novel, Horseman, Pass By (1961), was made into the movie Hud. That and his other novels that were turned into movies or television showsThe Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, Lonesome Dovedeal with the cowboy mentality, figuratively if not literally. He understands Hollywood well, and one of the books essays, Cowboys, Movies, Myths, and Cadillacs, shows he knows just how much Hollywood has shaped the image of Texas. But it is not clear that he understands the extent to which that image, situating the state in the West and not the South, buries huge, defining swaths of Texas history and culture, along with the experiences of people who were and are, in fact, Texans.

There is ample reason to think of Texas as separate from the South, and to think of it as separate from the West, too. The Balcones Fault roughly bisects the state, creating a division between East and West. The vast majority of the population has always lived in the eastern part of Texas, a fact McMurtry acknowledges. That the less populous region of the state would come to define it is ironic and curious.

We all have family stories. Mine is of an enslaved great-great-grandmother brought to East Texas from Mississippi in the 1850s, before McMurtrys family arrived in West Texas. Freed by her father as a child, along with her mother, she grew up to marry and raise a family, including my great-grandmother, who, with her husband, owned a cotton farm in East Texas. And then there was my fathers great-grandfather: he came out of slavery, and saved to buy a few hundred acres of land with his brothers. They became lumberjacks, cutting and selling timber to make a living. Cotton and timber: both have been integral to the economy and culture of Texas for most of the states history.

McMurtry does write of East Texas, saying that his family had always looked down on the people there because they were farmers. He also declares that area of his home state part of the South, and not really Texan. He invokes William Faulkner, whose writings show his grasp of the weight of history and his willingness to grapple with it:

It has clearly become necessary to write discursively of Texas if one is to be heard at all beyond ones city limits. The South, fortunately for its writers, has always been dark and bloody ground, but Texas is only scenery, and poor scenery at that.

Well, the ground of Texas is pretty dark and bloody too, for the same reasons it was so in Faulkners Mississippi and for reasons unique to Texas. One of McMurtrys own essays, Southwestern Literature?, describes in great detail the depredations of the Texas Rangers, who, after their beginnings in 1823, developed a reputation as expert killers of nonwhites. What would Texas literature look like if more of its writers had, over the years, mined this rich but tragic terrain instead of focusing on the blinkered mythology of the cowboya mythology that excluded the large numbers of cowboys who were black? In saying that his white and male family members bespeak the region, McMurtry, as have others before and since, pronounces Texas a white man. Manycertainly not allpeople who read these essays fifty years ago would have seen no problem with such a pronouncement. It is likely that more would object today. The world has, indeed, changed.

Lawrence Wright, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a screenwriter, was born in Oklahoma but has spent most of his life in Texas. He says that he has come to appreciate what the state symbolizes, both to people who live here and to those who view it from afar. God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, also a book of essays, is another attempt to get at the meaning of a place that has been contentious from the very beginning of its time in the Union. While it would be wrong to place too much emphasis on determinism and birthplace, Wright appears more detached from Texas than McMurtry, whose familial roots go deeper. There is no sense of loss in Wrights prose, no yearning for a supposedly disappearing Texas past, no presentation of a singular mentality that defines the state. Instead, there is a clear-eyed journalists view of the people encountered and the places visited. The predominant impression the reader takes away from the book is one of alarm. Wright fears that the rest of the country may come to resemble Texas in ways that will not do the nation much good:

I think Texas has nurtured an immature political culture that has done terrible damage to the state and to the nation. Because Texas is a part of almost everything in modern Americathe South, the West, the Plains, Hispanic and immigrant communities, the border, the divide between the rural areas and the citieswhat happens here tends to disproportionately affect the rest of the nation. Illinois and New Jersey may be more corrupt, Kansas and Louisiana more dysfunctional, but they dont bear the responsibility of being the future.

A past may lead to a future, and Wright understands the importance of the entirety of Texass history, as well as the importance of all its regions, in shaping what it has become. He recognizes the hold that the myth of the cowboy has had, along with the danger in holding on to a myth. It can become, he says, like a religion weve stopped believing in. It no longer instructs us; it only stultifies us. Moving beyond myth, Wrights explanation of the culture of Texans explicitly invokes the states history and the diversity of its people:

From my lifelong field studies spent among Texans, I have formulated a theory of cultural development.

Level One is aggressive, innovative, and self-assured. It erupts from the instinctive human reaction to circumstance. The paisano presses his tortilla, the slave mixes his corn bread, the cattleman rubs prairie sage on the roasting steer, and a cuisine is irrepressibly born from the converging streams of traditions and available flavors. Spanish priests mortar limestone rocks with river mud; bankrupt Georgia farmers, remembering the verandas of their plantation empire and mindful of the withering sun, build high-ceilinged houses with broad, shaded porches; thus a native architecture arises. In scores of county seats laid out in the 1880s, the Virginian idea of the central courthouse square meets the Spanish idea of the town plaza and the Victorian idea of wedding-cake masonry, creating an idiom of civic democracy. All of our culture overlays this primitive template, just as the Houston freeways inscribe the same routes once traced by ox wagons headed for Market Square.

Recalling in this way the racial and cultural palimpsest that forms the real substance of Texas, one realizes how much effort it has always taken to suppress the truth that Texas is not, in essence, a white man.

What, then, is Texas? Should we even think about so large and diverse a place as having an essence that can be distilled? The document of annexation to the United States provided that Texas could be divided into five separate states, a likely moribund provision that present-day Texans (sometimes jokingly, sometimes not) still invoke. The landscape runs from the lush forests of the east to the desert of the west. The part of Mexico that became Texas has been diverse from its earliest days, and not in a harmonious way. It is the only state to have its own electrical grid. And if Wright fears that Texass immature political culture has too greatly influenced the nations political culture, it is worth noting that the Beto ORourke phenomenonat least as far as the Senate race wentsuggests that things may be changing in the state. Texas has been red because of voter suppression coupled with insufficient voter participation. If the structural barriers to voting are removed, and if more Texans decide to vote, the state could soon be sending a very different message to the nation about what the future should look like.

Monica Muoz Martinezs The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas approaches Texas by focusing intently on the states dark and bloody ground, looking at the years between 1910 and 1920, when white vigilantes, the Texas Rangers, and other law enforcement entities engaged in a wave of anti-Mexican violence. The book uses documentary evidence and the oral histories of families whose members were victimized during this period:

Searching the Texas landscape for the remains of a loved one was an awfuland awfully familiarritual, repeated countless times before. By 1918, the murder of ethnic Mexicans had become commonplace on the TexasMexico border, a violence systematically justified by vigilantes and state authorities alike. Historians estimate that between 1848 and 1928 in Texas alone, 232 ethnic Mexicans were lynched by vigilante groups of three or more people. These tabulations only tell part of the story.

One of Martinezs most important contributions is to remind us that violence against nonwhites was not simply a matter of private citizens going out of control for private reasons. Vigilante violence on the border had a state-building function, she writes. It both directed the public to act with force to sustain hierarchies of race and class and complemented the brutal methods of law enforcement in this period.

What kind of state was to be built? Martinezs primary subject is the way all of this played out on the TexasMexico border between white Texans and ethnic Mexicans. It is a story that should be more widely known, and Martinez tells it with great passion and precision. But, importantly, she links the experiences of Mexican-Americans to those of African-Americans, understanding that enforcing white racial supremacy, through violence and other meansdisfranchisement and Jim Crowgoes to the very heart of the story of Texas:

Although histories of anti-black and anti-Mexican violence have been segregated in popular memories of this period, the ideologies that condoned violence in Texas against those communities mutually informed and justified one another. To fully comprehend the culture of impunity that allowed anti-Mexican violence to thrive in Texas, it is necessary to consider the ongoing history of anti-black violence in the state.

The state-building was being done on behalf of whites, which was perfectly in keeping with the intentions of the people who embarked on the idea of Anglo-American settlement during the early part of the nineteenth century.

This brings us back to the founders of Texas. Stephen F. Austin, who like a number of his generation said that he viewed slavery as a necessary evil, for a brief time changed his mind about the institution. Morality played no part in this shift. He looked with alarm at the growing population of blacks in other Deep South states, and feared that one day blacks in Texas would engulf whites. Austins fear was rooted in the nightmare scenario of black men rising up to kill whites and have sex with white women. He wrote, Suppose that you will be alive at the period above mentionedwhen blacks reached parity with or outnumbered whitesthat you have a long-cherished and beloved wife, a number of daughters, grand daughters, and great-grand daughters. This was, in his mind, a contest for racial supremacy. After the Confederate defeat in the Civil War, when white Texans lost the legal control over black Texans that the laws of slavery had provided, the border was wherever blacks and whites were in the state. The stories of violence and loss that the families in The Injustice Never Leaves You worked so valiantly to keep alive could be told in nonwhite communities throughout Texas. All of this is far away from lonesome cowboys on the range, living out a life of rugged individualism and fierce independence. Martinezs book suggests why many white Texans prefer that the world accept the myth over the reality.

Like the state of which he writes, Stephen Harrigans book on Texas is big; the word is in the title: Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas. Harrigan, an award-winning historical novelist and Texas Monthly contributor, starts with the story of the native peoples who fashioned Alibates flint into the distinctively styled spear and projectile points that are classified today as Clovis. He moves onto the Karankawas, who in 1528 became the first native group in Texas to encounter the Spanish, beginning an engagement with Europeans (the French would soon follow the Spanish) that would transform the lives of all native peoples in the area. Then there were other groupsamong them the Caddo, the Apaches, and the most obstreperous (from the European perspective), the Comanches:

Their name is Comanche. Its a simple enough statement, but one that, when considered against the next few hundred years of Texas history, takes on an ominous oracular force. Long before the Comanches began to clash with Spanish in Texas, they were well known to the soldiers and settlers and priests of New Mexico, and to the Pueblo Indians there, who were restively under Spanish control.

The horses the Spanish brought to the area made their way into the lives of native peoples, affecting no one more than the Comanches. Horses, Harrigan writes, became their culture. The horse culture, combined with their effective battle strategy, helped the Comanches build an empire that, for decades, challenged Spanish encroachment. Harrigans account confirms that the drama of this protracted engagement helped give rise to the cowboys and Indians trope that has so defined Texas and the West. We know how that contest ended, and Harrigan quotes the poignant statement of a Comanche chief, Ten Bears, who said he had been

born under the praire, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I know every stream and wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas. I have hunted and lived over that country. I live like my fathers before me and like them I lived happily. If the Texans had kept out of my country, there might have been peace.

But the Texans, by which he meant people of European descent, would not stay out. The lure of land and prosperity was too strong for that. Harrigan understands the centrality of East Texas to this story, and to the development of the basic character of the state. There were those who wanted to capture the land all the way to the Rio Grande, largely to prevent Spain from maintaining control of the area. But others fixated on East Texas, the fertile crescent of arable deep-soiled land, rich river bottoms, and coastal prairies extending roughly from San Antonio de Bxar to Nacogdoches, from the Colorado River to the Sabine. This is largely the area in which the cotton and sugar-based plantation economy took hold:

The fact that Spain had neglected this paradise, had failed to people it and protect it, to cultivate it and mine it, was an affront almost against nature itself. And the fact that the United States was already locked in a struggle over the expansion of slavery, with eleven free states tipping the balance against ten slave states, meant that Texas offered a potentially ripe opportunity to extend the dominion of human bondage.

Harrigan reinforces the idea that most people do not think of Texas in relationship to slavery. The states western halfits cowboy half, its plains-and-desert halfacts as a kind of psychic counterweight to the cotton-kingdom identity that links it with the Old South. But linked it was. It was no surprise that Texas joined the Confederacy in the hope of maintaining slavery and control over African-Americans. As things turned out, Anglo-Texans did not have long to develop their slave-based economy. The Civil War broke out fifteen years after Texas became a part of the country. Like all Southern states, it resisted Reconstruction and unleashed violence against the people it had formerly held in bondage. Quoting from letters, Harrigan reveals the depth of the hatred that many white Texans felt for all the nonwhites in their midst. They were firm in their belief that the state had been established for white people who were to have dominion over nonwhites. Harrigan echoes McMurtry and Martinez on the violence perpetrated against Mexican-Americans. There were exceptions, but the book leaves no doubt about the origins of the states troubled racial history.

The great strength of Harrigans work is that he tells the stories of all the types of people who have lived in Texas, from its earliest days into modern times, with a sense that all of their lives mattered in fashioning the states identity. Barbara Jordan, the congresswoman from Houston, was a Texan. Jessie Daniel Ames, a white woman who campaigned against lynching, was a Texan. Emma Tenayuca, the labor agitator, was a Texan, as were Sam Houston and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Texas is a large place with no one defining character, save for many residents confident belief that to be a Texan is to be special.

What does all this add up to? How has Texass place in the American Union made a difference? How has the history of Texas directed the progress of the state and of the nation? Lawrence Wrights assertion that Texas has exerted a powerful influence, and will continue to do so, on the American political landscape finds additional support in Lucas A. Powe Jr.s Americas Lone Star Constitution: How Supreme Court Cases from Texas Shape the Nation. Cases originating in Texas have determined, among other things, the way many Americans vote, their right to choose to have an abortion, the way public schools can be funded, and the right for people of the same sex to engage in sexual activity together.

The history, diversity, and geography of Texas all explain what Powe identifies as the states disproportionate effect on American constitutional law, and thus on the entirety of the United States:

More important United States Supreme Court cases have originated in Texas than in any other state, so many, in fact, that entire basic courses in Constitutional Law in both law schools and political science departments could be taught using nothing but Texas cases.

Powes accessible and well-researched account demonstrates why Texas and not Californiaprovides breadth and depth to constitutional adjudication that has had the deepest impact on the nations laws. The states Southern character has also made it a source of resistance to racial discrimination. The focus on its western character, which grows out of that regions wide-open spaces, was, Powe argues, an early-twentieth-century adaptation designed to erase its connection to the South: The Civil War and the Lost Cause were downplayed. Texas is vast, with a mineral resource, oil, that has shaped its place nationally and internationally. Powe reminds us that until displaced by OPEC in the early 1970s, the Texas Railroad Commission set the world price of oil. Cases about energy produced in Texas were closely watched during the New Deal as the state resisted various federal regulations.

Powe references the early struggle over the inclusion of Texas into the Union, with John Quincy Adamss pronouncement that the annexation of an independent foreign power [Texas] would be ipso facto a dissolution of this Union. The sense of the foreignness of Texas, and its own pride at having once been independent, created a combative posture toward the national government from the very start. Texas was a Republic. That is why the constitutional law originating in Texas is so rich and pervasive. Like Wright, Powe is discomfited by the states outsized influence on national law. It is unlikely, however, that this influence will wane anytime soon.

In addition to being a state, Texas is also, Powe says, a state of mind. If one knew nothing about it at all and read these five books, it is likely that one would not come away with a favorable impression. And yet there is something about the placeand its state of mindthat appeals. It is one of the fastest-growing states in the country. People go there seeking fortunes of one kind or another, hoping to find a place for themselves somewhere between what is real and what is myth. It is my home state, and I never feel freer than when driving along a Texas highway, on my way to a somewhere of endless possibilities. I know the problems that others who traveled on those roads have experienced throughout historyand continue to experience. To a degree, that history and its legacy led me to trade one place within a strong mythology for the only other place in the country with as big a sense of itself as Texas: New York City. But the notion of a special freedom in Texasa hope, actuallyis reflexive for me. It is strange and disturbing to think that this hope may in any way resemble the feeling that brought thousands of Anglo settlers, along with the people they enslaved, into the region so long ago.

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The Real Texas | by Annette Gordon-Reed - The New York Review of Books

Under capitalism, even water is a tool of oppression Meg Hill 06 Oct – Red Flag

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

All life depends on water. It covers 71 percent of the Earths surface, makes up 60 percent of our bodies and literally falls from the sky. Its abundant and indispensable. But under capitalism, even water is a tool of social domination. That is the logic of a system of class rule. Capitalism turns material abundance into socially constructed scarcity. No resource not even water is exempt from that violent process. Resources like water are commodified and weaponised, through the workings of the market and through state violence. The human need for water makes it a potential weapon for the ruling class.

Nigeria: a study in imposed water scarcity

Nigerias Rivers state is home to the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria. Their dialect has a special term for water that denotes collective ownership reflecting that its seen as a resource to be shared for the benefit of humanity. But the Ogoni were forcibly removed from their traditional water sources through both long-term groundwater pollution by oil companies and state violence and privatisation in the 1990s. By 2012, the lack of drinkable water had become so severe that the Nigerian government declared a water emergency and was supplying rationed water to the affected communities.

However, quantities of water supplied both during the water emergency and post-water emergency have been insufficient to prevent water scarcity, argued a 2018 research article by Victor Ogbonnaya Okorie published in Africa Spectrum. As a result, residents of the affected communities, including owners of the polluted wells, who were once water-sufficient, became water-insufficient and have been integrated as customers into the burgeoning water market in the region.

The opening of new markets and potential profits presupposes dispossession and destruction of traditional forms of property, particularly collective ones. In Nigeria, the new water market needed more consumers and workers than were provided by dispossession through privatisation. Groundwater pollution provided that extra nudge by rendering the remaining collective water sources poisonous.

Ogoni activist Kenule Saro-Wiwa accused the oil companies of practising genocide against his people and led a mass movement against them. Three hundred thousand people marched against the ecological destruction. The response was repression. Saro-Wiwa was executed in 1995 by Nigerias military dictatorship. In his Statement Before Execution, Saro-Wiwa asserted that the oil companies and the military government were allies in ecological warfare against the Ogoni: Victory is assessed by profits, and in this sense, Shells victory in Ogoni has been total. Last year, Shell celebrated 60 years of operation in Nigeria.

Water privatisation and pollution were the two pillars used to force on the Ogoni a system premised on scarcity. Dr Okorie concluded: What has eroded as the local wells turn black has been a set of social relations that were enabled by the fact that water was part of the commons and had more than monetary value.

Imperialism and water in Palestine

Human need for water is a weapon in the service of imperialism and settler colonialism. Water can be not just a commodity, but a means of ethnic cleansing. In occupied Palestine, Israel-as-oasis is a prominent part of the states national mythology. The military occupation, expanding illegal settlements and apartheid are accompanied by assertions that Israel has brought life human, animal and plant to what was a barren, inhospitable landscape. Desolate-looking Palestinian villages are contrasted to thriving, green Israeli settlements.

Halamish, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, sits above the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh. In the documentary Thank God Its Friday, a Halamish resident is filmed watering her garden while boasting, There were no birds before we came. In reality, its through violent dispossession of houses, land, resources and life that every Israeli settlement is built, and water theft has played a key role in that dispossession. When Palestinians had access to water, their agricultural communities thrived. Israel forced Palestinians off the arable land and took it under Israeli control. Palestinian access to water is increasingly restricted as settlements continue to be built on freshly stolen land.

In Nabi Saleh, residents receive 12 hours of running water a week. In Halamish its provided 24 hours a day. A huge pool sits as a centrepiece in the settlement, probably filled with water from the villages water spring that was confiscated for use by the settlement in 2009.Nabi Saleh is under constant siege by the Israeli military, which raids homes, murders civilians and destroys water tanks on the villagers roofs. With villagers forced off their land to make way for the Halamish settlement, and with their water spring confiscated, the targeting of water tanks ensures that they are reliant on water provided by the Israeli state.

The village and settlement are located within Area C of the West Bank. An Al Jazeera article outlined Israels strategy in the area: The lack of water and other basic services resulting from Israeli policies has created a coercive environment that often leaves Palestinians with no choice but to leave their communities in Area C, allowing Israels land takeover and further expansion of its settlements.

But its not just Area C. Since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it has instituted water-sharing agreements that force all Palestinians in the region into dependence on Israel. Palestinians have refused to sit on the Joint Water Committee within which Israel has a veto since 2010. Water control is a key part of Israels ongoing process of dispossession: hence the myth of Palestine as a water-scarce region. The West Bank is not naturally short of water. Its bordered by the Jordan River and sits above the Mountain Aquifer. United Nations data show that Ramallah gets more rainfall than London. But Israels policies ensure that its siphoned away from Palestinians.

And its not just the West Bank. The 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza, the worlds biggest open-air prison, have access to virtually nothing that is not provided by Israel. The United Nations has predicted Gaza could be uninhabitable by 2020, partly due to its water crisis.There is nothing accidental about that crisis. Where the needs of capitalism are met through imperialism and ethnic cleansing, places like Palestine are made deserts.

Water in the West

Resources are never ordered in accordance with human need under capitalism. While competition and the profit motive reign, rational planning and allocation are inconceivable. So water use is also separated from human need in wealthy places like Australia and the US.

Indigenous people in both the US and Australia, more developed capitalist nations than Israel and Nigeria, have long been subject to the same brutal processes of dispossession. But capitalist forms of water management developed and spread as the commodity-based economy took control.

The most recent catalysts for that development have been neoliberalism and climate change. The neoliberal era has removed water from the mostly illusory special status offered by state ownership where a sector or resource is seemingly shielded from market pressures in the postwar West, while across the world the escalating climate crisis is bringing to a head tensions associated with apparent scarcity.

Some light has been shed on the scale of water management corruption in Australia this year by mass fish kills in the Murray-Darling Basin. Although the immediate cause was a toxic algae bloom, there was no hiding the social nature of the disaster: for years water has been systematically pulled from all over the basin for use by agribusiness, leaving downstream communities and the basin itself prone to crisis.

Another flash point in Australia is the Adani coal mine. The monstrous project had polluted wetlands in Queensland before it was even approved. Its operations will require billions of litres of groundwater while almost certainly polluting the Great Artesian Basin, the largest of its kind in the world. And Adani, thanks to both the federal and Queensland governments, will get its water for free. For the rest of us, the water that comes out of our taps and that we need to survive comes with a bill. Whats left after priority is given to corporations like Adani is sold to us for profit.

Meanwhile, in the US, Trump has just rolled back a mild water reform won under Obama. Regulations to the Clean Water Act established some federal oversight that would lessen the severity of local water pollution. Trump has rescinded those measures to the benefit of a range of profiteers. News reports of the changes have emphasised the differences between Trump and Obama, but they have more in common than not. While measures against some pollution were taken under Obama, his approach was simply striking a different balance than Trump.

In fact, Obamas wars over water proved that the ongoing development of capitalism never stops targeting Indigenous populations. In 2016 the world watched battles between the Native American Sioux and their supporters and the Obama administration over the Dakota Access oil pipeline. One of the major issues was the destruction of the Standing Rock Sioux reservations water supply. Under Obamas watch, the military was sent in to break up a protest camp, dubbed the water protectors, of more than 10,000 people. The pipeline, now built, runs for almost 2,000 kilometres. According to the Intercept, it leaked oil at least five times in 2017 alone.

Capitalism distorts our relationship with every resource, no matter its abundance or its importance to human survival. Those in charge are conscious of how the impending climate crisis affects those needs and are increasingly anxious to protect their control over resources, especially water, into the tumultuous future. Capitalists are increasingly worried both that those theyve deprived of water will rise up against them, and that the climate catastrophe theyve created will start to impede their business and security. A few remedies are being experimented with. Some capitalists are hiring firms of trained killers to protect them and their water supply if we come for it. Others are securing getaway strategies like buying up remote land in New Zealand complete with the worlds freshest water sources to wait out the apocalypse. And in the meantime, scarcity exacerbated by climate change is driving up water prices, and with them profits, everywhere.

In Nigeria, a walled city is being built off the countrys coast to shelter the rich and powerful in the event of a climate apocalypse. The project is bankrolled by the Chagoury Group. Its founder, Gilbert Chagoury, was a Nigerian billionaire and adviser to the dictatorship that murdered Kenule Saro-Wiwa. Before he was executed, Saro-Wiwa said that history would put his murderers on trial. But if left unchallenged, our enemies can wait out the climate crisis on islands or sustain their rule through violent authoritarianism. The right side of history will win only through a collective struggle to the final victory of humanity over the rule of profit. Only then can water, nature and our wealth be used for human need and not for social control.

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Under capitalism, even water is a tool of oppression Meg Hill 06 Oct - Red Flag

Oct. 5 event aims to de-stigmatize addiction and promote recovery – Berkshire Record

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

GREAT BARRINGTON From its scenic vistas to its myriad eateries located in an especially walkable downtown, Great Barrington has often been described by tourists and longtime residents alike as idyllic.

But could the 2012 Smithsonian-ranked best small town in America be among the many communities throughout the Commonwealth and beyond struggling to defend against an opioid epidemic? Gary Pratt says yes.

People think that there cant be a heroin problem here, he said. But I know there is My addiction started in Great Barrington.

With a large tourist-based economy, Pratt said that acknowledging that the community has an issue might not present well, but is something that needs to be addressed. And on Saturday, October 5,hell be shining a light on the matter with a community-based, family-friendly walk and resource fair that will be held in Great Barringtons downtown.

For the rest of the story, subscribe to the Record athttps://bit.ly/2EyNvUR

addiction, fair, Great Barrington, Recovery.

Oct. 5 event aims to de-stigmatize addiction and promote recovery - Berkshire Record

Drillship Yavuz to begin offshore operations in Eastern Mediterranean on Monday – Daily Sabah

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

Turkey's second drillship Yavuz has arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean on Friday, just south of the island of Cyprus, and is set to launch its operations. It will begin drilling on Monday, according to Turkish diplomatic resources. On Thursday, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dnmez announced Yavuz was en route to the Gzelyurt-1 well in the Mediterranean Sea to continue oil and gas exploration activities. "Yavuz is moving toward the Gzelyurt-1 well where it will drill. We will not stop to make our underground resources available to our nation," Dnmez said. According to an issued Navtex or navigational telex, the Yavuz drilling vessel will continue to work in the Mediterranean until January 2020. Turkish diplomat aatay Erciyes, director general for Bilateral Political and Maritime-Aviation-Border Affairs, said on Friday in a tweet, "Yavuz will launch a new round of offshore drilling operations on Oct. 7, 2019.

The drilling area lies within the Turkish CS [continental shelf] registered with the U.N. [United Nations] and in the permit licenses that the government granted to TP [Turkish Petroleum], which were published in the Turkish Official Gazette in 2012." Erciyes also highlighted that Turkey does not recognize the exclusive economic zone claim of the Greek Cypriot administration despite its efforts to declare the area as European Union waters, which he censured as a blatant violation of international law. He further noted that the unilateral actions of the Greek Cypriot administration has violated Turkey's and Turkish Cypriots' rights since 2003.

Turkish Cypriot Energy and Economy Minister Hasan Tocay also lambasted the threats made by the Greek Cypriot administration to arrest the crew of the Turkish vessel after its arrival in the island's waters.

"The steps of the Greek Cypriots ignore the rights of the Turkish people living on the island and they have no right to oppose our activities on the island," Tocay said.

A Navtex published on the website of the Larnaca-based Joint Rescue and Coordination Centre (JRCC) stated on Thursday that all those working on the Yavuz and its supporting vessels will face international arrest warrants.

According to vessel tracker maritimetraffic.com, Yavuz arrived at the Gzelyurt-1 well on Friday. The area is also unilaterally claimed by the Greek Cypriot administration as Block 7, included in its putative exclusive economic zone.

In pure disregard of the rights of the Turkish Cypriots living on the northern part of the island, the Greek Cypriot administration signed agreements with French Total and Italian ENI for the offshore hydrocarbon exploration within Block 7. The deal made the French and Italian companies the biggest players in natural resource exploration on the island. Eni and Total have teamed up to expand their oil and gas search off Cyprus and currently hold licenses for seven of Cyprus' 13 blocks inside the island's economic zone.

Other licensed companies include ExxonMobil and Texas-based Noble Energy along with partners Shell and Israel's Delek.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry severely criticized the unilateral moves of the Greek Cypriot administration and underscored that a section of the so-called license area number 7 remains within the Turkish continental shelf, which has been registered with the U.N.

"As has been the case so far, Turkey will in no way allow any foreign country, company or vessel to engage in unauthorized hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation activities within its maritime jurisdiction areas, and will continue to take the necessary measures to protect its rights and interests," the ministry had previously said.

In response to Yavuz's arrival on the island waters where it will continue exploration activities, British State Ministry for Europe Christopher Pincher said on Friday, "I made it very clear that Great Britain deplores any drilling in waters close to Cyprus but supports Cyprus's right to extract oils in its exclusive economic zone."

Pincher was speaking in Nicosia after a meeting with Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, who also stated that Total and ENI are also the licensed energy companies to explore hydrocarbon resources in Block 7 and called Ankara's decision to send Yavuz to drilling Gzelyurt-1 well "severe escalation."

Turkey's hydrocarbon exploration in East Med

Turkey has consistently contested the Greek Cypriot administration's unilateral drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean, asserting that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) also has rights to the resources in the area. The unilaterally declared EEZ of the Greek Cypriot administration violates part of Turkey's shelf, particularly in Blocks 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7.

Since spring this year, Ankara has sent two drilling vessels Fatih and most recently Yavuz to the Eastern Mediterranean, asserting the right of Turkey and the TRNC to the resources of the region. The drilling area falls entirely within the Turkish continental shelf registered with the U.N. and in permit licenses that the Turkish government in previous years granted to Turkish Petroleum, the country's national oil company.

Turkey's first seismic vessel, the Barbaros Hayrettin Paa, bought from Norway in 2013, has been conducting exploration in the Mediterranean since April 2017. A second seismic exploration vessel, MTA Oru Reis, joined Turkey's exploration activities in the region at the end of August.

Athens and Greek Cypriots have opposed Turkey's activities, threatening to arrest the ships' crews and enlisting EU leaders to join their criticism.

The island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when a Greek Cypriot coup took place after decades of violence against the island's Turkish community and Ankara's intervention as a guarantor power. It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including the latest initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Turkey, Greece and the U.K. that collapsed in 2017.

The TRNC was established in 1983 on the northern one-third of the island, and is only recognized by Turkey and faces a longstanding embargo in commerce, transportation and culture. The Greek Cypriot administration enjoys recognition by the international community as the Republic of Cyprus, established in 1960, and acceded into the European Union on May 1, 2004, only days after the April 24 referendum to end the breakaway and isolation of Turkish Cyprus which was rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriot voters and accepted by 65% of Turkish Cypriot voters.

The accession of Greek Cyprus to the EU violated the EU's own rules of not allowing candidate countries with border disputes and assurances to Turkey and Turkish Cypriots that the Cypriot accession would not take place until a permanent solution had been reached on the island.

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Drillship Yavuz to begin offshore operations in Eastern Mediterranean on Monday - Daily Sabah

The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future – The News International

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Danzig

The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future

Reviewed by Dr. Erum Khalid Sattar

In The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future, Dr Ishrat Husain, Aijaz A. Qureshi, and Nadeem Hussain have written a vast book, ambitious in the scope of the material and research they have amassed. They dedicate their book to the poor households of Sindh who deserve a better future and it is with that aspirational spirit that their work should be approached.

As the authors point out, even though the title of the book seems to suggest that it is focused on Sindh, their focus is broader and includes a juxtaposition of Sindhs economy with Punjab and situates the two overall within the broader figures for Pakistan as a whole. In particular, where specific studies are available, they include comparisons with southern Punjab, and given on many counts its similarly underachieving nature, the comparative with Sindh is a fruitful one. This broader focus on the economic conditions in two provinces enhances the reference value of the book and it is hoped that people turn to it for its vital broader inter-provincial insights. Broadly, the authors helpfully lay out what they view as some principal challenges faced by Sindhs economy such as the need to raise agricultures productivity in the face of water shortages, food insecurity, and rising demand for meat, dairy, and fruits by the urban middle class such that these will be the principal areas of concern for the purposes of this review. More importantly, they tell us that they propose a strategy for tackling these challenges in their (brief) concluding chapter to which well return at the end. Broadly, on such an important topic as the economy of a region that is a current flashpoint of regional conflict that threatens to escalate into a wider and even more dangerous escalation, one perhaps needs no justification for yet another review of this already well-reviewed book on the topic of the economy of Sindh and more broadly, Pakistan.

There is a clear link between those whose lives the authors wish to improve through their work and the figures they cite such that in Sindh nearly 48% of the population lives in rural areas and 38% of them continue to derive their livelihoods from agriculture, livestock, forestry, and fishing. Given this is the case and they wish for their work to be relevant for policy-makers it would have been good if they had teased out some of the clear implications of their findings.In particular, given the reliance of the population on agriculture, the problems they document vis--vis Sindhs downstream location within the Indus river basin are unfortunately all too familiar. Further, in the province itself these range from inequity in land distribution and water availability between larger and smaller farmers and resulting productivity differentials between them. The authors conclude that there is overall poor resource management the most egregious being that of water access and availability. As is also well-known, larger landlords continue to utilize all levers of power to access more than their authorized shares of water. Unfortunately for us, while the authors clearly lay outthese well-known stark facts about the critical issues in the agricultural economy, they do go further and raise fundamental questions about its long-term sustainability in its present form. Clearly, the system is working for the few at the expense of the many and while these are critical issues of political economy, it would have been good to hear some of the authors proposed possible solutions to them as without such engagement, the overall contribution of the work on these issues remains limited. To take one example, they seem to lay out without question some key assumptions that they should make explicit instead of proceeding on their unstated basis such as that in coming decades Tarbela and Mangla dams will silt up and new reservoirs wont take their place till the late 2020s. This assumption that new dams will get built on this timeline may likely be taking WAPDA plans on their face and given the huge questions ranging from issues about their financing to impacts on humans and ecosystems, especially the misgivings about them that downstream Sindh continues to express (after all, the main focus of the book), these grave issues deserve more nuanced engagement.

As the authors tell us, in the seventh decade since its founding within the Pakistani federation, the incomes of Sindhs rural residents are on average as the authors report, one-third that of its urban citizens. There is in effect, vast income inequality that results from being born and raised in this region. Of course, the stark disparity of rural incomes vis--vis those of urban residents is a worldwide challenge. For example, as the Peoples Republic of China enters its seventh decade, urban incomes in that country remain nearly three times that of rural residents; in China, part of the reason for the gap in urban-rural incomes is the fact that farmers are not allowed to own the land and can only lease land from the state. But this trend extends even beyond China, and is a significant cause of the political turmoil in both the U.S. and the U.K., according to credible arguments from many analysts, from disparities between rural and city incomes and life opportunities.

Given the authors catalogue the challenges particular to their area of focus, it would have been good if they had made the connections that the rural-urban divide in life opportunities is not unique to Pakistan and nor does it excuse Pakistani policy-makers from the obligation to work towards the uplift of farmers within their own provincial and national jurisdictions. Perhaps policy-makers in Pakistan will want to solve the problems of farmer inequality because they deserve to be solved but also because theyll come to see that the widespread global prevalence of the problem will make any solutions they devise of interest to others beyond the countrys borders. Surely, being a part of a productive and critical global discourse should be an aspirational role for the country and hearing the authors views on such possibilities would have benefitted readers and policy-makers.Further, given the academic and policy grounding of the authors, perhaps they could serve as the conduit for further research and collaborative policy development across borders in this critical area through their ability to engage with a broad group of stakeholders.

As the authors could have highlighted, the income and hence opportunities gap between the residents of urban and rural areas couldbe of potential concern for policy-makers for at least two reasons. While the authors do not directly provide these reasons as an outcome of their study, they are reasonably inferable from a close reading of their findings. First, because the statistics they offer concern the welfare of approximately 40% of Sindhs labour force. Second, given the facts that the authors report, the question arises urgently whether and how policy-makers envisage bringing about a transition from the likely underemployed (and hence surplus) labour in the agricultural sector. While the authors do not clearly state the question directly in these terms, from much of what they tell us about under-performance in the sector across the countrys two main irrigated agricultural provinces of Sindh and Punjab, the structural question arises regarding the desirable percentage of the workforce to be employed in agricultural work, and the relative productivity of that work vis--vis other sectors. According to the authors, the International Labour Organization (ILO) recommends that an economys productivity gains need to be analysed carefully to disaggregate whether the gains are coming from people moving across sectors (e.g. from agricultural jobs to jobs in urban areas) or whether a sector itself such as for instance agriculture is itself becoming more productive. These are questions that need to be studied and answered carefully and unfortunately for us the authors do not describe the potential consequences of following the information the data provide either to its logical conclusion (no gains in productivity in agriculture) or whether the gains people are experiencing come when they move out of agriculture. Such in-depth analysis by the authors of their findings would have benefitted readers trying to understand all the collated material.

The figures indicate that people who could be more productively employed in urban jobs both in terms of numbers and in terms of productivity have not found that any such opportunities exist, and so they stay on their rural plots within the confines of their dwindling opportunities. The percentage of the labour force employed in agriculture, as high as it is, masks the attention that it merits from policy-makers in another key sense, and that is the very high population dependency ratios as the authors report in the country for working age populations. In their presentation of the data, essentially, the countrys high dependency ratios should also be a separate policy concern as the authors could have made clear when they report them in a table. As the authors note, on average, adults in their prime working years support approximately nine to ten dependents. Unfortunately, the dependency ratios are not disaggregated by rural and urban areas and further studies are needed to fill in this critical information gap which may have serious implications for policy design. Again, it would have been good if the authors had recommended that such further work be carried out by researchers and government agencies increasing the utility of their book through specific recommendations that they see in terms of the gaps in data and research that at a minimum need to be developed. This is particularly so as the authors have informed us, rural incomes are a third of urban incomes. This means that there needs to be a much keener appreciation than is visible from a policy response on the part of planners for how much more available money needs to stretch in rural areas. Given this urban-rural gap, it is hoped that in any proposals to tackle these structural challenges that they may devise, policy-makers will come up with aspirational goals to help shift these trends with the right incentives.

More importantly, whether planners are relatively content with how over the course of the past approximately twenty years, as the authors report, the share of employment in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors of the economy has remained relatively stable? While the overall trend has shifted significantly from the decade of the 1960s when employment in agriculture hovered just over 60% of the population, nevertheless the fact that the shift has stalled over the last two decades should be a source of concern. It would have been good if the authors had discussed the implications of these long-term trends especially as they see the challenges playing out for policy-makers.

Overall, given what the authors have told us about the persistent underachievement prevalent in the rural areas, an overarching question for the country is one of vision. How does it see itself going forward as what sort of nation in the 21st century? To be clear, the authors do not explicitly state the question in these terms but again, the question of how the country sees its future is one that their work necessarily leads us to and it would have been good to have seen their discussions of the implications of their findings for the countrys direction-setting. To take just one possible example, to incentivize away from the oft-repeated self-conceptualization of Pakistan being an agrarian nation will be a difficult yet necessary task in the long trajectory of the countrys development. It will stem from an appreciation of the fact that there is vast rural stagnation and miserable conditions borne by agricultural workers in many forms not limited to for instance oral contracts between illiterate labourers and the keeping of accounts by vastly more powerful landlords as the authors carefully document. It is likely that even all of this taken together may not move policy in desirable directions so the discourse will need to go beyond assembled facts and studies. It will essentially mean that all of the vast troves of information taken together will need to be distilled in a way such that there is a broad-based recognition that to date, no country in the world has made major strides in lifting its people from poverty and hunger in which a significant chunk of the population has been engaged in low-value producing agriculture.

Of course, there is no one overarching entity that can set a vision for a nation of an estimated 220 million people projected to rise to approximately 340 million by mid-century. What is important though is that through an analysis such as the one that the findings of the book necessarily lead to, deeper questions about the pace, scale and direction of change are raised. As before, it would have been good to have the benefit of the authors insights on these critical structural challenges. Let us recall that the grounding of the countrys rural economy in a structure of large-scale canal irrigation was laid during British colonial rule of the subcontinent. Given these historical colonial-era foundations of the countrys vast canal irrigation network that undergirds the rural agricultural economy, how do planners envisage its future in a time of increasing stresses on the system such as for instance the impact of a changing climate on the behaviour of glaciers and on available river water from their overall reduction. Further, to extend the authors analysis of the impacts on Pakistans rural agricultural economy and irrigation network within a consideration of its geopolitics is a necessity. To do so, the authors may have had to go beyond the scope of their disciplinary boundaries but given theyve relied on a broad range of studies, including some from a wider range of disciplines including geostrategic studies may have enabled them to paint a fuller picture of the conditions within which modern Sindhs economy, particularly its rural agricultural economy is situated. At first glance even though this may seem far from the core of their study, on closer reflection it is clear that given the huge scale of the gravity-flow canal irrigation network, developments far upstream and transboundary developments in the region more broadly have the potential for outsized impacts downstream. This means that the analysis could have benefited from a consideration of any potential impacts from Indian actions upstream on the Indus rivers system as well as any predictions about future developments that may occur there including effects on the long-term functioning, viability and prospects of the operation of the Indus Waters Treaty 1960. Any consideration of agriculture and irrigation in Sindh and the Pakistan more generally at least as it is currently practiced within the confines of present large-scale water transfer technology needs to have a keen understanding of the stability and long-term availability of water. Unfortunately for us, in the present work the authors have declined to engage in this sustained analysis. It is hoped that alert policy-makers spurred by the authors findings will go further to question the fundamentals and viability of the agricultural economy going forward into the 21st century.

In a trend that hopefully bodes well for the production of future research in Pakistan, the authors rely not only on experts in particular fields, but also worked extensively with both undergraduates and graduate students at the IBA in Karachi as research assistants who (one assumes) tracked down many sources and leads. Working with students for producing such research not only improves the quality of the work but also trains students to work with experts and authors leading hopefully to a continuum of ongoing training and research. It is hoped that educational institutions throughout the country will encourage the production of such research collaborations. However, a singular problem with such a work that is based on the compilation of data from numerous sources are the limitations of those sources themselves. Given this inherent shortcoming and the vast spread of data throughout the book, it would have been good had the authors included either an overall discussion that addressed some of the general problems or had interspersed the shortcomings and limitations of data sources within the substantive sections where they relied on them. To give just one instance, on their very important chapter on Poverty and Inequality, in a table on the proportion of the population classified as poor in Pakistan, the table stops at the years 1999-2000. Given this is a very recent book published in 2019 it seems imperative for readers to be able to understand why the figures seem to stop two decades ago. The source for the table is Government of Pakistan data and surely it must continue to maintain this information to the present. Given the importance of this information and the vast expenditure on poverty-alleviation efforts in the country, the non-inclusion of the data for recent years merits discussion. The need for such an explanation is particularly clear as the authors intend for the book to be used as a text book, as a reference for other researchers and scholars and as a guide for policy makers. Thus, while it is important to compile information and data extensively, it is also imperative that authors engage critically with their data sources and their overall utility in moving the project of knowledge production forward.

To close with the authors proposed strategy for tackling problems of food insecurity, irrigation water shortages, and lower crop yields arising from global warming in the face of increasing demand from the urban middle class for higher quality and quantities of food, the authors propose a broad range of strategies from improvement in water use efficiency, rationalisation of water pricing, water conservation techniques to substitution of flood irrigation by drips or sprinklers amongst others. As they acknowledge, for this to succeed, a whole host of governance reforms, creating a greater use of private economic agents, and capacity building of research and development institutions will need to happen for the process to succeed. These are very difficult and complex challenges indeed and perhaps with this effort of the authors and others that it may spur, Sindh and Pakistan can begin to move in the right directions.

The reviewer has a doctorate in law from Harvard University and teaches water law and policy at Tufts University. She will be a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore School of Law in 2020.

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The Economy of Modern Sindh: Opportunities Lost and Lessons for the Future - The News International

Crypto Rebels Trip Over Each Other en Route to Financial Utopia – Yahoo Finance

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Danzig

(Bloomberg Markets) -- For Ashleigh Schap, the 2008 Great Recession was more an ideological awakening than an economic crisis. Her hometown of Houston escaped the worst of the maelstrom that ravaged large parts of the U.S., her parents kept their jobs, and the house she was living in retained most of its value. She had little reason to imagine the wheels would come off Americas capitalist machine.

Yet the events of that year left a lasting impression on the teenager. The financial crisis and its aftershocks, which she read about on blogs and discussed with her classmates, made her realize that good times dont last forever. More important to what she would do later in life, she says they left her with a distaste for a lopsided financial system that benefits and protects those at the top at the expense of those at the bottom.

Im from Texas. My family is conservative and capitalist, she says. And this was the first evidence I had seen that the ideas of growth at all times, that the cream always rises to the top, and that markets will be always be efficient, failed.

It would be five more years before Schap would discover Bitcoina key moment in her growing rebellion against existing political and financial structuresand five more before she would work on creating what she saw as a fairer financial order. She would also diverge politically from her family. I dont talk to them about politics anymore, says Schap, whos now 27.

Her path from the high school chess club to crypto rebel was far from inevitable. Even before graduating in 2014 from the University of Texas at Austin, she joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Dallas as an analyst in the companys business for wealthy clients. She says she spent less than half a year there, moved to New York, knocked around a fintech firm and a family office for a while, and eventually, in April 2018, landed on the outermost fringes of finance at MakerDAO.

The key to MakerDAO is in its name: DAO stands for decentralized autonomous organization. Its an online platform for creating digital dollars, or so-called stablecoins, and generating loans secured by crypto tokensall run by a blockchain-based computer program and free of oversight by any central party, such as, say, a government.

MakerDAO is the most important player in the fast-growing movement known as decentralized finance. #DeFiwidely known by its Twitter hashtagaims to create a financial world where everything from loans to investments is readily available to anyone without having to go through gatekeepers who decide who gets to play or intermediaries who charge fees at every turn.

It was a world in which Schap felt at home. In her early 20s, the online game World of Warcraft had introduced her to Bitcoin: She needed it to buy an accessory for her avatar. She bought five Bitcoin tokens in February 2013 (and then lost the same number a year later when the Mt. Gox exchange froze withdrawals following a hack of its systems). Decentralized finance is a natural outgrowth of cryptos ideology. The DeFi movement is small; its almost exclusively the preserve of crypto utopians, many of them clustered around San Francisco. Its criticsand there are manysay its a wild experiment run by people ill-equipped to be designing financial products.

I left the traditional financial world for a reason. Im not some crazy renegade. Im quite the opposite

The technology might be interesting for more efficient delivery of financial services, but the naivet and lack of knowledge of financial history seem shocking to me, says Richard Bernstein, founder of Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC and a former chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch & Co. Theres this tear-down-the-house mentality, with minimal understanding of why financial regulation even exists.

QuickTake:U.S. Crypto Regulatory Fight Has Everything But Rules

Schap says shes no financial ingnue. I left the traditional financial world for a reason, not because I was not being paid enough, but because I wanted to see what we could do with this new technology and how far we could push it, she says. Im not some crazy renegade. Im quite the opposite. Blockchain has the potential to create a fairer financial system than we currently have, with more flexibility and greater opportunities to access credit.

Indeed, the ideas behind decentralized finance could have broad resonance beyond crypto circles. Popular uprisings from the global Occupy movement to the Hong Kong protests are driven by a young population pushing back against societal injustices and existing power structures, including in finance.

Working for MakerDAO, her hair dyed pink, her workstation a stones throw from the New York Stock Exchange, Schap had completely transitioned to the financial resistance. She says she loved that MakerDAO was the antithesis of a corporate giant like JPMorganless a corporation than a cooperative, a commune for the digital age with developers and entrepreneurs around the world collaborating on an exciting new project.

And yet unbeknownst to Schap, even by the time she joined MakerDAO, a rebellion was brewing within the rebellion. The infightingin which Schap would become an accidental combatantrevolved around how decentralized financial services can ever really be. MakerDAOs founder, Rune Christensen, had come to believe it was time to move away from crypto anarchism and integrate the project into the existing financial system. Others, including Chief Technology Officer Andy Milenius and Schap, saw such a move as a betrayal of the ideals they cherished.

In an account of the startups ideological battles that Milenius shared on the companys chat server in early April, he said Christensen, in trying to force his vision on what had been a loose coalition of developers and businesspeople, gave them an ultimatum to get on board with his agenda or leave. While Mileniuss post said numerous staffers were uncomfortable with Christensens power play, Schap was the only employee he mentioned by name.

As would soon become clear, her days at MakerDAO were numbered.

Schaps studies at UT Austin werent a natural launchpad for a career in finance. As a philosophy major, with a minor in French, she says she told a JPMorgan recruiter her liberal arts education taught her how to think through problems. The job didnt suit her in the end. I didnt feel like what we were doing was moving the needle, she says. We were collecting all these fees, but I thought we were really overpaid. It wasnt exactly rocket science.

Schap felt increasingly pulled to the edges of finance. There just hadnt been many opportunities to make a career in the crypto industry, she says, during the five years shed spent in traditional finance. But by last year, she says, she felt qualified enough, and bored enough, to take advantage of an opportunity that arose to join MakerDAO. Schap worked in business development, and what began as a jack-of-all-trades job soon morphed into a singular focus on delivering the most ambitious phase of the project: creating a stablecoin backed by multiple types of collateral. She says she worked on finding partners that could supply collateral to the MakerDAO system.

MakerDAOs stablecoin, Dai, is pegged to the dollar and, in its current iteration, backed by the cryptocurrency Ether. There are about $82million worth of Dai in circulation as of Sept. 19. Launched in late 2017, Dai was one of the first of whats become a flurry of virtual currencies designed to avoid large price swings.

Stablecoins like Dai can be used as a hedge against volatility. Ether peaked at more than $1,400 each at the beginning of 2018, only to fall to $84 at the end of the year and then to trade at $175 at the beginning of October. Dai can also be used to pay for things. Users of Dai claim to have bought cars and paid their employees salaries with the currency. MakerDAO says some payments companies such as Wirex Ltd. allow customers to use the token to facilitate the movement of funds between cryptocurrencies and traditional money.

The Dai token also enables lending. Dai is created when holders of Ether send their crypto to a blockchain-based computer program developed by MakerDAO and open whats known as a collateralized debt position. The CDP then issues a loan to Ether holders in Dai. The loan is smaller than the amount of Ether posted to maintain overcollateralization in case of market stress.

Dai, sold on exchanges such as Coinbase, is also widely used in other DeFi projects. Advocates of decentralized finance aspire to do more than just replicate the current system: They see a world in which DeFi projects collaborate to create business models and products that couldnt exist without blockchain technology.

Imagine being able to develop new financial markets that previously needed a multimillion-dollar bespoke contract designed by an investment bank, but with a few points and clicks, says Joey Krug, a DeFi entrepreneur and co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, the first U.S. investment firm focused on Bitcoin.

I left the traditional financial world for a reason. Im not some crazy renegade. Im quite the opposite

MakerDAO has a second token, MKR. A bit like shares in a public company, it gives holders voting rights on such matters as how much collateral is required to borrow Dai. Holders are rewarded for sound management with money drawn from fees charged to borrowers. The value of these tokens could be diluted if loans arent repaid. There are $450 million worth of MKR outstanding.

Schap says that if the MakerDAO system works as envisioned, it will be like a decentralized bank, taking deposits, facilitating lending, and managing risks. It also functions like a central bank in that it sets interest rates (in the form of what is called a stability fee, which is designed to help Dai track the dollar).

Before division and disenchantment set in at MakerDAO, Schap says, she felt she was involved in a startup that wasnt only reinventing finance but also creating a new type of corporate structureimpromptu brainstorming, a flat organization, ideas flying in from people regardless of job title or area of responsibility. All this, she says she believed in those early days, wasnt a function of good personal chemistry; it was Makers DNA.

Or maybe it wasnt. Her growing unease was thinly veiled in a series of tweets she sent on her one-year anniversary there. One of them said: I believe in a global, borderless, decentralized money. I believe in transparency and open governance. I also believe that we are human beings, we are flawed, and we have to set aside our selfish desires to make these things work. Because this work is worth doing. This matters.

A few weeks earlier, Christensen, who co-founded MakerDAO in 2014, had issued his ultimatum in true counterculture style. Christensen is a 28-year-old Danish entrepreneur. While still in college, the Mandarin speaker co-founded a company that recruited European teachers to work in China. Taking inspiration from the sci-fi film The Matrix, he gave his MakerDAO development team a choice. The red pill: Get on board with Christensens vision, whose main focus, as Milenius described it in his post, was on government compliance and integration of Maker into the existing global financial system. The blue pill: If you feel differently, finish your work and then leave.

Taking the red pill doesnt mean youre a sellout to mainstream finance, Christensen says: I reject the idea that Im not an idealist. He says he believes that startups like MakerDAO have few examples to follow, and to succeed in a fast-paced industry, they need to adapt to the real world.

The big journey and challenge is how to deliver this vision, he says. Its quite easy to write a white paper and code, but to get a real live decentralized finance system going, you need to deal with challenges like regulation and how to integrate with the establishment. In his view, the DAO-like setup that Schap cherished led to a tyranny of structurelessness.

MakerDAO last year established the Maker Foundation. Designed to make the Dai credit system a success, it was intended to formalize the structure. As of mid-September, the foundation was still in the process of recruiting a professional board of directors, according to Christensen.

In response to his ultimatum, Schap and some like-minded employees proposed a third way, which became known as the purple pill. They were seeking a compromise to preserve MakerDAOs decentralization ethos and ensure that its resources would be used to finance as broad a spectrum of DeFi projects as possible. If youre going to build a new system, its going to require selfless thinking and be designed so that theres not one company or entity that gets all the rewards, says Schap. You need to remove the advantages of being at the top, and that is hard to do: If we build something, we feel we need to get our pound of flesh.

Christensen, according to Mileniuss post, viewed the purple pill discussion as an uprising. Milenius said numerous purple pill partisans were fired. Schap was fired at the end of April. She says the reason given for her dismissal was violation of a nonsolicitation clause, something she denies. A MakerDAO spokesperson declined to comment.

Milenius, 27, who stepped down as CTO shortly before he wrote his treatise, says the struggles at MakerDAO are representative of a wider conflict that pervades the crypto communitya battle between those who see blockchain technology as a means to entirely reimagine the financial world and those who see it simply as a useful tool to make that world more efficient. The blockchain community has always been starkly divided between those with a reform agenda and those with a radical vision for a new way to live, he says. After the events of this past spring, it has become clear to me that Maker now exclusively falls into the former camp.

For Christensen, the next phase of the project is about increasing users and profits. He says hes considering whether MakerDAO should obtain a broker-dealer license or acquire a licensed brokerage firm so the MakerDAO system can accept collateral from the real world to back Dai. The future is not about making Maker work, but about figuring out how the ecosystem becomes as sprawling as its able to and how it can make money, he says. There is so much to be done before the crypto ecosystem becomes this big self-sustaining economy.

Schap says she was surprised to find herself at the center of the MakerDAO storm. I somehow ended up being the poster child of this perceived mutiny, she says. The reality was quite a bit different. It wasnt me leading. There was no coup.

After losing her job at MakerDAO, Schap headed to Egypt for some downtime. At Dahab, on the Red Sea, the longtime scuba diver tried something more adventurous: learning to free dive down 66 feet (20 meters). Schap says she relished the mental challenge of calming your mind and pushing past the urge to breathe or swim up. From Egypt, she went to Berlin, a hub for blockchain developers, where she advised some DeFi projects.

Schap says her experience at MakerDAO has strengthened, not broken, her conviction that decentralized financial services are necessary and worthwhile. She says she hopes MakerDAO prospers. She put a year of her life into it, after all, and she holds some MKR tokens. But she remains unconvinced that platforms such as MakerDAO need to be regulated.

Decentralized finance is dismissed as little more than a distraction by vast swaths of the financial community, so MakerDAOs next steps matter: Its the largest and most closely watched DeFi project. It has a significant bearing on the broader $220 billion crypto market, says Robert Leshner, CEO of Compound, a virtual-currency money market.

Leshner says MakerDAO and DeFi more generally are helping to provide an answer to the question that hangs over crypto. After the bubble, then crash, of 2017 and 2018, its natural to ask, What do we use this stuff for? he says. [DeFi] is the first legitimate answer to the question. DeFi is starting to have its moment because its the next chapter for crypto.

As for Schap, decentralization has become something of a life goal. She says shes now working on her own DeFi startup with friends and will split her time between Berlin and New York. I dont think Maker will ultimately make or break DeFi, she says. Its already helped to make it. And I dont think its possible, even if Maker were to fail, for this train to stop rolling.

Marsh covers cryptocurrencies in London.

To contact the author of this story: Alastair Marsh in London at amarsh25@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stryker McGuire at smcguire12@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Crypto Rebels Trip Over Each Other en Route to Financial Utopia - Yahoo Finance

What is the Architecture of Degrowth? – Archpaper.com – The Architect’s Newspaper

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Danzig

The Oslo Architecture Triennale, now in its seventh iteration, has made a name for itself under the directorship of Hanna Dencik Petersson as one of the most prescient and timely showcases in the relentless stream of iennales and ennials, those beloved recurring art and design festivals where dreams are made. After a successful 2016 exhibition themed around migration and identity in the face of hyper-globalization, the program returned in 2019, this time examining climate change, resource allocation, and economic systems under the theme of degrowth with Enough: The Architecture of Degrowth. Curated by Interrobang, an architecture and engineering firm, with chief curators Matthew Dalziel, Phineas Harper, Cecilie Sachs Olsen, and Maria Smith, the exhibition is a fresh take on ecology, introducing the ideology of degrowth into architecture discourse and examining how it would help realize a more ecologically-oriented human civilization.

Degrowth has recently gotten attention as a new paradigm for understanding a post-consumerist future where resource extraction and economic growth are decelerated, giving way to new social, political, and economic systems that are more harmonious with nature and the earths finite resources and terrain. For an exhibition, this is fertile intellectual territory to speculate on the ways in which we build, and how they can evolve in alternative worlds. It is a refreshingly positive take on politics today, as much of our discourse, in architecture and beyond, is overwhelmingly negative and aims to discount or problematize (cancel) rather than propose new ideas or provoke new thoughts.

Installation view of The Library at The National Museum Architecture. (Istvan Virag/OAT)

The main festival exhibition, titled The Library, was conceptualized as a spatial infrastructure for sharing knowledge and was organized as a series of four rooms or collections that featured works ranging from material samples and books to analyses of languages and economic systems. The range and breadth of types of thought experiments presented a holistic and clear visionalmost a manifestoof what degrowth might look like as an architectural philosophy. It was not a set of solutions, but rather speculative, positive provocations on what this new area of discourse might look like.

In theLibrarys first collection, The Subjective, personal identities and rituals were examined. How would life change in a degrowth world? How would we live, laugh, and love? The Aerocene backpack by the Aerocene Community is a personal, solar-powered balloon imagined as an alternative to carbon-intensive jet air travel. Helen Stratfords Organizational Diagrams for Everyday Life is a set of schematic diagrams that redraw the rituals of a daily schedule to visualize new routines outside of the pressures of work and productivity metrics that define us today.

Perhaps the most traditionally eco-friendly collection is the Objective Collection, which is about materials and building techniques. Like the rest of the Triennale, it attempts to take these decades-old sustainability ideas and pushes them into new places. Another Column by YYYY-MM-DD is a deployable textile column that can be filled with sand or aggregate to create a site-specific architecture to replace concrete. Multiplo by GUSTO is a simple brise-soleil made of discarded fan covers from an abandoned army base in Northern Italy. A host of other new, eco-friendly materials gave a glimpse into how resource extraction, especially fossil fuels, could be replaced by smaller-scale reuse and bio-engineering to architectural degrowth.

Exhibition view, The Library The National Museum Architecture. (Istvan Virag/OAT)

In the Collective and Systemic collections lie the big questions that both define a possible Architecture of degrowth, and are also impossible to answer now. How new collectivities and systems would be constructed is not clear in degrowth discourse at the moment, but the ideology is ripe for speculating on how we might live in a post-consumerist, post-growth society. Collective projects include Visual Ecolophonic by INDA and Animali Domestici examines and visualizes the Sami language of Northern Finland, which they describe as more in harmony than nature than most languages. ARPA by (ab)Normal is a theoretical world where artificial intelligence replaces market forces as an organizing principle. It is an important aspect to consider here, as questions about power structures and humanitys proclivity toward violence have to be taken into consideration.

The biggest questions are raised in the Systemic Collection, where entire social and political systems, networks, and environments are rethought at both the local and the global scale. This, according to the curators, is where degrowth departs from previous environmental movements. MassBespoke, a project to build quality housing out of timber, another replacement for concrete, was also on show at the Triennale. By allowing that flexibility in the system, these homes can now be personalized like custom homes. The Intentional Estates Agency (Jesse LeCavalier, Tei Carpenter, Dan Taeyuong, and Chris Woebken) is a set of real and imagined real estate models both new and oldfrom 19th-century utopias to seasteadingthat speculate on alternatives to our current real estate metrics.

In addition to the main exhibition, more than 100 events and other programming added to the degrowth chorus. Standouts included a workshop to make tote bags from recycled tote bags from previous events, as well as a spectacular, interactive performance by Rimini Protokoll that made the audience unwilling participants in the complexities and absurdities of our growth-fueled construction industry; politicians engaging in corruption, lawyers battling, financiers gambling, and precarious workers struggling.

Perhaps what is the most interesting aspect of this festival are the questions about that come next. How is degrowth a helpful ideology for architecture? Can it provoke new ways of building at the individual level that can become communal and then translate into change at the systemic scale? What power structures are most susceptible to degrowth in architecture? How can the development and real estate industry be convinced to participate in this? How do democracy and degrowth interact? What would happen if the right were to take degrowth and use it as an excuse to enable eco-fascism? Conversely, what does a green, socialist utopia look like? Can every aspect of our lives be redesigned through the lens of degrowth? The answers dont matter right now, it is the questions being raised that offer promise, and should echo through architecture at this most critical and important time for these eco-ideas.

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What is the Architecture of Degrowth? - Archpaper.com - The Architect's Newspaper

Coming to Broadway in Fall 2019 – NYU Washington Square News

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Danzig

Summer has finally come to a close, and that means its time for sweaters, pumpkins and Broadway previews. This fall, there are dozens of new shows coming to Broadway and off-Broadway stages near you. Comedies, tragedies, musicals, dramas you name it.

Not only is NYU conveniently located close to many theaters, students also have access to discounted tickets. As the weather gets colder, seeing a play can be the perfect opportunity to bundle up and relax for a little bit. Here are all the shows coming to theaters near you this fall.

Broadway

The InheritanceLocation: The Ethel Barrymore TheaterPreview: Sept. 27

The Inheritance was a West End success and winner of four Olivier Awards, including Best New Play. Based on E. M. Forsters Howards End, this is a two-part play that tells the story of three generations of gay men. The Inheritance emphasizes the connection between them through humor and heartbreak alike.

David Byrnes American UtopiaLocation: Hudson TheaterPreview: Oct. 4

David Byrnes American Utopia is a once-in-a-lifetime performance to view, having sold out intheaters all around the world. A theatrical rendition of Byrnes world tour of the same name, the performance features Byrne and 11 other artists from a host of countries.

TinaLocation: Lunt-Fontanne TheaterPreview: Oct. 12

Tina is a musical biography of Tina Turner, often referred to as the Queen of Rock and Roll. The show follows Tina from her humble beginnings through her successful career.

Jagged Little PillLocation: The Broadhurst TheaterPreview: Nov. 3

Jagged Little Pill was inspired by Alanis Morissettes Grammy-winning album of the same name. The rock musical follows the Healys, an outwardly perfect family dealing with private demons and life-altering circumstances.

A Christmas CarolLocation: Lyceum TheaterPreview: Nov. 7

Charles Dickens classic story is brought to life in this immersive performance. A ChristmasCarol offers a new take on the timeless tale for theater-goers of all ages.

Kristin Chenoweth: For the GirlsLocation: The Nederlander TheaterPreview: Nov. 8

In this show, Kristin Chenoweth turns her new album For the Girls into a Broadwayperformance. Chenoweth dedicated this album to female artists who influenced hercareer, and she incorporates many of their songs into the show.

Slavas SnowshowLocation: Stephen Sondheim TheaterPreview: Nov. 11

Since its October 1993 premiere in Moscow, performance artist and clown Slava Polunins theatrical experience has become a timeless and universally beloved work. Truly in a genre of its own, Slavas Snowshow promises to awaken everyones inner child.

The Illusionists- Magic of the HolidaysLocation: Neil Simon TheaterPreview: Nov. 29

The internationally renowned magic troupe brings together a new, all-star cast of the worlds top illusionists for what The New York Times called a high-tech magic extravaganza.

Off-Broadway

Heroes of the Fourth TurningLocation: Playwrights Horizon, Mainstage TheaterPreview: Sept. 13Opening: Oct. 7

This will be the world premiere of Will Arberys play examining the psyches of four young conservatives reuniting at their small Catholic college in Wyoming. Heroes of the Fourth Turning sheds light on the contemporary political landscape and the human desire to be understood.

Scotland, PALocation: Laura Pels TheaterPreview: Sept. 14Opening: Oct. 23

This production will be the world premiere of Adam Gwons dark comedy. Literature, cult fiction and Broadway collide in this play based on the 2001 film that draws inspiration from Shakespeares Macbeth.

Little Shop of HorrorsLocation: Westside Theater UpstairsPreview: Sept. 17Opening: Oct. 17

Seymour and Audrey work at a little plant shop, and their lives are turned upside downby a man-eating plant thats threatening the entire world. Little Shop of Horrors merges Roger Cormans film with a book by Howard Ashman, and it follows Seymour, Audrey, Audreys boyfriend and the man-eating plant.

The New EnglandersLocation: The Studio at Stage IIPreview: Sept. 17Opening: Oct. 2

In Jeff Augustins latest play, Eisa and her two dads live in a small town in New England but desire more fulfilling lives. Each member of the mixed-race family in The New Englanders is navigating life and trying to pursue a unique path.

Forbidden Broadway: The Next GenerationLocation: The Triad TheaterPreview: Sept. 28Opening: Oct. 16

Five years after its last run in 2014, Forbidden Broadway comes back to the stage in acomical mashup of well-known Broadway shows performed by this generations Broadway stars.

The Wrong ManLocation: Robert W. Wilson MMC Theater Space/Newman Mills TheaterOpening: Oct. 7

Duran is The Wrong Man. This musical performance sees him falsely accused of murder because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

For more information on upcoming shows and ticket sales, visit http://www.playbill.com.

Email Dani Herrera at [emailprotected].

Coming to Broadway in Fall 2019 - NYU Washington Square News

Mitchell novel and Fleabag extract revealed at Sceptre Salon – The Bookseller

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Danzig

Published October 2, 2019 by Mark Chandler

David Mitchell read from his new novel at a Sceptre Salon storytelling event last night, which also featured an exclusive extract from Phoebe Waller-Bridges highly...

David Mitchell read from his new novel at a Sceptre Salon storytelling event last night (1st October), which also featured an exclusive extract from Phoebe Waller-Bridges highly sought-after "Fleabag" book.

More than 100 guests packed into the Phoenix Arts Club in Soho mentioned in the second line of Mitchells new book Utopia Avenue.

Mitchells book, announced last week and released on 2nd June 2020, follows the career of 1960s rockers Utopia Avenue, the strangest British band you've never heard of. He read an atmospheric section of the book following one of its characters as she walked the streets of Soho.

There was also a surprise reading by editorial director Emma Hermanfrom Waller-Bridges Fleabag: The Scriptures, which the audience was urged not to share. Sceptre won an eight-publisher auction earlier this year for the book, which features the complete scripts alongside exclusive material and is out on 12th November.

Abi Dar, the Nigerian author of Sceptres lead 2020 debut fiction title, The Girl With the Louding Voice, kicked off the night before an appearance from Simon Parkin, investigative journalist and author of A Game of Birds and Wolves, the untold true story of WW2s Operation Raspberry, which has been optioned for film by Steven Spielberg.

There were also appearances from Professor Noreena Hertz, global economist and author of The Lonely Century, and Sanne Blauw, econometrician and author of the international non-fiction bestseller The Number Bias.

Carole Welch, publishing director at Sceptre, told the audience: These books exemplify the kind of fiction and non-fiction we aim to publish inspired writing and irresistible reading: superbly written books that are as illuminating and thought-provoking as they are captivating, that will stir, move and sometimes shock you. And in ranging from debutants to the mighty David Mitchell, whose first novel we published 20 years ago, they exemplify our aim to nurture our authors over the long-term while always being on the lookout for outstanding new voices from around the world to join them.

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Mitchell novel and Fleabag extract revealed at Sceptre Salon - The Bookseller

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