Monthly Archives: December 2019

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: ‘This time, with freedom!’ | Opinion – The Albany Herald

Posted: December 31, 2019 at 5:48 pm

This time, with freedom! Sisters Mary Karen and Mary Gabriel implored. It was a rare day for Sisters of Life from different convents to get to be together at the religious orders motherhouse in the suburbs of New York. There, they gathered around an outdoor Nativity scene with fire for warmth and sang carols and other devotional songs.

The funny part of the freedom remark is that these women are freer than just about anyone I have ever met.

In one description of the founding of the Sisters of Life, Mother Agnes Mary Donovan said about its founder, Cardinal John OConnor: He was very frank. He often said he was doing what he believed the Holy Spirit had asked him, and if it was of the Holy Spirit, then it would turn out all right.

I thought of that story as Sister Mary Gabriel gazed on the flames of the fire and talked about the Holy Spirit burning in each Christian. When you acknowledge that reality within, great things can happen. Goodness and joy can become contagious. Hope can be seen, and love can be plausible.

The Sisters of Life help women in need women who may not want their children but dont want to choose abortion; women who need help with parenting; women who need help, period. It is an international movement, with Sisters hailing from all corners of the globe. (The Sisters currently have convents in New York, Denver, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Toronto.)

Its safe to say the Holy Spirit wanted the Sisters of Life, because it is looking more than all right. They are women dedicated to God and His people, with a special commitment to innocent human life. The Sisters of Life were born of an inspiration Cardinal OConnor had at Dachau. He asked himself: How could human beings do this to other human beings?

Speaking of freedom, I realize I still cant get over an event at the Freedom Tower the structure built on the site of the World Trade Center in January, when the governor or New York decided to expand abortion in a state already known as the abortion capital of the country. To celebrate such a blow to life at a site at which so much life was taken should be beyond the pale.

But life continues, and God provides people who see clearly and will pour themselves out in service for others. Ours doesnt have to be a culture of cynicism and despair. The Sisters not only show us something greater, something wonderful, something more real than so much that we allow ourselves to become enslaved to; they draw us into it, as well.

The Sisters will tell you: We believe every person is valuable and sacred. We believe that every person is good, loved, unique and unrepeatable. We believe that every persons life has deep meaning, purpose and worth. In fact, we give our lives for that truth.

And that seems to me a good prompt for a resolution for the new year, for the rest of our lives. What more can we do to help people see that they are good, loved, unique and unrepeatable? People dont feel good, loved, unique and unrepeatable. What can each one of us do about that? Thats not simply a question for women who take particular vows with the Sisters of Life. Its fuel for the revolution our lives and world need. This is using freedom well. And it only comes from knowing it about yourself at which point it becomes harder not to want the same for others.

So, as the Sisters said: This time, with freedom! How about that as a mantra for 2020?

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute and editor-at-large of National Review magazine. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.

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Invest in Freedom: Support the Washington Monthly – Washington Monthly

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During my two-and-a-half decades as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, I had the privilege of getting to know political dissidents around the world. They were the most courageous people Ive known. They fight for the freedoms we take for granted. Some sacrificed their lives.

Occasionally, in my last diplomatic posting, I used to meet the Vietnamese political dissident Dng Thu Hng in Hanoi. As a young woman during the Vietnam War, Dng served as a volunteer in a youth auxiliarynoncombatants who provided support services for the troops. She was one of only three in her 40-woman unit who survived the war. She also became a member of the Communist Party. After the country was unified in 1975, she turned to writing. Her novels became bestsellers in her country and later abroad.

Nevertheless, she became disillusioned with Vietnams repressive one-party regime and expressed her discontent in her stories. Her government responded by banning her books (which were then circulated underground samizdat-style, and smuggled out of the country); expelling her from the Party; imprisoning her and after her release, barring her from foreign travel. Her circle of friends, afraid to be seen with her, dwindled and the secret police constantly harassed her.

Her novel, Paradise of the Blind, banned in Vietnam, became an award-winning bestseller abroad. In it, she took on Vietnams political leaders boast that they had created a workers and peasants paradise. On the contrary, she countered, there was no paradiseonly blind men promoting a faux paradise based on a flawed ideology that could never succeed. Only the first lie really costs us; after that, everything flows from the same wellspring, she wrote.

Over lunch one day, I asked her how she put up with it allthe harassment, the marginalization, the censorship. Plus, didnt she worry about meeting openly with an American diplomat? She stiffened in her chair, chin up, and responded resolutely, I spit in their face.

The Vietnamese government, having their fill of the feisty Madame Dng, finally allowed her to leave the country. Today, she resides in France, busily writing away into her 70s.

When I worked on Afghanistan at the State Department, I occasionally met the young Russian muckraking journalist Artyom Borovik. The son of a Novosti journalist assigned to New York, Borovik spoke nearly perfect American English (and excellent Spanish). He was urbane, highly educated and multilingual. At the same time, he was as comfortable in an Afghan tea house as he was at a Manhattan Starbucks. Borovik was a pioneer of investigative journalism during glasnost and was fearless in his criticism of the corrupt, oligarchic system that was supplanting the old communist regime.

True to form, he had been digging dirt on Vladimir Putin in advance of the 2000 presidential elections. In a scathing article, he quoted Putin as saying, There are three ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill. Days later, Borovik, only 39, was killed in a still-unsolved Moscow plane accident, an early journalistic fatality as Putin was consolidating power.

I also got to know many Cuban dissidents before Fidel Castros death, when my diplomatic duties included traveling throughout the island to monitor the human rights conditions of people we had repatriated, in accordance with a bilateral agreement, after they had unsuccessfully attempted to flee to the United States. Yet we took it a step further and resettled genuine political dissidents to the U.S. In Cuba, I was constantly surveilled and harassed. At one point, the secret police slashed my tires.

Later, during the 2003 crackdown known as the Black Spring, the Cuban government imprisoned 75 dissidents, including 29 journalists. Several years later, two of them, Orlando Zapata Tamayo and Wilmar Villar Mendoza, died from hunger strikes.

Around this time, the dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez summed up the dissidents sentiments: Freedom is fundamentally the possibility of standing on a street corner and shouting There is no freedom here! That reminded me of one of the earliest American political dissidents, Thomas Paine, who proclaimed, Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Indeed, we face the same challenge now, in Trumps America. Journalists are not enemies of the people; all voters need unhindered access to the polls; dark money needs to be taken out of politics; and whistleblowers are essential to democracy. Thats why we need to fight back. Because, as Paine made clear, and as the dissidents I knew exemplified, the most patriotic thing one can do is dissent. It means you love your country enough to sacrifice your own comfort for the sake of its improvement.

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As our editors state on our website, Were an independent voice, listened to by insiders and willing to take on sacred cowsliberal and conservative. And, as a non-profit, the Monthlyis beholden to no vested interests. Were committed to putting pressure on power, telling the truth no matter the costs, treating journalism as a public service, and coming up with bold ideas that can improve the country.

But we cant do it all on our own. If you appreciate our work, please consider helping us by making adonationduring this months fundraising drive. Give whatever you can$10, $20, $100, $1,000and for a limited time only your contribution will be matched, dollar for dollar, thanks to a generous challenge grant from NewsMatch. If you give $50 or more, youll receive a complimentary one-year subscription to the print edition of theWashington Monthly.

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Alabama’s 200 years in 200 images: Freedom fighting from Iwo Jima to Selma – AL.com

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AP

It was called the "Tuskegee Experiment."

Amid the unease of possibly being drawn into wars in Europe and Asia, the United States in the 1930s explored the idea of allowing African-Americans to serve as military pilots and looked to deeply segregated Alabama to get that idea off the ground.

"Potential candidates had to be college graduates and were expected to be officers in the Army Air Forces, usually second lieutenants, as they completed their advanced training," according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

More than 900 black pilots trained at the segregated Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama during the war, men from all over the country who fought racism and oppression at home and enemy pilots and antiaircraft gunners overseas.

More than 400 served in combat.

The Tuskegee Airmen lost 27 ships and would complete 1,578 total combat missions for the Fifteenth and Twelve Air Forces, destroying 150 enemy aircraft on the ground and 112 in air-to-air combat.

It was that record which inspired Harry Truman to eliminate racial divides in the military services.

These airmen shown listening to an instructor are among first class of African American pilots in history of the United States to get their wings at the advanced fly school on March 7, 1942 at Tuskegee, Alabama. Left to right: R.M. Long, G.S. Roberts, London, W. VA.; Capt. B. Washington; C.H. Debow, Indianapolis; Mac Ross, L.R. Curtis, New Rochelle, N.Y. (AP Photo)

B. I. Sanders

The Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941 attacked the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the nation was thrust into World War II. Approximately 300,000 uniformed men and women from Alabama served in the military branches during the war. More than 6,000 lost their lives, including those who served at Pearl Harbor, Normandy and Iwo Jima.

New or expanded military bases brought thousands of service members and civilians to Montgomery, Mobile, Selma, Ozark, Gadsden, Anniston and elsewhere, while munitions and supply plants roared day and night across the state.

In honor of Alabamas bicentennial, here is the third in a series of four pieces compiling more than 200 images capturing the states 200 years of history good, bad and ugly.

Part I: Creek War, Civil War, and the KKK

Part II: Promise, progress, Depression and death

Second Lieut. Russell Drinnan, an instructor in a Ranger division training at Camp Rucker, Ala., demonstrates how easy it is to clear bayonets, March 5, 1943. (AP Photo/B. I. Sanders)

Woman painting at Goodyear rubber plant in Gadsden, sometime between 1941-1945. Alabama Department of Archives and History.

AP

James Estes of Marion, Alabama stands guard beneath the stars and stripes on board a destroyer at the U.S. Naval operational base at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, July 12, 1942. (AP Photo)

A large electric phosphate smelting furnace used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals in 1942. (Library of Congress)

Carl Thusgaard

Mess Sergeant, S/Sgt. Milton Henney (right, foreground) of Opelousas, La., tastes the chow in the field kitchen in New Guinea on June 23, 1943. At left is Sgt. Henry Hall of Leeds, Alabama. (AP Photo/Pool/Carl Thusgaard)

AP

Sergeant Joe Louis, top, world heavyweight boxing champion, stretched out for a rest in a water-filled trench in Alabama on March 11, 1944, where he is temporarily stationed, after crawling under live machine gun fire and through mud and barbed wire. He and his two companions were training on the battle conditioning course of the chemical warfare training centre at Alabama. (AP Photo)

Alabama also became home to 24 POW camps holding 16,000 German prisoners. Camp Aliceville in Pickens County is the largest, with a capacity for 6,000. German POWs housed in barracks in Aliceville. (Alabama Department of Archives and History.)

Robert Adams

The war at home

When the war and the victory celebrations ended, Alabama still faced the deep racial divides that haunted us since before we joined the United States 125 years earlier.

In the years after World War II, Birmingham's African-American families began crossing the invisible line formed by decades old city ordinances that kept blacks out of the city's 'white neighborhoods.'

Barriers that kept black children in inferior schools and black women at the back of city buses were challenged in court and with acts of peaceful, civil disobedience.

Each hard fought victory was met with violence from spiteful racists.

Impromptu celebrations erupted in the streets of Birmingham as news of the surrender of Japan in August 1945, ending World War II, swept across Birmingham. (Robert Adams/The Birmingham News)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Jimmy Harris, right, 19, is questioned by Warden Tennyson Dennis, left, at the state prison in Montgomery, Ala., June 10, 1947, after Harris was rescued from a mob at Hurtsboro, Ala., which had a rope around his neck and was threatening to lynch him. Sheriff Ralph Matthews says Harris is held on an attempted rape charge. After his rescue from the mob, Harris was rushed to the jail at Phenix City and then to the state prison for his "protection." (AP Photo)

In the 20 years after WWII, bomb blasts turned Birmingham's Smithfield neighborhood into 'Dynamite Hill' and the Magic City into 'Bombingham.'

As civil rights activists made progress step by grueling step, their victories from the 1940s through the 1960s were punctuated with the sounds of bombs exploding.

After the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth fought to desegregate buses in 1956, his home was blown up on Christmas night.

When a truce was declared to end weeks of nationally televised protests in May 1963, bombs exploded at the Gaston Motel and the home of A.D. King, brother of MLK.

Days after city schools integrated in September 1963, four Sunday School students were killed in the deadliest, most tragic of the years-long series of bombings.

Original News caption: "Home Blasted: The four-bedroom home of a Negro woman who had challenged the city of Birmingham's zoning laws was blasted in 1950. This picture shows the over-all damage to the residence of Monroe and Mary Means Monk, 950 North Center Street. In the foreground is the wrecked porch, on which the bomb is believed to have exploded. Just back of the porch is the Monk's bedroom in which the owner of the house had retired before the explosion."

From a 2006 News article: "When Claretta Monk heard the blast four nights before Christmas 1950, she knew exactly what the target was: the home of her father and stepmother, Monroe and Mary Means Monk.

With a friend in tow, she hurried on foot from her residence in Enon Ridge to her parents' new home on the traditionally white west side of Center Street North.

''They stayed in it one night, and it was gone,'' said Monk."

.....The Monks were targets because they challenged (segregation) laws. The first black to do so was Sam Matthews. On Aug. 18, 1947, his home at 120 11th Court North was bombed.

Disgusted with the national Democratic Party for embracing aplatform to eliminate the poll tax and pass fair labor practices and anti-lynching laws, Southern state delegates walked out of the party's convention in Philadelphia into the rain on July 17, 1948and caught the Silver Comet train to Birmingham.

Bull Connor led the 6,000 people gathered under the ceiling fans there at Birmingham's Municipal Auditorium -- today called Boutwell Auditorium.

South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, who had a relatively moderate record on race, accepted the presidential nomination to the newly formed Dixiecrat Party.

"There's not enough troops in the Army to break down segregation and admit Negroes into our homes, our theaters and our swimming pools," Thurmond said in his acceptance speech.

July 17, 1948: The Dixiecrat Convention assembles in Birmingham, selecting Strom Thurmond as presidential nominee for the States Rights Democratic Party. In the 1948 election, the Dixiecrats carry Alabama and three other Southern states.'Truman Killed By Civil Rights' reads the sign on this effigy of President Truman handing from the marquee of the Tutwiler Hotel tonight after a states rights meeting was held here.

Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery on Dec. 1, 1955. Her action ignited the yearlong Montgomery bus boycott and helped usher in the civil rights movement.

"While thousands of other Negroes boycotted Montgomery city lines in protest, Mrs. Rosa Parks was fined $14 in Police Court today for having disregarded last Thursday a driver's order to move to the rear of a bus," The Associated Press reported in December 1955.

"An emotional crowd of Negroes, estimated by the police at 5,000, roared approval tonight at a meeting to continue the boycott.

"Spokesmen said the boycott would continue until people who rode buses were no longer "intimidated, embarrassed and coerced." They said a "delegation of citizens" was ready to help city and bus line officials develop a program that would be "satisfactory and equitable."

"Mrs. Parks appealed her fine and was released under $100 bond signed by an attorney, Fred Gray, and a former state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, E.D. Nixon."

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted by police Lt. D.H. Lackey in Montgomery, Ala., Feb. 22, 1956, two months after refusing to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger on Dec. 1, 1955. She was arrested with several others who violated segregation laws. Parks' refusal to give up her seat led to a boycott of buses by blacks in Dec. 1955, a tactic organized by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which ended after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed that all segregation was unlawful,Dec. 20, 1956. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

Gene Herrick

In early 1956, the homes of (Martin Luther) King and E. D. Nixon were bombed," according to Stanford University.

"King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place."

"City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case. Despite this resistance, the boycott continued."

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court and the boycott ended 0n Dec. 20, 1956.

"The next morning, (King) boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife Coretta after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala., March 22, 1956. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses in a campaign to desegregate the bus system, but a judge suspended his $500 fine pending appeal. (AP Photo/Gene Herrick)

HARDIN

Meanwhile, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was the driving force behind the Birmingham integration efforts in the 1950s and early 1960s that energized the national civil rights movement.

He was brutally beaten by a mob, sprayed with city fire hoses, arrested by police 35 times and also blown out of his bed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb during his struggle against segregation in Birmingham and said he never feared death.

"I tried to get killed in Birmingham and go home to God because I knew it would be better for you in Birmingham," he once told an audience of students.

June 5, 1956: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth on the night he founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights at Sardis Baptist Church. The meeting came one week after Alabama Attorney General John Patterson outlawed the NAACP. Said Shuttlesworth of the meeting: It was packed. People were downstairs and outside too. It was an enthusiastic meeting. The thing you have to remember is that I was challenging the whole segregation law. I was saying what I wanted to say and I was screaming against segregation. I was getting the crowd whipped up. After the NAACP was outlawed by Alabama Attorney General John Patterson. A response was organized as the ACMHR one week later. The ACMHR was the organization most often associated with Birmingham civil rights actions for the next 10 years, with Shuttlesworth's fiery oratorical style at the helm. (Tom Hardin photo)

Jay Reeves The Associated Pres

For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in Tuskegee withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward.

Workers initially recruited 600 black men into a health program with the promise of free medical checks, free food, free transportation and burial insurance in a county where many blacks had never even seen a doctor. The men were tested and sorted into groups -- 399 with syphilis and another 201 who were not infected.

The disease-free men were used as a control group. Health workers told syphilitic fathers, grandfathers, sons, brothers and uncles only that they had "bad blood."

None of the men were asked to consent to take part in a medical study. They also weren't told that "bad blood" actually was a euphemism for syphilis. Instead, doctors purposely hid the study's purpose from the men, subjecting them during the study's early months to painful spinal taps and blood tests.

And doctors never provided them with penicillin after it became the standard treatment for syphilis in the mid-1940s.

The government published occasional reports on the study, including findings which showed the men with syphilis were dying at a faster rate than the uninfected. But it's doubtful any of the men -- or their wives, girlfriends or other sexual partners -- had any idea what had happened until an Associated Press story was published nationwide on July 26, 1972.

Finally exposed, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement.

In this 1950's photo released by the National Archives, a black man included in a syphilis study has blood drawn by a doctor in Tuskegee, Ala. For 40 years starting in 1932, medical workers in the segregated South withheld treatment for unsuspecting men infected with a sexually transmitted disease simply so doctors could track the ravages of the horrid illness and dissect their bodies afterward. Finally exposed in 1972, the study ended and the men sued, resulting in a $9 million settlement. (National Archives via AP)

The Freedom Rides, a protest to show how Supreme Court decisions integrating public transportation were not being enforced in the segregationist South, left Washington in May 1961 headed to New Orleans. The buses were filled with blacks and whites, riding side by side.

Waiting for them were klansman in Alabama, determined the trip, and the Civil Rights Movement, would not proceed.

A Freedom Rider bus went up in flames in May 1961 when a fire bomb was tossed through a window near Anniston, Ala. The bus, which was testing bus station segregation in the south, had stopped because of a flat tire. Passengers escaped without serious injury. (AP Photo)

TOMMY LANGSTON

Klansmen attack a Freedom Rider at the Trailways Bus Station in Birmingham, Ala., May 14, 1961. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Tommy Langston, File)

Nashville Tennessean

May 20, 1961: Freedom Riders arrive at the Greyhound bus terminal in Montgomery where a mob attacks them. Anniston and Birmingham are scenes of similar mob mayhem. The Freedom Rides through the Deep South are challenging racial segregation on public transit.Freedom Riders John Lewis and Jim Zwerg after being beaten by a mob in Montgomery Alabama as they took part in the 1961 Freedom Rides that ultimately brought integration of interstate transportation to the South.

AP

A workman removes a restroom sign at Montgomery Municipal Airport, Jan. 5, 1962, in compliance with a federal court order banning segregation. However, city officials delayed plans to remove waiting room furniture and close toilets and water fountains. But they said these and the airport restaurant will be closed if there is a concerted integration attempt. (AP Photo)

AP

In the mayoral election of 1963, former Alabama Lt. Gov. Albert Boutwell received 39 percent of the vote and Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor received 31 percent, setting up an April 2 runoff.

Civil rights activists saw the discord in the municipal goverment of one of America's most violently segregated cities as a chance to finally kill Jim Crow.

Boutwell decisively defeated Connor and the next day, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) led sit-in demonstrations at downtown Birmingham lunch counters; 20 participants were arrested at Britt's lunch counters, while Kress, Loveman's, Pizitz, and Woolworth's closed their counters.

For the next five weeks, marchers, many of them children, took to the streets of Birmingham and were assailed by police dogs and fire hoses while the world watched on television.

(AP Photo/stf)

With an estimated 40 percent of the student body at the all-black Parker High School skipping class to protest and the Birmingham City Jail filled beyond capacity, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered the use of fire hoses and police dogs on the protestors in May of 1963.

CALVIN HANNAH

June 11, 1963, has been remembered most often as the day Gp. George Wallace fulfilled a campaign promise made more than a year earlier as he kicked off his run for governor, Charles Dean wrote.

"I shall refuse to abide by any such illegal federal court order even to the point of standing in the schoolhouse door, if necessary."

But Wallace's stand in front of Foster Auditorium was not how Vivian Malone, later to become Vivian Malone Jones, wanted history to remember those events. Jones, who died in 2005, said on the 40th anniversary of her and James Hood's successful enrollment, that she hoped people would remember doors opened, not blocked.

"For so long, it's gone down in a negative way, it's gone down in the way we portray that event as a 'stand in the schoolhouse door.' The press picked it up that way, which to me was a negative," said Jones. "What I was hoping and hoping will happen .... is that we celebrate the opening of the door, not the stand, not the attempt to close the door."

Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace is shown in this June 1963 photo, when he vowed 'segregation forever' and stood in an Alabama school house door to keep blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Ala. (AP Photo/Tuscaloosa News, Calvin Hannah)

Jones, Ed

Although only the state flag typically flew over Alabama's capitol, the Confederate flag was raised as U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy visited the state to meet with Gov. George Wallace in 1963. The two spoke for nearly an hour and a half.

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OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media welcomes release of Aseev and Halaziuk – Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

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OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Dsir welcomes the release of Ukrainian journalists Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk from militant captivity in occupied Donetsk.

I welcome and am relieved that Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk, both contributors to Radio Liberty in Ukraine, were released today from long illegal custody in Donetsk as a result of todays exchange of prisoners, Dsir posted on Twitter on December 29.

Earlier, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media repeatedly called for the release of Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk illegally detained by Russian occupation troops in Donetsk.

As reported, on December 29, the detainee exchange between Ukraine and the so-called Donetsk Peoples Republic and Luhansk Peoples Republic took place at the Mayorske entry-exit checkpoint in Donetsk region.

Seventy-six people returned to Ukraine. Ukraine transferred 127 detainees, being ready to transfer 141 people, but 14 of them refused to return to the militant-controlled territory.

Stanislav Aseev is Ukrainian writer, journalist and blogger, member of PEN Ukraine. He was captured between May 10 and June 2, 2017 by militants and charged with espionage. There was almost no connection with him. Aseev was held in former museum Isolation, turned into a prison, and was later transferred to another prison. According to the released Ukrainian who was in captivity together with Aseev, the latter admitted that he had been tortured. On October 22, Russian-backed militants of the Donetsk Peoples Republic formation reported in their media that Aseev had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Blogger Oleh Halaziuk was held captive also. He lived in the occupied city of Torez, Donetsk region, and was a professor at the local faculty of the Kharkiv Institute of Economics of Market Relations and Management. In June 2014, his brother, Vitaliy, reported to the Torez police department about disappearance of Oleh.

Stanislav Aseev and Oleh Halaziuk were also columnists of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and told about life under occupation.

ol

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OSCE Representative on Freedom of Media welcomes release of Aseev and Halaziuk - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

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Letter: Choice is simple freedom or slavery? – Northwest Herald

Posted: at 5:48 pm

To the Editor:

Overall, PBS News Hour and Politico, in particular the outstanding Judy Woodruff, moderated a substantive and productive debate among Democratic presidential candidates Dec. 19.

The candidates performed well, and competing world visions were laid out for the American voters.

Ironically, the most poignant moment, on foreign policy matters, came from South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He said that the Peoples Republic of China is on a mission to use technology for the perfection of dictatorship.

I believe his articulation of this fact is critical if we are to understand the future. The U.S. must respond aggressively to the Chinese communists efforts to subvert democracy, censor inherent freedoms, violently oppress individual rights and kill everyone who stands in their way.

The next president of the United States, and our entire nation, must stand boldly for our democratic republic. Even during this joyful time of year, we must recognize that our enemies will not compromise, relent or grant us mercy in their quest to implement an autocratic and evil world empire.

This is truly a binary choice for our planet. Freedom versus slavery. Life versus death. We must fight to ensure that freedom, and life itself, prevails.

Henry J.H. Wilson

Barrington

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Letter: Choice is simple freedom or slavery? - Northwest Herald

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Freedom of the Seas Live Blog – Day 1 – Embarkation – Royal Caribbean Blog

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Cruise day is here and we are getting onboard Freedom of the Seas!

We flew down to San Juan on two nights before and enjoyed a relaxing start to our vacation. Prior to the cruise, there was a lot of conjecture about what time boarding would begin, but I decided around 10:30am to roll the dice and head to the port. We found no traffic or wait at all to check-in at the terminal.

We boarded the ship at 11am and it felt great to be back onboard one of my favorite ships in the fleet.

Getting onboard the ship, we walked around the ship a bit to see things. There were still Christmas and Hannukah decorations up on the ship, and I understand they will stay up through this sailing.

At 1:30pm, our rooms were ready and we are staying in a two bedroom grand suite on the aft of deck 8.

The room is very spacious, and more than enough room for the kids and us. It features two full bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a very spacious balcony.

After getting in the room, I took the kids up to the pool to enjoy the now-classic H2O Zone. This, like so many other areas of the ship, will be upgraded/replaced in the forthcoming Amplification.

In the afternoon, we held our first event of the RoyalCaribbeanBlog.com group cruise, which was a welcome aboard event in the Viking Crown Lounge. We rented out the entire Olive or Twist bar and got our first official opportunity to meet everyone and put faces to online names.

Muster drill was at 5:15pm, and was luckily not too warm outside for the duration of the event.

Unfortunately Adventure Ocean did not open until 8:30pm, so we decided to skip dinner in a restaurant and eat with our kids in the Windjammer.

The Windjammer had a phenomenal gingerbread house at the entrance.

After dinner, we headed down to the Royal Promenade for some live music in the pub.

There was a Christmas tree lighting held as well on this sailing.

Tomorrow, we will be in St. Maarten.

I loved this creative fruit and cookie delivery to the room.

Here is the New Years Eve champagne options to pre-order.

The upper decks are closed due to winds this evening.

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Freedom of the Seas Live Blog - Day 1 - Embarkation - Royal Caribbean Blog

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STORIES OF THE DECADE: Freedom girls go perfect in 2015-16 for programs 5th title – Morganton News Herald

Posted: at 5:48 pm

NOTE: The following story originally appeared in the March 13, 2016 edition.

For the fifth time overall and first time at the 3A classification, Freedom is the NCHSAA state champion of girls basketball.

The program won the 1989, 1994, 1995 and 2002 titles in 4A.

And while it's not fair to compare any of the previous teams' runs to this one or to one another, Saturday's finals win in 53-50 fashion over No. 12 Northern Guilford (25-8) at UNC's Carmichael Arena capped a postseason run and really, a season-long run of more sheer Lady Patriots' dominance that ever before witnessed.

No. 1 Freedom (32-0) had an average margin of victory of 30.7 points in six playoff games and nearly 36 points for the season. They won every game except two by more than 16 points, were ranked atop the polls all season and won 17 games by mercy rule (40 points or more).

This year's group of Lady Patriots broke the '94 team's average playoff margin of victory record (26.4 in five games).

And they broke the will of anyone who stood in the way, becoming Freedom's eighth state champion in the sport but first to ever complete an undefeated season.

It was total superiority.

The way the game started, with Freedom ahead 17-4 at the 1:30 mark of the first quarter on junior Ariyana Williams' crossover and pull-up for her first points, it seemed the Pats may be headed for another rout.

The Nighthawks, led by 6-foot-3 sophomore Elissa Cunane, ensured it would be anything but.

"It wasn't our prettiest game, but a lot of that is a testament to Cunane," said FHS coach Amber Reddick, who has now claimed state titles as a player, assistant coach and head coach with the program.

Lady Patriots coach Amber Reddick finishes the job cutting down the nets at the team's pep rally in March 2016.

"They're a tough team and made some runs on us. I was impressed with us gutting it out at the end the way we had to. I thought our posts did a good job on her, and our guards did a good job pressuring the ball. It just came down to putting the ball in (Ariyana's) hands and letting her make free throws ... just believing in each other and making plays."

Cunane finished with game highs of 20 points, 14 rebounds and eight blocks.

But Williams, who was named Kay Yow title game MVP, had an answer each time.

NG used a 10-2 run after their largest deficit (at 21-7) to trail just 23-17 when Williams drew contact in transition and made both free throws.

It was 43-38 Freedom after three periods when Williams grabbed a rebound and went coast-to-coast to increase the margin to three possessions once more.

At 48-44 after a Cunane bucket down low, Williams attacked the goal and her layup made it 50-44 with just under 4 minutes left.

And in the biggest spot of the year, up 50-48 with 51.6 seconds left, Williams made 3 of 4 free throws in 1-and-1 situations to seal the championship win.

Williams had 16 points, three rebounds and two assists in her 20th straight postseason game with double-digit points.

Freedom was just 6 of 13 at the foul line before Williams' late flurry; NG finished 17 for 21 at the stripe. Both teams shot just under 40 percent from the field, but FHS had 11 more attempts.

"It feels really good to be state champs and get our picture on the wall (at the FHS gym)," Williams said. "I know my teammates believe in me, and I believe in them."

Given the lopsided margins all year, how the team would perform in a close game "was a big question mark coming in," Reddick admitted.

"But down the stretch, the last 4 minutes, we really took care of the basketball."

The Freedom press rattled NG early, forcing eight turnovers in the opening six-plus minutes. But foul trouble to every post player, Amy Rhoney, Taylor Gardin and Charmee Miller, forced FHS into the halfcourt setting for most of the last three periods. FHS forced just six turnovers spanning the final three periods.

"We did let that take us out of our rhythm and the way we normally play," Reddick said.

NG coach Kim Furlough credited her team's slow start to nerves.

"Being on a big stage, as young as we are," she said, "but I was super proud of our comeback. We didn't give up, and that's the way we've been all year. They don't quit."

Freedom senior Lindsey Adams was named her team's most outstanding performer in the game after her 16 points on 3-of-4 shooting from 3-point range.

"Freedom did a good job on screens," Furlough added. "And Adams is a great shooter. She showed that."

As the game ended, Rhoney found Reddick and lifted her coach off the ground as they embraced.

"We went straight to each other," Rhoney said. "She's the greatest coach I've played for, and I appreciate all she did for me."

Junior Amaryah Corpening added six points and six rebounds for Freedom, Rhoney had seven points, a team-best eight boards and two blocks and senior Madison Ervin had four points, four rebounds and four steals.

"It still hasn't really hit me that we actually won," Ervin said. "We came out with a purpose to get that big lead, and we needed it. ... Our fans were huge too."

Reddick seconded that: "Our fans, school, administration and athletic director are amazing. We had so much support coming down here. I looked up and saw that sea of red up there, and it was so special."

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STORIES OF THE DECADE: Freedom girls go perfect in 2015-16 for programs 5th title - Morganton News Herald

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Freedom from 3Cs – The Indian Express

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By: Editorial | Published: December 31, 2019 12:20:14 am A government with a strong mandate like the Modi-led NDA 2 hasnt signalled so far that it has the desire or the appetite to go down that road.

IT is a reflection of the state of the Indian banking industry today, specially state-owned banks which dominate the landscape and are marked by a virtual freeze in lending, that the countrys finance minister had to reach out to bankers to assure them that they need not fear the three dreaded Cs Central Bureau of Investigation, Central Vigilance Commission and Comptroller and Auditor General. At a meeting with bankers over the weekend, Nirmala Sitharaman while conceding that decision-making in banks was getting impacted because of the fear of the 3Cs attempted to assuage the apprehensions, saying that the government and its investigative agencies have put in place measures to address their concerns. Notably, Sitharamans predecessor, Arun Jaitley, in early 2019, had cautioned against the overzealousness of state agencies, warning of the dangers of the banking system grinding to a halt.

The Indian Banks Association, too, had protested a while ago after senior officials of the Bank of Maharashtra were arrested by the state police and following several cases dating back a decade or more being filed by agencies. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has blamed what he termed as the malafide unless proven otherwise doctrine of governance of the NDA Government for the breakdown of trust between institutions and the government. Bankers may tend to agree, especially when basic questions such as the definition of a bonafide decision and who should sit in judgement on loan approvals granted by banks years ago remain unclear even now. Little will be achieved through incremental moves. An enduring solution requires a significant lowering of state holding by the government in scores of banks well below the threshold of 51 per cent to free bankers from the purview of the three Cs, or privatisation.

A government with a strong mandate like the Modi-led NDA 2 hasnt signalled so far that it has the desire or the appetite to go down that road. The second best but sub-optimal solution would be to empower bankers and professional bank boards to decide on whether a decision to approve a loan was bonafide or malafide. It is a fact that the seeds of the current mess in Indian banking were sown during UPA 2 but that doesnt absolve the Modi government which was late in addressing the crisis during its first term. The perceived morality play reflected in punishing so-called rogue bankers and businessmen a political response to Rahul Gandhis suit boot sarkar jibe has already hurt banking and industry. With India set to end the fiscal with a multi-decade low in bank credit, the longer the government takes to unveil a roadmap and walk the talk to boost the confidence of bankers, the more elusive will be the economic recovery.

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Economic freedom, not government programs, the key to poverty reduction – Orange County Register – Daily Gaming Worlld

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People have struggled to find the best way to fight poverty since the earliest societies, but the answer is obvious if we just look at history.

From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution to modern times, poverty has been eased in the most radical and rapid way whenever people are free to work in the profession of their choice, to keep the fruits of their their work, to acquire and maintain private property and to rely on legal to protect their personal and economic freedoms.

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In recent decades, this age of relatively free enterprise and world trade has led to an unprecedented reduction in poverty.

This may surprise many who have heard the story, popular in the media and some academic circles, which claims that not only the rich get rich, but the poor get poorer.

Indeed, when a survey by Hans Rosling for Gapminder asked people whether the portion of the worlds population living in extreme poverty had a) almost doubled, b) remained about the same, or c) almost divided halved in the past 20 years, only 5% of Americans correctly answered that it had been cut in half.

According to World Bank estimates, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $ 1.90 a day, has declined steadily from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015 (and to about 8.6% in 2018) the lowest level in recorded history.

In total, 1.1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in just a quarter of a century an extraordinary achievement!

In addition, 80% of those who remain in extreme poverty are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, mainly in countries characterized by war, corruption and lack of economic freedom.

These results are supported by various freedom indexes, such as Frasers annual Freedom Institute of the Economic Institute (or its index of human freedom, which includes measures of personal freedom in addition to economic freedom).

These studies consistently show an incredibly strong correlation between nations that offer greater economic and personal freedom and desirable characteristics like higher per capita income and economic growth, lower poverty levels, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality rates, greater gender equality and generally higher levels of happiness.

So while many are focusing on the next government program that will surely be the quick fix for reducing poverty, the best solution is to simply create the conditions that allow people to prosper by eliminating government laws and regulations that exacerbate poverty by restricting economic and personal factors. freedoms.

Adam B. Summers is a researcher at the Independent Institute and a former columnist and columnist for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group.

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Economic freedom, not government programs, the key to poverty reduction - Orange County Register - Daily Gaming Worlld

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Years Best: Financial Freedom, Jack Bogle, and More – Barron’s

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Soon it will be time to break out the party attire, chill a bottle (or three) of bubbly, don a pair of glittery 2020 plastic glasses, and finalize those resolutions. But with a few hours still left in 2019, we thought it apropos to take a look back at the years most-read articles at Barrons Advisor. They include simpleyet often overlookedtips for financial well-being, a previously unpublished investing manifesto by Vanguards late founder Jack Bogle, and a relatively new use for 529 plans. Enjoy.

Rules of thumb. Back in May, my colleague Karen Hube queried top financial advisors to compile a list of 10 rules for financial freedom, and the resulting article was the most popular at Barrons Advisor this year. The basic rules might seem simple, but theyre powerful, and sadly are ignored by many families, including some wealthy ones.

Bogles advice. Jack Bogle, who founded Vanguard in 1974 and died in January 2019, led a decades-long crusade against investment fees and complexity, and championed a simple yet effective way to amass wealth: a broadly diversified portfolio using low-cost index funds. He shared that recipe about a decade ago in an article he penned for a mens magazine, but the magazines top editor killed it. This year, Barrons Jack Otter, who had asked Bogle to write the piece , found it and shared it with our readers.

Power tool. The 2017 tax law has made 529 college-savings plans an increasingly popular estate planning tool. For example, grandparents can dump plenty of money into a grandchilds 529 plan without incurring federal gift taxes. In addition to helping to finance their grandchilds education, they can reduce their potential tax load.

Doomsday plan. The stock market may have logged a 2019 return worthy of a cork popping, but its hard to know when a bubble will burst, a financial crisis will explode, or a major economy will slide into a deflationary funk. Earlier this year, Barrons Reshma Kapadia surveyed strategists, fund managers, and financial advisors for their investment equivalents of canned food and bunkers for surviving a financial doomsday.

Face-off. Since President Trumps election, the U.S. economy has grown every quarter, defying some pundits 2016 predictions a Trump presidency would lead to a recession. But has the performance been better than during the Obama years? Gene Epstein, who for years was Barrons economics editor, in late May dissected the numbers. Epstein wrote, GDP gains under Trump, while encouraging, show no good evidence so far of having bettered the record of his predecessor.

Happy New Year. May 2020 bring peace and prosperity to you and yours.

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Years Best: Financial Freedom, Jack Bogle, and More - Barron's

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