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New federal legislation on prostitution will bring the threat of jail time and steep fines for customers who buy sex as well as others who profit from the sex trade.
Known as the Nordic model that outlaws the buying but not the selling of sex, the Conservative government's bill comes in response to the striking down of the existing law on prostitution late last year by the Supreme Court of Canada.
"We will criminalize those who are fueling and perpetrating the demand for this dangerous activity," Justice Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday.
Those to be targeted by police under the new law include pimps and others who exploit sex workers, including those who advertise the sale of sex in print or online.
MacKay said legitimate, non-exploitive service providers – such as doctors, pharmacists and taxi drivers – won't be targeted, nor would spouses or family members of sex trade workers.
It's not yet clear if that leniency will extend to bodyguards hired by sex workers for security.
MacKay pledged $20 million in support to help sex trade workers exit "a life of exploitation and danger."
Fines might range from $1,000 to $4,000 and jail time could be up to five years in jail for an offender who pays for sex – double that if it involves a minor.
The bill would criminalize the act of selling sex in public places or where children could be expected to be present.
SFU criminology professor John Lowman said criminalizing customers and the public buying of sex will again drive the trade into out-of-sight places where women will be at greater risk of predators like serial killer Robert Pickton.
"It will force women into those dark, dangerous industrial areas," he said.
"What you're looking at here is a form of state-sponsored institutionalized entrapment," Lowman said. "Can you think of any other law where it's legal to sell something which is illegal to buy?"
He said the legislation recreates many of the problems that led the Supreme Court to strike down the old law on grounds it exposed women to too much danger.
A federal survey of Canadians released June 1 following government-led consultations found 56 per cent of respondents think it should be a crime to buy sexual services, but 66 per cent said it shouldn't be illegal for sex workers to sell their services.
A study by UBC researchers released earlier in the week argued a Canadian move to the Nordic Model would force prostitutes to work in riskier conditions where they have less control over their health and safety.
Where clients continue to be targets of police, sex workers' ability to protect themselves from violence and abuse or access police protections is severely limited," said report author Dr. Kate Shannon.

subset: commoncrawl


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Back in 2014, when food blogger and Memphis public relations professional Cara Greenstein was attending the Austin Food & Wine Festival, she remembers thinking how great it would be if Memphis could host its own version of such an event.
Leave it to a chef to fall back on a food metaphor when talking about the more than year-long planning that's gone into the inaugural Memphis Food & Wine Festival, a one-day culinary bash set for Oct. 15.
A culinary festival launching this fall will showcase some of Memphis' top chefs alongside acclaimed regional and national chefs.
Set for Oct. 15, the Memphis Food & Wine Festival will feature cuisine from 28 chefs with accolades ranging from Michelin Starred Chefs and Master Chefs to James Beard winners. The lineup also will include 36 well-known wineries and live local music.
Terry Brimhall, founder and president of Brimhall Foods Co. Inc., has been named entrepreneur of the year by the Bartlett Area Chamber of Commerce.
There were new restaurant openings, expansions and major milestones celebrated.
Alliances were formed, events were debuted and, of course, a few joints were shuttered.
In most respects, 2012 was a banner year for the Memphis food scene, and 2013 could be even more promising, said Patrick Reilly, owner of Majestic Grille and president of the Memphis Restaurant Association.
Michael Patrick came to Memphis in 1997. Things are finally starting to look up.
"Well, maybe that's an exaggeration," the chef said, sitting at the front sun-drenched table in his three-month-old Rizzos Diner. "At certain times, my time in Memphis has been disappointing. Sometimes it was going great, and then I had the carpet pulled out from under me. I got the rep of a person who had too many jobs."
New Year's Eve! What a scary night! Not only because people have to stand around at midnight with a bunch of so-called friends and sing that dreary "Auld Lang Syne" and put each other's eyes out with supersonically zooming champagne corks (see Memphis Grapevine for advice on avoiding this), but because this artificially imposed deadline for the ending of one year and the beginning of another sets the scene for trend-spotting galore.
Duncan Aiken has loved pizza his whole life, though pizza, as he has found out, can be a harsh mistress. It took years to develop a recipe for the kind of crust he favors, years of studying, traveling, working and, of course, eating.
Several weeks ago, I wrote about the history of the French 75 cocktail and looked at two examples, one made by bartender Shawn Ilsley at Café 1912, the other concocted by Leanne Netherland at Circa.
I was surprised to hear – from a friend in the wine business, which is how a great deal of restaurant news travels – that Karen Ross had left Erling Jensen: The Restaurant after serving as chef de cuisine for four years. Ross and executive chef and owner Erling Jensen made a good team and worked together extremely well in that kitchen.
Your new restaurant has been open for a few weeks. The kitchen and front-of-house staffs are working in sweet sync. Patrons react favorably to food, service and atmosphere. There's a sense of anticipation in the dining room, and you're taking reservations a month out. You seem to be heading toward a great success story.
Chez Philippe has a new chef, Jason Dallas, and the shadow of Jose Gutierrez no longer looms over The Peabody's opulent flagship restaurant.
John Condy's interest in food and wine was piqued years ago when he worked at Captain Bilbo's, once a mainstay of Downtown dining and dancing but long gone. Readers who remember Bilbo's will understand that it's a far cry from that rowdy purveyor of seafood on Wagner Place to the elegance and creativity of Erling Jensen: The Restaurant in East Memphis, yet that's where Condy, 45, presides as wine manager.
Italian is coming to the intersection of Cooper and Young.
Chef David Cleveland, in Memphis since 1997, and veteran front-of-the-house manager Leslie Billman will open Cortona – they hope by the beginning of 2011 – in the space where Dish closed Jan. 31.
In 2008 and 2009, restaurant news tended to be depressing because it usually involved restaurants that were closing, sometimes old favorites.
Today's news, however, deals with moves and additions.
So, you're a couple celebrating an anniversary or a birthday, and you go to a nice restaurant, sit at the bar, chat with the bartender and somehow it comes out that, oh, this is exactly where you were sitting two years ago when you got engaged. The bartender says, "Folks, congratulations, two glasses of champagne, on the house!"
One in an occasional series on the signature dishes of local chefs.
It's appropriate that over the fireplace at Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen hangs a painting of a pig.
The waiter at Sekisui Pacific Rim brings to the table a large bowl brimming with a rich broth filled with sauteed soba noodles, shrimp, scallops and crawfish, and explains that it's the lunchtime-sized serving.
Every restaurant has a cook or chef in the kitchen, but how many diners know the name of the person cooking their lunch or dinner? How many give a hoot?
With book deals, food magazines, television shows and restaurants with PR staffs, the past decade has seen the rise (and frequently the fleeting fame) of the celebrity chef. Not that there's anything wrong with the recognition and rewarding of genius, though sometimes, let's admit, we just want a quiet, satisfying meal without the sense of hushed worship.
Editor's Note: A new occasional series about people who make and manage wine lists for restaurants
Wine lists are fascinating documents. They tell you about a restaurant's intentions, what it anticipates in the way of patrons – as in how much they'll spend – and how willing it is to explore and innovate.
Richard and Barbara Farmer opened Jarrett's in 1994.
The restaurant on Quince Road in the Yorkshire Square shopping center served its last meal on New Year's Eve, a victim of the economic downturn.
"For 2010, I'd like to see a 20 percent increase in revenue," said Jeff Dunham, owner and chef at the popular Grove Grill in East Memphis.
Though Jose Gutierrez' name is Spanish, his French accent could out-charm the great French music hall singer Maurice Chevalier.
The EEO/Federal Contractor's Liaison Association of the Mid-South will host an information seminar today from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the University of Memphis Fogelman Executive Center, 330 Innovation Drive. Cost is $100 for members and $125 for nonmembers. Contact Virginia Leonard at 528-4264 or firstname.lastname@example.com to register.
The Memphis Bar Association (MBA) will hold its "21st Annual MBA Bankruptcy Section Seminar" today beginning with registration at 8 a.m. and continuing until 5 p.m. at the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, 1801 Exeter Road. For more information on cost and registration, call the MBA at 527-3573.
The Memphis and Shelby County Council on Aging will present Senior Day at the Memphis Zoo today from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event is free to seniors 55 and older, and includes free parking and access to all exhibits. Call Coretta Perkins at 406-7164 for more information.
The work day at Chef Jose Gutierrez's year-and-a-half-old Downtown business, Encore Restaurant & Bar, begins at about 3 in the afternoon. Some of the kitchen staff already are in place doing prep work for the French-style bistro in Peabody Place.
The Small Business Chamber will hostits first Memphis Breakfast Club today from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. at InSouth Bank, 5299 Poplar Ave. Cost is free to members and first-time guests. Call 262-9537 for more information or visit www.smallbusinesschamber.com.
Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center and FM 100 will host the ninth annual Radiothon at Le Bonheur today. The Radiothon will run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call 866-350-9355 during the Radiothon to donate. For more information, call 287-6030.
The Mid-South Area Business Travel Association (MSA-BTA) will hold its monthly luncheon today from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Tower Room, 5100 Poplar Ave. Cost is $20 for MSA-BTA members and $30 for nonmembers. To register, visit www.msabta.com or call LaShawn Hampton at 218-6056.
The South Main Arts District will hold its Last Friday Art Trolley Tour today. The stores, galleries and restaurants throughout the district will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The Main Street trolley running through the district will be free. Go to www.southmainmemphis.org for more information.
The Memphis Regional Chamber will host a Breakfast Forum today at 7:30 a.m. Benny Lendermon, president of the Riverfront Development Corp., will discuss "Take Me to the River: Beale Street Landing and Other Riverfront Projects." Cost to attend is $20 for chamber members and $30 for nonmembers. To register, e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com.
The National Hookup of Black Women Inc. will sponsor a voter education forum today from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Nova Copy Building, 15 Lindsay Ave. at Second Avenue.
Memphis Light, Gas & Water Division (MLGW) will host the 2007 Neighborhood Leaders Conference Aug. 3 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. at the MLGW University, 4949 Raleigh-LaGrange Road. The theme is "Protecting Yourself and Your Neighborhood" and will feature information about starting and maintaining neighborhood watches, real-estate issues and crime prevention. The event is $5. Call 528-4322 by today to reserve space.
An exhibit featuring work by Peter Bowman and Mary Sims will open at the David Lusk Gallery today from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at 4540 Poplar Ave. The exhibit will be on display through July 28. For more information, call the gallery at 767-3800.
Tennessee Small Business Development Counseling will host Mark Taylor, business counselor, today from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Collierville Chamber of Commerce, 485 Halle Park Drive. There is no charge for the service. Appointments may be made by calling 853-1949.
The Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Mid-South meeting will be held today at 11:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis, 3700 Central Ave. Rick Zurburg will present "Tips and Tricks for Handling, Storing and Working with E-Mail." Cost is $20 for members and $35 for nonmembers. Call 508-0527 or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com to RSVP.


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- Security News
- Internet of Things
- How Much is Your Personal Data Worth? Survey Says...
view infographic: How Much is Your Personal Data Worth?
In this day and age where privacy, security and the lack of both (which leads to some very disastrous data breaches) are considered major issues, the question above is getting more and more relevant. We asked more than a thousand consumers from all over the world to put a specific monetary value on each chunk of personal information (passwords, health information, etc) that a trusted third party would have to pay for access.
Here's what we found out:
What do these results show us? One conclusion we can obviously draw from this is that US responders value nearly all their personal information higher than respondents from other countries. Besides cultural differences, this could also be due to how much US consumers value their privacy, and how their day-to-day lives revolve around their own personal information, what with the boom of social media. Take health and medical records, for example—in the US, a person's medical record may be extensive enough to the point that they can be considered a complete 'profile', including not only their name and home address but their social security details and financial information. This could explain why they value it highly.
[More: Learn about security in the age of the Internet of Things]
But one thing that stands out: how everyone considers their passwords to be their most valuable information. It's certainly a testament to how connected people have become in this day and age of the Internet. Unfortunately, we still often hear about consumers and businesses being hacked because their passwords have either been misplaced or easily guessed, despite the high value they placed on it.
View the results of the survey in the infographic.
Like it? Add this infographic to your site:
1. Click on the box below. 2. Press Ctrl+A to select all. 3. Press Ctrl+C to copy. 4. Paste the code into your page (Ctrl+V).
Image will appear the same size as you see above.


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#FOAMed (Free Open Access Meducation)
The internet is a gold mine for Medical Students. Encyclopaedias, interactive tutorials, guideline databases and question banks are all online in abundance. Most junior doctors will have a list of their favourite websites - the ones that got them through Finals!
The #FOAMed community is growing rapidly with numerous websites and lots of Twitter streams of new and innovative medical education resources. We are compiling a list of all the best online resources, with ratings and tips on how to get the best from each website. Vitally, we want YOU to contribute to this database so that we make sure we find even the most elusive online gems - if you have any links that you find invaluable then submit them using our simple form.
Make sure you follow us on Twitter (@OSCE_Aid) to keep up with the latest OSCE #FOAMed!
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NB Items cut to specific size for your order are subject to a 50% Made to Measure fee on return. To read more about our returns process, click here
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The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948
edited by: Eugene Rogan, Avi Shlaim
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN: 9780521794765; 249pp.
Brunel University
Date accessed: 28 February, 2024
In an earlier review in the IHR 'Reviews in History' series (number 154) of Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), I pointed to the intense historiographical conflict raging over the formation of Israel in 1948, the cause(s) of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the nature of Israel's subsequent relations with its Arab neighbours. For those readers unfamiliar with the debate, the essential fault line is between those who say that Israel was in some measure responsible for the Palestinian diaspora in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli conflict, and those who argue that the Palestinian refugee crisis was not, fundamentally, Israel's fault and that chances for peace were scuppered not by Israel but by obstinacy on the part of the Arabs. The debate has shifted over time. Until the 1970s it was dominated by an 'old' or 'mobilised' Israeli history that portrayed a Jewish state under serious threat from the Arabs and so reluctantly forced into a series of wars of survival. This changed in the 1980s with the arrival of what became known as the 'new' or 'revisionist' historians - sometimes also called the 'critical sociologists' - who offered radically contrary perspectives on the formation of Israel, the causes of the Palestinian refugee crisis and the origins of the Arab-Israeli wars. These 'Young Turks', led by the likes of Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé and Avi Shlaim, set out to overturn received history.(1) They argued that the historiography on Israel had for too long been dominated by an approach that has sought to exculpate Israel from the charge that it stole Palestinian land and forcibly evicted the inhabitants.(2) While the conclusions of the 'new' historians were not necessarily pro-Palestinian, they stressed that Israel needed to take some of the blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis, the Arab-Israeli wars and the failed peace of 1949, and that the image of Israel put forward by the 'old' historians was both misleading and determined by the political need to be pro-Zionist.
The debunking by the 'new' historians of long-held shibboleths provoked a furore among the 'old' historians (who now became the 'new old' historians) and the debate soon spilled over into the public domain. In articles and books, the 'new old' historians such as Shabtai Teveth and Anita Shapira counter-attacked. Aharon Megged charged the 'new' historians with writing history in the spirit of Israel's enemies; Efraim Karsh accused Morris and Shlaim of falsifying and recycling history.(3) Attack and counter-attack ensued as both sides slugged it out.(4) At the same time, some pro-Palestinian academics attacked the 'new' historians for not going far enough in their analysis; other Palestinian authors acknowledged the honest debate of the 'new' historians.(5) While the debate on both sides has become more nuanced, nonetheless it continues apace in scholarly and popular books, journals and films. The revision of Israeli school text-books to take into account the 'new' history suggests that the counter-attack on the 'new' historians is failing; it also raises the question of whether the epithets 'new' or 'revisionist' history themselves need revising as this approach to Israeli history becomes more mainstream and less of an iconoclastic historical fringe.(6)
Where does this edited volume fit in these history wars? With Avi Shlaim as one of the co-editors, an afterword by the Palestinian academic Edward W. Said, and essays by the likes of Benny Morris and Rashid Khalidi, the initiated reader will sense the 'new' history flavour even before opening the book. And s/he will not be disappointed as the contributions to this volume, wrapped around the seminal event of the formation of Israel in the 1948-9 'War of Independence', what for the Palestinians was the 'Catastrophe' - al-Nakba - of 1948, are very much in the 'new' history vein. The problem with edited collections is that essays can be disparate and varying in quality. Editors know this to be the case and so, typically, claim to have found some elusive, special cohesive glue for their volume. This adhesive frequently comes unstuck under closer scrutiny. For Shlaim and his fellow editor, Eugene L. Rogan, both scholars at the University of Oxford, the ongoing 'new' history versus 'old' history debate gives genuine linkage and binds the chapters, providing the reader with a central unifying strand and overcoming any charge that the collection lacks common purpose. The volume concludes with a pithy - perhaps polemical - afterword by Said.
To make sense of what is in this collection, this review will pose four questions. Firstly, what claims do the editors make in the introduction where they set out their stall? Secondly, what do each of the chapters contain, and what do they add to the debate on Israel and the Palestinians? Thirdly, how does Said's afterword tie these different essays together? Finally, are there any weaknesses to the collection?
In the introduction, the editors make three key points. Firstly, the war of 1948 was an immensely significant event for Israel and the Arab Middle East, worthy of continued study. As Rogan and Shlaim proclaim (p.1): 'No event has marked Arab politics in the second half of the twentieth century more profoundly. The Arab-Israeli wars, the Cold War in the Middle East, the rise of the Palestinian armed struggle and the politics of peace making in all of their complexity are a direct consequence of the Palestine War.' For the editors, the 1948 war was also formative in that it was the first serious challenge for the newly independent Arab states. How they reacted would determine the course of their subsequent histories. Secondly, the editors raise the question of how the 1948 war has been factored into the histories of Israel and the Arab states as part of the process of national identity building. It is argued that by rewriting history both sides have used the 1948 war as the seed to nurture particular national myths and narratives. The editors are keen to pursue the idea that historical 'facts' have been manipulated by elites through media such as history books. Thirdly, the editors emphasise the critical reappraisal of these national myths by the 'new' historians of the 1980s and locate their volume firmly in the revisionist trend in the Arab-Israeli conflict. These three themes resonate through The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948.
The core 'new' historian thesis of the volume under review is not groundbreaking. Rather, it builds upon and acknowledges a debt to earlier scholars, some of whom have contributed to this collection. To give these essays a new spin to the 'old' versus 'new' history debate, the editors make two claims. Firstly, they have drawn together in one show case volume essays from historians on all the major participants in the 1948 war: Israel (Shlaim), Syria (Joshua Landis), Jordan (Rogan), Iraq (Charles Tripp), Egypt (Fawaz A. Gerges) and the Palestinians (Rashid Khalidi). There are also two chapters on the vexed question of the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis which form another node of analysis (Benny Morris and Laila Parsons). In collecting together these Israeli, Arab and Western academics, the editors provide the reader with the latest 'new' history debates from a variety of perspectives in one handy volume. Secondly, the chapters open up new avenues of enquiry that will be pathways for more historical exploration. This is, if you like, revision within the revisionism as most of the chapters contain new ideas that will prompt further research to confirm or disprove what these authors have to say.
What do these chapters contain and what to they add to our understanding of the debate around the formation of Israel? In the two chapters on the origins of the Palestinian refugee crisis, Parsons disagrees with Morris's findings that the refugee crisis 'was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab.'(7) Rather, in a stimulating case study, Parsons looks at the interchange between the Israeli army (the IDF) and the Druze community in Galilee during the IDF's conquest of the region. For Parsons, Israeli policy towards the Druze helps us to understand the wider picture of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. She attacks the argument that Israel's expulsions of Palestinians were essentially random and based on local factors and the actions of subordinate IDF commanders by showing how the IDF (which contained some Druze troops) left Druze villages unmolested, even when they had been fired on from these villages. For Parsons, the actions of the IDF in sparing the Druze show the grand design in an Israeli policy that would target one community perceived as a threat (the Palestinians) and leave alone another seen as a potential ally (the Druze) even when the former were pacific and the latter bellicose towards the IDF. Parsons also claims (p.67) that Morris made two errors in his earlier The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947-49 (1987): firstly, some Druze did fire on IDF - and lived to tell the tale; secondly, villagers from 'Amqa, expelled by the IDF, were not, as Morris claimed, Druze, but, in fact, Muslims, thus confirming Parsons' thesis that the IDF acted within a carefully structured plan in the 1948 war to drive out only the Palestinians so as to make a viable Zionist state (p.68): 'If you have a policy not to do something it implies that you also have a position on what you are doing.' The second part of Parsons' chapter moves the emphasis from the history itself to the writing of the history. In line with the 'rewriting history' theme detailed by the editors in the introduction, she claims that Israeli historiography and perceptions of the Druze were consciously skewed to create a common past to prove a Jewish-Druze friendship. This 'invention of tradition' has, of course, its own logic as if people are told they have a bond with another group this can well become a reality regardless of historical truth.(8)
Morris complements Parsons' analysis of Israeli relations with the Druze by concentrating on two discrete but interconnected areas of enquiry: pre-war Zionist transfer thinking on the Palestinians, and supposed atrocities by IDF troops during the 1948 war that were designed to drive out the Palestinian population of Galilee. While Morris provides some revision in his chapter, broadly speaking, the evidence he presents, as he himself admits, is in line with his earlier works such as The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947-49 (1987) and 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (1990). Morris concludes that there was a crystallisation of consensus among Zionist leaders on expulsion before the war. Having trawled through the Israeli archives, he then presents a nuanced if inchoate study of the claim that the IDF committed massacres of Palestinians. These findings, based on new archival research in Israel, will be presented in a fuller form in a planned revised version of 1948 and After.
What of the other chapters? The co-editor, Rogan, concentrates on Jordan, the subject of his recent monograph.(9) As with Parsons, Rogan differentiates between historical 'facts' and the purposeful writing up of these 'facts' as history. Therefore, Rogan, unpacks how the Jordanian state created a particular narrative on Jordan's involvement in the 1948 war, what he terms the 'Jordanian loyalist' history, that emphasised Jordan's difficulties and valour in 1948 against tough odds. In contrast, an 'Arab nationalist' history based around Gamal Abd al-Nasir charged Jordan with deceit and greed as it colluded with Israel to divide Palestine. Using what primary sources are available, Rogan weaves the events of 1948 within this historiographical narrative to unpack fact and fiction. He does a good job of this and in doing so paints a more sympathetic portrait of the actions of the Jordanian army - the Arab Legion - in the war of 1948. While in no sense being an apologist for the Jordanians, Rogan shows, amidst King Abdullah of Jordan's abundant treachery, just how difficult was the fight for the Arab Legion. While well trained and equipped by the standards of the other Arab protagonists, the Arab Legion was terribly overstretched and often outnumbered. In contrast to arguments elsewhere in this volume, Rogan argues that it is not clear that the Arab Legion had the military clout to save the Palestinian towns of Lydda and Ramla; neither was the rescue of the Egyptian forces trapped in the Faluja pocket a clear-cut operation. Nonetheless, Rogan is careful to detail the infighting between the Jordanians and Egyptians that torpedoed any chances of joint, effective military action. He also recounts the evident collusion between Israelis and Jordanians first described in Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (1988). As Rogan shows, these were not politically correct times: the Jordanians were never fully reconciled to negotiating with Israel's Golda Meir (Meyerson), feeling that (p.117) 'optimal results would be had through direct meetings between reasonable men.' The Arab Legion's defence of the Jerusalem-Latrun line, where it battered the IDF in a series of tough actions, represents one of the few military high points for the Arabs in the 1948 war and shows what might have been possible had the disparate Arab armies united and acted in unison, something that this volume amply shows the Arabs failed to do.
The chapter by Tripp on Iraq, as with Rogan the subject of a recent book, seems, at first sight, odd as the spotlight is turned away from Palestine and put on domestic politics within Iraq.(10) However, as the reader delves deeper into the text interesting and relevant themes emerge that link up with the chapters on Syria and Egypt. Tripp outlines the impact of the war in Palestine on Iraq, one of the Arab states that sent troops to fight in the 1948 war. In doing so, he highlights the lack of synergy between the home front and the trenches that was so fatal for the Arab armies fighting the IDF. Tripp also throws the reader's attention forward to show how the Palestine war had a longer-term impact within the Arab world (p.128): '...the cause of Palestine created the basis of a language of legitimation within Iraqi politics that politicians ignored at their peril...It thus provided an opportunity for those in command of the state...to displace more radical languages of social revolution.' As with Jordan, Iraq manipulated events in Palestine for its own ends. Israel was, in some sense, an irrelevance but for what it could provide the ruling elite in Baghdad in terms of continued power. This, of course, was disastrous for the 'united' Arab attack on Israel as the Iraqi leaders used the preparations for a war in Palestine as a means to check rivals such as Abdullah of Jordan and the Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin al-Husayni - the 'Mufti of Jerusalem'. There were essentially two narratives at work (p.130): firstly, a symbolic, radical view on Palestine for public consumption; secondly, the reality of a pragmatic policy by Iraqi elites on Palestine that was designed to do nothing to rock the boat within Iraq. As with Jordan, Iraq was complicit in the avaricious partition of Palestine. In December 1947, Iraqi leaders visited Amman to tell Abdullah that Great Britain favoured the partition of Palestine (p.134). Iraq pledged support for this Jordanian take-over of parts of Palestine in the hope of some mutual gain.
The politicking within Iraq fed down the line to make the Iraqi army an ineffective tool for military operations. After making a derisory, failed attack near Beisan, the Iraqi army relieved the Arab Legion and settled into holding the line in the northern sector of the front in a phoney war that resulted in few casualties for either side. As Tripp proves, Iraqi military intervention summed up the uncoordinated nature of the attack on Israel: 18,000 men doing nothing sitting on the defensive in positions some 12 miles from the Mediterranean Sea from where they could cut Israel in half. With allies like these, did the Palestinians need enemies?
Shlaim takes up the baton of challenging the myth of an Israeli David versus an Arab Goliath in the 1948 war in his chapter on Israel and the Arab coalition in 1948. Developing themes from his recent Iron Wall, Shlaim gels with the arguments in the other chapters in the volume and slams into the David versus Goliath thesis so popular in the 'old' history. Shlaim does not pull his punches, arguing that the Arab coalition (p.82) 'was one of the most divided, disorganised and ramshackle coalitions in the entire history of warfare.' The fissiparous Arab bloc set Hashemites against anti-Hashemites in the Arab League; Abdullah of Jordan, keen to create a 'greater Syria' under his rule, schemed against the Syrians and others; King Faruq of Egypt looked on aghast at Abdullah's evident ambitions; all the while, the Palestinian leadership, such as it was, worked against itself as different nodes of power jockeyed for position. As Shlaim concluded, as the Arabs attacked Israel (p.89) 'the politicians of the Arab League continued their backstage manoeuvres, labyrinthine intrigues and sordid attempts to stab each other in the back - all in the name of the highest pan-Arab ideals.'
Shlaim's chapter paints a broad brush across the canvas and his conclusions are sure to annoy the 'new old' historians (p.100): '...when one probes the politics of the war and not merely the military operations, the picture that emerges is not the familiar one of Israel standing alone against the combined military might of the entire Arab world but rather one of a remarkable convergence between the interests of Israel and those of Transjordan against the other members of the Arab coalition and especially against the Palestinians. My purpose in writing this survey was not to pass moral judgement on Israel's conduct in 1948 or to delegitimize Zionism but to suggest that the traditional Zionist narrative of the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war is deeply flawed.'
Gerges and Landis do for Egypt and Syria what Rogan and Tripp did for Jordan and Iraq. As Gerges argues, Egypt went to war for pretty much the same reasons as Jordan and Iraq: national self-interest. As with the other Arab states, the Egyptians had inadequate military means with which to realise their goals. The Egyptians misunderstood the power of the nascent Israeli army, foolishly referring to the IDF as nothing more than 'armed gangs' (p.155). Thus, Egypt went to war woefully unprepared, eager to fight Abdullah's pretensions to power as much, if not more, than the IDF. The military co-ordination of the Egyptians and Jordanians was dismal: while a rapidly expanding and effective IDF deployed for battle, Jordanian and Egyptian forces in southern Palestine/Israel squabbled over the size of the flags flying over their respective positions (p.164). As Rome burnt, the Egyptian army even mistreated local Palestinians.
Soon the Egyptians were encircled, leaving courageous Egyptian soldiers with inadequate leadership and equipment trapped at the mercy of the IDF. The Egyptian leadership was too proud to ask for help; Abdullah was delighted that the Israelis were humbling his main rival for power. The Egyptian high command was unaware of the seriousness of the plight of its army and so, as with the other Arab states, wrote their own shortcomings out of the histories of the war, preferring to blame everyone and everything bar themselves for the defeat. The Free Officers' Egyptian revolution of 1952 and the militarisation of Egyptian politics (p.100), themselves a product of the 1948 defeat, facilitated the rewriting of history as defeat could be blamed on the old monarchical regime. Quite how Nasir's post-1952 regime would explain defeats in 1956 and 1967 is another story. The defeat of 1948 sent a shock wave through the Arab world: there were coups in Syria, Faruk of Egypt was toppled and Abdullah was assassinated.
Landis's essay on Syria reiterates the infighting in the Arab camp with the real fight over whether Abdullah was going to create a 'greater' Hashemite empire at the expense of other Arab powers. As with Egypt, Syria was sure that the biggest threat came from an expanded, powerful Jordan, rather than a small Jewish state along a small strip of the Mediterranean. This fear of Abdullah led the Syrians, as with the Egyptians, to reject the Bernadotte peace plan of 1948 that would have prevented a total Arab defeat and limited the Palestinian refugee crisis. The reason for this rejection was that the peace plan would have legitimated Jordan's annexation of the west bank of the river Jordan. In military terms, Syria had little to offer as it had to rebuild its disloyal French-trained army before it could attack. This reduced military effectiveness. Worried by a coup from within the army, the Syrian leadership, according to Landis, emasculated the army. In the end, Syria attacked Galilee with a weak Arab Liberation Army of about 2500 men that advanced no great distance and was soon checked by the Israelis.
The last chapter to be discussed is Khalidi's which articulates the case for the Palestinians being fatally weakened by the British prior to the 1948 war, so much so that they were unable to make any meaningful contribution in 1948. Khalidi puts forward a strong argument that the British had paved the way for the Zionist triumph of 1948 with pro-Zionist policies and military repression of the Palestinians in the 1930s. This meant that when the war came in 1948, the Palestinians were reliant on other Arab powers. As has been seen, this was fatal for the Palestinians and led to years in the wilderness.
What of Said's afterword? Afterwords can be in the way of finishing a lovely meal and then being presented with another starter rather than the dessert that the diner is after. This is especially the case if the afterword is essentially there to sell the book by taking on some eminent scholar willing to put his or her name to a volume. Rogan and Shlaim have avoided this pitfall and, in fact, the afterword works extremely well in tying the historically based arguments in The War for Palestine with the current situation in the region. Said provides a lucid, passionate and policy relevant essay of some length (almost as long as some of the chapters) that shows how the history that Rogan and Shlaim have brought together has contemporary relevance. More than this, Said locates much of the current Israeli-Palestinian impasse to misunderstandings over the events of 1948. For Said, 1948 is a distinctively significant historical event. In the afterword, he takes the two histories discussed in this volume - one 'Israeli', one 'Arab' - and tries to bring them together and show not just the common ground but how they can be reconciled and made to work for future generations. This is all done with Said's typical penmanship and flourish, with a touch of the polemical. What is most striking about Said's afterword is the mismatch between his hopeful words born of a lifetime of study and reading in the academy, and the reality of the current violent impasse in the region. It is to be hoped that the plea of the academic is not drowned out by the reality of cannon fire as the sword triumphs over the pen, as too often happens in history.
There are criticisms that can be levelled against this volume and these might be issues that the editors will want to raise in their authors' response. One of the most noticeable weaknesses comes when the reader skims through the endnotes looking at sources used. It quickly becomes apparent that when it comes to primary sources - memoirs aside - only Britain, Israel and the USA provide archival material. This is not the fault of the editors or contributors to this collection - indeed it is acknowledged in the introduction (p.8) - but the gap left by the absence of Arab archives is sorely felt in any scholarship on a debate which has a reasonably full picture of one side - Israel - but less to say on the Arabs based on the original official documentation. (Indeed, 'new old' historians have attacked the 'new' historians for their lack of Arab sources, saying that more Arab sources are available.) The contributors to The War for Palestine do a good job of overcoming this deficiency by using Arab-language books, memoirs diaries and, in the case of Jordan, some printed primary material, but if and when the Arab governments do open their archives it will be interesting to see how much of the current debate will need to be revised in light of new findings from Arab documents.
On the theme of archival access, Morris raises the question of whether the Israeli archives have been 'weeded' (pp.49-50) to stonewall researchers searching for references to abuses by the IDF during the 1948 war. Morris might be right but it leaves a slightly conspiratorial feel to the scholarship that can be neither proved nor disproved - which is of course why conspiracy theories are so popular. This is most noticeable in the chapters by Morris and Parsons where both are forced to present the best case that they can based on, at times, circumstantial evidence. As Parsons confesses in her case study relying on only two villages (p.68): 'I have not found the smoking gun.' It is the connection between what the IDF were doing at the local level and what the central Zionist leadership were deciding that needs to be unravelled. If IDF abuses occurred were they centrally or locally directed? As Morris is well aware, the former suggest a policy of expulsion; the latter suggest undirected actions taken in the heat of battle or soon after by local commanders acting on their own initiative. Assuming that more information will emerge from the Israeli archives, further revisions of the 1948 war will be necessary. At the moment there is still a disjuncture between local IDF actions and central Zionist direction.
Two key players in the war of 1948 are absent from The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948: Lebanon and Great Britain. The absence of a chapter on Lebanon is acknowledged by the editors (pp.8-9) who lament that a chapter on Lebanon was impossible because of insufficient scholarship. The omission of a chapter on Great Britain is more puzzling. It might be that that Rogan and Shlaim wanted to focus on the immediate middle eastern states involved in the 1948 war but, as they well know, Britain, as the ex-colonial power, had a big part to play in what happened in 1948. A chapter on London's views and policies would have helped flesh out the insights and conclusions of the contributors to this collection.
In terms of the chapters, Khalidi's stands out, to use the current jargon, as the weakest link. It is a pity that Khalidi's chapter on the Palestinians opens the volume as its central thesis, that the Palestinians were not presented with a level playing field before 1948 and so suffered when it came to a fight with the Zionists, while relevant, interesting and strongly argued, is simply not substantiated. Indeed, Khalidi's chapter raises more questions than it answers and is an example of the sort of apologia that the other authors in this volume are careful to avoid. To blame the Palestinians' lack of leadership in 1948 on events such as the Balfour Declaration seems misplaced and misleading. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was, in a vague way, pro-Zionist. But Britain acted primarily out of national self-interest, supporting Jew and Arab in equal and unequal measure when it suited. Thus, in the 1939 White Paper, notwithstanding Khalidi's contrary argument, the British performed a volte-face, supporting the Arabs because they wanted their support against Germany and Italy in the Second World War. The fact is that what Britain did to the Arabs it did to the Zionists. It is more that the Zionists were far better at exploiting what was offered. Therefore, from 1936-9 the British successfully suppressed the Arab revolt in Palestine; from 1945-7, the British unsuccessfully suppressed Zionist terrorism in Palestine. Obviously, the context of the Arab revolt and the Jewish insurgency after the Second World War and the Holocaust was different but Khalidi never really presents a convincing case to prove that the real fault lay outside rather than inside the Palestinian community. Khalidi presents an interesting argument but the reader is left wondering whether the Palestinians still need to face up to their own shortcomings which left them reliant on an avaricious group of Arab states for support when it came to war in 1948 rather than blame external factors in the form of Britain and/or the Zionists.
These minor criticisms should not detract from the topicality, scholarship and interest provided by The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Anti-revisionists will doubtless attack the veracity of the finer details embedded in this volume. Was an expulsion policy around 'Plan Dalet' ever agreed before 1948? Are the IDF to blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis when Arab leaders acted so stupidly? Why attack Israel when the Arabs were just as bad, if not worse, in their behaviour to the Palestinians? While the 'new' historians certainly present Israel in a more hostile light, Rogan and Shlaim show how, at the end of the day, no-one emerges from the machinations of 1948 with much credit. Indeed, the reader of The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 is left rather shocked at the greed and complicity of the neighbouring Arab states who pretended they were acting for pan-Arab ideals. At least the Zionists, busy trying to forge a Jewish state out of the ruins of the Holocaust, had the excuse that the Arabs were the enemy and that without a substantial Jewish majority Israel was simply not viable.
The editors have attempted to address the issue of what really happened in 1948 but they have also tried to show how the subsequent writing of the history of 1948 needs to be challenged. They are to be commended for a scholarly, readable volume that will provoke more debate and, perhaps, a more honest examination of the histories of all the protagonists more than half a century after Israel's 'War of Independence'.
- Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-49 (Cambridge: CUP, 1987); Morris, 1948 and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990); Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (London: John Murray, 2000); Ilan Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951 (London & New York: IB Taurus, 1992); Pappé (ed.), The Israel/Palestine Question (London & New York: Routledge, 1999); Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon, 1987); Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988); Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (London, Allen Lane, 2000).Back to (1)
- For a cogent summary of the 'new' historians' perspective see Avi Shlaim, 'The Debate about 1948', International Journal of Middle East Studies, 27, 1995, 287-304; also Bernard Wasserstein, 'Old historians and new', Jerusalem Post, 27 December 1999.Back to (2)
- Aharon Megged, 'The Israeli Suicide Drive', Ha-aretz Weekly Magazine, 10 June 1994 quoted in Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The 'New Historians' (London: Frank Cass, 1997). See also Karsh's, Fabricating Israeli History, Preface to the Second Revised Edition, pp.xv-xxxix (London: Frank Cass, 2000).Back to (3)
- For instance Morris's review of Karsh's Fabricating Israeli History entitled 'Refabricating 1948' in Journal of Palestinian Studies, 27/2, Winter 1998, 81-95.Back to (4)
- For instance Nur Masalha's essay 'A Critique on Benny Morris' in Ilan Pappé (ed.), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York: Routledge, 1999 (originally an article in Journal of Palestine Studies, 21/1, Autumn 1991, 90-7); Norman Finklestein, 'Myths, Old and New', Journal of Palestine Studies, 21/1, Autumn 1991; and Morris 'Response to Finklestein and Masalha', in the same issue of Journal of Palestine Studies. Prominent Palestinian scholars such as Edward Said have acknowledged the work done by the 'new' historians: see http://ihr.sa.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/shlaimavi.html.Back to (5)
- For a revision of schoolbooks, see Neil Caplan, review article, 'Zionism and the Arabs: Another Look at the "New" Historiography', Journal of Contemporary History, 36/2, April 2001, 348-9.Back to (6)
- Morris, Birth, p.286.Back to (7)
- From Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: CUP, 1984).Back to (8)
- Rogan, The Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921 (Cambridge: CUP, 1999).Back to (9)
- Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge: CUP, 2000).Back to (10)
Author's Response
We are pleased to accept Matthew Hughes' very generous review of our edited book, which accurately represents our views. He did express puzzlement that we did not have an essay on Britain in the Palestine War. We confined the scope of this book to participants in the war in the war itself, and of course Britain did not fight in the Palestine War. There have been other excellent contributions on the end of the Palestine Mandate and so we did not see the need to revisit those arguments.


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White House: Yes, The Taliban Is a Terrorist Organization
GOP accuse Obama of "negotiating with terrorists," WH says Bergdahl was POW.
June 4, 2014 — -- With the recent release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from Taliban captivity after nearly five years--in exchange for five mid- to high-level Afghan Taliban figures--criticism immediately emerged questioning not only how the deal suddenly came about but also whether dealing with the Taliban could set a dangerous precedent for U.S. national security.
"This is a complete change of our national security strategy of not negotiating with terrorists," Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, told ABC News Monday. "I think it sends a terrible national security message – not just to Afghanistan, but to the rest of the world."
But did President Obama's White House, through the Qatari government which brokered the deal, negotiate with terrorists, as suggested by Rogers and a number of high-profile Republicans?
When asked Monday if the White House considered the Taliban terrorists, Press Secretary Jay Carney dodged.
"We don't get to choose our enemies when we go to war," Carney told reporters. "We regard the Taliban as an enemy combatant in a conflict that has been going on, in which the United States has been involved for more than a decade. In this case--as you know we dealt with the Qataris in order to secure [Bergdahl's] release--it was absolutely the right thing to do."
But Tuesday White House National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden noted that the Taliban was added to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by executive order in July 2002, even if it is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the State Department. Either designation triggers asset freezes, according to the State Department, though they can differ on other restrictions imposed on the target organization. The Treasury Department told ABC News the Taliban is still on their SDGT list.
The U.S. is offering $10 million for information leading to the capture of the Taliban's leader, Mullah Omar, through the State Department's Rewards for Justice program, an effort designed to "fight against international terrorism." The National Counterterrorism Center also lists "Taliban Presence in Afghanistan" on its global map of "Terrorist Groups."
Though the State Department has not designated the Afghan Taliban as an FTO, it has designated the group's sister network, the Pakistani Taliban, as well as the Haqqani Network, a group closely associated with the Taliban that was believed to have been actually holding Bergdahl for most of his captivity. Hayden told ABC News the U.S. "did not negotiate with the Haqqanis" for Bergdahl.
Rather than arguing the status of the Taliban, however, the administration has launched a coordinated effort to characterize Bergdahl as a prisoner of war, rather than a hostage.
"Sgt. Bergdahl was not a hostage, he was a member of the military who was detained during the course of an armed conflict," Hayden said. "The United States does not leave a soldier behind based on the identity of the party to the conflict... It was a prisoner exchange. We've always done that across many wars. With the Germans. The Japanese. The North Koreans."
As President Obama put it earlier Tuesday, "This is what happens at the end of wars."
The logic hasn't convinced some of the president's biggest critics across the aisle.
Tuesday Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, called on the administration not only to clarify how the deal went down, without Congressional approval, but to show "what steps the president has taken to guarantee this exchange is not a signal that it is open season on our fellow citizens, both military and civilian personnel, serving our country abroad."
"We must all be mindful that the United States has diplomatic, civilian and military personnel deployed in other countries with both challenging security environments and active terrorist networks interested in targeting not just our facilities but our people," Boehner wrote in a statement today. "One of their greatest protections--knowing that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists – has been compromised."
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Get a quoteThe Bank of England has once again significantly increased its growth forecast for the year. It now expects the UK economy to grow by 2% in 2017 – a major rise from its November forecast of 1.4%.
That forecast was itself an upgrade from the 0.8% forecast made in August.
The Bank was criticised last year for its overly pessimistic predictions following the June Brexit vote. Announcing the latest forecast, Governor Mark Carney admitted that the Bank had misjudged the strength of consumer confidence following the referendum.
He commented: 'The thing that we missed is the strength of consumer spending and consumer confidence associated with that.
'After an initial wobble in terms of consumer surveys… it bounced back pretty quickly.'
However, he warned that the implementation of Brexit could still cause difficulties, saying: 'The Brexit journey is really just beginning. While the direction of travel is clear, there will be twists and turns along the way. Consumers have not been affected by the uncertainty around Brexit.
'Uncertainty over future arrangements is weighing on business investment, which has been flat since the end of 2015.'
In the longer term, the Bank still expects the economy to slow down, with growth in 2018 predicted to fall to 1.6% in 2018.
As expected the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) kept interest rates on hold at 0.25%.
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Home > Topics >The "Write Stuff" For Preventing and Treating Disabilities by Virginia Berninger |
"Write Stuff" For Preventing and Treating Disabilities Written language disabilities are extremely prevalent in the population of children with learning disabilities. Reading disabilities might be identified sooner than writing disabilities in many children, but writing disabilities are more persistent. Public concern and public awareness are on the rise. Now that states are expected to be accountable for students learning, and many have instituted a statewide assessment of writing competence, both educators and parents are concerned about the large number of children whose writing skills are below standard. In this educational climate, students with writing disabilities are much more likely to be noticed. The University of Washington research program on writing disabilities, which has been funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development since 1989, has discovered two kinds of writing disabilities. One group has initial trouble learning to read; the children respond well to instruction, but have persistent problems with writing. One of these children commented to this author, "OK, so now you cured my dyslexia; now what are you going to do about my dysgraphia?" For many other children, writing problems develop even though they learned to read quite easily. Educators or parents may mistakenly attribute specific writing disabilities to lack of motivation or effort. However, appropriate assessment often reveals one of several reasons for writing difficulty: The University of Washington research program is being conducted in three phases. In the first phase, we designed a large-scale assessment to validate the components of writing disabilities and the processes that are functionally related to each of these components. This work has provided the conceptual foundation for the Process Assessment for the Learner (PAL) test, which the Psychological Corporation is developing and norming on the same sample as the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. The PAL diagnostic will be available, along with the WIAT-II, in 2001. It will provide an improved assessment system for conducting research and doing clinical evaluations of writing disabilities. In the second phase of the research, we focused on early intervention to prevent writing difficulties and long-term intervention to treat serious writing disabilities. A hallmark of this phase of the research is that intervention is aimed at both low-level and high-level cognitive and linguistic skills in the same instructional session to create a functional writing system. For example, whenever handwriting or spelling is taught, children compose in the same instructional session.
In the third phase, we continue to evaluate instructional interventions. However, we have added projects in our Multidisciplinary Learning Disabilities Center, also funded by NICHD, that a) evaluate the effectiveness of teacher training on student learning outcomes, b) investigate the genetics of subtypes of writing disabilities, and c) image the brains of students with and without writing disabilities. The following is a brief summary of our findings to date. Handwriting Automaticity Once children have been introduced to letter formation, they must learn to retrieve and produce letters automatically. Handwriting automaticity, which is assessed by the number of letters written correctly within a brief time limit, is a strong predictor of the quality of composition in normally developing and disabled writers. If letter production is automatic, memory space is freed up for higher level composing processes, such as deciding what to write about, what to say and how to say it. Although many people believe that writing is primarily a motor process, our research supports a different point of view: writing is a written language process. The intactness of fine motor skills alone does not account for handwriting problems as much as the ability to code an identified language symbol (letter) in memory. To help struggling writers put letter retrieval and production on automatic pilot, we ask them to study a model letter with numbered arrow cues and then to follow those cues as they write the letter. We then ask children to write letters from memory to help them create retrieval routines. We gradually increase the time interval between when the child looks at the letter and when she tries to write it from memory. During each teaching trial, we name the letters at least three times: when children are asked to study the numbered arrow cues, when they are asked to cover each letter and when they are asked to write each letter from memory. In contrast to the practice of asking children to write similar letters over and over, we ask children to study and write all 26 letters of the alphabet in each instructional session. To avoid brain habituation, which is common when tasks do not vary sufficiently, children are usually asked to write each of the 26 letters only once in a practice session. Recycling through the alphabet might be done a second or third time, but never more than that. Spelling Spelling is harder to remediate than handwriting automaticity or composition. Our genetic studies have found two abilities that are most likely to be inherited are written spelling and repetition of spoken pseudo-words. When written spelling has improved significantly in children, associated improvement in pseudo-word repetition also has occurred, suggesting that the ability to process the sound structure of spoken words is common to both tasks. Several traditional approaches to word study were not sufficient for improving the spelling of children with learning difficulties, including the method of looking at the word, memorizing the letter sequence, covering the word and writing it from memory. Learning to spell requires linking the spoken word to the written word, not simply visual memorization. The following instructional strategies have resulted in significant gains in the children we study: Composition Self-directed journal writing is ineffective with students who lack skills for text generation. Because planning is difficult for beginning writers in general, and especially so for students with writing problems, many children need guided assistance in the form of prompts. Three kinds of prompts make planning easier: a) composition starters, b) teacher queries such as, "What else can you think of?" and, c) prompts for eliciting one of the 21 self-instruction cues we teach children that will help them generate the next sentence. Graphic organizers for both narratives and exposition are useful to help struggling writers plan what to write. Also helpful is explicit modeling of composition in which the teacher thinks aloud, using a chart or overhead transparency, while planning, generating and revising the text produced. Children also benefit from being taught specific self-regulations strategies. Two are especially helpful. The first was suggested by Jenifer Katahira, a master teacher who specializes in integrated reading and writing instruction. Students are taught to say, "What I think I can say, what I say I can write." The teacher models this process using sound-keyword-spelling cards (Talking Letters in our program) to translate what I can say into what I can write. The students then apply the strategy on their own. The second strategy is PWRR: plan, write, review, revise, which are steps that are constantly rehearsed and reinforced. All of our composition instruction emphasizes writing for a real audience; therefore, compositions are shared with either the tutor or peers in small groups. Coordinating the Components of the Functional Writing System Many component processes need to be coordinated to write a composition, just as many instruments in the orchestra need to be synchronized to produce a symphony. We begin each lesson with a warm-up to practice handwriting and\or spelling. We liken this warm-up to the athlete who stretches before running or the musician who tunes and plays scales before performing. Handwriting and spelling are presented as tools for communicating ideas. Kris Begay, one of our tutors, puts it this way: "Training transcription skills is like giving an artist a box of paints; he needs the tools for creative work." We then focus on planning, generating, reviewing, and revising text. Our children have improved significantly in handwriting, spelling and composition when low-level transcription is transferred seamlessly to high-level composing within the same lessons. Much work remains to be done to ensure that writing disabilities are appropriately identified, diagnosed and treated. Our work to date suggests that writing disabilities, like reading disabilities, are to large to extent preventable, although some may require life-long treatment and accommodation. Acknowledgements: This research has been supported by Grant Nos. 25858-09 and P50 33812-03 from NICHD. My co-investigator for the last decade has been Robert D. Abbott. The numerous other faculty and graduate students at the University of Washington and colleagues elsewhere who have contributed to this work are acknowledged in the PAL Intervention Guides (Berninger, 1998). About the Author: Virginia Berninger is professor of educational psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA; principal investigator of NICHD grants on writing intervention, and director of a multidisciplinary learning disabilities center on biological and educational links to learning disabilities. References:
© Copyright 1999, The International Dyslexia Association (IDA). IDA encourages the reproduction and distribution of this article, if proper credit is given in the following manner: Reprinted with permission from The International Dyslexia Association quarterly newsletter, Perspectives, date/issue number/author. Articles must be copied/reprinted in their entirety (no edits), unless specific permission has been granted. Articles cannot be reprinted for the purpose of resale. URL: http://www.interdys.org/servlet/compose?section_id=5&page_id=64
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I am a professional
Boston commercial photographer
whose main specialties are editorial, advertising, corporate, headshot, higher education, politics, documentary photography, sports, viewbook, science, dissolution photographer, medical and environmental portraiture of real people. I regularly collaborate with magazines, newspapers, photo agencies, ad agencies, corporations, wire services and design firms who are looking for a Washington DC or Boston photographer to create the most visually interesting photography possible. With over 10 years of professional photography experience, I am ready to tackle any photography project you need photographed be it documentary style photo coverage or a formal portrait. Please take a moment to check out my blog at vickmark.com/blog. I use the ProPhoto Blog template which I cannot say enough good things about for my WordPress blog. If you are in the market for a new blog theme click the following for a ProPhoto Blog discount code.
I particularly enjoy illustrating stories of social issues domestically and abroad for editorial clients and humanitarian, non-profit, non-government organizations (NGO). Some editorial photography clients of mine include The New York Times, the Sporting News, H&HN Magazine, the World Picture Network, ZUMA Press, Sipa Press, Response Magazine, Private Wealth Magazine, Focus Magazine and Research Magazine. Other than my love of photography, the best part of my job is meeting interesting people.
As an award winning photojournalist, I like to base my commercial photography in realism for businesses in Boston and Providence and for those outside of New England in places like Washington D.C. and New York City. I want to photograph your corporation or business as it really is in an interesting and dynamic photojournalistic style that shows off the most flattering aspects of your company. I believe customers if given the chance to first see your company in photos based in reality, will be more apt to give your company their trust and business once they learn more about your service. Visual images are the best way for clients to build brand loyalty. I service businesses in the Boston area but I am more than happy to travel domestically or internationally for all of your commercial photography needs. Same goes for industrial photography.
Environmental portraiture is a portrait of a person in their familiar surroundings. The surroundings should be indicative of what the person does or who they are. This is my favorite style of portrait photography since I can learn a lot about the person I am photographing by being invited into their space. I particularly enjoy photographing environmental portraits of athletes and sports personalities.
Executive, corporate or business headshots or corporate portraits are photos made of staff members, usually head and shoulders but sometimes half-body or three-quarter-body shots, generally made for company websites, internal newsletters, trade publications, public relations, marketing and sometimes advertising. My photography is made on location so I bring my studio strobes and backdrops to your place of business. This way I can be on your employee's schedule instead of the other way around. There is no need for your co-workers to make a special trip to the studio photographer. It is all done at your location usually in a conference room or like space. You can choose to go with a neutral backdrop like white or gray or you can use your go with a natural environment look with business or nature in the background. My commercial headshots take about 10 to 15 minutes for each person that is to be photographed. Set-up of the photo studio lights generally takes about an hour and tear down about half that.
I work for a number of university and colleges including MIT and Boston University as a higher education photographer and a viewbook photographer to produce the school's higher ed admissions marketing photography.
I enjoy being a medical, biotech and science photographer in Boston. I am always happy to travel to New York, Rhode Island or wherever a client might need tablet dissolution or science photography made for their research, lab, pharmaceutical, educational, diagnostic equipment manufacturing or other company.
I photograph people for their author headshot, actor headshot and actress headshot for theater and film and musician headshot in Boston both on-location or in my South End studio. The headshots are commonly used for book jackets, readings, comp cards, submission for acting roles for stage productions, film, movie and TV, musical performance newsletters and announcements, websites, brochures and more.
Often I am hired as a Boston event photographer. That is where I am hired to photograph a special corporate or business occurrence like an awards dinner, annual company party, annual conference, ground breakings and more. I work as a photojournalist would, documenting what happens in an unobtrusive style with group shots and detail pictures/signage images mixed in. It is very important to me to not distract from your company's event as I work to photograph it.
On the commercial and advertising photography side I find myself working for a lot of assisted living, retirement and senior living facilities such as Benchmark Assisted Living, Erickson Retirement and Genesis Health Care. I also worked with many travel companies like Garber Travel based in the Boston suburb of Brookline and like corporations in need of updating their website, marketing, PR and advertising photography of their people, products and locations. Most of my work is of people but I also enjoy being a Boston architectural photographer. I love to photograph annual reports as well since it gives me a chance to develop an in depth relationship with my clients that really allows me to know them on a personally. Work for corporations looking for a executive headshot photographer as well. I can make myself available for companies in Boston, New York or Washington D.C. on a moment's notice.
I also enjoy being a sports photographer for all levels from professional sports from college and university to prep and high school. I love to photograph sports such as baseball, basketball, football, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, golf, softball, volleyball, swimming, diving, hockey, field hockey, little league baseball, running, cricket and rugby. I have experience shooting the National Football League, NFL, Major League Baseball, MLB, Grand Slam Tennis including the French Open, Roland Garros, and the US Open Tennis Tournament, the Boston Marathon, Professional Golfers' Association, PGA, Major League Lacrosse, MLL, Rodeo and NCAA college and universities and high school sports of all kinds. I make regular trips to Fenway Park in Boston and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA to make portraits of Red Sox baseball players and New England Patriot football players respectively. I have photographed the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. I have also visited Giants Staduim at the Meadowlands in New Jersy many times to photograph the New York Giants and the New York Jets football teams. I hope to get the opportunity to photograph the Washington Redskins at FedEx Field and the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park soon.
I work exclusively digital using top of the line digital cameras. I photograph digitally using raw format which allows me to capture the most digital information available to me as a photographer. Shadow and highlight detail preserved in ways that cannot be when using jpg or a compressed digital file format.
Although most of my photography clients are based in Boston, the Boston metro area, Massachusetts, MA, Providence, RI and the other New England states of Connecticut, CT, New Hampshire, NH, Vermont, VT, and Maine, ME. I also consider myself to be a New York City Commercial photographer and a Washington DC political photographer. I am more than happy to travel within the United States to New York City, NY, New York State, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, PA, Washington DC (Washington D.C.), Hartford, CT, Baltimore, MD, Charlotte, North Carolina, NC, Atlanta, Georgia, GA, Miami, Florida, FL, Chicago, Illinois, IL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, MN, New Orleans, Dallas, Texas, TX, Houston, San Antonio, Denver, CO, Phoenix, Arizona, AZ, Los Angeles, California, CA, San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, Washington, WA, or any other location you need a photographer. I always have a current passport and am available to travel from Boston to any international destination.
I am a member of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), National Press Photographer's Association (NPPA), Editorial Photographers (EP), Sports Shooter, Alternative Pick and the Boston Press Photographer's Association (BPPA). Here are some links that I find helpful and interesting.
Thank you so much for taking the time to view my photography and website. I hope you have found me to be a creative and unique Providence and Boston photographer. Do not hesitate to give me a call or send me an email to discuss your upcoming commercial, advertising or editorial photographer requests in Boston, Washington DC, New York City or beyond. I pride myself in not only being a Boston photographer who delivers great images but also on being dependable, professional in dress and manor and responsive to all of your photography requests. Written photography estimates or references from past photography clients can be had on demand. I look forward to hearing from you!
Below is a list of my capabilities and photography styles for clients in need of a Boston photographer or one outside of Massachusetts in Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco or any other location. |
Advertising Photography Advertising Agency Aerial Photography Alumni Magazines Annual Report Architectural Assisted Living Athlete Portraits Author Portrait Baseball Basketball Biomedical Photographer Black and White Brochure Business Photographer Catalog Celebrity Cityscape College Commercial Photographer Communications Concert Photographer Construction Photographer Corporate Photographer Design Firms Digital Dissolution photography Documentary Photographer Drone Photographer Editorial Photographer Education Equine and Horse Executive Headshots Environmental Portrait Event Photographer Fine Art Football Golf Course Photography Golf Photographer Boston Healthcare Health and Fitness higher ed Higher Education Photographer Hockey Hospital Humanitarian Photographer Industrial Photography Landscapes |
Large Equipment Photographer Large Format Photography Lifestyle Lightroom Magazine Photographer Marketing Medical Photographer Medium Format Photographer Movie Still Photographer Music Musicians Nautical and Marine Newspaper Photographer Newsletter NGO Night Photography Nursing Home People Photography Photo Agency Photojournalism Photojournalist Photoshop Political Photographer Portraits Portraiture Product Photography Public Relations, PR Publishing Real Estate Photographer Reportage Retirement Community School Science Photographer Soccer Sports Photographer Stills Stock Photographer Studio Tennis Theater and Stage Technology Travel Photographer University View Book Photography Website Wire Service |


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Malaysian Hair In Moldova is relatively affordable compared to other types of hair, making it a popular choice for those looking for high-quality hair at a reasonable price. One of the advantages it has over other wigs is it is easy to maintain and can be washed, dried, and styled like your own hair.
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Human hair wigs are typically more expensive than synthetic wigs
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How to Wash and care for Your Human Hair wig In Afghanistan
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Prep up your wig, and use a tooth or comb to gently comb through. Brush the wig to remove any tangles or knots.
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Fill a sink or basin with cool water and add a small amount of mild shampoo. Place your wig under lukewarm water to fully submerge it. Gently submerge the wig in the water and gently swish it around to clean it
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Gently squeeze the excess water out of the wig and blot it dry with a towel.
- Dry
Allow the wig to air dry on a wig stand or a mannequin head. Avoid using heat to dry the wig, such as a hair dryer or heating element, as this can damage the fibers


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10 Nights | 10-DAY WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN FROM BARCELONA
You will visit the following 9 places:
Valletta is the capital of Malta, colloquially known as Il-Belt in Maltese. It is located in the central-eastern portion of the island of Malta and the city proper has a population of 6,098. According to Eurostat, the larger urban zone of Valletta has a population of 368,250. Valletta contains buildings from the 16th century onwards, built during the rule of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, also known as Knights Hospitaller. The city is essentially Baroque in character, with elements of Mannerist, Neo-Classical and Modern architecture in selected areas, though World War II left major scars on the city. The City of Valletta was officially recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. The city is named for Jean Parisot de la Valette, who succeeded in defending the island from an Ottoman invasion in 1565. $$https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGlRHAOUQvk$$
Palermo is a city of Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as Ziz ('flower'), Palermo is Sicily's cultural, economic and touristic capital. It is a city rich in history, culture, art, music and food. Numerous tourists are attracted to the city for its good Mediterranean weather, its renowned gastronomy and restaurants, its Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque churches, palaces and buildings, and its nightlife and music. The city is also was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean and is now among the top tourist destinations in both Italy and Europe. It is the main seat of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale. The city is also going through careful redevelopment, preparing to become one of the major cities of the Euro-Mediterranean area. Roman Catholicism is highly important in Palermitano culture. The Patron Saint of Palermo is Santa Rosalia whose Feast Day is celebrated on 15 July. The area attracts significant numbers of tourists each year and is widely known for its colourful fruit, vegetable and fish markets at the heart of Palermo, known as Vucciria, Ballarò and Capo.
Marseille, known in antiquity as Massalia, is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of 240.62 km2. The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of 1,204 km2. 1,530,000 or 1,601,095 people live in the Marseille metropolitan area. Located on the southeast coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea, Marseille is France's largest commercial port and largest French city on the Mediterranean coast. Marseille is the capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, as well as the capital of the Bouches-du-Rhône department. Its inhabitants are called Marseillais.
Barcelona – Spain's enchanting capital, second largest and most populous city. It is a huge city that vibrates with life, and there's certainly not another city in the country to touch it for its sheer style, looks or energy. It is one of the world's leading tourist, economic, trade fair and cultural centers, and its influence in commerce, education, entertainment, media, fashion, science, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities. Barcelona is home to masterpieces of many great architects – the most famous of which is Antoni Gaudí.
Valencia is the most populous city of the Autonomous Community of Valencia and the third largest city in Spain, with a population of 809,267 in 2010. It is the 15th-most populous municipality in the European Union. It is integrated into an industrial area on the Costa del Azahar. Its historic centre is one of the largest in Spain, with approximately 169 hectares; this heritage of ancient monuments, views and cultural attractions makes Valencia one of the country's most popular tourist destinations!
Livorno is an Italian port city on the Ligurian Sea, on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. Traditionally been known in English as Leghorn, it's known for its seafood, Renaissance-era fortifications and modern harbor with a cruise ship port.
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo, officially refers to an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Monaco has four traditional quarters - from west to east they are: Fontvieille (the newest), Monaco-Ville (the oldest), La Condamine, and Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo (literally "Mount Charles") is situated on a prominent escarpment at the base of the Maritime Alps along the French Riviera. Near the western end of the quarter is the world-famous Place du Casino, the gambling center which has made Monte Carlo "an international byword for the extravagant display and reckless dispersal of wealth". It is also the location of the Hôtel de Paris, the Café de Paris, and the Salle Garnier (the casino theatre which is the home of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo).
Civitavecchia is a town and comune of the Metropolitan City of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio. A sea port on the Tyrrhenian Sea, the name ''Civitavecchia'' means "ancient town". The modern city was built over a pre-existing Etruscan settlement. The massive Forte Michelangelo was first commissioned from Donato Bramante by Pope Julius II, to defend the port of Rome. The upper part of the "maschio" tower, however, was designed by Michelangelo, whose name is generally applied to the fortress. North of the city at Ficoncella are the Terme Taurine baths frequented by Romans and still popular with the Civitavecchiesi. The modern name stems from the common fig plants among the various pools. And also next to the town is the location of the cruise ship docks. All major cruise lines start and end their cruises at this location, and others stop for shore excursion days that allow guests to see Rome and Vatican sights, which are ninety minutes away.