text:
This is the big question, right?
It's what people are wondering everywhere.
The answer is simple and plausible – but the explanation is a bit more complicated. The majority of Americans are suffering terribly from the current economic crisis, but they do not yet have a political self-identity that will allow for a successful fightback. They don't know who they are or what they're fighting for. Neither do they understand whom or what they are fighting against.
"If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . . if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." These are the words of Sūn Zǐ, a 6th century BCE Chinese general, military strategist, and author of The Art of War, an immensely influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy.
All fighting is the same. Self-knowledge and knowledge of the enemy confer on the fighter the outlines of a winning strategy, based on the best utilization of available weapons of offense and defense.
The majority of Americans, unknowingly, are members of the working class, AKA the proletariat, and will be fighting for the kind of socialism in which sharing, cooperation, volunteerism, and wellness replace the drive for individual profits, competition, ego, and the desire for power over others. Most Americans would like to see an end to global poverty, war, and injustice, and one day, we shall discover that the means to this end involves the social ownership and democratic control of the world's wealth. Only with this in place can the benefits of that wealth find their way back to the vast majority – the bottom two-thirds of the economic ladder.
That accomplishment will prepare us for the next stage, which will fulfill most of the needs that we "earthlings" currently have. These essentials include saving the environment, automating all boring and unhealthy jobs, developing the individual person, living wherever and however we wish, and benefiting from the astounding medical and other technological advances of the future.
The American majority will be fighting against the other pole of attraction – the ruling class, AKA the capitalist class, AKA the bourgeoisie, and their particular version of class society, which could be referred to as the Dictatorship of Capital. The rulers are fighting for the status quo – their supposed right to own, control, and accumulate wealth – and the power over the majority that that wealth provides.
The capitalist class already knows who they are and what they are fighting for, and they are well aware of who their enemy is. That's why they are presently winning the fights.
Before we examine the roadblocks that need to be cleared away for this to begin, let us briefly review the current unpleasant situation.
The Current Crisis and Today's Fightbacks
The last four decades have witnessed the first-ever generalized stagnation of wages and benefits for working people in this country, as well as the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of the world, from middle and low income Americans to the billionaire gamblers, bankers, industrialists, and their hirelings. According to Mother Jones, from 1979 to the present, the productivity of American capitalism grew over 80 percent, while US wages only grew around 12 percent.
The share of US wealth held by half of American households plummeted in 2010 to 1.1 percent, while the top 10 percent's share was 74.5 percent. And according to the British aid agency Oxfam, the 2012 income alone of the 100 wealthiest families in the world was enough to end global poverty four times over!
This is the Privatize Everything period, when every grain of sand and every drop of moisture must be owned and extracted for their profit-producing potential. Since capitalist markets began crashing in the early 1970s due to the final exhaustion of the post-World War II boom and the subsequent global crisis of overproduction, American workers and small business owners have been hit with a concerted regimen of job speedup, increased competition, and economic strangulation – AKA "austerity" – which is aimed directly at them.
For the working class in America, unemployment remains high; debt is increasing; pensions are under attack; public education and medical care are being undermined; prices keep climbing; security and respect on the job are historical memories; public services are being slashed; cultural standards are coarsening; prisons are filling; foreign wars continuing without end; cop brutality increasing; harmful addictions of all kinds soaring; personal relationships fraying and mental/physical health spiraling downward, while the secretive security state grows stronger day by day. Times are good for snake oil salesmen of all colors and stripes, but bad for whistleblowers and other honest folk – and getting worse.
So the objective justifications for the Big Fightback are firmly in place.
Some are fighting back, but not the majority of Americans all at once. An old Chinese proverb reminds us that "the tallest nail gets hammered down." Political fightbacks have coalesced recently around many "separate" struggles, such as those of public union workers in Wisconsin, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the coal miners, the US postal workers, the fast-food workers, public school teachers, the anti-war movement, those determined to stop global warming, the free speech and press freedom movements, communities fighting to stop police harassment, the reproductive rights movement, the LGBT movement and a hundred others. Despite some victories here and there, none have so far initiated a real groundswell of opposition to the relentless rightward course of the oligarchy and its institutions of class rule.
Two Successful Fightbacks from History
History offers us valuable lessons from the examples of successful, largely non-violent fightbacks by big majorities against oligarchic tyrannies.
In 509 BCE, the Roman people overthrew the last king and established a republic, which was composed of three socioeconomic classes: the patricians, landed aristocratic families who owned and controlled the wealth, did no physical labor, and made all of the decisions; slaves, who performed forced labor in the fields and the homes; and the plebeians, the Roman proletariat who served the Republic as soldiers, shopkeepers, crafts people, skilled and unskilled workers, and small farmers.
Fifteen years later, the proletariat, who had been suffering horribly from debt bondage and the threat of slavery, physically withdrew from the city confines and vowed to establish a new city on a nearby hill if their demands were not met. These organized plebeians told the grossly outnumbered patricians that they weren't going to fight their wars, produce their food, make their clothes, or anything else for them until they – the working class – received some debt relief and some say in the operation of the new republic.
The plebeian fighters knew who they were and whom they were fighting. These workers were the people who, aside from slaves, created the wealth that the patricians had come to depend on.
- Because of their overwhelming numbers, the strategy of peaceful physical secession forced changes favorable to them – debt relief and political recognition.
- They understood that all plebeians – the immense majority – were their comrades and that all patricians were their foes, and that this tyranny in which patricians were making all the decisions had to be fought against and overturned.
Their understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of themselves and their enemy gave them their weapons and their winning strategy. With these, their fear and apathy turned to anger and enthusiasm and, within a year, they had won political representation and debt relief. The plebeians used this strategy three more times over the next two centuries until the final plebeian secession in 284 BCE and the resultant law known as the Lex Hortensia, which forced the retreating patrician order into a permanent position of subordination to the plebeian order.
A more recent example would be the phenomenon of Polish Solidarity, whose full name is "Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarnosc." At the time, Poland was a Stalinist workers' state with one owning class – the working class – and a bureaucratic caste managing and usurping wealth and privileges, much as some corrupt union officials today are make decisions and live well while the silent rank and file struggles.
Solidarity emerged on 31 August 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard. It was the first non-governmental trade union in a Warsaw Pact country. This very large union reached 9.5 million members – 1/3 of the total working age population of Poland – before its September 1981 Congress.
Their fightback was against the ruling bureaucrats of the Polish police state and their Stalinist brand of "socialism-from-the-top-down." The members of Polish Solidarity knew themselves to be working class – and they knew they were fighting for the kind of political freedoms that Americans have in our Bill of Rights.
During the 1980s, the unionists used the powerful weapons of class solidarity – massive sit-down strikes that brought the economy to a standstill and peaceful mass street protests that generated support throughout Poland and the world. This double-barreled plan of action eventually brought the oligarchic bureaucracy to its knees and opened the floodgates of anti-Stalinist rebellion around the world, culminating in the fall of the Soviet Union and the shakeup of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy.
Current Obstacles to Knowledge of Self and the Enemy
Compared to the European and Latin American proletariat, Americans lack political savvy. One reason is that in Europe and Latin America, when the going got tough, the working class had to stay put, organize, and fight back. By contrast, in the US, when the going got tough, individuals and families just picked up and moved West. Now however, there is no more out West, no wide-open spaces to flee to to make a living, and we on this continent are now forced by circumstances – the global capitalist crisis of overproduction – to stay and fight back.
American workers don't really want to fight. We don't want trouble or violence. We just want to live our lives in peace with a reasonable level of prosperity. It's easier to simply sit by the fire and munch on a drumstick. But when that nasty cave bear tries to enter, that's the time for everyone to get angry and grab the weapons. And when the entire clan stands in unison – in solidarity – ready and able to defend itself, violence is averted because the bear gives up and runs off.
The development of modern technology has far outpaced political understanding and social progress (think nuclear bombs, global warming, and artificial intelligence). That is why the catch up, when it happens, will likely be rapid and explosive, taking most by surprise.
The following seven obstacles currently stand in the way of a proletarian knowledge of self and the enemy:
1. Lack of class consciousness. This is the single most important obstruction blocking the road to a successful fightback. The terms capitalist class and working class have been completely obliterated by the Orwellian Newspeak of American discourse. Americans are burdened with a peculiar and spurious definition of class. In the post-World War II textbooks and mass media, class has suddenly and curiously become synonymous with income level. When class is confused with income level, political self-identity becomes entirely connected to the selfish accumulation of personal wealth. This is the game played by the ruling rich. Workers cannot play that game and expect to create any kind of class solidarity. As in the case of the Roman plebs and Polish workers, class is what unites the toiling majority and solidarity is our most potent weapon.
Class is a reflection of a person's relationship to the means of production of wealth. The majority of Americans have to work for a living to survive, in workplaces devoid of democratic rights. Workers are neither middle class nor lower class, no matter how much or how little we earn, no matter if we work with our minds or muscles, in factories, offices, transportation companies, schools, hospitals, or retail outlets. We are working class, but are discouraged from thinking of ourselves as such, even by labor leaders and leftist academics and journalists who should know better. George Orwell, Joseph Stalin, and Joseph Goebbels all understood that political thinking and behavior can be channeled by restricting and reshaping the language.
The term middle class generally refers to owners of small and medium sized businesses and farms, managers who represent employers, and college students. Ironically, at the time of the Great French Revolution which established capitalism as the dominant mode of economic organization in Europe, middle class and bourgeoisie were the terms commonly used to refer to the emerging capitalist class. If we keep referring to ourselves as "middle class," we are essentially identifying ourselves with the enemy. No fightback is possible in that case.
Before the Big Fightback begins, American workers – the vast majority whose hands and minds control the wealth-producing "machinery" – will realize our awesome power over economics and politics. We will also come to understand that we share mutual interests with other toilers everywhere and that we have no interests in common with our class enemy – the American capitalist class.
2. The bad taste left in the collective mouth by the Stalinist experiment. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed of its own massive internal contradictions in 1989, capitalism had lost its best defensive weapon against socialist revolution. After all, nobody wants to live in a totalitarian police state. It has been a quarter-century since that momentous event and still working people are leery of the socialist goal, not yet realizing the difference between top-down socialism and bottom-up socialism. Totalitarianism has been relentlessly associated with all forms of socialism by the big business press and their educational system, while the democratic aspects of the Cuban revolution remain a big secret – like the elephant in the room that everyone tries to ignore.
Post-Stalinist, anti-authoritarian sentiment is also reflected in the phenomenon of worker-owned enterprises. It's understandable that workers hate being at the mercy of bosses or any kind of mis-leadership. To avoid layoffs and harassment, a few are pooling their resources to buy the businesses at which they work. Some people believe that this development will gradually and seamlessly replace capitalism as we know it.
These developments are valuable as learning experiences for the working class and can help to prepare for an alternative society. However, the strategy has some inherent problems:
- While worker-owned businesses do not have pay management salaries or generate profits for shareholders, they nevertheless must pay for overhead such as rent, utilities, raw materials, and marketing and still have some left over for the workers and all the while compete against large corporations, which can buy cheap in bulk, cut prices, and more easily absorb temporary loses in order to put smaller competitors out of business.
- Without an accompanying cultural shift away from unbridled competition, the talented and greedy few may eventually become the new bosses. We remain people acculturated to a dog-eat-dog culture, surrounded daily on all sides by selfishness and insecurity.
- The workers at major corporations will never raise the money to buy these corporations, because the super-rich who own them care more about the powerthat wealth confers on them than the actual selling price, and will do anything and everything to smash any idea about surrendering their power.
3. Fossilized, bureaucratic unions. American labor unions need to be thoroughly rebuilt from the bottom up. In periods of general retreat such as we find ourselves in today, the likelihood is greater that elected leaderships will put their own interests first, ahead of the interests of the shell-shocked membership. Their jobs depend on defending the existence of the unions while at the same time not confronting the dominance of the ruling class – not rocking the boat. This middle-man strategy leads to the ruthless extermination of genuine fightbacks and the inevitable steerage of working class aspirations into the harmless arena of electoral politics – and specifically the Democratic Party. All electoral efforts are aimed at reform – improving capitalism – and away from any real challenge to the bosses' profits or their for-profit structure.
As the fightback gets rolling, we will see young militant workers who believe they have nothing to lose, begin replacing these reformist leaderships who engage in sectarian squabbles with other unions and who promise a lot and deliver little. The union, after all, is a weapon owned entirely by the workers and, unlike the institutions of the capitalist state, is potentially responsive to the needs of an aroused and determined membership.
Union dues will partly be used to establish and maintain the international Labor Party, whose purpose will be to represent and fight everywhere for the interests of the working class.
4. Capitalist electoral politics. Voting is an important right that must be jealously defended. However, there are a hundred-and-one methods that the ruling class can and does employ to make certain that pro-capitalist candidates will always win their elections. These days, scores of Western-supported tyrannies around the world hold "elections" which they always win, such as the recently fallen Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, to name just one notorious example.
In the US, the twin parties of capitalism – the Democrats and Republicans – are used by the ruling plutocracy in a tag-team strategy of good cop/bad cop to successfully divert anger and dissatisfaction away from real change and into the Neverland of personality politics, morality politics, and empty promises. We are taught that voting is all that most of us need to do – just vote for the right people. Oh, we can also sign a petition or write a letter to our "representative."
Both bourgeois parties and their politicians, funded mostly by powerful industries and corporations, naturally dance to the tunes that these wealthy pipers play. And unlike in the past, neither Tweedle-dee nor Tweedle-dum can deliver significant economic concessions any more.
The "third" parties that have been given just enough media exposure to make it onto some ballots (but not enough to pose a serious threat to two-party rule) are limited to those that call for the reform of the capitalist order, not its wholesale replacement with a humane, sensible system run by the majority working class. Neither the Green Party nor the Peace and Freedom Party nor the Libertarian Party publicly advocate the social ownership of the means of production. Many in these reformist parties will one day want to join a powerful Labor Party that has a clear program for defending the health of the biosphere, world peace, and our political freedoms.
The 40 percent of the American electorate that typically isn't motivated to vote has, in some sense, a higher political consciousness than the 60 percent who vote time and again for the continuance of class society, because the 40 percent know consciously or unconsciously that these elections are not going to improve their lives in any meaningful way. Only when a mass Labor Party enters the arena will bourgeois elections take on real significance for the bottom two-thirds majority.
5. Arbitrary divisions of the proletariat. Nationalism, sexism, racism, and xenophobia serve the interests of the ruling class in a big way. These major divisions prevent the formation of solidarity, the most potent weapon in the working class arsenal. "Divide and conquer" has ever been the strategy of ruling minorities, because they know in the dark recesses of their hearts that sufficient numbers will defeat their lawyers, guns, and money.
- The nation-state is purely an invention of 15/16th century capitalism, used by the investor class to protect their profit-making abilities. The tribes, city-states, and regional states that preceded the nation-state eventually gave way to the approximately 195 national governments that currently keep humanity divided against itself.
Working class politics begins with the world. The disasters we face today – poverty, war, climate change, disease, and the ever-present threat of nuclear holocaust – are planetary in scope and require global solutions and an "earthling consciousness." This means that the concept of Amerika can no longer retain its religious hold on people's loyalties, and that working people must stop taking responsibility for the concerns and crimes of the ruling rich. Working people will learn to avoid using the first-person plural pronouns of "we," "us," and "our" when referring to the capitalist government and military, (we invaded Iraq, we must fix our economy, they hate us for our freedoms, and other inanities), and instead use these pronouns when referring to our class and our human species.
- The oppression of women – a division of the toilers right down the middle – has been with us since the establishment of class society approximately 7,000 years ago, and is an organic component of modern capitalism. For more insight into the role that sexism plays in class society, readers can study The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the Stateby Frederick Engels, available through Pathfinder Press.
- Racism is another capitalist invention. One would be hard-pressed to find any examples in pre-capitalist history of whites or anyone else asserting natural superiority over other people based on skin color. Anti-racism will become a major focus of the mass Labor Party.
- Xenophobia – fear and hatred of immigrants – is the flip side of nationalism, and is an important weapon that keeps the working class confused about political self-identity. In contrast, the relocation of workers across borders strengthens the working class by the sharing of information and lessons learned from other struggles. Americans will discover that immigrants are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Time and again, when people fight shoulder to shoulder against the common enemy, these differences melt away. This is what the ruling class fears most.
6. The capitalist propaganda machine. The big-business media and educational system are organs of the capitalist order whose functions are to make a profit, while keeping the majority of us misinformed, confused, and distracted. Their message to us is loud and clear: We are "consumers" who should only be concerned with earning money, spending money, and avoiding politics.
The proletariat will need to cast a skeptical eye on this propaganda while developing its own informational and educational vehicles that will promote the interests of workers. Defending press freedoms and free speech and opposing censorship of all kinds will be crucial in this process.
7. The American security state. The ruling class as a whole would prefer to maintain their power and privileges here and abroad through non-violent means, using electoral politics and a steady stream of disinformation. It's easier. But these are not easy times for them or us.
As the crisis of capitalism drags on, fightbacks will increase in quantity and quality. The oligarchy will be tempted to use every repressive weapon in its arsenal to instill terror and a sense of hopelessness and disorientation in its adversary, the international working class. These terror weapons include cop harassment and violence, repressive laws, frame-ups, prisons, kidnappings, the use of torture, assassinations, private goon squads, and military invasions and occupations. The tallest nail gets hammered down.
State secrecy, already at its highest level since World War II, will only increase, as will the violation of privacy and attacks on all of the rights embodied in the constitutional Bill of Rights that working people fought so hard for. Attempts to physically disarm the working class will also intensify, even as it means decreasing the profits of the armaments capitalists.
In the beginning stages of the Big Fightback, we will likely witness the rise of mass fascist organizations, composed mainly of ruined middle class elements and the chronically unemployable, and funded and supported primarily by those same armaments capitalists. Ranks of Brownshirts will be loosed onto city streets in a desperate attempt to head off the revolutionary upsurge. There can be no illusions here. This will be a fight for the very existence of humanity.
Many of these terrorist measures were used unsuccessfully to stop the Roman plebeians and Polish Solidarity. What neutralized them in each case was a self-aware, organized working class, conscious of its mission, its abilities, and its enemy.
Learning the Lessons
As we become new people, we will be learning many lessons through smaller defeats, victories, and stalemates. American workers have to develop an abiding faith in democratic principles and our own abilities, and we have to relearn how to win fights.
In the words of that old ruling class warrior Winston Churchill, "Americans always do the right thing, after they have tried everything else first."
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
E. Douglas Kihn
E Douglas Kihn is a Doctor of Oriental medicine and a licensed acupuncturist with 25 years of experience in Chinese medicine who lives and works in Los Angeles. He has written three books: Chinese Medicine for Americans, Avoiding Death Indefinitely, and The Workbook of Chinese Herbs. He can be reached through his website at www.drkihn.com.


text: Energy | 15. February 2010 | posted by Jan Oliver Löfken Energy question of the week: are large hydroelectric power stations genuinely good for the environment? After decades of planning, Belo Monte - the third largest hydroelectric power station in the world, will now be constructed in the Amazonas region of northern Brazil. When the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, IBAMA, approved the plan in early February, it was met with vociferous criticism from environmental conservationists and spokespersons for indigenous groups. So just how green are gigantic hydroelectric power stations really? This is an exceptionally tough question to answer. In a densely populated region like Europe, the construction of a dam the size of a city such as Hamburg would soon be equated with an environmental catastrophe. Thousands of people would need to be relocated, vast areas of forest destroyed, innumerable species of plant and animal life would be threatened with extinction, massive quantities of climate-damaging methane would be released and, at a local level, permanent changes in climate might occur. None of these arguments are incorrect. Even countries such as Brazil, which have an enormous amount of land available, are fully aware of this. "The implications for our environment do exist, but they have been weighed, analysed a great deal and mitigated," said Carlos Minc, the Brazilian Minister for the Environment. The overflow ramp on the world's second-largest power station, Itaipu, on the border between Brazil and Paraguay, with a capacity of 14,000 megawatts generated from 20 turbines. Credit: Jan Oliver Löfken. Jan Oliver. A large amount of 'clean' power Belo Monte has a planned capacity of 11,200 megawatts, meaning that only two other power stations on Earth are more powerful: the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Itaipu power station on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. This power generation capacity is comparable to that of up to eight large nuclear power stations or 16 medium-sized coal-fired power stations – this tends to put the counter-arguments into perspective. This is particularly true in times of climate change, when all parties would like to generate their electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions. After all, once they have been built, large hydroelectric power stations generate electricity for decades with very little impact on the climate. Moreover, this power is incredibly inexpensive to produce, as the example of Itaipu demonstrates. Here, each kilowatt-hour of power is generated at a cost of roughly four eurocents. "When compared to large coal-fired or nuclear power stations, large hydroelectric power stations always emerge with compelling climate-related and environmental credentials," says Cicero Bley, Coordinator of the Brazilian Observatory for Renewable Energy, with conviction. Given that almost 12 percent of the world's fresh water flows through the rivers of Brazil, this energy expert is convinced that it makes perfect sense to use this resource. This is a commonly held view in Brazil, questioned only by a minority. It follows that, given the growing hunger for electrical power in countries such as Brazil and China, there is a tendency to downplay the implications of any large-scale hydroelectric power station. Moreover, the company that ultimately wins the current invitation to tender for construction of the Belo-Monte project and goes on to build the dam will be obliged to invest more than 1.5 billion Real – about 500 million Euro – in environmental projects in the area surrounding the power station on the Xingu river. Downpipes on the Itaipu power station on the border between Brazil and Paraguay. Credit: Jan Oliver Löfken. Plenty of criticism from conservationists and from indigenous peoples Justified criticism from those directly affected follows: "We oppose dams on the Xingu and will fight to protect our river," announced Megaron Tuxucumarrae, a leader of the Kayapo tribe that inhabits the Xingu region, according to the non-governmental organisation Amazon Watch. Belo Monte must not be allowed to destroy the ecosystem and diversity of native species. Furthermore, up to 40,000 people would need to be relocated from the flooded area. In addition - and this is one of the strongest arguments being put forward by the conservationists - the power station may be unable to generate electricity for up to four months a year as a consequence of inadequate volumes of water. This does not justify the massive investment required, which is estimated to be in the region of 12.3 to 17.5 billion USD. Environmental conservation in the region, or large volumes of climate-friendly electrical power with zero carbon dioxide emissions? It is not possible for large hydroelectric power stations to achieve both these objectives at the same time. If construction work proceeds, every possible effort must be made to mitigate the environmental implications. Given the anticipated profits, there would certainly be enough money to accomplish this. However, there are reasonable doubts as to whether monies would be well invested in this course of action. Torn between these arguments, it is not possible to provide a clear answer to this conundrum and this is regrettable. Nonetheless, we are interested in knowing your views on this topic. The DLR Energy question of the week in 'The future of energy' Year of Science The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has given the Year of Science 2010 the motto 'The future of energy'. For this reason the science journalist Jan Oliver Löfken will this year answer a question on the subject of energy in his blog each week. Do you have a question about how our energy supply might look in the future? Or do you want to know, for example, how a wave power plant works and how it can efficiently generate electricity? Then send us your question by email. Science journalist Jan Oliver Löfken will investigate the answers and publish them each week in this blog.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Kazakhstan (MNN) — The Kazakh government continues to put pressure on foreign missionaries attempting to obtain visas to stay in the country. The Kazakh church is prepared for matters to get worse.
"Foreign involvement for the purpose of missionary work in Kazakhstan becomes increasingly difficult to happen," confirms Eric Mock, vice president of Ministry Operations for Slavic Gospel Association.
Norwegian news network Forum 18 conveys a number of instances in which the Kazakh government has denied visas to foreign missionaries of various minority faiths. A missionary visa, as it is, lasts only 180 days and cannot be renewed.
Mock says there is some fear that the visas will become even more restrictive. According to Forum 18, the Nur Otan Party has even created a document calling for further crackdown on "non-traditional faiths." Forum 18 quotes a report as saying, "The Nur Otan Party should devote special attention to the activity of non-traditional religious movements of destructive character. The destructive impact of such movements is very great."
With clear contempt toward the presence of evangelical Christian missionaries as well as missionaries for other minority faiths, the church as well as ministries like SGA need to prepare for any change. "[We need to] be sure that we do not assume that the world that we minister in today is the same that we minister in tomorrow," says Mock.
Whether or not missionary presence is increasingly restricted does not directly affect SGA, since their ministry mainly focuses on helping nationals. Still, won't a crackdown harm the church? Mock says not as much as you might think.
"There is one thing that I saw [in Kazakhstan] that mostly encouraged my heart," explains Mock. "I saw a group of ethnic Kazakh young men who God has raised up with a passion to reach their own people. I had not really seen that in the past; it [had been] more of a Russian Baptist influence, but now I'm seeing Kazakh Baptist."
As long as changes don't happen too abruptly, Mock says he believes the church will be able to handle any blows headed their way. The energy generated by young church leaders could be just what the Kazakh church needs to become self-sustaining. "With this new generation coming up, I think even with law changes, God has raised up this younger generation to make a profound impact for the sake of the Gospel."
If laws are passed too quickly or even just gradually, their effects will still of course be evident in the church. Mock says the best thing that we can do for them now is to pray. "There is nothing more important than praying for the believers in Kazakhstan to be passionate in reaching their own people, and to see more churches planted with that same commitment to advance the Gospel."


text: A non-profit organization (abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals. Examples of NPOs include charities (i.e. charitable organizations), trade unions, and public arts organizations. Attorneys who work with non-profit organizations help in establishing and operating a non-profit within the requirements of the law, deal with issues of taxation, corporate governance, telephone solicitation and charitable fraud.


text:
Luke Kanies has a passion for the Puppet language he created. He always wanted to start a software company with Puppet as its foundation. The problem he faced was how to make the open source model support his software innovation without getting lost in the process.
After eight years as founder and CEO of Puppet Labs, Kanies has succeeded in avoiding the danger lurking nearby for all open source companies.
Puppet is an open source configuration management tool written in Ruby. It was released as free software under the GPL in 2005 until version 2.7.0 and the Apache 2.0 license after that.
The Puppet language helps sys admins simplify how they manage systems using Puppet. The software provides automation to manage infrastructure throughout its lifecycle — from provisioning and configuration to patch management and compliance.
Kanies developed Puppet as a model-based approach to IT automation. The user defines the desired state of the system using Puppet's declarative language. Puppet does the heavy lifting to automatically create and then enforce this desired state. This information is stored in files called "Puppet manifests." Puppet discovers the system information and compiles the Puppet manifests into a system-specific catalog containing resources and resource dependency. Puppet applies these manifests to the target systems and then reports the actions it has taken.
Puppet products combine a strong foundation in existing open source code such as MySQL with code the company has added. Some of that code is proprietary. The open source portion handles the setup, configuration and scaling to the user's hardware. The proprietary portion runs on top of that, according to Kanies.
One of the neat things about Puppet's success and the company's growth was Kanies's desire to always be a software company. When he started the Puppet Project, he also started Puppy Labs, the company to support it. A former sys admin who contributed to many tools like CFEngine, his business sense told him he could not succeed with one company without the other.
"Unlike a lot of other open source projects, I didn't spend a few years doing it as a hobby and then realize there was money behind it," Kanies told LinuxInsider. "I really started it in the beginning to build a company to support it. The goal was always to build a scalable company primarily to pay for the programming. That was my number one problem. How do I pay for my programmers?"
In this exclusive interview, Kanies tells LinuxInsider how he grew his open source software project into a thriving commercial enterprise.
LinuxInsider: How does the Puppet language differ from other programming languages?
Luke Kanies: Puppet's language is designed to do one thing — specify resources. In the Puppet world, a resource is an entity that you want to configure, whether that entity is a package, a user, a group, a service or a file. Any of those things is a resource.
Everything that Puppet comes down to is to get the right resources to the right relationships. So the language is really about specifying those resources, allowing the different parts of the configuration to do the things that those resources need to do, and building and subscribing the relationship using those resources.
LI: Can you give an example of that difference?
Kanies: Puppet was built to handle active resources in the most user-friendly way possible. You don't use language to tell Puppet what work to do. You tell Puppet what state you want the system to be in. So you don't say to Puppet, "Go install package." You say, "I want to make sure this package is installed." So the first time Puppet runs, it finds the package is not installed and goes about installing it. The next time Puppet runs, it is going to check to see if the package is installed and then does not do any work because the system is already configured correctly.
LI: Prior to introducing Puppet, what alternatives were available to deal with system configurations and maintenance?
Kanies: There were generally two ways to go. One was picking a general purpose language, and the other was relatively opaque graphical applications. There was no middle ground between the simplicity and approachability of a GUI and the power of a programming language. Because Puppet is a domain-specific language, it allowed us to really simplify the problems faced without dumbing down the language.
LI: The Puppet Labs documentation describes the Puppet language as much simpler than other programming languages. What makes it simpler and thus easier to learn and use?
Kanies: I have found through our seminars that within one hour, participants decide if they get it or find it too complicated. In practice, we find that most people take about two weeks from deciding, "I'd like to take some time with this" to "I've got it up and running in production doing real work and solving problems with my infrastructure." And that's not two weeks of clock time, spending 80 hours of active work. It's two weeks of calendar time.
Another measure is we have a three-day training class heavily focused on teaching people the language. In those three days we can train the vast majority of people in how to use Puppet.
LI: What factors led to expanding the free version to the commercial version of Puppet software?
Kanies: Prior to the commercial software, we had done a lot of short-term tactical training projects where we would show up, train a team, get Puppet set up, solve some specific problems that they had and then get out as quickly as possible. The biggest reason to switch to the commercial software was to solve that setup problem.
We were finding that spending three to five days on site was generally devoted to setting up peoples' infrastructure. So now with Puppet, that installation service is dead with Puppet Enterprise because in one click you can get the whole thing up and running with as much specification as our services people would take three to five days to do.
LI: Your web site boasts that the development of Puppet skills is one of the top trending jobs in IT. What type of training do you give to certify Puppet skills?
Kanies: Last year we officially launched our Puppet certification class. We are building out our certifications portfolio and will offer three to five certifications over the next year or two. It isn't a rubber stamp process where you show up and pay your US$1,000 and we make you look special. The goal is to provide a challenging certification that demonstrates expertise. We have seen a pretty strong response to that so far.
LI: Since you already expanded the open source version of Puppet to a commercial version with proprietary code, how viable is open source in today's market?
Kanies: You have to be pretty clear on the definition of open source. The entire world runs on open source. Nearly everything you do everywhere relies on open source. Every email you send, I guarantee you, goes through at least one email server that touches open source, and the vast majority of every website you visit is running on an open source stack. And that is all the way from the little Web server you are talking to down to the operating system and the kernel it is running on. In many cases the browser you are using to talk to that system is also based on an open source engine or something like that.
None of those is in danger of going away or becoming obsolete or being supplanted by a commercial replacement. If anything, open source has become more and more pervasive over the last 10 years.
LI: So how critical will the distinction between free and commercial become in the future as a business model?
Kanies: Today open source is generally better software that is more stable, more secure and better maintained. All those things that shouldn't happen because it is open source are absolutely happening. So the question becomes if you are a company trying to grow, how do you do that without open source?
LI: What, if anything, needs to be done to improve or advance the open source model? If you were calling the shots, what would you like to see happen next?
Kanies: I think I am calling the shots! In my opinion open source is not a business model. It is somewhere between a technique and a strategy. Fundamentally, if you want to be viable as a business, you have to sell something that your customers think is valuable that they can't get someplace else or think the overall deal is better with you. That is the only business model that has ever succeeded.
LI: So how did you make that business model work for you?
Kanies: For me there are three categories as a software company. You sell software. You sell promises around open source software. You sell services on the software. We do all three. We have proprietary software on top of open source. We have open source products. But if you buy our commercial products, we make additional promises about that open source software that we don't make to our wider community. And then we sell services around our software also.
The biggest danger is when an open source company gets confused about what it sells. If you think you are selling open source software, there aren't a lot of buyers for that now. But if you have promises about what you sell, those promises make a very lucrative business.


text:
I recently created a MyOpenID to log into Stack Overflow. This login works on SO but not on Meta Stack Overflow. Why is this? This seems like it is a problem on MSO's side rather than MyOpenID's side.
When I attempt to log into MSO using MyOpenID, I end up being redirected to a blank page with a very long query string. The URL of the blank page is
Secondly, my Google login does not work. When I attempt to log into SO using my Google login, I end up seeing a blank page with a URL beginning with
I am using Firefox 3.6.3 and I can successfully log into SO using MyOpenID but not with MyOpenID onto MSO and not with Google onto SO.
Please note that I would prefer to use my Google login to log into SO. I only created the MyOpenID account to get to the root of the problem.
Stack Overflow should seriously consider giving users the option of having SO-specific credentials because for me — and I am sure countless others — this OpenID thing doesn't work.
(I know this should be posted on MSO, but that requires a working OpenID, which I do not have.)


text:
Pak Red Crescent Medical College & Teaching Hospital Dina Nath Jobs 2022 Pakistan Jobs –– Pakistani Today Jobs 2022 has been announced through the advertisement and applications from the suitable persons are invited on the prescribed Pak Red Crescent Medical College & Teaching Hospital Dina Nath Jobs Pakistan Today Jobs 2022 the eligible Male/Female candidates from across the country can apply through the procedure defined by the organization and can get these Today Jobs in Pakistan 2022 after the complete recruitment process.
Job Type | Regular |
Qualification | Bachelor, Intermediate, Matric, Middle, Primary |
Age Limit | 18-35 |
Total Vacancies | Multiple |
Posted Date | 17 DECMBER 2022 |
Last Date | 25 DECMBER 2022 |
Salary PKR | 55000 to 95000/month |
APPLY : | YouTube Channel |
Location | Pakistan |
Incomplete Application
Applications incomplete or received late will not be considered.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for a test/interview.
TA/DA will not be permitted for the test/interview.
Last Date To Apply
The deadline for submitting the application is 25 DECMBER 2022
Vacant Positions / Posts:
- Manager Students Affairs
- PSO To Principal
- Transport Officer
- Data Entry Operators
- Office Boys
- Naib Qasid
How to Apply for Today Jobs 2022
- Interested candidates should submit application form along with required documents at the given address before the closing date
- Education Qualification and Experience shall Examined on the closing date of applications.
- Candidates with Higher Additional education qualification and experience will Preferred.
- No TA/DA shall be admissible for test and interview.
- Only short listed candidates will be called for interview.
- Applications received after the closing date shall not be entertained.
- Government employees should apply through the proper channel.
- Last Date for Submission of Applications :-
- Email Address/Jobs Portal:- email@example.com
- Application send:- Pak Red Crescent Medical College & Teaching Hospital Dina Nath – Pakistan
For further Detail See the Advertisement


text:
Every event is different, and will depend upon the number of guests you are expecting, the size of the head table, and whether you are serving buffet-style or plated. We will make every effort to accommodate the arrangement you have in mind for your event. However, we do have a number of stand-by's that are tried and true. Look them over for ideas on how you might like to have the room arranged for your event.
Banquet Room Setup Ideas (PDF) (for up to 230 guests)
Civic Rooms A & B Setup Ideas (for up to 160 guests)
Civic Room A Banquet Style (PDF) (for up to 80 guests)
Civic Room B Banquet Style (PDF) (for up to 80 guests)
Civic Room C Setup Plans (for up to 60 guests)


text:
Existence of God
Every branch of knowledge has its rules. In chemistry, without a clean microscope, you won't see what you're supposed to. And without having faith that any subject is worth knowing, you won't learn anything.
How do we know if there is a God? Some say, "There is!" and some say, "There isn't!" But it's not a matter of "belief" or "disbelief." By following an authorized process, anyone can have doubtless, scientific knowledge of God's existence.
- God—an Objective Fact?—God can be seen, but, as in "seeing" the atom, we must be trained to interpret the relevant data.
- The Logic of the Absolute—People often ask, "Can you prove the existence of God?"
Still More:


text:
Here are some Fun Michigan Facts:
Michigan gets its name from the Indian word "Michigana" (great lake).
Lansing is the state capital.
State Motto: "If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you."
State Flower: Apple Blossom.
Michigan is sometimes referred to as the "Great Lakes State." (It was once called the Wolverine State, although there are no longer any wolverines in that state.)
If you love lighthouses, Michigan is the state for you! It has (+/-) 110 of them.
Authors who are found on the Cozy Mystery Site and who feature Michigan locations in their books:
Deb Baker: Yooper Mystery Series
Lilian Jackson Braun: The Cat Who *** Mystery Series (There is some speculation that Moose County actually is situated in Upper Michigan.)
V.M. Burns: Samantha Washington Bookshop Mystery Series– Samantha is an aspiring Cozy Mystery author who owns a book store on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli (aka Elizabeth Lee): Emily Kincaid Mystery Series
JoAnna Carl (aka Eve K. Sandstrom): Chocoholic Mystery Series
Laurie Cass: Bookmobile Cat Mystery Series
Peg Cochran (aka Meg London): Cranberry Cove Mystery Series
Nancy Coco (aka Nancy J. Parra): Candy-Coated Mystery Series
Jo Dereske: Ruby Crane Mystery Series
Dawn Eastman: Family Fortune Mystery Series
Sharon Farrow: Berry Basket Mystery Series
Debra H. Goldstein: Denney Silber Mystery Series
Paula Gosling: Blackwater Bay Mystery Series AND Stryker & Trevorne Mystery Series
Victoria Hamilton: Vintage Kitchen Mystery Series
Susan Holtzer: Anneke Haagen Mystery Series
Madison Johns: Agnes Barton Senior Sleuth Mystery Series
William X. Kienzle: Father Koesler Mystery Series
Victoria Laurie: Psychic Eye Mystery Series
Meg Macy (aka 1/2 of D.E. Ireland): Teddy Bear Mystery Series – sleuth Sasha Silvermanis the manager of a teddy bear shop and factory.
Nina Wright: Whiskey Mattimoe Mystery Series
Please feel free to contact me if you see an author from the Cozy Mystery Site who belongs on this list, or if you have any comments.
♦To access more Cozy Mysteries by Theme click on this link.♦


text:
October 19, 2010
Biologist hopes new 'condos' will help Galapagos penguins stave off extinction
Penguin Report (PDF)
A Tool for Increasing the Population of the Galapagos Penguin
For more information, contact Boersma at 206-616-2185 or email@example.com.
Think of it as Habitat for Penguinity. A University of Washington conservation biologist is behind the effort to build nests in the barren rocks of the Galápagos Islands in the hope of increasing the population of an endangered penguin species.
Just as Habitat for Humanity crews help build houses for people who need shelter, Dee Boersma's team in late September built 120 "condominiums" for penguins. The trio created holes just large enough to serve as nests along the volcanic shoreline of three islands in the Galápagos and several smaller islets.
Because of continuous warm temperatures at the equator, Galápagos penguins need shaded nests to breed. There are some mangroves, which grow in saline coastal conditions, but few other trees or shrubs along the coast to provide shade, so the birds use crevices in the rocks, lava tubes or similar spaces to find relief from the heat and protection from predators.
"Our whole goal is to increase the population of Galápagos penguins, and the way to do that is to make sure that when conditions are good, when they're not food challenged, that all of them will be able to breed," Boersma said.
Galápagos penguins are the only penguin species whose range includes a bit of the Northern Hemisphere. Boersma began studying them 40 years ago while a doctoral student at Ohio State University. Since then, she has seen the population decline steadily — it is possible that fewer than 2,000 remain. The penguin species is one of two listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
"One of the biggest problems is the introduced species of predators," including pigs, dogs, cats and rats, Boersma said. "We went to lengths to build nests in places where there aren't introduced predators."
Habitat also has declined, she said, and new nests are needed if the population is to stabilize. While some of the same nests from 40 years ago are still in use, others have simply disappeared because of erosion and volcanic activity.
Boersma's joint project with Parque Nacional Galápagos included Burr Heneman of the Commonweal Ocean Policy Program and boat captain Godfrey Merlen and his crew from Puerto Ayora in the Galápagos.
Using local lava, they built 100 shaded nests in clusters that are relatively close together, and 20 nests that are farther away, in case some penguins prefer to be more isolated. The human-built nests are virtually indistinguishable from natural holes, Boersma said. The work received financial support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the UW.
The Galápagos are part of Ecuador, located in the Pacific Ocean about 600 miles from the South American mainland. Most of the islands and surrounding waters are protected as a biological marine reserve and national park, and are a United Nations World Heritage site.
Climate cycles can play havoc with Galápagos penguin reproduction. The penguins depend on cold ocean currents that rise to the surface and bring plentiful food. During El Niño years, those currents fail and most marine species have trouble finding food. During La Niña cycles, those rising cold currents increase and bring a plentiful supply of nutrients to support small fish on which the penguins feed.
Boersma hopes the new nesting sites were in place soon enough to have a positive effect as La Niña conditions take hold in the Galápagos and bring plentiful food to the penguins. She saw many penguins feeding and breeding during her recent visit.
"We found everything from eggs to small chicks to near-fledglings because the food is so good because of La Niña," she said. "The penguins are ready, if the food stays, to begin breeding. The question is will they find these new nest sites in time."
She expects to return to the Galápagos in February to evaluate the project's success.


text:
Welcome to Carver Audio Repair
Carver Audio Repair is determined to provide you with the highest quality service for your Carver equipment. We are dedicated to repairing your equipment to, at minimum, factory specifications. With over 34 years in the audio industry we have tens of thousands of hours of trouble shooting, debugging & modification techniques. Please look at our custom page for details on specialized services as well.
Many educated technicians lack proper trouble-shooting techniques simply from not enough experience. Here, our seasoned technicians have as mentioned tens of thousands of hours on the bench and have developed several trouble-shooting techniques that assist in efficiently finding any and all problems in any unit they may encounter.


text:
Unlocking the World of Car Security Systems
With car theft rates fluctuating, understanding the nuanced world of car security systems is essential.
Discover the Fragrant Symphony: Elevating Your Home with Exquisite Fragrances
Fragrances can elevate your home into that great-smelling dwelling place. You can use different scents together to get the fragrance symphony for your home.
Unlocking the Adventure: Men's Journey Through California's Wild Expanse
In California, men's interests are influenced by the diverse culture, lifestyle, and opportunities that the state offers.
The Eco-Friendly Home: How to Integrate Solar Power into Your Design Aesthetics
For those interested in the most current advancements and offers in solar technology, exploring the latest deals can provide valuable insights into how to make eco-friendly living a beautiful reality.
Traffic Tour Car Racer: Experience the Ultimate Adrenaline-Pumping Car Racing Adventure
In this blog, we'll explore the world of Traffic Tour Car Racer, highlighting its features, gameplay mechanics, and why it has become a favorite among car racing enthusiasts.


text:
President Donald Trump took questions from the press in a combative news conference on Tuesday.
The president defended his response to the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. He reverted to his original argument blaming all sides, a position that drew bipartisan criticism.
Read the full transcript below:
TRUMP: Hello, everybody. Great to be back in New York with all of our friends, and some great friends outside the building, I must tell you.
I want to thank all of our distinguished guests who are with us today, including members of our cabinet, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, and of course our Transportation Secretary, who's doing a fabulous job, Elaine Chao.
Thank you all for doing a — a really incredible and creative job on what we're going to be discussing today, which is infrastructure.
We just had a great set of briefings upstairs on our infrastructure agenda. My administration is working every day to deliver the world-class infrastructure that our people deserve, and frankly, that our country deserves. That's why I just signed a new executive order to dramatically reform the nation's badly broken infrastructure permitting process.
U.S. & World
Just blocks away is the Empire State Building. It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today, it can take as long as a decade and much more than that. Many, many stories where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway. Highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving 9 different federal agencies governed by 29 different statutes. One agency alone can stall a project for many, many years and even decades.
Not only does this cost our economy billions of dollars but it also denies our citizens the safe and modern infrastructure they deserve. This overregulated permitting process is a massive, self- inflicted wound on our country. It's disgraceful. Denying our people much-needed investments in their community and I just want to show you this because it was just shown me and I think I'm going to show it to the media.
Both real and fake media, by the way. This is what it takes to get something approved today.
Elaine, you see that?
So this is what it takes. Permitting process flow chart, that's a flow chart. So that can go out to 20 years, this shows about 10. But that can go out to about 20 years to get something approved. This is for a highway. I've seen a highway recently in a certain state, I won't mention its name, it's 17 years.
I could have built it for $4 million or $5 million without the permitting process. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars but it took 17 years to get it approved and many, many — many, many pages of environmental impact studies. This is what we will bring it down to. This is less than two years. This is going to happen quickly, that's what I'm signing today.
This will be less than two years for a highway. So it's going to be quick, it's going to be a very streamlined process. And by the way, if it doesn't meet environmental safeguards, we're not going to approve it. Very simple. We're not going to approve it. So this is — maybe this one, we'll say "let's throw the other one away." Would anybody like it from the media? Would anybody like that long, beautiful chart? You can have it.
So my executive order also requires agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major infrastructure project. It also holds agencies accountable if they fail to streamline their review process. So each agency is accountable. We're going to get infrastructure built quickly; inexpensively, relatively speaking; and the permitting process will go very, very quickly.
No longer will we tolerate one job-killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hardworking Americans. Now, I knew the process very well, probably better than anybody. I had to get permits for this building and many of the buildings I built -- all of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many other places.
And I will tell you that the consultants are rich people. They go around making it very difficult, they lobby Congress, they lobby state governments, city governments to make it very difficult so that you have to hire consultants and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune. So we're streamlining the process and we won't be having so much of that any more.
No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay. While protecting the environment, we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways. We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true.
Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world. And today we're like a third world country. We're literally like a third world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation and all over the United States, we'll be proud again.
So I want to thank everybody for being here. God bless you, God bless the United States. And if you have any questions, we have — Mick, you could come up here, please. Come on up. Mick Mulvaney. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
QUESTION: Why do you think that CEOs are leaving your manufacturing council?
TRUMP: Because they're not taking their job seriously as it pertains to this country. We want jobs, manufacturing in this country. If you look at some of those people that you're talking about, they're outside of the country. They're having a lot of their product made outside. If you look at Merck, as an example, take a look where — excuse me, excuse me — take a look at where their product is made. It's made outside of our country. We want products made in the country.
Now, I have to tell you, some of the folks that will leave, they're leaving out of embarrassment because they make their products outside. And I've been lecturing them, including the gentleman that you're referring to, about you have to bring it back to this country. You can't do it necessarily in Ireland and all of these other places. You have to bring this work back to this country.
That's what I want. I want manufacturing to be back into the United States so that American workers can benefit.
QUESTION: ... wait so long (inaudible)?
TRUMP: I didn't wait long. I didn't wait long.
TRUMP: I didn't wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement. But you don't make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don't know the facts. And it's a very, very important process to me. And it's a very important statement.
So, I don't want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts. If you go back to my...
TRUMP: I brought it. I brought it. I brought it.
QUESTION: What did you (inaudible)?
TRUMP: As I said on — remember this — Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. And when I went on from there.
Now, here's the thing. As to — excuse me, excuse me — take it nice and easy.
Here's the thing. When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. In fact, a lot of the event didn't even happen yet, as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts.
So I don't want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent. In fact, the young woman who I hear is a fantastic young woman, and it was on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through, I guess, Twitter, social media, the nicest things and I very much appreciate that.
I hear she was a fine, a really — actually, an incredible young woman. But her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said. And honestly, if the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. But unlike you and unlike — excuse me — unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.
TRUMP: They don't. They don't.
TRUMP: How about a couple of...
TRUMP: How about a couple of infrastructure questions?
QUESTION: Mr. Trump, was it terrorism, that event? Was that terrorism?
TRUMP: Say, what?
QUESTION: The CEO of Walmart said you missed a (inaudible) opportunity to help bring the country together. Did you?
TRUMP: Not at all. I think the country — look, you take a look. I've created over a million jobs since I'm president. The country is booming. The stock market is setting records. We have the highest employment numbers we've ever had in the history of our country.
We're doing record business. We have the highest levels of enthusiasm. So the head of Walmart, who I know is a very nice guy, was making a political statement. I mean...
TRUMP: ... it the same way. And you know why? Because I want to make sure when I make a statement that the statement is correct. And there was no way — there was no way of making a correct statement that early.
I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters — unlike a lot of reporters...
TRUMP: I didn't know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts. And the facts as they started coming out were very well stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful; if he would have made it sooner, that would have been good. I couldn't have made it sooner because I didn't know all of the facts.
Frankly, people still don't know all of the facts. It was very important that — excuse me, excuse me — it was very important to me to get the facts out and correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement, and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing.
The second statement was made after — with knowledge, with great knowledge. There are still things — excuse me — there are still things that people don't know. I want to make a statement with knowledge. I wanted to know the facts. OK ...
QUESTION: Was it — two questions. Was it terrorism? And can you tell us what you're feeling about your...
TRUMP: Well, I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and his country. And that is — you can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. That's what I'd call it. Because there is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? And then you get into legal semantics.
The driver of the car is a murderer. And what he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.
QUESTION: Can you tell us how you're feeling about your chief strategist, Mr. Bannon? Can you talk about that?
TRUMP: Go ahead.
QUESTION: I would echo Maggie's question. Steve Bannon ...
TRUMP: I never spoke to Mr. Bannon about it.
QUESTION: But can you tell us broadly what you're — do you still have confidence in Steve?
TRUMP: Well, we see — and look, look. I like Mr. Bannon. He's a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late, you know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that, and I like him. He's a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that. He's a good person. He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard.
But we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon, but he's a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.
QUESTION: Do you have confidence in him? Because he has called on you to defend your national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, against ...
TRUMP: I've already done it. I did it the last time.
QUESTION: And he called on it again, linking this ...
TRUMP: Senator McCain?
QUESTION: ... the alt-right and ...
TRUMP: Senator McCain, you mean the one who voted against Obamacare? Who is — you mean Senator McCain who voted against us getting good health care?
QUESTION: Senator McCain said that the alt-right is behind these attacks, and he linked that same group to those who perpetrated the attack in Charlottesville.
TRUMP: Well, I don't know — I can't tell you. I'm sure Senator McCain must know what he's talking about. But when you say the "alt- right," define "alt-right" to me. You define it, go ahead.
QUESTION: Well, I think that ...
TRUMP: No, define it for me, come on. Let's go. Define it for me.
QUESTION: Senator McCain defined them as the same group ...
TRUMP: OK, what about the alt-left that came charging them? Excuse me. What about the alt-left that came charging at the — as you say, the alt-right? Do they have any semblance of guilt?
QUESTION: Mr. Trump ...
TRUMP: Let me ask you this. What about the fact they came charging — that they came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs? Do they have any problem? I think they do.
QUESTION: Sir ...
TRUMP: As far as I'm concerned, that was a horrible, horrible day.
Wait a minute, I'm not finished.
I'm not finished, fake news. That was a horrible day ...
TRUMP: I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it. And you have — you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now. You had a group — you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.
TRUMP: Go ahead.
QUESTION: Do you think that the — what you call the alt-left is the same as neo-Nazis?
TRUMP: Those people — all of those people — excuse me. I've condemned neo-Nazis. I've condemned many different groups. But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists, by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue, Robert E. Lee.
So — excuse me. And you take a look at some of the groups and you see — and you'd know it if you were honest reporters, which in many cases you're not, but many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
So this week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson's coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?
You know, you all — you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop? But they were there to protest — excuse me. You take a look, the night before, they were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.
Infrastructure question, go ahead.
QUESTION: Should the statue of Robert E. Lee stay up?
TRUMP: I would say that's up to a local town, community, or the federal government, depending on where it is located.
QUESTION: Are you against the Confederacy?
QUESTION: How concerned are you about race relations in America? And do you think things have gotten worse or better since you took office?
TRUMP: I think they've gotten better or the same — look, they've been frayed for a long time. And you can ask President Obama about that, because he'd make speeches about it.
But I believe that the fact that I brought in — it will be soon, millions of jobs, you see where companies are moving back into our country, I think that's going to have a tremendous positive impact on race relations. We have companies coming back into our country. We have two car companies that just announced. We have Foxconn in Wisconsin just announce. We have many companies I say pouring back into the country.
I think that's going to have a huge, positive impact on race relations. You know why? It's jobs. What people want now, they want jobs. They want great jobs with good pay. And when they have that, you watch how race relations will be.
And I'll tell you, we're spending a lot of money on the inner cities. We're going to fix — we're fixing the inner cities. We're doing far more than anybody's done with respect to the inner cities. It's a priority for me. And it's very important.
QUESTION: Mr. President, are you putting what you're calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?
TRUMP: I'm not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I'm saying is this. You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch.
But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You've just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that's the way it is.
QUESTION: ... on both sides, sir?
QUESTION: You said there was hatred, there was violence on both sides. Are...
TRUMP: Well, I do think there's blame — yes, I think there's blame on both sides. You look at — you look at both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don't have any doubt about it either.
TRUMP: And, and, and if you reported it accurately, you would say (inaudible).
QUESTION: (inaudible) started this (inaudible) Charlottesville. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest...
(CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. (inaudible) themselves (inaudible) and you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.
QUESTION: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same (inaudible)...
TRUMP: George Washington was a slave-owner. Was George Washington a slave-owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down, are we going to take down statues to George Washington?
TRUMP: How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?
TRUMP: OK. Good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave-owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what? It's fine. You're changing history. You're changing culture. And you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You've got — you had a lot of bad — you had a lot of bad people in the other group ...
QUESTION: ... treated unfairly (inaudible) you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? (inaudible) understand what you're saying.
TRUMP: No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I'm sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them.
But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don't know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn't have a permit.
So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country (sic).
Does anybody have a final — doesn't anybody have a — you have an infrastructure ...
QUESTION: What makes you think you can get an infrastructure bill? You didn't get health care. You ...
TRUMP: Well, you know, I'll tell you. We came very close with health care. Unfortunately, John McCain decided to vote against it at the last minute. You'll have to ask John McCain why he did that. But we came very close to health care. We will end up getting health care, but we'll get the infrastructure. And actually, infrastructure is something that I think we'll have bipartisan support on. I actually think — I actually think Democrats will go along with the infrastructure.
QUESTION: Mr. President, have you spoken to the family — have you spoken to the family of the victim of the car ...
TRUMP: ... I'll be reaching out. I'll be reaching out.
QUESTION: When will you be reaching out?
TRUMP: I was very — I thought that the statement put out — the mother's statement I thought was a beautiful statement. I must tell you, I was — it was something that I really appreciated. I thought it was terrific. And really, under the — under the kind of stress that she's under and the heartache that she's under, I thought putting out that statement to me was really something I won't forget.
Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.


text:
The New England Patriots added former Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Brian Daboll to their staff on Monday, beefing up their preparation for Sunday's AFC Championship Game against the Baltimore Ravens.
"It's great to have Brian back," Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said, according to the Kansas City Star. "He's a very good football coach, very knowledgeable and can help us in a lot of different ways. Certainly having another set of eyes with experience and has a lot of understanding of our system and how we go about doing things, I think, is only a positive for us and can help our football team going forward. I look forward to doing that with Brian."
McDaniels himself served a similiar role with the Patriots in last season's playoffs, with the agreement that he would become offensive coordinator when Bill O'Brien took the Penn State head-coaching job.
Daboll led Kansas City's offense under former Chiefs coach Romeo Crennel in 2012. He coached wide receivers for Bill Belichick's Patriots staff from 2002 to 2006. He's also been offensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins.


text:
My second session on Tuesday was my first non-keynote session at JavaOne 2012 outside of the Hilton. Peter Hausel (Typesafe) gave the presentation "Modern Web Development with Play Framework 2.0" was held at Cyril Magon I in Parc 55. For some unexplained reason, they did not allow attendees into the room until ten minutes before the session started. It was a small room and ended up being over 3/4 or more full.
In a slide titled "tl;dr", the speaker talked about DRY, out-of-your-way configuration, avoiding bloat, avoiding verbosity, using Java 7, using fork/join (or Akka) and NIO, going asynchronous when possible, favoring immutability, favoring fluid interfaces, and questioning the status quo.
Play Framework 2 provides a "development console for RAD" and is "type checked all the way." Play 2.0 supports "asynchronous programming techniques" along with support for "front end technologies" (LESS, Clojure, Require.js, CoffeeScript).
Play is built upon and/or supports Java, Scala, akka, HTML5 Web Sockets, and Netty.
The speaker showed a provided template, but pointed out that this mechanism is extensible and organizations can create their own templates and plug-ins.
Hausel moved onto showing code examples. The code seemed fairly fluent, straightforward, and readable, even without having any significant experience with Play or Scala. I certainly could not write it right now, but I could read it. He showed implementation of a application controller (with several static functions) and model class and showed how to hook all of this up to a Redis plugin.
It was difficult at times to hear in this presentation due to competing sounds such as voices from nearby conference rooms and "everyday noises" within the room. The loud opening and slamming of doors in the back as late arrivals came in and others left early added to the difficulty (I'm not the only one particularly bothered by this as shown by this this Tweet that appeared about the same time I wrote the previous sentence). In general, this is type type of thing that could make the difference between selecting between two presentations in the future: all else being equal, I'll select the one in a room other than Parc 55 Cyril Magnon I.
I've read quite a bit of positive buzz in the blogosphere about Play Framework and I can see from this presentation that it definitely has some attractive features and attributes.


text:
[Asher Glick] wrote in to share a project he has been working on with his friend [Kevin Baker], a 4x4x4 RGB LED cube. The pair are students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and also members of the newly-formed Embedded Hardware Club on campus. As their first collaborative project, they decided to take on the ubiquitous LED cube, trimming down the component count to nothing more than 64 LEDs, a protoboard, some wire, and a single Arduino.
Many cubes we have seen use shift registers or decade counters to account for all the I/O required to drive so many LEDs. Their version of the cube has none of these extra components, solely relying on 16 of the Arduino's I/O pins for control instead. You might notice something a bit different about the structure of their cube as well. Rather than using a grid of LEDs like we see in most Charlieplexed cubes, they constructed theirs using 16 LED "spires", tucking the additional wiring underneath the board.
The result looks great, as you can see in the videos below. The cube looks pretty easy to build, and with a cost around $60 it is a reasonably cheap project as well.
Nice job, we look forward to seeing all sorts of fun projects from the Embedded Hardware Club in the future!


text:
Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Means to Me to Launch a U.S. Tour in 2020
Heidi Schreck's Tony Award-nominated Best Play and Pulitzer Prize finalist What the Constitution Means to Me will embark on a national tour in January 2020, beginning at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The tour will play 40 weeks in 22 cities including Charlotte, Hartford, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with more to be announced. All venues, dates and casting for the tour will be announced at a later date.
The U.S. tour of What the Constitution Means to Me will mark the first time the play will be presented with a new performer in the leading role. With casting already underway, Schreck and director Oliver Butler will work closely to interpolate new cast members into the play in a unique and exciting way that matches the play's blend of the personal and the universal.
"When I set out to adapt my personal history with the Constitution into a play, I could never have anticipated how widely it would resonate with audiences," said Schreck, in a statement. "I've been deeply moved by the stories audience members have shared with me in reaction to the play, so it's an honor to have the opportunity to share the piece with audiences nationwide. I'm especially excited to work with Oliver to invite a new performer into the leading role, which open up its perspective further and allow it to remain a vital, living piece of theater."
Fifteen-year-old Heidi Schreck earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In her boundary-breaking new play, Schreck resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women in her family and the founding document that shaped their lives. This theatrical exploration breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it might impact the lives of future generations.
What the Constitution Means to Me became a sensation off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in fall 2018 before transferring to Broadway in spring 2019 and receiving two Tony Award nominations (Best Play, Best Actress in Leading Role in a Play). It was also named a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play and the Obie Award for Best New American Play.
Initially announced for a 12-week engagement through June 9 on Broadway, What the Constitution Means to Me has been extended twice and will now play through August 24 at the Helen Hayes Theater.


text:
Slender West Lake and Historic Urban Area in Yangzhou
State Administration of Cultural Heritage
Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province
The Tentative Lists of States Parties are published by the World Heritage Centre at its website and/or in working documents in order to ensure transparency, access to information and to facilitate harmonization of Tentative Lists at regional and thematic levels.
The sole responsibility for the content of each Tentative List lies with the State Party concerned. The publication of the Tentative Lists does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the World Heritage Committee or of the World Heritage Centre or of the Secretariat of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its boundaries.
Property names are listed in the language in which they have been submitted by the State Party
Slender West Lake, formerly Baozhang Lake, is located in the northwest of Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, covering an area of two square kilometers. In the mid-18th century, the moats and a large number of suburban villas of salt traders along the moats built in different locations and in different historical period (Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties) were connected elaborately and delicately to welcome the south inspection of Emperor Qianlong, thus forming a beautiful belt of the lake with garden scenery combining natural and human landscapes characterized by the most famous 24 scenes of "rolling stone archway, winding water in west park, spring pillow on the long bank, bright cloud in white pagoda" etc. The typical layout of Chinese scroll-type picture was recorded by royal painters and filed in imperial storehouse due to its unique aesthetic value. Thanks to the impact of the south inspections by Emperor Qianlong and the support of its salt economy, Yangzhou had became the garden-building centre in China, represented by classical garden cluster around the Slender West Lake. As well-known as "Yangzhou Gardens is second to none in South China" and "Yangzhou Gardens is the best in China", it embodies the most advanced art in terms of layout, architecture, stone laying, water conservation, plant arrangement, etc. As a masterpiece in garden-building after Yuanmingyuan Park during the reign of Emperor Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty, a lot of experiences can be drawn from it in the construction of the Chengde Mountain Resort.
The historic urban area in Yangzhou refers to the Yangzhou City built on the basis of Luocheng City of the Tang Dynasty and Dacheng City of the Song Dynasty in the Ming and Qing dynasties covering an area of 5.09 square kilometers which made great contributions to the economic, political and cultural development of Chinese feudal society and had a significant impact on world culture. Relying on its highly developed salt economy, Yangzhou still kept strong vitality and had a great influence in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The original city layout, streets and lanes, water system, and ancient and elegant city landscape embody the characteristics and styles of water city in South China. A large number of ancient cultural heritages, such as residential houses, gardens, temples, government offices, old stores, ancient bridges, ancient wells and famous trees that are well preserved in the historic urban area display the city's solid cultural background. Till today, quite a few residents in the area are still engaging in the traditional handicraft production and commercial activities, including lacquer, jade ware, paper-cut, etc. Such handicraft as Yangzhou lacquer and Yangzhou jade ware, and such popular entertainment as Yangzhou Ditty, Yangzhou storytelling, Yangzhou puppet show, etc, have been listed as intangible cultural heritage at national level and have been regarded as precious treasures of Chinese nation.
Justification of Outstanding Universal Value
As for the criterion (iii):
Slender West Lake in Yangzhou is a typical demonstration of Chinese traditional public tourism destination, representing the taste and life style in Chinese traditional society. He Gar-den and Ge Garden illustrate the changes on people's taste and way of life in the revolutionary phase of China society from feudal to modern times.
As for the criterion (iv):
He Garden and Ge Garden are the representative works and outstanding example of Chinese art of garden design. Slender West Lake is an excellence of the design of Chinese ancient cities.
As for the criterion (v):
Historic Urban Area in Yangzhou shows the principles and thoughts of Chinese city plan and construction, as well as the special way of development of Chinese old commercial cities. Slender West Lake represents the relationship between nature and human within Chinese traditional city, as well as cultural landscape and natural environment.
Statements of authenticity and/or integrity
The long and good traditions of Yangzhou people to built gardens can be traced back to the Western Han Dynasty. According to historical literature, gardens had been built around the Slender West Lake since the Southern Dynasties, and the scale had been gradually expanded since the Tang and Song dynasties. The remained classical gardens are all private gardens built by wealthy salt traders and famous men of scholars in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Detailed record of Slender West Lake Gardens can be found in the historical literature of the Qing Dynasty and during Republic of China period, such as Collection of Yangzhou Painted Boat, Collection of Yangzhou Places of Interests, and in various inscriptions, stone-carving, tablets, paintings, etc. To keep its original landscape, the government has paid great attention to its maintaining and repairing, consolidating rockeries, cleaning water system as well as landscaping.
Since Yangzhou was listed as a historical and cultural city in 1982, the government, together with the coordination and cooperation of the departments concerned such as city planning, construction, heritage conservation, etc., has been actively restoring and preserving the historic urban areas built in the Ming and Qing dynasties. They successively compiled Special Plan for the Protection of the Historical and Cultural City of Yangzhou, Detailed Control Plan of the Historic Urban Area of Yongzhou Built in the Ming and Qing Dynastis, cleared the moat and inner river course in the historic urban area to guarantee their functions of water supply, flood discharge and tourism, restored the streets and lanes in the historic urban area, keeping the residing functions of the well-preserved historical blocks such as Dongguan Street, Nanhexia and Renfengli, etc., and evacuated population as planned to increase their vitality. Up to now, over 20 classical gardens have been restored and open to the public for the purpose of bringing their social effects into full play. Such old and famous shops as Fuchun Teahouse, Lvyang Travel Agency, Yangzhou Bathroom, etc, stick to the manual production mode in their traditional site, and carry forward their typical cultural atmosphere. After repairing, various museums have been established on the site of traditional buildings to publicize, inherit and promote Yangzhou's traditional culture. In addition, the cultural heritages, such as city walls of different dynasties, city gates, etc, and former residence of historical celebrities are effectively interpreted to ensure the consistence of Yangzhou culture.
Comparison with other similar properties
As the masterpiece of Yangzhou classical gardens, Slender West Lake is an organic combination of imperial gardens in the north and private gardens in the south of Yangtze River. This is different from Suzhou Gardens listed in the World Heritage List, which are typical private gardens in the south of Yangtze River. Due to the discrepancy in terms of location and cultural background, the difference between these two still lies in: Firstly, Yangzhou lies in the convergence of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Yangtze River, and had been the most important distributing center of goods along the coast in Southeast China and a key economic town for a long time. Developed economy brings prosperous culture. Yangzhou not only became an important place for Chinese men of letter to exchange ideas, but gathered many scholar officials, such as Du Mu, Ouyang Xiu, Su Dongpo, Wang Yuyang, etc., and Cui Zhiyuan, Puhaddin, Marco Polo forged an indissoluble bond with Yangzhou as well. As a result, Yangzhou was developed into a city with cultural diversity and laid the spiritual foundation for the forming of Yangzhou classical gardens. Secondly, convenient transport created conditions for the exchanges of garden designers and craftsmen all over China, thus determining the regional style of Yangzhou gardens characterized by combining "the grandeur of North China" and "the delicacy of South China". Thirdly, most of the owners of Suzhou gardens were government officials; while those of Yangzhou gardens were mostly wealthy salt merchants. Accordingly, the former longed for delicate and complicated layout and elegant style; while the latter paid more attention to open space and personal style. Fourthly, Suzhou gardens can be classified as urban private gardens; while the Slender West Lake be suburban gardens of imperial grandeur.Compared with Pingyao County of Shanxi Province which has been listed in the World Heritage List, we can find some generalities between Pingyao County and the historic urban area in Yangzhou. For example, both are comparatively developed industrial and commercial cities in Chinese feudal society, whose strong economic strength backed the city's development. However, their differences are more obvious: First, Pingyao was a local city with developed industry and commerce in the middle of Shanxi area; while Yangzhou was a commercial metropolis which affected the economic, political and cultural development of Chinese feudal society. The latter's influence is much more significant than the former. Second, since it is situated in the south of the Yangtze River, Yangzhou is characterized by delicate, elegant and water-friendly features, typical of water cities in South China. The Pingyao City located in North China, however, is more primitive and imposing. Third, as a place with long cultural traditions and attracting a large number of great men of letters, Yangzhou's influence in terms of culture far exceeds that of Pingyao.


text:
Orchard of possibilities with freeze-dried fruit in chocolate, claims Chaucer Foods
The UK-based firm told ConfectioneryNews that many fruits such as strawberries and oranges were not previously suitable in chocolate confectionery due to a high water content that reduces shelf life.
Chaucer Foods claims freeze drying extracts almost all of the water content and preserves the color and nutrients of the fruit opening up fresh possibilities for manufacturers.
'Growth sector of the future'
"Freeze dried fruit has gradually been emerging in confectionery applications in recent years," Richard Ilsley, group sales director at Chaucer Foods told this site.
UK premium confectionery retailer Hotel Chocolat for example uses freeze dried fruit for its Raspberry Riot Slab.
"We see the use of freeze dry becoming more interesting to confectionery manufacturers. We see this as one of the growth sectors of the future," said Richard Brewer, director of marketing for Chaucer Foods.
Real fruit claim
Fruit is typically added to chocolate as an air dried product, such as the dried apricots and raisins you see on supermarket shelves.
Ilsley said that some air dried products such as banana chips can be flavoured, fried and may contain preservatives, whereas a freeze dried version is entirely natural and allows a chocolate maker to claim they are using "real fruit".
Nutrients preserved
The company said that nutrients are also maintained after freeze drying.
The firm conducted an unpublished study in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University, which found that Vitamin C content, phenolic content and antioxidant activity were all preserved after the low temperature process.
Color and feel
The company claims that freeze dried fruits maintain a fresh flavor and bright color. "It won't feel like a fruit. It will be dry and slightly crispy," said Brewer.
"Freeze drying concentrates the flavor so it can be even more intense," added Isley.
"It's a very natural type flavor," continued Brewer. "Strawberry is strawberry – all we've done is taken out water - all other components are there."
Formulation options
The options for freeze dried fruits in confectionery range from enrobing whole or large fruit pieces in chocolate, to using small fruit pieces as inclusions in bars or tablets, or even adding freeze-dried fruit powders in fondant creams inside chocolate.
The fruits are added much like any other inclusion such as nuts. They require no special shipping requirements and are not sensitive to moderate heat. The typical shelf-life for a freeze dried fruit is around 12 months, similar to chocolate.
The company said that strawberry was proving its most popular offering.