Top 400 contractors are feeling no pain, ENR report says
The nation's construction contractors are generally doing quite well, thank you.
The Engineering News Record's list of Top 400 U.S. contractors based on revenue was released last month, and it provided a favorable diagnosis for the nation's construction economy a decade after the Great Recession.
"The still-healthy market is evident in the results of this year's ENR Top 400 Contractors survey," the ENR said. "As a group, those firms generated a new record of $405 billion in contracting revenue in 2018, a significant increase of 8.3 percent from the 2017 total of $373.98 billion." The ENR added: "The construction market has been growing steadily for nearly 10 years, with no signs of stopping."
Among the nation's top 100 contractors, the ENR's list has, for the entirely of this century, annually included two Michigan-based contractors: Southfield-based Barton Malow and Detroit-based Walbridge. It's more of the same this year, as Barton Malow (No. 40, down 12 spots from 2018) and Walbridge (No. 59, -11 spots compared to 2018) were Michigan's top contractors. But for the first time, they had company in the top 100: Lansing-based The Christman Co. jumped from No. 110 in 2018 to No. 93 this year.
Other Michigan-based contractors that made the list include Aristeo Construction Co., Livonia, (No. 194, +5 vs. 2018); Rockford Construction Co., Grand Rapids (No. 243, +7); Commercial Contracting Corp., Auburn Hills, (No. 260, +21); Pioneer Construction, Grand Rapids (No. 268, +5); Granger Construction Co., Lansing (No. 305, -103); Wieland, Lansing, (No. 319, -43); Clark Construction Co., Lansing, No. 320, not on the 2018 list); Roncelli Inc., Sterling Heights (No. 340, -50) and Wolverine Building Group, Grand Rapids (No. 400, not on the 2018 list).
Notable contractors that didn't make this year's list (or last year's), but that have in the past, include Sachse Construction, Detroit (No 393 in 2017) and George W. Auch, Pontiac (No. 394 in 2017).
The list's 2019 top five U.S. contractors by revenue include, in order, Bechtel, Reston, Va.; Fluor Corp., Irving, Texas; Turner Corp., New York, N.Y.; Aecom, Los Angeles, and The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., Baltimore.
"Industry veterans know the market can't sustain this pace forever, but they are focused on the opportunities in front of them," the ENR said.
Gilbane Building Co. Executive Vice President told the publication: "We all remember 2009-11 and don't want to see that again. So we as an industry are constantly wary, watching for signs of a downturn. But we don't see any yet."


U.S. Supreme Court sides with employers workplace arbitration case
By Celine McNicholas
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on May 21 handed down a 5-4 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis that deals a significant blow to the fundamental right of workers in this country to join together to address workplace disputes.
For over 80 years, the National Labor Relations Act has guaranteed workers' right to stand together for "mutual aid and protection" when seeking to improve their wages and working conditions. However, the Supreme Court decision clears the way for employers to require workers to waive that right as a condition of employment.
The use of mandatory arbitration and collective and class action waivers - under which workers are forced to handle workplace disputes as individuals through arbitration, rather than being able to resolve these matters together in court - makes it more difficult for workers to enforce their rights.
These agreements bar access to the courts for all types of employment-related claims, including those based on the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act. This means that a worker who is not paid fairly, discriminated against, or sexually harassed, is forced into a process that overwhelmingly favors the employer - and forced to manage this process alone, even though these issues are rarely confined to one single worker.
Today's decision undermines the National Labor Relations Act and further erodes workers' rights and freedoms. Workers depend on collective and class actions to combat race and sex discrimination and enforce wage and hour standards. It is essential to both our democracy and a fair economy that workers have the right to engage in collective action. Congress must act to restore this fundamental right and ban mandatory arbitration agreements and class and collective action waivers.
The New York Times said writing for the majority, "Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court's conclusion was dictated by a federal law favoring arbitration and the court's precedents. If workers were allowed to band together to press their claims, he wrote, 'the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace.'"
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented strongly, saying the case will lead to "huge under-enforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well being of vulnerable workers."
Said AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka: "Today, five justices on the Supreme Court decided that it is acceptable for working people to have our legal rights taken away by corporations in order to keep our jobs. This decision forcing workers to sign away the right to file class-action suits against such illegal employment practices as wage theft, sexual harassment and discrimination is outrageous - and it is wrong.
"In this case, the newest justice has joined the dangerous trend of this court to side with corporations over working people. We call upon Congress to immediately enact legislation making clear that no worker can be forced to give up their right to effectively challenge illegal conduct in the workplace in order to keep their job."


Meet Gibbi
Gibbi on Lampedusa island, about one month after rescue at sea. Lampedusa, Italy; November 2016. ©Pamela Kerpius
Meet Gibbi.
27 years old and from Gambia.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
His journey took six months, five of which were in Libya. From Agadez, Niger he crossed the Sahara desert in a pickup truck with 28 people. Each, as standard, had 5 liters of water. He made it through four checkpoints across the desert with the help of his driver, who negotiated lower rates to pass.
When he arrived in Sabha, he says, even the little kids have guns. They're called "small boys," as I've heard them described throughout almost all of my interviews. (They are also throughout the city of Tripoli, making prey of migrants who congregate on known corners looking for day work.)
He mostly stayed inside the compound because it was too dangerous to leave. There were about 300 people living in his particular house. Some slept outdoors because there wasn't enough room. He spend one week in the compound and never felt safe.
Gibbi stopped in Bani Waled, then it was on to Tripoli, where he spent three months and two weeks in a prison somewhere within the city limits. He arrived with over 90 people to a space holding somewhere around 700-800, by his estimate.
There was scant food or water. He shared a plate of macaroni with 10 other people each day for food. He was allowed one teacup of water daily. Men, women, and children and babies were all kept together in the same space.
He was given the option to pay 1000 dinars for his release, but he escaped instead. It took him days to plan it. During his allowed visit to the toilet one morning, he left alone on foot. He looked for other black people along the way for aid.
Gibbi's family thought he was dead during this time because he was never able to call home. He was married in 2009 and has a wife, a five year old son, and a baby girl about a year old.
He spent a month at the seaside camp before his boat was ready. He crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a wooden boat with 140 people around 9:00pm. There were 40-50 women on board. They were out to sea for eight hours.
At 5:00am he was rescued by a German vessel, and was then transferred to the Guardia Costiera who brought him to Lampedusa.
He has worked as a mechanic and is eager to maintain his skills. In time, he would like to earn money and send for his family in The Gambia.
He was always wearing that same ball cap and had his hands muffled in his pocket to keep warm when I'd see him everyday on Via Roma. He is kind and friendly and his eyes light up when he speaks.
Gibbi is an amazing human being.
Leggete in italiano


Meet Dr. Brett Zubeck
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Created in Newsletter Library, Wellness
The natural world functions very well on its own. Left to their own devices, members of the tens of millions of species on our planet thrive and prosper without relying on outside agencies.
In order to grow abundantly, plants consume carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients from the soil. Likewise, herbivorous animals consume plants whereas carnivorous animals consume other animals. Insects eat a wide variety of foods, including plants, fruit, other insects, detritus (dead leaves, stems, and twigs), and even blood. Many types of bacteria and fungi recycle decomposing matter. Whales, the top predator in the oceans, may consume more than a ton of plankton per day in addition to fish, squid, and other crustaceans.
Every member of every species excepting humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) obtains everything it needs from the environment. Modern humanity is the only species for which the abundance provided by the global ecosystem is insufficient.
For instance, mountain lions, raccoons, and coyotes don't need sleeping pills. But humans spend more than $1.5 billion per year on the sleep aid Ambien. Dolphins, antelope, and bluebirds don't have problems with blood glucose levels. In stark contrast, the annual cost of diabetes medications in the United States was $12.5 billion in 2007. In the wild, oak trees, tuna, and elephants don't need nutritional supplementation. Humans, however, spend more than $23 billion annually in the United States alone. What is wrong with this picture?
As a species, humans have the unprecedented ability to manipulate and drastically alter the world in which we live. Also aside from epidemic infectious disease, there exists no natural check on human population growth. As populations expand, resources become scarce. Populations flocking to urban enclaves not only leave behind the countryside but also local sources of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry. Canning, packaging, and transportation of food over long distances become necessary to supply the energy needs of cities. But only calories and not much else are obtained by these methods. Energy is provided but food quality is substantially reduced.
Chronic disease becomes widespread. Diabetes, cardiovascular disorders including high blood pressure, heart attacks, and stroke, and obesity are all the direct result of a severely compromised food supply.1,2,3
Our disconnect from the natural world poses many additional challenges. Our bodies were designed to meet the demanding physical requirements of a hostile environment. But for the most part we don't do physical work anymore. If we don't find satisfactory substitutes for strenuous physical activity our musculoskeletal, metabolic, and endocrine systems easily deteriorate. The consequences include osteoporosis, chronic aches and pains, gastrointestinal problems, and anxiety and depression.
It takes a lot of effort to maintain good health when we're so far removed from the natural world. We need to make sure our diets are healthy and we need to get sufficient and regular strenuous exercise. The short- and long-term benefits include happiness, self-esteem, and ongoing well-being.
1Kesse-Guyot E, et al: Adherence to nutritional recommendations and subsequent cognitive performance: findings from the prospective Supplementation with Antioxidant Vitamins and Minerals 2. Am J Clin Nutr Nov 24 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
2Wolfe AR, et al: Dietary protein and protein-rich food in relation to severely depressed mood: A 10 year follow-up of a national cohort. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry Nov 22 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
3Pekmezi DW, Demark-Wahnefried W: Updated evidence in support of diet and exercise interventions in cancer survivors. Acta Oncol Nov 24 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
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County declines MTO transportation grant
Published Feb. 1, 2018
Haliburton County council will stick with its plan of commissioning an implementation plan for a transportation service in the community, forgoing a grant opportunity from the Ministry of Transportation.
At a December meeting, council decided it will hire a consultant to complete a transportation project implementation plan and has allotted $50,000 in the 2018 draft budget for that purpose.
During a Jan. 24 meeting, councillors were visited by Tina Jackson and Sue Shikaze of the Haliburton County community transportation task force, who asked councillors to take advantage of a new community transportation grant program offered by the MTO.
A business case prepared by the task force that councillors had received at their December meeting outlined a number of transportation options, one being a booked, shared ride service that would transport residents who called to book rides. It was estimated the cost for such a service would be at least $192,000 a year.
"I know there is some concern about how this model will meet the needs of all residents, and I'm here to assure you that it can't and it won't," Jackson said, adding that ideally a suite of transportation services is required to fulfill the needs of residents.
"Our request is that you reconsider your decision and prepare and submit an application to the ministry of transportation," Shikaze said.
She emphasized the grant program is designed for communities that are not served or are under-served by transit, and can be used to develop new systems, with an emphasis on improving mobility for the entire community, including those with transportation barriers, seniors, people with disabilities, youth and individuals with low incomes.
The program offers funding of up to $500,000 over five years, however, a caveat is that it is a five-year commitment.
County planner Charlsey White told councillors that if council decided after a few years a system was unsustainable and decided to pull out of the arrangement, it was possible that some or all funds received from the province would have to be paid back.
With municipal elections taking place this October, a five-year commitment would also mean that council was committing not just the next county council, but also the council after that, to the project.
"I need to see an implementation plan," said Dysart et al Deputy Mayor Andrea Roberts. "I'm just worried about committing future councils."
"We have to acknowledge this whole project is fraught with various risks," said Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt. Moffatt said she did see the grant program as an opportunity, but noted the county would be taking a risk with the five-year commitment.
"I see it as hedging our bets," Moffatt said.
Dysart et al Mayor Murray Fearrey, who emphasized he was not against the project, noted the county would be responsible for administration of the service, something likely not possible with its current staff level. With vehicles, gas and drivers, he said he believed a booked, shared ride service would end up costing more than the $192,000 that had been estimated in the task force's business case.
The grant application deadline is also fast approaching, at the end of February.
Chief administrative officer Mike Rutter said it was staff's opinion the more financially prudent option for council would be to use gas tax funding to help finance whatever transportation system is eventually created. That way, Rutter said, there would not be a specific time commitment, and council could abandon a financially unsustainable program at any time.
Moffatt and Minden Hills Mayor Brent Devolin acknowledged the decision would likely draw criticism from some members of the public.
"I think we're sincerely committed to this, and we're going to do something," Devolin said. The county will not submit a grant application and will continue with the creation of its implementation plan.


2013 Children's Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) Winners
OVER 1,000,000 VOTES CAST BY KIDS & TEENS -- JEFF KINNEY WINS AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AND ROBIN PREISS GLASSER NAMED ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR
New York, NY  -  May 13, 2013 - The Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children's Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at a charity gala benefitting Every Child a Reader in New York City this evening. The announcement is an annual highlight of Children's Book Week (May 13-19, 2013)as the CCBAs is the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens. Young readers across the country voted in record numbers for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and a tbookweekonline.com, casting more than 1,000,000 votes. Full video footage of the awards ceremony is available for book lovers of all ages at .
The 2013 Children's Choice Book Awards winners are:
KINDERGARTEN TO SECOND GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta, illustrated by Ed Young (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
THIRD GRADE TO FOURTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Macmillan)
FIFTH GRADE TO SIXTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)
TEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton/Penguin)
AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Amulet Books/Abrams)
ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR
Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet (HarperCollins Children's Books)
About the Children's Choice Book Awards Program (CCBAs)
Launched in 2008 by the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader, The Children's Choice Book Awards program was created to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read more and cultivate a love of reading. More at .
About Children's Book Week (CBW)
Established in 1919, CBW is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Each year, official and local commemorative events are held nationwide at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes -- wherever young readers and books connect.In 2013, official events will be held in 50 cities nationwide. Learn more at .
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About Kits House
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House ('Kits House'), member of the Association of Neighbourhood Houses BC, is a registered non-profit, charity organization dedicated to meeting the needs of those most vulnerable as well as providing an opportunity for everybody in our community to get together and be engaged. We offer many different programs like volunteer-led English Conversation Circles, weekly hot lunches for seniors, childcare and much more. We are the only Neighbourhood House on the Westside and serves many different communities like Kitsilano, Dunbar, Arbutus Ridge and Point Grey.
Kits House has a rich history on Vancouver's Westside since 1894 when it was originally opened as Alexandra Orphanage and Non-Sectarian Home Society. This original site was located at 7th and Pine. The orphanage was eventually renamed "Alexandra House" in 1938. In 1972, the House moved to its current location, was renamed Kitsilano Neighbourhood House and still serves the six communities of the Westside.
Check out "A Place on the Corner" for some more Kits House History.
Our Statement of Diversity
Vancouver's Westside is a healthy, vibrant and connected community where everyone thrives.
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House creates community for all by connecting people, ideas, and opportunities.
Our community welcomes people of any age, race, or religion.
We see value in every person, regardless of physical ability, mental ability, or economic standing.
We welcome the experience and knowledge of people from other places. Many languages and cultures are heard in the community at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House.
People of any gender and sexuality are welcome in our community.
Our staff, board, membership and volunteer community reflect the diversity of our neighbours.
Any person who transmits or receives our services can expect to be treated with respect.
Our dedication to diversity means that all people are part of our community; therefore, we act to promote the inclusion of everyone in our House.
democratic participation
What is a Neighbourhood House?
Neighbourhood Houses are non-profit organizations, which function as resource centres with the flexibility to meet changing community needs and challenges. They work towards improving the quality of both community and family life and differ from other social organizations as they are concerned with the community as a whole while working towards improving the quality of both community and family life.
Programs and services are designed to reach all age groups in a diverse population that is inclusive and reflective of the many different life experiences of the neighbours. Neighbourhood Houses build strong, independent communities, encouraging people to thrive. They are familiar and easily accessible; and effective in reaching people and helping them with their community aspirations, needs, challenges and problems.
Scent Reduction Policy
Kits House is not a scent-free environment; however, we do ask that everyone avoid the use of strong perfumes and heavily scented products while at Kits House. We ask for everyone's cooperation in our efforts to accommodate staff, volunteer, resident, participant and visitor health concerns, and minimize unnecessary discomfort.
We collect personal information in order to maintain contact with you, to invite you to KNH, and ANH General Meetings and to provide you with information on future programs, services and events.
Complaint Resolution Process
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House is committed to working with children, youth, seniors, families and communities to provide supports and programs that meet community needs. In keeping with this all participants in all programs have the right to raise their concerns about any program decision or actions taken by Kits House.
• You will be treated with respect, listened to and acknowledged.
• Your concern will be kept in confidence and there will be no repercussions for bringing forward a concern in good faith.
• All staff will have a working knowledge of the complaint resolution process and a willingness to listen to your concern and find a resolution that works for all involved.
What we will do
• We will provide an opportunity for you to explain the complaint.
• We will respond to the initial complaint as soon as possible after it is received and not longer than one week from receiving the complaint.
• We will document your concern and the final resolution or decision.
• We will follow up until the issue is resolved.
• We will make sure the process is accessible and transparent.
How to bring your complaint to our attention
1. Work together with the Kits House staff involved to resolve the disagreement
2. If the disagreement is not resolved work together with the Program Manager
3. It is hoped that through these conversations, your concern will be addressed to your satisfaction. If a resolution has not been found you can contact the Executive Director by phone 604 736-3588 or email  or in writing attn: Executive Director c/o Kits House.
4. If the Executive Director is not able to resolve the disagreement to the satisfaction of all parties, your concern can be referred to the current Chair of the Kits House Board (contact email on KNH website) and/or the CEO of the Association of Neighbourhood Houses of BC 604-875-9111 ext 107.


Dovetail is an American band from Dallas, Texas, fronted by singer/songwriter Philip Creamer. Joined by brother and co-writer Daniel Creamer, the band is a family of creative free-spirits in pursuit of the high and lofty. Giving much credence to their musical predecessors, the band lives in a magic place of sonic discovery.
Clearly drawing much of their musical inspiration from 60s and 70s era rock and roll, Dovetail taps into the simple yet dynamic arrangements and huge-sounding vocal productions of bands like The Beach Boys, The Byrds and The Beatles. Still, the band is able to create a fresh and modern sound, with frontman Phillip's voice channeling the likes of Tom Chaplin of Keane, or at times, Matthew Bellamy of Muse. Fans of classic rock or of more modern bands like My Morning Jacket, Radio Head, Arcade Fire, Portugal The Man and Dr. Dog will likely connect with Dovetail's music..
As a testament to the band's tremendous songwriting capabilities, Dovetail holds the prestige of winning the 2012 John Lennon Song Writing Contest in the category of Rock Song Of The Year with their song "Julie" which appears on their debut album, Mount Karma.
For more information, visit their website at:
Be sure to stay up-to-date by following Dovetail on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.


Israel's puppet war unmasks apartheid regime
By Fatima Masri - July 03, 2013
Section: [Main News] [Culture] [Life under Occupation]
Tags: [culture] [Jerusalem] [Palestinian Authority] [popular resistance] [social media] [Apartheid]
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Image from Puppets4All Facebook page protesting Israeli ban of Palestinian Puppet Festival
The El-Hakawati theatre was colorfully adorned for its annual International Puppet Festival when a closure order by the Israeli authorities dashed the expectations of the Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem. Now signs announcing the closure of the theatre from June 22 to 30 have replaced the festive decorations.
This "puppet war" was launched by the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, transforming a festival for children into a security issue. Officially, the order has been issued on the grounds that Israeli law prohibits the Palestinian Authority from funding or holding any gatherings in Israel without government authorization. The theatre's director, Mohamed Halayiqa, was summoned by Shin Bet and questioned about the funds' provenience. Halayiqa denied the involvement of the Palestinian Authority and so far no evidence of PA involvement has been offered by the Israeli police to justify the closing order.
This "puppet war" was launched by the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, transforming a festival for children into a security issue
The festival, which would have been in its nineteenth season, hosts a large number of international performers and theatre groups. Mohamed Halayiqa said the theatre closure was "disgraceful," and claims that the Palestinian Cultural Foundation, which is supported by donations from Palestinian businesses and European Donors, provided funding for the project.
The cancellation of the puppet festival raises questions about Israel's democratic principles. The Security Minister says he is not opposed to Palestinian cultural and artistic events as long as they are conducted according to Israeli law. However, if PA funding of cultural activities for Palestinians is prohibited and the Israeli government does not provide any alternative, the result is a system that regulates access to culture on the basis of ethnicity.
According to a study conducted by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem - and 84% of the children - are living below the poverty line. Israel neglects the Palestinian population's basic needs, including access to education and professional training. Such practices make it hard to believe that any effort would be made by the government to promote cultural events even if they are in line with Israeli regulations.
As harmless as a puppet festival may be, Israeli authorities view Palestinian art as part of a national struggle that must be contained. Israeli authorities did not see the festival performances prior to their cancellation, suggesting that the theatre closure was not ordered on the basis of unacceptable content. It seems that any opportunity to enrich Palestinians is viewed as a potential threat to an Israeli system based on the exclusion and segregation of one group.
As harmless as a puppet festival may be, Israeli authorities view Palestinian art as part of a national struggle that must be contained
Among those protesting the cancellation of the festival are the puppeteers from the Israeli television series "Sesame Street." Ariel Doron, who gives voice to the Israeli puppet Elmo, and Yousef Sweid, who gives voice to the Arab puppet Mahboub, have launched a campaign through the Puppets4All Facebook page, in which Israeli television and stage actors, as well as protestors from all around the world, are posting pictures with puppets and slogans such as "Culture is not a security issue".
The Facebook page provides the link to a petition that states, "Every child has the right to enjoy puppet shows". A short video, entitled "The puppet war", was created by Doron to accompany the petition. In the video Israel is represented as an inflatable blue and white hammer chasing scared puppets that cry out for help.
Ariel Doron believes that every child has a right to culture. In an interview with Haaretz, he expressed his disbelief in regards to the measure adopted by his own government: "It sounds incredible to me that they're keeping Palestinian children from seeing puppet shows. It seems ridiculous and cruel and sad and completely unnecessary, and hypocritical too. When an Israeli artist attends a festival abroad and is boycotted because he gets Israeli funding, Israel speaks against it, and now it [Israel] is saying the same thing."
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Israel requires students to pass "propaganda" course before overseas trips
Israeli-Arab human rights group Adalah has labelled the course as "racist ideology",
Israel's Defence Ministry erases historical Nakba documents
An investigative report by Haaretz has uncovered the Israeli Defence Ministry
The El-Hakawati theatre was colorfully adorned to host its annual International
Rushdi Tamimi becomes second victim of Israeli army in Nabi Saleh
On Tuesday November 21st, the body of 31 year old Rushdi Tamimi was
Israel Avoids Hard-Right Shift: No Benefit for Palestinians
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How can students health care to be improved?
March 4, 2017 iwona Education 0
In the run-up to the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, emeVia's network of student mutual publishes a White Paper designed to challenge parties and their candidates on the issues of student health. 17 proposals centered around three main axes: access to care, prevention and education to the health system.
The local student mutually manages the student social security scheme of around 1 million students and offer a complementary mutual insurance scheme to nearly 250,000 of them.
Improving health, fighting against cessation of care
To elaborate the 17 proposals for access to care and improvement of prevention policies, the emeVia network has based its latest health survey in 2015 on 14,000 of its members. The proposals are intended to challenge the candidates, but also to be confronted with health professionals. Goal? To improve the health and well-being of students, in particular by facilitating access to care, while 16% of them declared in 2015 that they had refrained from visiting a doctor for financial reasons.
Which lines of thought should be taken from the White Paper?
Three priorities were identified: improving access to care and rights for young people, strengthening prevention and educating young people about their health system. More specifically, the Mutual Network proposes, for example, to link the 500,000 apprenticeship and salaried students to the student social security scheme, in order, according to its president, to "stop the double penalty" of those who, when registering in the superior, of the contribution for student social security but who also contribute through their professional activity.
Read also: How to acquire new skills without breaking the bank
According to emeVia, it would also be necessary to generalize the university health network Rhesus which exists in some faces like that of tours. This network is the result of an agreement between liberal health professionals, universities and mutual societies. It ensures the third-party payment so that the students have nothing to pay for the day of the consultation, more personalized follow-up and a permanence of care after 8 pm and the weekend. In the same vein would be set up a free gynecological consultation every 2 years for young women aged 16 to 25 years.
Lastly, stressing that only 75% of students benefit from a complementary health care compared to 93%. the population, emeVia recommends extending the check or "pass" health, already proposed by some local authorities. It would be set at $150 for fellows and employees.
Regarding prevention, emeVia advocates for a youth education by their peers, and this from the high school and proposes the creation of a foundation co-managed by the State, the private sector and the actors of the prevention. We estimated that by setting a tax of one cent on each bottle of wine, we would release 10 million dollars of a budget for this foundation.
To challenge the candidates for the presidential election
EmeVia has put in place the presidential for which lists all the proposals of candidates for the presidential as well as their positioning on the measures of the White Paper. It will make it possible to compare programs according to thematic criteria.
Internet users will be able to vote for a measure, share it on Facebook or Twitter, as well as directly interview candidates via social networks. One limitation, however, is that they will not be able to suggest other measures that they feel could improve their situation.
EmeVia ensures that it has sent its White Paper to all candidates, and hopes that answers will be added to the comparator. It remains to be seen if the policies, very discreet until now on the living conditions of students, will play the game.
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Immunophenotypic characterisation of morphologically diagnosed cases of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML)
Immunophenotyping and Aberrant phenotype in AML
Maria Basharat
Saleem Ahmed Khan
Nasir ud din
Dawood Ahmed
Keywords: Immunophenotyping, Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Aberrant phenotype in AML, Flowcytometry
Objective: To determine immunophenotypic pattern in newly diagnosed cases of acute myeloid leukaemia by flow cytometry and its correlation with morphological findings.
Methods: This study was conducted at Haematology (Pathology) department, Army Medical College, in collaboration with Immunology Department Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Rawalpindi from 16 November 2016 to 16 November 2017. One hundred and six patients of both genders and all age groups diagnosed as acute myeloid leukaemia were included in the study. Demographic data was noted. Complete blood counts, bone marrow examination and cytochemical stains were carried out and evaluated microscopically for blast percentage and morphology. Immunophenotyping was performed by flow cytometry using standard panel on peripheral blood or bone marrow samples. The surface and cytoplasmic antigens of interest were analysed and correlated with morphological findings.
Results: The most commonly expressed antigens were CD13, CD33, CD45 and HLA-DR. Almost all blasts expressed CD45 with no remarkable difference among the subtypes of AML. The mean positivity for CD13 among all AML subtypes was 57% and for CD33 was 67%. Aberrant expression of CD7 and CD19 were expressed in 26.4% and 1.1% of all cases respectively. There was concordance rate of 90% between morphology and FCM in our study.
Conclusion: Flow cytometric analysis of acute leukaemia done by a combination of patterns and intensity of antigen expression improves diagnostic yield in AML. CD13, CD33 and CD45 are the most frequently expressed antigens in AML. Our findings suggest a 90% concordance between morphology and flow cytometry. It is pertinent to conclude that flow cytometry results interpreted with morphology are complementary.
Basharat M, Khan SA, Nasir ud Din, Ahmed D. Immunophenotypic characterisation of morphologically diagnosed cases of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(2):470-476. doi:


[INTERVIEW] Prof Mehmet UGUR: "We may be enjoying relative freedom in Europe but this freedom is tainted by continued violations in Turkey"
Fernando Lozano
Elections in March, Hydrocarbons in Cyprus and Erdoğan's Nationalist Footsteps
Dr Anthony Derisiotis is a lecturer of Turkey and the Middle East, at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian studies, of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens. He has graduated from the Department of Turkish Studies of the University of Cyprus and got his MA and PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He teaches Turkish political history and foreign policy. His publications and research interests include Turkish domestic and foreign politics, with a special focus in the Middle East and the United States, as well as the Kurdish issue. He has previously held a research associate position at the Hellenic House of Parliament.
A major characteristic of Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, one that he has mastered during his political career, is the ability to adapt to conditions, especially when he can't adjust conditions to his views. The latter may sound absurd, but in the past 16 years, the Turkish leader has done so a few times, with the most significant cases being the way he handled the Kurdish issue, from the pro-Kurdish reforms and the solution process to the sacrifice of the Kurdish vote in favour of the nationalists, or the turn against his former political ally and AKP supporter, cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Erdoğan simply changed his attitude and turned against them, when he deemed it necessary to serve his own political interests. In the process he accused Gülen of terrorism, treason and being an enemy of the state, while he practically demonised the Kurds for demanding the rights he has promised them in the early years of his government. In both cases, he used this as an excuse to proceed to a wide-range purge from the armed forces, political institutions, media, universities, etc.
Whenever he can't manipulate a situation, he will compromise and adapt to it, as he has done with his relation to Putin that actually flourished after the Sukhoi Su-24 shoot down in 2015 and the Russian economic sanctions to Turkey; or with Assad's advance in former strongholds of the opposition in Syria, which Turkey has been sturdily supporting against the Syrian leader.
Another similar challenge for the Turkish president is his alliance to the nationalist MHP, one that has ensured him crucial political victories in the 2017 referendum and in the 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections, the latter through the People's Alliance.
The upcoming local elections in March 2019 is the next challenge in Turkey's troubled internal political scenery and the discussion on a joint campaign under the People's Alliance is already on the way.
President Erdoğan has been targeting the nationalist sentiment after the June 2015 elections, especially since the nationalist vote has been a fundamental element of his electoral dominance. He has incorporated nationalism in his approach to Turkey's foreign policy and has adopted an anti-Kurdish and anti-American rhetoric regarding the Syrian autonomous area of Rojava in the east of the Euphrates that is controlled by the PYD.
Relations with Washington have been stressed due to a number of reasons, including Ankara's affiliation to Moscow, the Andrew Brunson case and Iran, as well as, Ankara's request for Fethullah Gülen's extradition and the US-YPG alliance. In the process, Erdoğan has conceded to a significant rise of MHP's influence within AKP's ideological core but seems to remain in control of a significant segment of the nationalist vote with political manoeuvres like the recent developments in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Cyprus, where Ankara has been raising objections on the right of the government of Nicosia to issue drilling permissions to foreign companies, on the basis that the rights of the Turkish-Cypriots have not been secured.
On the same basis, Ankara has also deployed its own research vessels in the Cypriot EEZ causing further stir in its relations with Nicosia and Athens. All of these are related to Turkey's national interests as they have been outlined by the AKP government, after Cyprus established its EEZ with agreements with Egypt (2003), Lebanon (2007) and Israel (2010), regarding Cyprus' hydrocarbon potential riches.
Recent developments include Nicosia's 2017 partnership with ExxonMobil-Qatar Petroleum consortium, the 16 November 2018 ExxonMobil launch of drilling operations with the escort of US Navy ships and the heated response by the Turkish government which vowed to begin drilling operations of its own in the Cypriot EEZ.
Earlier in the year, just before the June snap elections, the MHP leader, Devlet Bahçeli, was quoted saying "Cyprus is Turkish and will remain so", while the party's campaign issued a map that depicted Cyprus as Turkish territory.
Bahçeli's statement was reiterated by İyi Parti leader, Meral Akşener, in her 21 November address to the parliament, where she also warned of a repeat invasion of Cyprus, while calling the international companies' exploration for hydrocarbons commissioned by the Nicosia government as imperialist activity against Turkey.
Her statements came after the Turkish government hardened its stance, warning that the drillings off Cyprus would affect regional stability. Adding to the tension, Yeni Şafak newspaper published reports in October 2018 that Greece has been "stealing Libya's EEZ", as stated by defence minister Hulusi Akar in a recent visit to Libya.
Overall, there is significant tension brewing in the east of the Mediterranean Sea related to Cyprus' hydrocarbons that serves as nationalist fuel for the MHP and the AKP that both parties are incorporating in their rhetoric, in the wake of the 2019 local elections.
Earlier disagreements over a Bill of Amnesty submitted by the MHP, the reinstatement of the national oath in schools and Bahçeli's October statement that the party will not form an alliance in the local elections and will nominate its own candidate for Istanbul, were side-lined after the nationalist leader issued a new statement on 24 November, according to which, the MHP will not nominate metropolitan mayoral candidates in Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir and will support the AKP's candidates.
A few days earlier, President Erdoğan has called upon the benefits of an alliance, referring to "expectations from the grassroots of both parties". His statement came just one day before a meeting between the two party leaders to discuss the March elections.
Erdoğan is surfacing on the top of the People's Alliance, presenting himself as the guarantor of Turkey's national interests in an acceptable way to the nationalist voters. He is manipulating the delicate conditions in the east of the Mediterranean to his behalf and is gaining the advantage in the nationalist field, ahead of the MHP leader and Akşener.
Turkey's Idlib adventure; will it end in tears?
Soviel Scheinheiligkeit ist eigentlich unglaublich!
Summary of the Parliamentary Resolution of March 2019 on the 2018 Commission Report on Turkey


Where has the Pledge gone? What impact has it had so far?
Stories will be added here as they come in - please send yours!
Each small step will take us closer to changing the way the system currently operates, and by collecting as many stories here as possible here, we can exponentially increase the momentum towards that change.
The Young Christian Workers (YCW) are very involved in the asylum seeker and refugee issue. Some of the actions they are currently undertaking include:
Hosting Asylum Seeker & Refugee awareness nights every fortnight at their Melbourne office. These nights include a dinner and discussion about the actions we can take as a community to support those seeking asylum and they invite guest speakers to talk about their experiences as an asylum seeker.
They have an online blog which touches on the topic of asylum seekers and they encourage opinions and awareness for change.
They are also entering a team in this years 'Run 4 Refugees' in Melbourne on October 12!
They've also been very supportive of the Pledge, uploading pictures of members signing the Pledge on twitter, facebook, and instagram and spreading the word! You can see their photos in the montage on the Pledgers page as well.
"The pledge has inspired us to get this awareness out there and to continue supporting those wonderful causes who make it their mission to support our refugees and to stop the injustices against them. All the very best, and keep up the wonderful work!"
Grade 2/3 students at Mount Barker South Primary School have explored the Pledge, and what it means to be an asylum seeker or a refugee.
From their teacher:
My year 2/3 class were fascinated with the lesson. It's not often that they are completely silent but they all sat wide eyed with interest. Prior to the lesson, not a single student of 29 had any idea what the term 'refugee' meant but several recognised 'boat people'....
They are eager to learn more and have already enthusiastically shared their learning with the rest of our school at our last assembly.
For the presentation you see in the photo, they were asked to think about an activity they enjoy doing then imagine how happy it makes them feel to have the freedom to do it in our country. From that they drew their activity, as visualised in their mind's eye, and invited a refugee to enjoy the activity with them.
Not related to the Pledge, but this article talks about refuges who have gone on to become some of our greatest entrepreneurs. Ahn Do is one of those mentioned; have a look at his book, The Happiest Refugee, describing what it was like to be an asylum seeker travelling to Australia by boat. He's also released a beautiful children's book, The Little Refugee, on the same theme.
Linda and her husband Wes from the Combined Refugee Action Group are already active in assisting asylum seekers and refugees, but still loved the idea of signing the Pledge.
The Pledge really affirmed everything I have already committed to: lobbying politicians, writing letters and articles to the local papers, encouraging others to do the same, being involved in an action group, using my blog and Facebook for public education, supporting services financially, and befriending individual asylum seeker to make their lives in limbo just a little bit more bearable. We have to take whatever action we can. Every little bit helps.
"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." Ryunosuke Satoro
Kent is distributing the Pledge amongst the South Australian Police (SAPOL), and to his fellow 10/27 Army Reserve Infantry Battalion Unit and 7th Royal Australian Regiment colleagues.
As a member of the Police operating in a multicultural area I have exposure to and deal with refugees within our community on a daily basis. As a soldier I served as a rifleman on the front line of operations in Afghanistan. I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times where the long conflict against the Taliban forced many from their homes. I am well aware that this is just one of many conflict areas in the world that refugees are coming from.
I am committed to helping those who seek asylum and educating both the refugees and the public.
I think the pledge is a fantastic idea. It's proactive attitudes like yours we need to inject into all areas of our community.
Well done and thank you.
Sue* is a member of a group who visit asylum seekers in detention to offer them friendship, support and hope.
I made copies of the pledge and took it to a group of people who visit asylum seekers in a nearby detention centre. Some of us gather each week to review how things are going for the people we visit; we to talk about what kind of assistance may be needed, whether there are new people we individually may have met, or knowledge we may have gained about people being sent to other detention centres, including Manus and Nauru. At the end of our meeting last week we read through the Pledge at the end as a reflection and as our prayer of remembrance for the asylum seekers who are part of our lives.
Last night when I visited the detention centre, I decided to show the pledge to two families and explained what it was about. I, and two others who were there with me, then signed it and gave it to these people who were frightened and depressed that they have been told they are going to be moved to a more remote detention centre. Their faces were so filled with deep gratitude when we read the words "You are welcome here".
Thank you so much for making the pledge available to us and for putting words around our thoughts and feelings.
* Sue is a real person, but this is not her real name. Her identity was kept anonymous so that her ability to visit asylum seekers in detention is not jeopardised. She is not, however, the only person who has shared the Pledge with people in detention and I thank them all for taking on the Pledge in such a personal way.
Rachel is part of the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN). Check out their Facebook page.
We've put the Pledge on our Facebook page and take printed copies to the weekly Nightcliff market stall for people to read, take and sign. DASSAN also visit asylum seekers in local detention centres, bringing them friendship and contact with the outside world.
Thank you for creating a powerful piece of prose and sharing it with the wider community!


Quintiles partners to improve patient care
Quintiles has signed a collaborative agreement to help drive innovation, improve patient care and increase efficiency in early stage clinical research
Quintiles has signed a collaborative agreement with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London to help drive innovation, improve patient care and increase efficiency in early stage clinical research.
As part of the agreement, the biopharmaceutical services company, has commissioned a research facility with 30 beds, for both patients and healthy volunteers involved in research within Guy's Hospital in London. The facility, to be named Quintiles Drug Research Unit, will be completed in early 2010 and will increase Quintiles' capacity to conduct proof-of-concept programmes that help biopharmaceutical companies develop better medicines faster.
Eddie Caffrey, senior vice president, Global Phase I, Quintiles, said: "The biopharmaceutical industry must bring new drugs to market faster and with greater predictability to address declining research and development productivity. The smartest move is to invest in intelligent, early-stage development because, when done well, it has significant impact on speed and cost of the overall development process."
Ron Kerr, chief executive of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said: "We want to deliver the best possible care to our patients, and we know that aligning clinical service excellence with translational research has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to do this. We're excited by the potential of this collaboration as it will lead to a smoother and faster clinical trials process, ensuring our patients and local people are among the first to benefit from any new discoveries."
Professor Robert Lechler, vice-principal (health), King's College London and Director of King's Health Partners, said: "King's College London's important partnership with Quintiles and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, one of our Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) partners, is exactly the sort of collaboration we expect to see at the heart of King's Health Partners."
Lechler added: "Through this collaboration and the significant investments we have already made to develop first class clinical research facilities, we will create a powerful 'experimental medicine' hub across four floors of the Guy's Hospital Tower, allowing us to harness the expertise of our world class scientists and clinicians to drive new discoveries in medicine and clinical treatment."
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THE CASE AGAINST LIBERAL COMPASSION
The following is reprinted in its entirety by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College by William Voegeli on October 9, 2014, sponsored by the College's Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship.
Four years ago I wrote a book about modern American liberalism: Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State. It addressed the fact that America's welfare state has been growing steadily for almost a century, and is now much bigger than it was at the start of the New Deal in 1932, or at the beginning of the Great Society in 1964. In 2013 the federal government spent $2.279 trillion - $7,200 per American, two-thirds of all federal outlays, and 14 percent of the Gross Domestic Product - on the five big program areas that make up our welfare state:
1. Social Security; 2. All other income support programs, such as disability insurance or unemployment compensation; 3. Medicare; 4. All other health programs, such as Medicaid; and 5. All programs for education, job training, and social services.
That amount has increased steadily, under Democrats and Republicans, during booms and recessions. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, federal welfare state spending was 58 percent larger in 1993 when Bill Clinton became president than it had been 16 years before when Jimmy Carter took the oath of office. By 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated, it was 59 percent larger than it had been in 1993. Overall, the outlays were more than two-and-a-half times as large in 2013 as they had been in 1977. The latest Census Bureau data, from 2011, regarding state and local programs for "social services and income maintenance," show additional spending of $728 billion beyond the federal amount. Thus the total works out to some $3 trillion for all government welfare state expenditures in the U.S., or just under $10,000 per American. That figure does not include the cost, considerable but harder to reckon, of the policies meant to enhance welfare without the government first borrowing or taxing money and then spending it. I refer to laws and regulations that require some citizens to help others directly, such as minimum wages, maximum hours, and mandatory benefits for employees, or rent control for tenants.
All along, while the welfare state was growing constantly, liberals were insisting constantly it wasn't big enough or growing fast enough. So I wondered, five years ago, whether there is a Platonic ideal when it comes to the size of the welfare state - whether there is a point at which the welfare state has all the money, programs, personnel, and political support it needs, thereby rendering any further additions pointless. The answer, I concluded, is that there is no answer - the welfare state is a permanent work-in-progress, and its liberal advocates believe that however many resources it has, it always needs a great deal more.
The argument of Never Enough was correct as far as it went, but it was incomplete. It offered an answer to two of the journalist's standard questions: What is the liberal disposition regarding the growth of the welfare state? And How does that outlook affect politics and policy? But it did not answer another question: Why do liberals feel that no matter how much we're doing through government programs to alleviate and prevent poverty, whatever we are doing is shamefully inadequate?
Mostly, my book didn't answer that question because it never really asked or grappled with it. It showed how the Progressives of a century ago, followed by New Deal and Great Society liberals, worked to transform a republic where the government had limited duties and powers into a nation where there were no grievances the government could or should refrain from addressing, and where no means of responding to those grievances lie outside the scope of the government's legitimate authority. This implied, at least, an answer to the question of why liberals always want the government to do more - an answer congruent with decades of conservative warnings about how each new iteration of the liberal project is one more paving stone on the road to serfdom.
Readers could have concluded that liberals are never satisfied because they get up every morning thinking, "What can I do today to make government a little bigger, and the patch of ground where people live their lives completely unaffected by government power and benevolence a little smaller?" And maybe some liberals do that. Perhaps many do. The narrator of "The Shadow," a radio drama that ran in the 1930s, would intone at the beginning of every episode, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
Well, the Shadow may have known, but I don't. The problem with this kind of explanation for liberal statism is that very, very few liberals have been compliant or foolish enough to vindicate it with self-incriminating testimony. Maybe they're too shrewd to admit that ever-bigger government is what they seek above all else. Or maybe they don't realize that's what they're up to.
Such arguments trouble me, however. The great political philosophy professor Leo Strauss insisted that it is a grave mistake to presume to understand important political philosophers better than they understood themselves, unless one had already put in the hard work necessary to understand them as they understood themselves. Perhaps this good advice can be democratized, I thought, and applied as well to Elizabeth Warren and Rachel Maddow as to Aristotle and John Locke. If we make that effort - an effort to understand committed liberals as they understand themselves - then we have to understand them as people who, by their own account, get up every morning asking, "What can I do today so that there's a little less suffering in the world?" To wrestle with that question, the question of liberal compassion, is the purpose of my latest book, The Pity Party.
Indifference to Waste and Failure
All conservatives are painfully aware that liberal activists and publicists have successfully weaponized compassion. "I am a liberal," public radio host Garrison Keillor wrote in 2004, "and liberalism is the politics of kindness." Last year President Obama said, "Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. When I think about what I'm fighting for, what gets me up every single day, that captures it just about as much as anything. Kindness; empathy - that sense that I have a stake in your success; that I'm going to make sure, just because [my daughters] are doing well, that's not enough - I want your kids to do well also." Empathetic kindness is "what binds us together, and . . . how we've always moved forward, based on the idea that we have a stake in each other's success."
Well, if liberalism is the politics of kindness, it follows that its adversary, conservatism, is the politics of cruelty, greed, and callousness. Liberals have never been reluctant to connect those dots. In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt said, "Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." In 1984 the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, "Tip" O'Neill, called President Reagan an "evil" man "who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations . . . . He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood." A 2013 Paul Krugman column accused conservatives of taking "positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable." They were, he wrote, "infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness . . . . If you're an American, and you're down on your luck, these people don't want to help; they want to give you an extra kick."
Small-d democratic politics is Darwinian: Arguments and rhetoric that work - that impress voters and intimidate opponents - are used again and again. Those that prove ineffective are discarded. If conservatives had ever come up with a devastating, or even effective rebuttal to the accusation that they are heartless and mean-spirited: a) anyone could recite it by now; and, b) more importantly, liberals would have long ago stopped using rhetoric about liberal kindness versus conservative cruelty, for fear that the political risks of such language far outweighed any potential benefits. The fact that liberals are, if anything, increasingly disposed to frame the basic political choice before the nation in these terms suggests that conservatives have not presented an adequate response.
A first step in that direction is to note a political anomaly pointed out by Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana. Daniels contended that disciplining government according to "measured provable performance and effective spending" ought to be a "completely philosophically neutral objective." Skinflint conservatives want government to be thrifty for obvious reasons, but Daniels maintained that liberals' motivations should be even stronger. "I argue to my most liberal friends: 'You ought to be the most offended of anybody if a dollar that could help a poor person is being squandered in some way.' And," the governor added slyly, "some of them actually agree."
The clear implication - that many liberals are not especially troubled if government dollars that could help poor people are squandered - strikes me as true, interesting, and important. Given that liberals are people who: 1) have built a welfare state that is now the biggest thing government does in America; and 2) want to regard themselves and be regarded by others as compassionate empathizers determined to alleviate suffering, it should follow that nothing would preoccupy them more than making sure the welfare state machine is functioning at maximum efficiency. When it isn't, after all, the sacred mission of alleviating preventable suffering is inevitably degraded.
In fact, however, liberals do not seem all that concerned about whether the machine they've built, and want to keep expanding, is running well. For inflation-adjusted, per capita federal welfare state spending to increase by 254 percent from 1977 to 2013, without a correspondingly dramatic reduction in poverty, and for liberals to react to this phenomenon by taking the position that our welfare state's only real defect is that it is insufficiently generous, rather than insufficiently effective, suggests a basic problem. To take a recent, vivid example, the Obama Administration had three-and-a-half years from the signing of the Affordable Care Act to the launch of the healthcare.gov website. It's hard to reconcile the latter debacle with the image of liberals lying awake at night tormented by the thought the government should be doing more to reduce suffering.
A sympathetic columnist, E.J. Dionne, wrote of the website's crash-and-burn debut, "There's a lesson here that liberals apparently need to learn over and over: Good intentions without proper administration can undermine even the most noble of goals." That such an elementary lesson is one liberals need to learn over and over suggests a fundamental defect in liberalism, however - something worse than careless or inept implementation of liberal policies.
That defect, I came to think, can be explained as follows: The problem with liberalism may be that no one knows how to get the government to do the benevolent things liberals want it to do. Or it may be, at least in some cases, that it just isn't possible for the government to bring about what liberals want it to accomplish. As the leading writers in The Public Interest began demonstrating almost 50 years ago, the intended, beneficial consequences of social policies are routinely overwhelmed by the unintended, harmful consequences they trigger. It may also be, as conservatives have long argued, that achieving liberal goals, no matter how humane they sound, requires kinds and degrees of government coercion fundamentally incompatible with a government created to secure citizens' inalienable rights, and deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.
I don't reject any of those possibilities, or deny the evidence and logic adduced in support of each. But my assessment of how the liberal project has been justified in words, and rendered in deeds, leads me to a different explanation for why, under the auspices of liberal government, things have a way of turning out so badly. I conclude that the machinery created by the politics of kindness doesn't work very well - in the sense of being economical, adaptable, and above all effective - because the liberals who build, operate, defend, and seek to expand this machine don't really care whether it works very well and are, on balance, happier when it fails than when it succeeds.
The Satisfaction of Pious Preening
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Latinate word "compassion" means, literally, "suffering together with another" - it's the "feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it." Note that suffering together does not mean suffering identically. The compassionate person does not become hungry when he meets or thinks about a hungry person, or sick in the presence of the sick. Rather, compassion means we are affected by others' suffering, a distress that motivates us to alleviate it. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself."
We can see the problem. The whole point of compassion is for empathizers to feel better when awareness of another's suffering provokes unease. But this ultimate purpose does not guarantee that empathizees will fare better. Barbara Oakley, co-editor of the volume Pathological Altruism, defines its subject as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." Surprises and accidents happen, of course. The pathology of pathological altruism is not the failure to salve every wound. It is, rather, the indifference - blithe, heedless, smug, or solipsistic - to the fact and consequences of those failures, just as long as the empathizer is accruing compassion points that he and others will admire. As philosophy professor David Schmidtz has said, "If you're trying to prove your heart is in the right place, it isn't."
Indeed, if you're trying to prove your heart is in the right place, the failure of government programs to alleviate suffering is not only an acceptable outcome but in many ways the preferred one. Sometimes empathizers, such as those in the "helping professions," acquire a vested interest in the study, management, and perpetuation - as opposed to the solution and resulting disappearance - of sufferers' problems. This is why so many government programs initiated to conquer a problem end up, instead, colonizing it by building sprawling settlements where the helpers and the helped are endlessly, increasingly co-dependent.
Even where there are no material benefits to addressing, without ever reducing, other people's suffering, there are vital psychic benefits for those who regard their own compassion as the central virtue that makes them good, decent, and admirable people - people whose sensitivity readily distinguishes them from mean-spirited conservatives. "Pity is about how deeply I can feel," wrote the late political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain. "And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs."
It follows, then, that the answer to the question of how liberals who profess to be anguished about other people's suffering can be so weirdly complacent regarding wasteful, misdirected, and above all ineffective government programs created to relieve that suffering - is that liberals care about helping much less than they care about caring. Because compassion gives me a self-regarding reason to care about your suffering, it's more important for me to do something than to accomplish something. Once I've voted for, given a speech about, written an editorial endorsing, or held forth at a dinner party on the salutary generosity of some program to "address" your problem, my work is done, and I can feel the rush of my own pious reaction. There's no need to stick around for the complex, frustrating, mundane work of making sure the program that made me feel better, just by being established and praised, has actually alleviated your suffering.
This assessment also provides an answer to the question of why liberals always want a bigger welfare state. It's because the politics of kindness is about validating oneself rather than helping others, which means the proper response to suffering is always, "We need to do more," and never, "We need to do what we're already doing better and smarter." That is, liberals react to an objective reality in a distinctively perverse way. The reality is, first, that there are many instances of poverty, insecurity, and suffering in our country and, second, that public expenditures to alleviate poverty, insecurity, and suffering amount to $3 trillion, or some $10,000 per American, much of it spent on the many millions of Americans who are nowhere near being impoverished, insecure, or suffering.
If the point of liberalism were to alleviate suffering, as opposed to preening about one's abhorrence of suffering and proud support for government programs designed to reduce it, liberals would get up every morning determined to reduce the proportion of that $3 trillion outlay that ought to be helping the poor but is instead being squandered in some way, including by being showered on people who aren't poor. But since the real point of liberalism is to alleviate the suffering of those distressed by others' suffering, the hard work of making our $3 trillion welfare state machine work optimally is much less attractive - less gratifying - than demanding that we expand it, and condemning those who are skeptical about that expansion for their greed and cruelty.
Those of us accused of being greedy and cruel, for standing athwart the advance of liberalism and expansion of the welfare state, do have things to say, then, in response to the empathy crusaders. Compassion really is important. Clifford Orwin, a political scientist who has examined the subject painstakingly, believes our strong, spontaneous proclivity to be distressed by others' suffering confirms the ancient Greek philosophers' belief that nature intended for human beings to be friends. But compassion is neither all-important nor supremely important in morals and, especially, politics. It is nice, all things being equal, to have government officials who feel our pain rather than ones who, like imperious monarchs, cannot comprehend or do not deign to notice it.
WILLIAM VOEGELI is a senior editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College's Henry Salvatori Center. After receiving a Ph.D. in political science from Loyola University in Chicago, he served as a program officer for the John M. Olin Foundation. He has written for numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor, City Journal, Commentary, First Things, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and the New Criterion. He is the author of two books, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State and The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.
Labels: Liberal Mindset, progressive/socialists, White House Policy
Violent Buddhism, Bob Ross's Missing Paintings, and Shakespeare's Lost London Home


Marie Brennan September 16th 2007
Respecting history
I recently came across Guy Gavriel Kay's essay "Home and Away," which addresses the complex relationship between fantasy and history, both in the sense of historical fantasy, and fantasy which models itself on (without directly representing) history.
It provoked two major trains of thought for me. The first had to do with this notion:
It was Henry James who argued that historical fiction was, in fact, impossible. That it was condemned to be 'cheap' because getting to 'the real thing' with regard to the world views of people in the past simply could not be done. One could only write from within one's own world view, leaving access to the vision or the soul of the past hopelessly barred.
If you think it's bad in historical fiction, try anthropology. We've gone through several decades of angst over this very matter: how can we, as outsiders to a culture, try to represent its nature and point of view? Isn't that arrogant? Or maybe just impossible? If we can't achieve that goal, should we pack up and go home?
I'll come back to those points in a bit; first, let's turn to my other train of thought, which has to do with respect. I came across the Kay essay by way of Matt Cheney's column "Pol Pot's Fantasized Daughter," published recently on Strange Horizons. Cheney makes some cogent points about the thorny difficulties of fictionalizing and fantasizing a real-world scenario like the aftermath of Pol Pot's regime. I've thought about this in other contexts, too; I'm curious to see more of the world Naomi Novik presents in her Temeraire series, because I wonder how she's chosen to handle the problems of nineteenth-century colonialism. We don't necessarily want our historical fantasy to uncritically replicate the problems of real-world history, be they political, religious, economic, gender-based, what have you  -  but it's also a little cheap to decide that magic makes the problems go away. Where's the proper balance?
If it sounds like I've thought through this in detail, it's because I have; I just finished writing Midnight Never Come, which I fondly refer to as my Elizabethan faerie spy novel. All of the faeries in it are made up, of course, but virtually every mortal character except for the human protagonist is real. And the premise of the novel, in a nutshell, is that the faerie queen has been interfering with mortal politics.
Here's the thing. I find Elizabeth I to be a fascinating individual, and while she was far from perfect as a queen  -  she was vain, short-tempered, indecisive, and jealous  -  I have a lot of respect for her. But Midnight Never Come is a secret history, not an alternate history; I'm not making any visible changes to what really happened in sixteenth-century England, but rather saying that some of those things happened for secret reasons. Faerie reasons. And this runs the risk of diminishing the actions and achievements of real people. (A problem White Wolf occasionally ran into with the metaplot of their "World of Darkness" RPGs; sometimes it seemed like ordinary people were nothing more than the blind, clueless puppets of vampires, werewolves, mages, etc, etc.)
They were real people. As far as I'm concerned, just because they're several hundred years dead doesn't mean they don't deserve respectful treatment.
It's tempting to dodge the complexities of the situation by saying it's fiction, it's fantasy, it isn't real. Unfortunately, that's too facile of a response, and at its worst it can be a cousin of the "it's just a joke" non-defense of sexist or racist behavior. If you misrepresent history  -  real people, real cultures, real events  -  not all readers will know the period well enough to recognize what's been made up or changed, and what hasn't. Benign example: you'll never ever convince me Loki is really a bad guy, because my first encounter with Norse mythology was Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke. The story you tell will go into the reader's mind along with everything else they read, and once there, it has a tendency to color their thoughts, even if it's fiction.
So where am I going with all of this? Back to anthropology. First of all, anthropologists depend on the admittedly amorphous notion of respect. Everything they write may not be  -  will not be  -  uncritically positive, but it should be respectful toward the real people about whom they are writing. And second, just because I as an anthropologist can't achieve "access to the vision or the soul of the past" doesn't mean I shouldn't try. I can only ever think like me, but I can make my thinking more flexible, more open to other ways of viewing the world.
And that's how I feel about historical fiction, too. Respect means researching the period, both its physical reality and its worldview, and attempting as best I can to work from that perspective. Respect means trying to fit what I'm doing in with the "real" Elizabeth, the "real" Walsingham  -  that is, our historical understandings of them  -  rather than replacing them with modern authorial sockpuppets that happen to bear the same name. And it's worth trying to do, because fantasy offers an unparalleled opportunity to bring ourselves and our readers into a different cultural point of view.
But it's hard work. Have any of you tackled historical fantasy yourselves, and if so, how did you approach it? What authors would you say have done a good job of it?
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1. S.C. Butler on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Never written any historical fantasy, though I'm a firm believer that modern fantasy is the direct successor of 19th c. historical romances. Hoever, regarding the respect issue, I think you can take it both ways. Revisionism can be as much fun as respect. Flashman is the classic case in point - Harry Flashman is a modern, cynical man (I won't go so far as to call him an anti-hero) plopped down in the middle of Victorian England's golden age to expose the hypocrisy of everything they said and did. Fraser's research is dead on, but then he uses that research often enough to turn pre-conceived notions on their heads.
2. Jess Nevins on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Oh, I dunno. I think the target of Flashman is as much the modern reader, with their facile and often uninformed judgment of the Victorians, as the Victorians themselves.
But that ties in to the respect thing. Fraser, via Flashman, is telling us (sometimes very directly, as with his comments about the burning of the Forbidden City) that unless we put the Victorians' actions into the proper cultural and historical context, we don't know enough to judge. Which strikes me as what Marie (hi, Marie!) is talking about.
I'd also recommend Patrick O'Brian's Maturin & Aubrey series, which I think is Literature and on a par with Austen and the other great novelists.
My one-and-a-half complete novels are both historical fantasies, and I tackled both by doing as much research as possible until I felt that I knew the eras fairly well. Then began writing. Contexts change, possibilities change, but people don't. Of course, venality and compassion will manifest themselves quite different in the South China Sea in 1806 than in Istanbul in 1425-and that's where the research comes in.
3. Karen Wester Newton on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am
What bothers me most in fantasy settings is otherwise medieval worlds in which women are warriors, just like men-not the occasional Xena but half the armies-with no explanation of why this fundamental difference occurred. I will buy almost any reason-religion, plague that kills or weakens men, you name it-but I want this accounted for.
I think it's interesting that science fiction writers have similar problems. Look at Bujold's Vorkosigan series. The Barrayarans conquer and colonize another world. How enlightened is that? Bujold knows this and sets it up so the other world allowed Barrayar to be attacked, so it's self defense. And the Vor may be the universe's best saber rattlers, but she gives them their own strong moral codes.
Real people in fiction is another question. I think the fiction writer does have an obligation to do research. On the other hand, he or she can say simply that it's his or her take on that person. Even biographies of the same subject take a slant on what their subject was like. Short of a Vulcan mind meld with a dead person, what else can a writer do?
4. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Oh, certainly. I don't mean to suggest one cannot skewer historical periods. But there's a difference between mocking what they really did (because you've done your research) and mocking inaccurate stereotypes.
Kind of like my long-standing belief that the best parodies are the ones done by people who love the subject they're making fun of.
5. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Yeah, I've written about that very gender problem before. (I put it in the context of infant mortality rates, actually: if half of your kids don't live to be ten, then most women can't afford to not have children, which means going to war is unlikely.) Part of my justification in Doppelganger was that magical healing made their lives generally healthier. I never found a good way to insert the other part of the explanation, but the people in that culture believe not only in reincarnation, but in the notion that one might be reincarnated as either sex, making the differences between the two less meaningful.
Back to history, though  -  of course you can't avoid having your own take on a person's life and personality, whether you're writing fiction or biography. But in a biography, one is held to certain standards of evidence for one's depiction; I feel the same should be true for fiction. So, you can give me a Doctor John Dee who's a con man, or one who's being conned, or one who's genuinely delusional, but if you give me a Doctor John Dee who's a neo-pagan earth-mother-worshipping Renaissance hippie (which apparently someone has done), then unless you're writing a weird alternate history where that makes sense, I'm going to call BS.
6. Alma Alexander on Sep 16th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
"Secrets of Jin Shei" was historical fantasy - basically rooted in imperial China but with a lot of 'different' stuff in there that made it possible for my story to take place. That didn't stop people from taking it as gospel and asking me which PARTICULAR period of Chinese history I was writing about. But that one was written as pure historical fantasy - lots of research went into it, but the story was pure me.
Its successor, "Embers of Heaven", deals with a Cultural Revolution China setting. And this felt very different to me - not least because there are people out there who have either lived through this period of history themselves or have immediate relatives who did - and not only did I have to treat the period with respect, I had to care about making it perfectly plain where I followed the "historical" line and where I diverged from it for story reasons. It was damned hard, sometimes.
I'm planning at least one other historical fantasy. Pray for me...
7. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Yes, the need for respect becomes much more obvious when the history is recent, and people are still around who remember it.
8. S.C. Butler on Sep 16th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Jess-
Interesting take on Flashman - I'll have to look for what you suggest the next time I read one. I've always felt Fraser, via Flashman, took every opportunity he had to stick a thumb in the Empire's eye.
As you say, the Aubrey/Maturin books are excellent. But what do you think O'Brien was doing at the end when he ran out of time for Napoleonic derring-do? Secret history or alternate?
Hi, Jess! (I wish I knew the logic by which WordPress orders these comments. Does it pull the timestamp from the computer used to post? Because I didn't get notification of your comment until about #7 or #8, yet there you are up at #2, where you most definitely were not before.)
I haven't read Flashman, so I can't judge it personally. But based on what you've said, it sounds like Fraser knew whereof he spoke, and that's really what I'm getting at. Whatever you're planning on doing with your history, know it first, and think carefully about the choices you make.
10. Jess Nevins on Sep 17th, 2007 at 9:46 am
The most recent one I read was Flashman and the Tiger, so I referred to that. Look at how Flashy adresses the reader about Elgin's decision. His comments boil down to "you really can't judge us because you weren't here."
As for O'Brian-I think he'd have found lots for Aubrey & Maturin to do elsewhere. The Brits were militarily busy throughout the 19th century, after all-lots of the "Little Wars" that A&M could have taken part in.
Flashman isn't for everyone-his personality grates on some readers-but I think the books are very solid historically, and well-footnoted to boot.
And, hey, any author who has a scene in which Sherlock Holmes' snap deductions are shown to be logical but wrong has a lot going for him. *g*
11. Diatryma on Sep 17th, 2007 at 10:55 am
At some point in the Aubrey-Maturin books, there's a note saying, more or less, "I've run out of war for the moment, because ships take so long to get there." It mentioned an 1812a, 1812b, et cetera, just because you can't have your characters becalmed in the Pacific while the plot's going on elsewhere.
However, I am sure that Maturin could have rigged up a nice FTL drive for the ship if necessary.
12. S.C. Butler on Sep 19th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Flashman and the Tiger is one of the best in the series. I should it put of on the top of my list to reread. And you're right about recommending Flashy to other readers. I stopped years ago after too many people told me they couldn't stand his sexism, racism, and bullying, whether he was honest about it or not.
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